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The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

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God imparts, <strong>and</strong> which believers have from Him. <strong>The</strong> fulness of the<br />

Godhead is the plenitude of the divine nature in all its attributes. This is<br />

here intensified by the word "all:" “all the, fulness." <strong>The</strong> Godhead is<br />

incarnate through the second person of the Trinity, <strong>and</strong> the whole second<br />

person of the Trinity dwells in Christ's humanity, which it has united to<br />

itself as its own body. All the fulness of the Godhead cannot personally<br />

dwell in Christ <strong>and</strong> also personally be separate from Christ, for personality<br />

implies -not simply presence, but far more; it involves the most absolute<br />

union. If all the fulness of the Godhead in the second person of the Trinity<br />

dwells in Christ bodily, then there is no fulness of that Godhead where it is<br />

not so dwelling in Christ; <strong>and</strong> as the human in Christ cannot limit the<br />

divine, which is essentially, <strong>and</strong> of necessity, omnipresent, the divine in<br />

Christ must exalt the human. <strong>The</strong> Godhead of Christ is everywhere<br />

present, <strong>and</strong> wherever present, dwells in the human personally, <strong>and</strong>,<br />

therefore, of necessity renders it present with itself.<br />

<strong>The</strong> Doctrine implied where there is no formal statement.<br />

Matt. xvii. 25; xii. 8.<br />

So thoroughly does this idea of the personal unity underlie the New<br />

Testament conception of Christ, that we find it constantly assumed where<br />

no formal statement of it is made. Two examples of this may suffice.<br />

When (Matt. xvii. 25) our Lord claimed, as man, the exemption from<br />

the duty of paying the Temple-tax, on the ground that He had the receiving<br />

right of royalty, <strong>and</strong> was exempt from the paying duty of the subject, it<br />

implied that His humanity was in such unity with His Godhead, that He<br />

could argue from the one to the other. If there were two persons, He must<br />

have argued: My Godhead is exempt, but my humanity is bound to the<br />

payment. But His argument is the very reverse: I am not bound as God,<br />

therefore I am not bound as man; the logical link, of necessity, being:<br />

Because my Godhead has taken my humanity into personal unity with it.<br />

But if Christ participates in divine rights according to His humanity, He<br />

must participate in the divine attributes which condition those rights. This<br />

is the presupposition of that. That is the result of this.

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