How does Ritschl regard Christ?
He considers him as one with God. But this oneness is not a oneness of consubstantiality of nature, but of Spirit and will, the correlation of his obedience with the Divine Love and Purpose. Through that manifestation of Love, grace, and faithfulness, which Christ gave in his Life and death, he became a perfect revelation of God; and, hence, divinity has been ascribed to him. But this dignity, according to Ritschl, does not remove his prophetic calling, but only modifies it. His sovereignty is made effectual only through his morally working, teaching, and serviceable Life, not through any compulsion of judgment. His divinity indicates no absolute distance, no difference in order of being, between his person and that of the members of his church. "Originally the attribute of divinity, as applied to Christ, was meant in this sense,—that the divinity of Christ is a direct guarantee that the whole human nature is to be made divine."
Nevertheless, Ritschl holds the position of Christ to be historically unique. Christ was the first to realize in his own Life, as his work and calling, that establishment of God's kingdom in the world which is precisely the final end of the Divine Purpose. He is, therefore, the founder of the divine realm, the archetype of complete humanity, the original object of the Divine Love, through whom this blessing of blessings is mediated to its subsequent members. Christ is, therefore, the complete revelation of God's Love, Grace, and Truth; and by its diffusion in the kingdom of God, founded by him, is its extension in the world possible.
