Hitherto we have been considering the relations within the Godhead of Father and Son, together with certain characters which belong to the Son in virtue of His eternal birth. We now come to the more original part of Hilary’s teaching, which must be treated in greater detail. Till now he has spoken only of the Son; he now comes to speak of Christ, the name which the Son bears in relation to the world. We have seen that Hilary regards the Son as the Creator. This was proved for him, as for Athanasius, by the passage, Proverbs viii. 22, which they read according to the Septuagint, ‘The Lord hath’ created Me for the beginning of His ways for His Works.’ These words, round which the controversy raged, were interpreted by the orthodox as implying that at the time, and for the purpose, of creation the Father assigned new functions to the Son as His representative. The gift of these functions, the exercise of which called into existence orders of being inferior to God, marked in Hilary’s eyes a change so definite and important in the activity of the Son that it deserved to be called a second birth, not ineffable like the eternal birth, but strictly analogous to the Incarnation.
This last was a creation, which brought Him within the sphere of created humanity; the creation of Wisdom for the beginning of God’s ways had brought Him, though less closely, into the same relation, and lxviiithe Incarnation is the completion of what was begun in preparation for the creation of the world. Creation is the mode by which finite being begins, and the beginning of each stage in the connection between the infinite Son and His creatures is called, from the one point of view, a creation, from the other, a birth. We cannot fail to see here an anticipation of the opinion that ‘the true Protevangelium is the revelation of Creation, or in other words that the Incarnation was independent of the Fall,’ for the Incarnation is a step in the one continuous divine progress from the Creation to the final consummation of all things, and has not sin for its cause, but is part of the original counsel of God.
Together with this new office the Son
receives a new name. Henceforth Hilary calls Him Christ; He is Christ in
relation to the world, as He is Son in relation to the Father. From the
beginning of time, then, the Son becomes Christ and stands in immediate
relation to the world; it is in and through Christ that God is the Author of
all things, and the title of Creator strictly belongs to the Son. This
beginning of time, we must remember, is hidden in no remote antiquity. The
world had no mysterious past; it came into existence suddenly at a date which
could be fixed with much precision, some 5,600 years before Hilary’s day,
and had undergone no change since then. Before that date there had been nothing
outside the Godhead; from that time forth the Son has stood in constant
relation to the created world.
Christ, for so we must henceforth call Him, has not only sustained in being the universe which He created, but has also imparted to men a steadily increasing knowledge of God. For such knowledge, we remember, man was made, and his salvation depends upon its possession. All the Theophanies of the Old Testament are such revelations by Him of Himself; and it was He that spoke by the mouth of Moses and the Prophets. But however significant and valuable this Divine teaching and manifestation might be, it was not complete in itself, but was designed to prepare men’s minds to expect its fulfilment in the Incarnation. Just as the Law was preliminary to the Gospel, so the appearances of Christ in human form to Abraham and to others were a foreshadowing of the true humanity which He was to assume.
They were true
revelations, as far as they went; but their purpose was not simply to impart so
much knowledge as they explicitly conveyed, but also to lead men on to expect
more, and to expect it in the very form in which it ultimately came210. For His
self-revelation in the Incarnation was but the treading again of a familiar
path. He had often appeared, and had often spoken, by His own mouth or by that
of men whom He had inspired; and in all this contact with the world His one
object had been to bestow upon mankind the knowledge of God. With the same
object He became incarnate; the full revelation was to impart the perfect
knowledge. He became man, Hilary says, in order that we might believe Him;—‘to
be a Witness from among us to the things of God, and by means of weak flesh to
proclaim God the Father to our weak and carnal selves.’ Here again we see the
continuity of the Divine purpose, the fulfilment of the counsel which dates
back to the beginning of time. If man had not sinned, he would still have
needed the progressive revelation; sin has certainly modified Christ’s course
upon earth, but was not the determining cause of the Incarnation.
The doctrine of the Incarnation, or Embodiment as Hilary prefers to call it, is presented very fully in the De Trinitate, and with much originality. The Godhead of Christ is secured by His identity with the eternal Son and by the fact that at the very time of His humilialxixtion upon earth He was continuing without interruption His divine work of maintaining the existence of the worlds. Indeed, by a natural protest against the degradation which the Arians would put upon Him, it is the glory of Christ upon which Hilary lays chief stress. And this is not the moral glory of submission and self-sacrifice, but the visible glory of miracles attesting the Divine presence. In the third book of the De Trinitate the miracles of Cana and of the feeding of the five thousand, the entrance into the closed room where the disciples were assembled, the darkness and the earthquake at the Crucifixion, are the proofs urged for His Godhead; and the wonderful circumstances surrounding the birth at Bethlehem are similarly employed in book ii.
Sound as the reasoning is, it is typical of a certain unwillingness on Hilary’s part to dwell upon the self-surrender of Christ; he prefers to think of Him rather as the Revealer of God than as the Redeemer of men. But, apart from this preference, he constantly insists that the Incarnation has caused neither loss nor change of the Divine nature in Christ, and proves the point by the same words of our Lord which had been used to demonstrate the eternal Sonship. And the assumption of flesh lessens His power as little as it degrades His nature. For though it is, in one aspect, an act of submission to the will of the Father, it is, in another, an exertion of His own omnipotence. No inferior power could appropriate to itself an alien nature; only God could strip Himself of the attributes of Godhead.
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