the Logos and the man, and this relation is on both sides one of free will[1], a relation of love[2], a relation of giving on the one side and of taking on the other[3], a relation that becomes so close, that the one presents himself as the other, and that the form of God shows itself in the form of a servant and the form of a servant is teaching, acting, etc. in the form of God.
We must observe, it is true, that the man is God not by nature, but only because God reveals Himself in him, and that the Logos is not flesh by nature, but only manifests himself in the flesh[4]. But also my late colleague Dr Martin Kähler (†Sept. 7th, 1912), who was regarded as orthodox, held it to be a vain attempt to combine two independent beings or two persons in an individual life[5]. He himself thought that the union of the Godhead and manhood will become intelligible if understood as a reciprocity of two personal actions,
- ↑ B. 264 f. = N. 159: … une union volontaire en prosôpon et non en nature.
- ↑ B. 81 = N. 52: unies par l'amour et dans le mime prosôpon; B. 275 = N. 174: réunies en égalité par adhésion (συνάφεια) et par amour.
- ↑ B. 299 = N. 189 f.: … afin que le prosôpon fût commun à celui qui donnait la forme et à celui qui la recevait à cause de son obéissance; B. 348 = N. 223: Par les prosôpons de l'union l'un est dans l'autre et cet 'un' n'est pas conçu par diminution, ni par suppression, ni par confusion, mais par l'action de recevoir et de donner et par l'usage de l'union de l'un avec l'autre, les prosôpons recevant et dormant l'un et l'autre.
- ↑ Comp. above, p. 83 f. and 85.
- ↑ Kähler, Die Wissenschaft der christlichen Lehre, 3rd edition, Leipsic, 1905, § 388, p. 339.
