But if Luther accepted the old formulas de- scribing the nature of God and the Person of Christ, he did so in a thoroughly characteristic way. He desired to state them in plain German, so that they could appeal to the 'common man.' Neither he nor any of tlie Reformers believed that theology, which for them was, or ought to be, the most practical of all disciplines, was a secret science for experts, described in a language which must be unintelligible to the multitude. He con- fessed with some impatience that technical theo- logical terms were sometimes necessary, but he did not like them, and he used them as little as possible.
' Quodsi odit anima mea vocem homoousion, et nolim ea uti, non haereticus ero, quis enim me coget uti, modo rem teneam, quae in concilio per scripturas definita est' (Erlangen ed. Lat. xxxvi. 506). Like Athanasius, he preferred the word oneness to express the relation between the Persons in the Trinity. He even disliked the term Trinity or its German equivalents Drei- faUigkeit, Dreiheit. ' Dreifaltigkeit ist ein recht hose Deutsch, denn in der Gottheit ist die hochste Einigkeit. Etliche nennen es Dreiheit ; aber das lautet allzuspottisch . . . darum lautet es auch kalt, und viel besser sprach man Gott denn die Dreifaltig- keit' (Erlangen2, xii. 408). He called the technical terms used in the old creeds vocabula mathematica, and did not use any of them in his Small or Large Catechisms.
In framing his conception of what was meant by the Person of Christ, Luther, like all the Re- formers, started from the saving work of the Re- deemer. He approached the Person of Christ from our Lord's mediatorial work, and not from any metaphysical way of thinking Avhat Godhead must be, and what manhood must be, and how Godhead and manhood can be united. He rises from the office to the Person, and does not descend from the Person to the office.
'Christ is not called Christ because He has two natures. What does that matter to me? He bears this glorious and comforting name because of His office and work which He has undertaken ' (ib. xii. 244).
It is a true api)reciation of His work that leads to a real knowledge of His Person. ' He who, with Peter, has a true view of the office which Christ must exercise in the world, and effect with us, must conclude with Peter that Christ must be God in like omnipotence' (ih. vi. 286). 'To remove from us the burden of sin, death, hell, and the devil, and to vanquish their power, and to bring again righteousness, life, and salvation, are the works neither of men nor of angels, but only of the One, Eternal, Divine Majesty, the Creator of heaven and earth.
Therefore must this seed of Abraham be true, everlasting. Al- mighty God, equal to the Father from all eternity ' (ib. xix. 18). He who accomplished an effectual redemption for fallen and enslaved humanity must needs be Divine. The idea of a re- deemer of man. Himself no more than man, or rather. Himself less than the one eternal God, was to Luther an absurdity. Redemption and Godhead were inseparably bound together.
So, like Athanasius, Luther found in his salva- tion the prooi of the Divinity of the Saviour. Beneath all the reasonings of the great Alex- andrian there lay his fundamental Christian experience that the Saviour who redeemed him must be the great God who made heaven and earth. It was the same with Luther.
In the second article on the Creed in his Catechism, he says, ' This means that I believe that Jesus Christ, true God ... is my Lord who has redeemed me,' and again : ' We must have a Saviour who is more than a saint or an angel ; for if He were no better and greater than these, there were no helping us. But if He be God, then the treasure is so ponderous that it out- weighs and lifts awaj- sin and death ; and not only so, but also gives eternal life. 'This is our Christian faith, and therefore we rightly confess : "I believe in Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord, who was born of Mary, suffered and died." By this faith hold fast, and though heathen and heretic are ever so wise, thou Shalt be Islessed' (Erlangen ed. xlvii. 3, 4).
Jesus Christ was for Luther the mirror of the fatherly heart of God, and therefore was God ; God Himself w^as the only Comforter who could bring rest to the human soul burdened by sin and grief ; and the Holy Spirit was God. The old creeds confessed One God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and the confession contented him, what- ever words were used. Besides, he rejoiced to place himself side by side with the Christians of the ancient days, who were free from the sophis- tries of the Schoolmen, and to feel that he also belonged to the ancient Church, the communion of the saints.
But although Luther and the other Reformers accepted the theology of the ancient Church and introduced its creeds into tlie reformed services of public worship, they put a richer meaning into the doctrine of tlae Person of Christ than had ever been done before their day ; and the thought of the Divinity of Christ meant more to them than it had done t<) their early predecessors. Jesus, the Saviour, seemed to be God in a more intimate way to them than to the earlier divines. The old theo- logy had stated the doctrine of the Two Natures in the Person of Christ, in such a way as to suggest that the only function of the Divine nature was to give to the human work of the Saviour such an importance as to make it effective. This is seen in Augustine, in Anselm, and in the Reformed Scholastics of the 17th century. Luther and his fellow-Reformers always refused to take this limited way of regarding the Divinity of Christ. They did not refuse the expression ' Two Natures in One Person,' but Luther makes it plain that the Avords suggested an idea which he believed to be wrong, and which had to be guarded against. He declares frequently that we must beware of thinking that the Deity and the humanity of Christ are united in such an external fashion that we may look at tlie one apart from the other. When we see Jesus, we perceive God and man really and intimately united.