Different Views among the iMtherans.
The principal points of difference among the Lutheran divines concerning the person of Christ were the following : The nature and effects of the union of natures in Christ ; the ground of that union ; and the time of its occurrence. The Reformed Church in adiiering to the doctrine as it had been settled in the Council of Chalcedon, maintained that there is such an essential difference between the divine and human natures that the one could not become the other, and that the one was not capable of receiving the attributes of the other. If God became the subject of the lim- itations of humanity He would cease to be God ; and if man received the attributes of God he would cease to be man. This was regai'ded as a self-evident truth. The ," communion of attributes " which the Reformed, in accordance with the common faith of the Church, admitted, concerned only the person and not the natures of Christ. Christ possessed all the attributes of iiiiman- ity and of divinity, but the two natures remained distinct ; just as a man is the subject of all that can be predicated of his body and of his soul, although the attributes of the one are not predicable of the other. The Lutherans maintained that, according to this view, the two natures were as separate as duo asseres agglutinatos. This they pronounced to be no real incarnation. The Reformed acknowledged that Jesus Christ the son of the Virgin Mary is a divine person, but denied that his human nature was divine. The Lutherans maintained that man became God, and that the human did become divine. Otherwise, Clirist as clothed in our nature, could not be an object of divine worship. As though we could not reverence a man unless we believed that the attributes of his mind were transferred to his body.
Although the Lutheran theologians agree as to the fact that the man Christ Jesus became God, they differ as t j the mode in which this was accomplished. Their language as to the fact is as strong as it can be made. Thus Brentius, the friend of Luther and the Reformer of Wiirtemberg, in his work " De Personali Unione," says. If the Logos " did not intend to remain either personali}^ or with his nature outside of Christ, but purposed to become man, He must needs exalt the humanity into his own majesty. Therein, in fact, consists the incarnation, that the man Christ not merely never existed or worked without the Logos, but also that the Logos never existed or worked without the man, whom He had assumed ; and as this was only possible through the elevation of the human* ty to
410 PART in. Ch. m. — the person of christ.
equal dignity with the Logos, the incarnation consists precisely in this elevation, — the one is identical with the other." ^ " Accord- ing to the philosophy of Zwingli, there is no proportion between the finite and the infinite ; but in the philosophy of God, finite humanity also may become infinite." '^ The human nature of Christ, therefore, possesses all divine attributes. It fills heaven and earth. It is omniscient and almighty. In the *' Form of Concord " ^ it is said, " Itaque non tantum ut Deus, verum etiam ut homo, omnia novit, omnia potest, omnibus creaturis praesens est, et omnia, quae in coelis, in terris et sub terra sunt, sub pedibus suis et in manu sua habet." And again,^ " Non in Christo sunt duse separatae personse, sed unica tantum est persona. Ubicunque ea est, ibi est unica tantum et indivisa persona. Et ubicunque recte dixeris : hie est Deus, ibi fateri oportet, et dicere, ergo etiam Christus homo adest." Tiiis being the case, it being admitted that man becomes God, that the human becomes divine, the finite infinite, the question arises, How can this be ? How is divinity thus communicated to humanity? It is in the answer to these questions that the diversi- ties and inconsistencies in the views not only of theologians but also of the symbolical books, appear. It was a principle with the Wittenbero; school of the Lutheran theologians that human nature is not capable of divinity. This is true also of Chemnitz, the great- est of the divines of the age after the Reformation. In his work " De Duabus Naturis in Christo, de Hypostatica Earum Unione, de Communicatione Idiomatum," etc., says Dorner, "he controverts in the most vigorous manner, a ' physica, naturalis communicatio,' or ' transfusio idiomatum ; ' and no less earnestly does he deny the 'capacitas' of a 'natura finita' for the 'infinitum,' if it signify more than that the divine can dwell and work in man."^ As to the ubiquity of Christ's body, the dissent was still more decided.^ Yet this idea of the capacity of human nature for divinity became
1 History of the Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ, by Dr. J. A. Dorner. Translated by Rev. D. W. Simon. Edinburgh, T. and T. Clark, 1862. Division ii. vol. ii. p. 180. 2 Ibid. p. 183.
8 VIII. 16; Ilase, Libri Symbolici, p. 608.
* viii. 82; Ibid. p. 784.
6 Dorner, Div. ii. vol. ii. p. 200.
6 On this point Dorner, on pa{]fe 240, note, says, " Selnekker designates the ' Ubiquitas absoluta figmentum Sathanae' (Chemnitz, a ' monstrum ' and ' portentum'), and j-et sub- scribed the Bergian formula which included Luther's words, — ' omnia in universum plena esse Christi etiam juxtahumanam naturam,' — which repeatedly says, Whoso believeth not that where the Logos is there also is the humanity of Christ, divideth the person; and which assumes Luther's doctrine of the three modes of existence of the body of Christ, — that also according to which ' Christi corpus repletive, absolute ut Deus, in omnibus crea • turis sit.' "