The Formula (in the Second Part) distinguishes three kinds of the communicatio idiomatum, which were afterwards more fully analyzed, defined, and designated by the Lutheran scholastics of the seventeenth century. [631]
1. The genus idiomaticum, by which the attributes of one or the other nature are communicated to the whole person. Thus it is said that 'the Son of God was made of the seed of David, according to the flesh' (Rom. i. 3), that 'Christ was put to death in the flesh,' and that 'he suffered in the flesh' (1 Pet. iii. 18; iv. 1). [632] Here Luther's warning is quoted against Zwingli's alloeosis, as 'a mask of the devil.'
2. The genus apotelesmaticum, or the koinonia apotelesmaton, [633] which has reference to the execution of the office of Christ: the communication of redeeming acts of the whole person to one of the two natures. Christ always operates in and through both. Thus Christ, neither as God nor man alone, but as God-man, is our Mediator, Redeemer, King, High-Priest, Shepherd, etc. He shed his blood according to his human nature, but the divine nature gave it infinite value (1 Cor. xv. 3: 'Christ died for our sins;' Gal. i. 4; iii. 17; 1 John iii. 8; Luke ix. 56).
3. The genus majestaticum, or auchematicum, [634] i.e., the communication of the attributes of the divine nature to the assumed humanity of Christ. 'The human nature of Christ,' says the Formula, 'over and above its natural, essential, and permanent human properties, has also received special, high, great, supernatural, inscrutable, ineffable, heavenly prerogatives and pre-eminence in majesty, glory, power, and might, above all that can be named (Eph. i. 21).' [635] . . . 'This majesty of the human nature was hidden and restrained in the time of the humiliation. But now, since the form of a servant is laid aside, the majesty of Christ appears fully, efficiently, and manifestly before all the saints in heaven and on earth, and we also in the life to come shall see his glory face to face (John xvii. 24). For this reason, there is and remains in Christ only one divine omnipotence, power, majesty, and glory, which is the property of the divine nature alone; but this shines forth, exhibits, and manifests itself fully, yet spontaneously, in, with, and through the assumed, exalted human nature in Christ; precisely as to shine and to burn are not two properties of iron, but the power to shine and to burn is the property of the fire--but since the fire is united with the iron, it exhibits and manifests its power to shine and to burn in, with, and through this red-hot iron; so that also the red-hot iron, through this union, has the power to shine and to burn, without a change of the essence and of the natural properties of the fire or of the iron.' [636]
The Lutheran scholastics make here a distinction between the operative attributes (omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence) and the quiescent attributes (eternity, infinitude): all were communicated to Christ for inhabitation and possession, but only the operative for use--chresis, usurpatio (Matt. xxviii. 18; John xvii. 2, 5, 27; Col. ii. 3).
4. Strict logic would require a fourth genus (genus tapeinotikon, namely, the communication of the attributes of the human nature to the divine nature. But this is rejected by the Formula and the Lutheran scholastics, on the ground that the divine nature is unchangeable, and received no accession nor detraction from the incarnation. [637] This is a palpable inconsistency, [638] and is fatal to the third genus. For if there is any real communication of the properties of the two natures, it must be mutual; the one is the necessary counterpart of the other. If the human nature is capable of the divine, the divine nature must be capable of the human; and if, on the other hand, the divine nature is incapable of the human, the human nature must be incapable of the divine. Luther felt this, and boldly uses such expressions as 'God suffered,' 'God died,' which were familiar to the Monophysites. [639]
The battle-ground between the Lutheran and the Reformed is the genus majestaticum, for which John of Damascus had prepared the way. But just here the Formula is neither quite clear nor consistent. It was unable to harmonize the two different Lutheran Christologies represented among the authors by Andreæ and Chemnitz. [640] It teaches, on the one hand (to guard against the charge of Eutychianism and Monophysitism), that the attributes of the divine nature (as omnipotence, eternity, infinitude, omnipresence, omniscience) 'can never become (intrinsically and per se) the attributes of the human nature,' and that the attributes of the human nature (as corporeality, limitation, circumscription, passibility, mortality, hunger, thirst) 'can never become the attributes of the divine nature.' [641] (This quite agrees with the doctrine of Chemnitz and of the Reformed theologians.) But, on the other hand (in opposition to Nestorianism and the 'sacramentarians,' as the Reformed are called), the Formula asserts that, by virtue of the hypostatic or personal union of the two natures and the communion of natures, one nature may, nevertheless (by derivation and dependency), partake of the properties of the other, or at least that the human nature, while retaining its inherent properties, may and does receive (as peculiar prerogatives, or as dona superaddita) the attributes of divine glory, majesty, power, omniscience, and omnipresence. [642] Thus God is really man, and man is really God; Mary is truly the mother of God, since she conceived and brought forth the Son of God; the Son of God truly suffered, though according to the property of his human nature; Christ as man, not only as God, knows all things, is able to do all things, is present to all creatures, and was so from the moment of the incarnation. For (as the Solid Declaration expressly states) Christ, according to his humanity, received his divine Majesty 'when he was conceived in the womb and became man, and when the divine and human natures were united with each other.' That is to say, the incarnation of God was at the same time a deification of man in Christ. (This was the Swabian theory of Brentius and Andreæ.)
As regards the ubiquity in particular, the Formula is again inconsistent. The Epitome favors the doctrine of the absolute ubiquity of Christ's body in all creatures (as taught by Luther, Brentius, Andreæ), and says that Christ, 'not only as God, but also as man, is present to all creatures . . . is omnipresent, and all things are possible and known to him;' the Solid Declaration, on the contrary, asserts only the relative ubiquity or multivolipresence (as taught by Chemnitz); but neutralizes this again by quoting, with full approbation, Luther's strongest passages in favor of absolute ubiquity. [643] Hence there arose a fruitless controversy on the subject among the orthodox Lutherans themselves, as has been already stated.
The Formula, therefore, is not a real union of the Swabian and Saxon types, but only a series of concessions and counter-concessions, and a mechanical juxtaposition of discordant sentences from both parties. [644] The later orthodoxy did not settle the question, and both theories continued to find their advocates. Moreover, the Formula does not answer and refute, but simply denies the objections of the Reformed divines, and falls back upon the incomprehensibility of the mystery of the hypostatic union, which is declared to be the highest mystery next to the Trinity, and the one 'on which our whole consolation, life, and salvation depend.'
As regards the states of humiliation (exinanitio) and exaltation (exaltatio), the Formula, in the passages already quoted, teaches the full possession (ktesis), and a partial or occult use (kresis), of the divine attributes by Christ from the moment of his existence as a man. His human nature, and not the divine pre-existent Logos, is understood to be the subject of the humiliation in the classical passage Phil. ii. 7, on which the distinction of two states is based. Consequently the two states refer properly only to the human nature, and consist in a difference of outward condition and visible manifestation. The humiliation is a partial concealment of the actual use (a krupsis chreseos) of the divine attributes communicated to the human nature at the incarnation; the exaltation is a full manifestation of the same. As to the extent of the concealment or actual use, there arose afterwards, as we have seen already, a controversy between the Giessen and Tübingen divines, but was never properly settled, nor can it be settled on the christological basis of the Formula. [645] The modern school of Lutheran Kenoticists depart from it by assuming a real self-renunciation (kenosis) of the divine Logos in the incarnation, but thereby they endanger the immutability of the Deity, and interrupt the continuity of the divine government of the world through the Logos during the state of humiliation.
We add some general remarks on the Christology of the Formula, as far as it differs from the Reformed Christology. After renewed investigation of this difficult problem, I have been confirmed in the conviction that the exegetical argument, which must ultimately decide the case, is in favor of the Reformed and against the Lutheran theory; but I cheerfully admit that the latter represents a certain mystical and speculative element, which is not properly appreciated in the Calvinistic theology, and may act as a check upon Nestorian tendencies.
1. The scholastic refinements of the doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum, and especially the ubiquity of the body, have no intrinsic religious importance, and owe their origin to the Lutheran hypothesis of the corporeal presence. [646] They should, therefore, never have been made an article of faith. A surplus of orthodoxy provokes skepticism.
2. The great and central mystery of the union of the divine and human in Christ, which the Formula desires to uphold, is overstated and endangered by its doctrine of the genus majestaticum, or the communication of the divine attributes to the human nature of Christ. This doctrine runs contrary to the asunchutos and atreptos of the Chalcedonian Creed. It leads necessarily--notwithstanding the solemn protest of the Formula--to a Eutychian confusion and æquation of natures; for, according to all sound philosophy, the attributes are not an outside appendix to the nature and independent of it, but inherent qualities, and together constitute the nature itself. Or else it involves the impossible conception of a double set of divine attributes--one that is original, and one that is derived or transferred.
3. The genus majestaticum can not be carried out, and breaks down half-way. The divine attributes form a unit, and can not be separated. If one is communicated, all are communicated. But how can eternity ab ante (anfangslose Existenz), which is a necessary attribute of the divine nature of Christ, be really communicated to a being born in time, as Jesus of Nazareth undoubtedly was? How can immensity be transferred to a finite man? The thing is impossible and contradictory. An appeal to God's omnipotence is idle, for God can not sin, nor err, nor die, nor do any thing that is inconsistent with his rational and holy nature.
4. The doctrine has no support in the Scriptures; for the passages quoted in its favor speak of the divine human person, not of the human nature of Christ; as, 'I am with you alway;' 'all power is given to me;' [647] 'in Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge;' 'in Christ dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.' And as to the state of humiliation, such passages as Luke ii. 52; Mark xiii. 32; Heb. v. 8, 9, are inconsistent with the teaching of the Formula that he was omniscient as man from the mother's womb.
5. The Christology of the Formula makes it impossible to construct a truly human life of our Lord on earth, and turns it into a delusive Christophany, or substitutes a crypto-pantheistic Christ for a personal, historical Christ.