that elaborate system of dogma which is
often little understood even by its most vigorous champions. You know
in a very general way the result. The Logos was made more and more
distinct from God, endowed with a more and more decidedly personal
existence. Then, when the interests of Monotheism seemed to be
endangered, the attempt was made to save it by asserting the
subordination of the Son to the Father. The result was that by
Arianism the Son was reduced to the position of an inferior God.
Polytheism had once more to be averted by asserting in even stronger
terms not merely the equality of the Son with the Father but also the
Unity of the God who is both Father and Son. The doctrine of the
Divinity of the Holy Ghost went through a somewhat similar series of
stages. At first regarded as identical with the Word, a distinction
was gradually effected. The Word was said to have been incarnate in
Jesus; while it was through the Holy Ghost that the subsequent work of
God was carried on in human hearts. And by similar stages the equality
of the Holy Ghost to Father and to Son was gradually evolved; while it
was more and more strongly asserted that, in spite of the eternal
distinction of {171} Persons, it was one and the same God who revealed
Himself in all the activities attributed to each of them.

Side by side with these controversies about the relation between the
Father and the Word, there was a gradual development of doctrine as to
the relation between the Logos and the human Jesus in whom he took up
his abode. Frequently the idea of any real humanity in Jesus was all
but lost. That was at last saved by the Catholic formula 'perfect God
and perfect man'; though it cannot be denied that popular thought in
all ages has never quite discarded the tendency to think of Jesus as
simply God in human form, and not really man at all. Even now there
are probably hundreds of people who regard themselves as particularly
orthodox Churchmen who yet do not know that the Church teaches that our
Lord had a human soul and a human will.

What are we to make of all that vast structure, of the elaboration and
complication of which the Constantinopolitan Creed which we miscall
Nicene and even the so-called Athanasian Creed give very little idea to
those who do not also know something of the Councils, the Fathers, and
the Schoolmen? Has it all a modern meaning? Can it be translated into
terms of our modern thought and speech? For