PrefaceIt may not be unnecessary to inform the reader that the present book is designed chiefly as a student's manual, which, with a fair measure of completeness, should cover the whole field of Christology. This so far excuses two of its more prominent features: the large space given to historical narration, and a certain frequency of allusion to modern literature. My purpose was not simply to formulate the results reached by a single mind—results, as I give fair warning, in no sense original or extraordinary— but also to furnish what might be considered a competent guide to the best recent discussion, in this country and Germany. If these pages should have helped any student to take his bearings in the world of Christological thought, or suggested fruitful lines of new inquiry, their object will have been fully achieved.
Nothing in the book, it is probable, may seem so indefensible as the more or less speculative tone of the concluding chapters. Some, I fear, will judge that, all protestations notwithstanding, I have added one more to the vain attempts to explain in detail how God became, for our redemption, incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ. I am conscious that a problem of method is indicated here on which opinions are widely divergent, and are likely to remain so. To abstain from all -efforts to reach a constructive synthesis of the data which faith apprehends would, as is known, have been in harmony with well-marked and ably championed tendencies of our time. I can only plead that, while it certainly " has not pleased God to save His people by argument," it nevertheless does not seem possible to vindicate the absoluteness of Christ as an intelligent conviction except by passing definitely into the domain of reasoned theory. It is not that Dogmatic starts where faith ends. It is rather that Dogmatic is called to fix in lucid conceptual forms the whole rich truth of which faith is sure. The revelation and self-sacrifice of God in Christ—which forms the very heart of the New Testament message—cannot really be presented to the mind without raising problems of an essentially speculative character. Hence there will always be metaphysic in theology, but it is the implicit metaphysic of faith, moving ever within the sphere of conscience.
My sincere thanks are due to my friend and colleague, the Rev. Professor H. A. A. Kennedy, D.D., who has helped me to revise the proofs, and has guided me at many points by valuable counsel and suggestion. I am also indebted to the Editor of the Expositor for permission to use some portions of an article lately contributed to its pages.
H. R. MACKINTOSH. NEW COLLEGE, EDINBURGH, October 1912.
In the Second Edition I have made a few corrections, which do not affect the substance of argument or exposition.
H. R. M.
February 1913.
