GESHURITES, ge-shfl'raits. See Canaan, § 11.
GESS, ges, WOLFGANG FRIEDRICH: German Lutheran, belonging to the modern kenotic school (see Christology, X., 4, § 2; Kenosis); b. at Kirchheim unter Teck (16 m: s.e. of Stuttgart), Württemberg, June 27, 1819; d. at Wernigerode (43 m. s.w. of Magdeburg) June 1, 1891. He studied at the monastic school at Blaubeuren and at Tübingen (1837-11), and became vicar of his father, who was general superintendent at Heilbronn. Following the Württemberg custom of his time, as candidate in theology in 1843 he visited various universities-Heidelberg, Bonn, Berlin, Wittenberg, and Halle. His first pastorate was at Maulbronn, whence he returned in 1846 to Tübingen as repetent, and then became pastor at Grossanspach. In 1850 he went to the Mission House in Basel as instructor in theology. From 1864 to 1871 he was ordinary professor of systematic theology and exegesis at Göttingen, from 1871 to 1880 professor at Breslau and member of the Silesian consistory, then general superintendent of the province of Posen till 1885, after which time he lived in retirement at Wernigerode.
The teaching of Gess was fundamentally Biblical. " The Biblical doctrine of faith, which we have here to deal with," he declared in one of his lectures at Basel, " is derived not from the symbolical documents of any particular Church, but immediately from the revealing sources themselves. .
It presupposes that the transmitting author really comprehends the fundamental thoughts [of the
Spirit] out of which all Scripture has grown and did
not import extraneous or foreign views." With
Auberlen, Riggenbach, Stdhelin, and others he
delivered popular lectures in Basel in 1860-61 in
vindication of the Christian faith (Eng. transl.,
The Foundations of our Faith, Edinburgh, 1863), and
here he first brought out his chief literary work,
Die Lehre von der Person Christi
(1856), with three supplementary articles "On the Atonement" in
the Jahrbücher für deutsche T heologie,
1857-59. He aims to set forth the conceivableness of the union
"of the complete humanity and the real divinity in
Christ," especially in the light of
The solution of the problem, °° how he who was
born as very man can be the same person with him
who had glory with the Father before the foundation of the world, Who was
as God with God" (vol.
iii., p. 254), constituted the literary life-work of
Gess. " Christ's actual acknowledgment of the
righteousness of God by silent and humble endurance of the sentence of condemnation, is the mainspring of his messianic work " (iii.
144). The expression that with the Son of God all variableness
is excluded, is " only a theological construction,
not a canon of Christ, Paul, John " (iii. 352). The
" great transformation " took place in him, " in
that he passed over from the life of the absolute,
or self-constituent, into the life of the transposed,
or objectively constituted " (p. 353). Just as
with the children of men God creates the soul at the instant of conception, and the divinely created spirit
unites with the bodily nature engendered by man
and woman, so " with Jesus the Logos-Nature
unites with the corporal nature as conceived in
Mary by the Holy Ghost." Thus arises " the resemblance of Jesus to his mother " (p. 360). So,
too, his vital development is conditioned by the
gradual maturing of his bodily organism (p. 367).
Again, his sanctification remained " the act of real
freedom; that is, the freedom of choosing between
contrasted or opposing possibilities " (p. 369).
" He was still in the process of learning, even in
Gethsemane
(
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