to be the object of our love and of our imitation rather than of our philosophical investigation, at least this investigation should have been made peaceably by men of approved competence and prudence, far from the quarrelsome crowd. The contrary happened. An unloosing of religious passion, a series of quarrels between metropolitans, of rivalries between ecclesiastical prelates, of noisy councils, imperial laws, deprivements, exiles, riots, schisms—these were the circumstances under which Greek theologians studied the dogma of the Incarnation. And if we look for the result of their work, we see at the end of the story the Eastern Church incurably divided, the Christian Empire broken up, the successors of Mohammed crushing under foot Syria and Egypt. This was the price of those metaphysical exercises."[1]
Let us also notice this: supposing there had been no such discussion, supposing we could entirely forget the storms that raged around Ephesus and Chalcedon, any reasonable person now would admit that the Catholic solution is the only possible one, on the basis of the divinity of our Lord. Jesus Christ is God and man. That is the old faith held in peace by the Christian commonwealth long before these fatal discussions began. "The Word was God. The Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us." It follows, then, inevitably that in him divinity and humanity both exist, "in whom dwells all the fulness of divinity in the body."[2] That was enough for earlier generations. But, if the prying Greek philosopher must ask further, what then? Plainly that these two, divinity and humanity, are as intimately joined as they can be without destroying each other. They are as intimately joined as they can be. There is only one Jesus Christ. He, the same he, died on the cross who reigned with the Father before all ages; the Jews "crucified the Lord of Glory."[3] He, the same Jesus Christ, who was born of Mary, said: "Before Abraham was made, I am."[4] To divide our Lord, then, into two destroys the whole idea of who he is. If there were two, the Lord of Glory would not have been crucified, he (the same Jesus) would not himself be God and man; there would be he who is God, and (another person) he who is man. Shall we say that the
