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The disagreement was due not to their vision but to their view point, not to the object of their thought or the process of their thinking, but to their different presuppositions and starting points. Presented in this way the monophysite and other Christological controversies of the fifth and sixth centuries become phases of the cosmic problem.
Humanism has made Jesus obvious, hence, relatively impotent. With its unified cosmos, its immanent God, its exalted humanity, the whole Christological problem has become trivial. It drops the cosmic approach to the person of Jesus in favor of the ethical. It does not approach Him from the side of God; we approach nothing from that side now; but from the side of man.
The systematic Christology of the fifth century was, therefore, a completion of the work begun in the first. The essence of the Christological problem is the question as to the union of natures in Christ. Are there two natures divine and human in Him? Is each distinct from the other and from the person? Is the distinction conceptual or actual? The incarnation is a union. Is it a real union?
In the first edition of Melanchthon's Loci Communes, that of 1521, the first Lutheran theological work, its author omits all Trinitarian and Christological speculations, the dogmatic basis of eschatology. And Dr. Nothing ought to find a place in Christian doctrine that is not capable of helping man to recognize his sins, to obtain the grace of God, and to serve Him in truth.
Readers of the Gospel narrative find there the Christ they are prepared to find. On this well-recognised fact we base our contention that an examination of any Christological system must begin with the philosophy on which the system rests. That philosophy supplies the a priori, or the presupposition, or the metaphysical basis, whichever name we prefer.
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