An Unresolved Tension in the Christology of D. M. Baillie

D. M. Baillie's God was in Christ is now published as a paperback, and this is a pointer to the widespread nature of its appeal. No modern book in English on Christology has been more readable or given a greater sense of honesty of thought or ecumenicity of spirit. It has appeared to many to throw new light on the wonder of the Incarnation, and on the human and Divine in the life of our Lord. Its Christology, however, has also been already the subject of criticism in this journal where Professor J. H. Hick, of Princeton, in March 1958 suggested that Baillie's solution is really a form of adoptionism, the Man Christ Jesus being the Man in whom the most perfect presence of God to Man and the most perfect response of Man to God is manifested. I agree with Professor Hick that much of what Donald Baillie says does appear to point to a form of adoptionism, but I would maintain that there is another strain in Baillie's writings which is not simply a form of predestinarian compulsion as Hick suggests, but is an attempt to say what the traditional orthodoxy said when it spoke about a Divine nature in Christ. The aim of this article is to show that this real tension is to be found in Baillie's writing, and that for this reason his solution of the paradox of grace does not turn out to be nearly so complete a solution as he thinks.