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or wonderful, upon this hypothesis, in
Christ's resurrection?
Or, rather, is it not much more difficult and amazing to conceive how such a being should ever, for any the slightest interval, be subject to death at all?
The resurrection of
Christ could then be no pattern or pledge of that of mankind at large, which is the plain doctrine of the New Testament.
The author then proceeds to comment on several texts which are commonly supposed to favour this scheme, and particularly the introduction to
St. John's Gospel, in which he conceives the term
λογος,to denote the divine wisdom personified,—an attribute of the divine nature, but not any being or person distinct from God the
Father himself.
When it is said the Word was made or became flesh, the term flesh denotes human nature in general; and the expression is equivalent to what we are elsewhere told, ‘that in him (
Christ) dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead;’ —‘that in him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge.’
This is, perhaps, the principle of interpretation which is better adapted than any other to meet all the difficulties of this remarkable passage, and, under one modification or another, has united in its favour, perhaps, an increasing majority of Unitarian critics.
‘The notion of an inferior Deity,’ says Lardner, ‘pre-existing, and then incarnate, seems to have been brought into the church by some of the learned converts from heathenism, who had not thoroughly abandoned the principles in which they had been educated.
Perhaps, likewise, they hoped by this means to render the doctrine of Christ more palatable to heathen people, especially their philosophers.
Moreover, ’
