Sunday, July 11, 2004 AD
Of doves and men
One person who could not be accused of being "uneasy at, and sometimes incapable of, being asked to wrestle with sustained didactic exposition of theology" (see previous post) is Martin Chemnitz. I'm gradually working my way through The Two Natures in Christ and, while sometimes it's a bit of a struggle, at many other times I've found "my heart burning within me" as Chemnitz unfolds the wonderful depths of what it means to believe in, and confess, Jesus Christ as "perfect God and perfect Man".
And I liked the unexpected touch of dry humour when Chemnitz - in the course of explaining how Christ truly assumed human flesh, rather than His incarnation being merely another manifestation of the Second Person of the Trinity as found at times in the Old Testament - cites Augustine on the difference between the incarnation of Christ and the appearance of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove:
And I liked the unexpected touch of dry humour when Chemnitz - in the course of explaining how Christ truly assumed human flesh, rather than His incarnation being merely another manifestation of the Second Person of the Trinity as found at times in the Old Testament - cites Augustine on the difference between the incarnation of Christ and the appearance of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove:
For the Spirit did not come to liberate doves in the way that the Son of God put on human flesh in order that He might liberate flesh by His flesh.(Also: having read sections VII and VIII of the Solid Declaration in the past week, and started Chemnitz, I'm now beginning to see more clearly the basis for Lutheran accusations of Nestorianism against Calvinists and Zwinglians, and to reconsider my earlier hesitations about these arguments - may go into more detail on that point in a later post).
