Prefatory Remarks

Part I: The Work of Redemption

The Redemption could not have been effected by a mediator who was either mere God or mere man. It required one who was both God and man. Christ, alone, being both God and man, was in a position to act as natural and moral mediator and to reconcile the human race to its Creator.

We have shown in a previous treatise that Christology¹ is founded on the doctrine of the Hypostatic Union. Similarly, Soteriology turns on the pivotal concept of the mediatorship of Christ and may be said to be implicitly contained in 2 Cor. V, 19: “God indeed was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.”

We have, therefore, to consider: (Ch. I) the mediatorship of Christ, the possibility of the Redemption, its congruity and necessity, and, by way of a corollary, the highly interesting question whether or not the Incarnation was absolutely preordained; (Ch. II) the fact of the Redemption, its reality, its properties, and the concrete mode of its realization. In connection with the last-mentioned point we shall also treat of Christ’s Descent into Hell and His Resurrection from the soteriological point of view.

Notes