The argument
appears to be not that Christ is not the “express
image,” or impress of the Father, as He is described in
Heb. i. 3, or form, as in Phil. ii. 6, but that this is not the sense in
which our Lord’s words in St. John xiv. 9, must be understood to describe
“seeing the Father.” Χαρακτὴρ and
μορφὴ
are equivalent to ἡ
θεία
φύσις, and μορφή is used
by St. Basil as it is used by St. Paul,—coinciding with, if
not following, the usage of the older Greek philosophy,—to
mean essential attributes which the Divine Word had before the
incarnation (cf. Eustathius in Theod. Dial. II.
[Wace and Schaff Ed., p. 203]; “the express image made
man,”—ὁ τῷ
πνεύματι
σωματοποιηθεὶς
ἄνθρωπος
χαρακτήρ.)
The divine nature does not admit of
combination, in the sense of confusion (cf. the
protests of Theodoret in his Dialogues against the confusion of the
Godhead and manhood in the Christ), with the human nature in our Lord,
and remains invisible. On the word χαρακτήρ
vide Suicer, and on μορφή Archbp.
Trench’s New Testament Synonyms and Bp. Lightfoot on
Philippians ii. 6.