rought about by God and Christ himself, which
reaches its culminating point in the death on the cross. Christ, the
divine spiritual being, is sent by the Father from heaven to earth, and
of his own free will he obediently takes this mission upon himself. He
appears in the [Greek: homoioma sarkos amartias], dies the death of the
cross, and then, raised by the Father, ascends again into heaven in
order henceforth to act as the [Greek: kurios zonton] and [Greek:
nekron] and to become to his own people the principle of a new life in
the spirit.

Whatever we may think about the admissibility and justification of this
view, to whatever source we may trace its origin and however strongly we
may emphasise its divergencies from the contemporaneous Hellenic ideas,
it is certain that it approaches very closely to the latter; for the
distinction of spirit and flesh is here introduced into the concept of
pre-existence, and this combination is not found in the Jewish notions
of the Messiah.

Paul was the first who limited the idea of pre-existence by referring it
solely to the spiritual part of Jesus Christ, but at the same time gave
life to it by making the pre-existing Christ (the spirit) a being who,
even during his pre-existence, stands independently side by side with
God.

He was also the first to designate Christ's [Greek: sarx] as "assumpta",
and to recognise its assumption as in itself a humiliation. To him the
appearance of Christ was no mere [Greek: phanerousthai], but a [Greek:
kenousthai, tapeinousthai] and [Greek: ptocheuein].

These outstanding features of the Pauline Christology must have been
intelligible to the Greeks, but, whilst embracing these, they put
everything else in the system aside. [Greek: Christos ho kurios ho sosas
hemas, hon men to proton pneuma, egeneto sarx kai houtos hemas
ekalesen], says 2 Clem. (9. 5), and that is also the Christology of 1
Clement, Barnabas and many other Greeks. From the sum total of
Judaeo-Christian speculations they only borrowed, in addition, the one
which has been already mentioned: the Messiah as [Greek: proegnosmenos
pro kataboles kosmou] is for that very reason also [Greek: he arche tes
ktiseos tou theou], that is the beginning, purpose and principle of the
creation. The Greeks, as the result of their cosmological interest,
embraced this thought as a fundamental proposition. The complete Greek
Christology then is expressed as follows: [Greek: Christos, ho sosas
hemas,