Chemnitz escaped some difficulties of the Swabian theory, but by endeavoring to mediate between it and the Melanchthonian and Swiss theory, he incurred the objections to both. Christ's glorified body is indeed not confined to any locality, and may be conceived to move with lightning speed from place to place, but its simultaneous presence in many places, wherever the eucharist is celebrated, involves the chief difficulty of an omnipresence, and is just as inconsistent with the nature of a body.
Of subordinate interest was the incidental question, disputed mainly between Wigand and Heshusius, whether the flesh of Christ were almighty and adorable only in concreto, or also in abstracto (extra, personam). Chemnitz declared this to be a mere logomachy, and advised the combatants to stop it, but in vain.
The first creed which adopted the ubiquity dogma was the Würtemberg Confession drawn up by Brenz, and adopted by a Synod at Stuttgart, Dec. 19, 1559. [573]
The Formula Concordiæ on this subject is a compromise between the Swabian absolute ubiquitarianism represented by Andreæ and expressed in the Epitome, and the Saxon hypothetical ubiquitarianism represented by Chemnitz and expressed in the Solida Declaratio. The compromise satisfied neither party. The Helmstädt divines--Tilemann Heshusius, Daniel Hoffmann, and Basilius Sattler--who had signed the written Formula in 1577, refused to sign the printed copy in 1580, because it contained unauthorized concessions to the Swabian view. A colloquy was held in Quedlinburg, 1583, at which the ubiquity question was discussed for several days without result. [574] Chemnitz was in a difficult position, as he nearly agreed with the Helmstädtians, and conceded that certain expressions had been wrested from him, but he signed the Formula for the sake of peace, with the reservation that he understood it in the sense of a hypothetical or limited ubiquity.
The Giessen and Tübingen Controversy about the Kenosis and Krypsis. [575] --The ubiquity question was revived under a new shape, on the common basis of the 'Formula of Concord' and the dogma of the communicatio idiomatum, in the controversy between the Kenoticism, of the theologians of Giessen, which followed in the track of Chemnitz, and the Krypticism of the theologians of Tübingen, which was based upon the theory of Brenz and Andreæ. The controversy forms the last phase in the development of the orthodox Lutheran Christology; it continued from 1616-1625, and was lost in the Thirty-Years' War.
Both parties agreed that the human nature of Christ from the moment of the incarnation, even in the mother's womb and on the cross, was in full possession (ktesis) of the divine attributes of omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, etc.; but they differed as to their use (chresis). The Giessen divines--Balthazar Mentzer (d. 1627), his son-in-law, Justus Feuerborn (d. 1656), and John Winckelmann--taught a real self-renunciation (kenosis, evacuatio, exinanitio), [576] i.e., that Christ voluntarily laid aside the actual use of the divine attributes and functions, except in the working of miracles; while the Tübingen divines--Lucas Osiander II. (d. 1638), Theodor Thumm, or Thummius (d. 1630), and Melchior Nicolai (d. 1659)--taught that he made a secret use of them (krupsis, occulta usurpatio). [577]
The Giessen divines, wishing chiefly to avoid the reproach of a portentosa ubiquitas, represented the omnipresence of Christ's humanity, not as an all-pervading existence, [578] but as an all-controlling power, or as an element of omnipotence. [579] The Tübingen school taught, in consequence of the unio hypostatica, an absolute omnipresence of Christ's humanity, as a quiescent quality, which consists in filling all the spaces of the universe, even from the conception to the death on the cross. [580]
A theological commission at Dresden, with Hoe von Hoenegg at the head, decided substantially in favor of the Giessen theory (1525), and against the Tübingen doceticism, without, however, advancing the solution of the problem or feeling its real difficulty.
The Giessen theory is more consistent with the realness of Christ's human life, but less consistent with itself, since it admits an occasional interruption of it by the use of the inherent powers of the divinity; the Tübingen theory, on the other hand, virtually destroys the distinction between the state of humiliation and the state of exaltation, and resolves the life of Christ into a magical illusion.
The modern Tübingen school of Baur and Strauss forms a strange parallel and contrast to that of the seventeenth century: it starts from the same principle that 'the finite is capable of the infinite,' but extends it pantheistically to humanity at large, and denies its applicability to Christ, on the ground that the divine fullness can not be emptied into a single individual. [581] Therefore, while the old Tübingen school in effect, though not in intention, destroys the real humanity of Christ, the modern Tübingen school consistently denies his divinity, and resolves all the supernatural and miraculous elements of the gospel history into a mythic poem or fiction.
In the modern revival of orthodox Lutheranism, the ubiquity of the body of Christ is either avoided, or advocated only in the hypothetical form, and mostly with a leaning towards a more literal acceptation of the kenosis (Phil. ii. 7) than the Giessen divines contended for. [582]