“I Am With You Always”: Christ’s Absolute Presence with Us

Confessional Lutheran Christology Part II

Martin Luther [steadfastly defended the substantial presence of Christ’s Body and Blood in the Lord’s Supper against other reformers like Ulrich Zwingli.] Luther responded to Zwingli in part by teaching the absolute omnipresence of Christ’s human nature. This doctrine is sometimes incorrectly called “Ubiquity.”¹ As Luther notes, the Bible teaches that Christ is at the “right hand of God.” But this is not a physical location (i.e., a semi-local heaven, as Zwingli had taught). Rather, God’s right hand refers to rather his power and glory, which are everywhere.¹ 

Hence, Jesus’s body is, in some mysterious sense, everywhere. However, Luther emphasized that Christ’s body does not exist everywhere in the form of infinite multiplication or spatial extension (hence, the inaccuracy of the term “Ubiquity,” which implies spatial extension).³ Rather, Luther drew on Gabriel Biel’s distinction among the various presences bodies can have (local/circumscribed, definitive, and repletive)⁴ Following Biel, Luther affirmed Jesus can exercise multiple modes of presence, including a repletive presence, or divine omnipresence. 

Logically, since Jesus is at the right hand of God, he is in some incomprehensible and supernatural sense present at all places as true man.⁵ Beyond the fact that Christ sits at the right hand of God, Luther also argued that if Christ was not omnipresent according to his humanity, his two natures would be divided. The consequent Christology would contradict the Chalcedonian definition: 

Wherever this person is, it is a single indivisible person, and if you can say, ‘Here is God,’ then you must also say, ‘Christ the man is present too.’ And if you could show me one place where God is and not the man, the person is already divided and I could at once say truthfully, ‘Here is God who is not man and has never become man.’  But no God like that for me!⁶

The consequence of Luther’s doctrine of absolute omnipresence is that Christ can be substantially present in the Eucharist according to his humanity. He is present in all places already as true man. At this point, contrary to a common misconception, Luther does not assert that Christ’s absolute omnipresence is the mechanism by which he is present in the Eucharist. Rather, Luther was agnostic as to how God made Jesus’s humanity present through the eucharistic elements. He simply urged that the absolute omnipresence of Christ’s human nature made it metaphysically possible for Christ to be present as true man on many different altars on any given Sunday morning.⁷    

Absolute Omnipresence in Scripture

Luther’s doctrine of the absolute omnipresence of Christ’s humanity has substantial support in Holy Scripture. The man Jesus tells the disciples that when “two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them” (Matt. 18:20) and “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). It is, indeed, also the human nature of which St. Paul wrote: “He who descended is the very One who ascended above all the heavens [i.e., Christ’s humanity], in order to fill all things” (Eph. 4:10). 

Moreover, the New Testament’s description of Jesus’s resurrection appearances seriously problematize Zwingli’s claim Christ, as man, can only have a circumscribed presence. Here, the humanity of Jesus displays a presence that is genuinely physical (i.e., he eats, people can touch him, and put their fingers in his wounds), but mysteriously so. As Luther noted, the risen Christ can appear and disappear at will (as at Emmaus) and walk through walls. Nevertheless, Jesus does not cease being human or having a real human nature as a result of these actions.⁸

John Calvin shared Zwingli’s belief that Christ could only have a circumscribed presence. To explain the mysterious physicality of the resurrection appearances, he later resorted to the rather unconvincing argument that the risen Jesus’s movements might appear to be miraculous, but were actually not: 

They object that Christ went forth from the closed sepulcher [Matt. 28:6] and went in to his disciples through closed doors [John 20:19]. This gives no more support to their error. For just as the water, like a solid pavement, provided Christ with a path as he walked on the lake [Matt. 14:25], so it is no wonder if the hardness of the stone yielded at his approach. Yet it is more probable that the stone was removed at his command, and immediately after he passed through, returned to its place. And to enter through closed doors means not just penetrating through solid matter but opening an entrance for himself by divine power, so that he suddenly stood among his disciples clearly, in a wonderful way, although the doors were locked.⁹ 

Here, Calvin must add details to, and indeed contradicts, the text of Scripture to validate his pre-established idea that bodies can only possess a circumscribed presence to remain bodies.

Of course, belief that Christ’s human nature is limited to a circumscribed presence does not logically rule out his substantial presence in the Lord’s Supper. As many Roman Catholic apologists have noted, Jesus gives the Johannine “Bread of Life” discourse immediately after he miraculously multiplies the loaves and fishes.¹⁰ If he could miraculously multiply the loaves and fishes without them ceasing to be loaves and fishes, then surely he do this with the supernatural presence of his own Flesh and Blood in the Sacrament of the Altar.

Luther on Christ’s Absolute Omnipresence

Subsequent Lutheran theologians argued that Christ’s omnipresence was the logical consequence of what Martin Chemnitz termed the “genus majestaticum¹¹ Some theologian also argued it was the consequence of Jesus’s human nature’s full participation in the divine glory. However, as historical theologian Richard Cross has recently demonstrated, the Reformer does not follow this line of reasoning regarding the absolute omnipresence of Christ’s human nature.¹² 

Instead, as we have already seen, the Luther does not argue that Christ’s humanity is omnipresent because of the communication of glory. Rather if Christ was not present everywhere as both God and man, one could point to Jesus’s presence as just God, or just man. As a result, the person of Christ would be divided.¹³ Here, Luther rejects the notion of the logos asarkos, or what later scholars called the “Extra Calvinisticum,” at least after the Incarnation.¹⁴

Luther does not invoke the genus majestaticum when arguing in favor of the omnipresence of Christ’s humanity. However, the very fact that Christ’s humanity is able to do something that only God can do (i.e., to be omnipresent) implies that the human nature of Christ participates in the divine glory. Against the traditional reading of Luther, Cross argues that examining Luther’s corpus of writings demonstrates that he does not justify absolute omnipresence on the basis of the genus majestaticum.

Additionally, Luther was not the first to contemplate absolute omnipresence. The late Scholastic philosophical work entitled Centiloquium and attributed to William of Ockham (but probably written by Arnold of Strelley) speaks of the possibility of bodily omnipresence.¹⁵ In this vein, Swedish Lutheran theologian Tom G. A. Hardt has also pointed to passages in the works of Gabriel Biel and Faber Stapulensis that teach the possibility or reality of the bodily omnipresence of Christ.¹⁶ 

Cross thus argues that Luther does not directly reason in favor of bodily omnipresence on the basis of the genus majestaticum. Moreover, Luther simply shared the common late-medieval assumption that God could create multiple presences of a body without recourse to the genus majestaticum. Therefore, Cross infers that Luther does not hold to the later Lutheran doctrine of the full communication of divine glory.¹⁷  

Luther’s Affirmation of the Genus Majestaticum

Even though Cross is correct that Luther never systematically connects the genus majestaticum to bodily omnipresence, it does not logically follow that Luther did not affirm the doctrine. Indeed, Cross does cite numerous passages where Luther seems to teach the reception of divine glory by Christ’s human nature.¹⁸ However, he dismisses them as too ambiguous and claims that it was the later Lutheran tradition and not Luther that taught the genus majestaticum.¹⁹ Nevertheless, the passages cited by Cross are in point of fact dramatically less ambiguous than Cross claims. As an example of this, a very direct and clear teaching of the genus majestaticum appears in the late work On the Last Words of David. Luther writes:

Mary’s son is, and is called, through the communicatio idiomatum, almighty, eternal God, who has eternal power, and who has created all things and preserves them, because he is one Person with the Godhead and is also very God . . . I [viz. Mary’s son] had this from my Father from eternity, before I became man, but when I became man, it was imparted to me in time according to my human nature, and I kept it concealed until my Resurrection and ascent into Heaven, when it was to be manifested and glorified.²⁰  

As can be observed from this single passage, Luther seems clear about the participation of the man Jesus in divine glory, although Cross is correct to note he does not labor the point much. In another passage in Luther’s late disputation against Kaspar Schwenckfeld, Cross stops his quotation short, and leaves out a passage in which Luther mocks the medieval theologians for only allowing Christ as vere homo dulia or hyperdulia, and not latria. Here we see a key difference regarding the communicatio idiomatum between Luther and the earlier medieval theologians. What Luther implies here is that it is right to worship Christ’s humanity because the fullness of divine glory is communicated to the human nature.²¹  

Hardt mentions another proof of Luther’s belief in the genus majestaticum ignored by Cross. Namely, Hardt explores how the Reformer dealt with the kenosis hymn of Philippians 2. Aquinas and the earlier medieval tradition had interpreted Christ in the “form of God” taking on a “form of a servant” as the divine nature taking on a human nature. In contrast, Luther states that the divine person does not lower himself at all. Rather, from the late 1510s onward, he explicitly taught that the “form of God” is the divine glory imparted to the man Jesus which is suspended and then recovered in the resurrection and ascension.²² Here Luther appears to directly affirm the hypostatic participation of Christ’s humanity in the fullness of divine glory. Otherwise, his understanding of kenosis, namely, that the human nature suspended its use of the divine glory that it possesses in itself, makes very little sense.   

In light of this and other similar passages, Cross is particularly unconvincing in his dismissal of the claim that Luther taught the genus majestaticum. The fact that Luther did not directly link bodily omnipresence with the reception of the fullness of divine glory does not necessarily mean that Luther did not hold said doctrine. Indeed, textual evidence, including the above (some of which was ignored by Cross) demonstrates that Luther did indeed hold to the hypostatic communication of divine glory. 

What Cross does get correct in his discussion of Luther is that the Reformer makes many intriguing metaphysical claims (i.e., statements about omnipresence and participation in the divine glory). Yet he did not connect all the dots of these claims or explicitly work out their implications. This task would fall to Luther’s theological descendants, particularly Johannes Brenz and Martin Chemnitz.²³ 

Brenz on the Communication of Attributes

Due to geographical proximity, the Swabian Lutheran reformer Johannes Brenz found himself threatened by the Christology of southern Reformers (Zwingli, Martin Bucer, and Johannes Oecolampadius) more acutely than other Lutherans.²⁴ As a result, Brenz accentuated Luther’s doctrine of the communication of glory and the absolute omnipresence of Christ’s human nature beyond all measure.²⁵ Between the two classical analogies for the Incarnation that we have already examined, St. Cyril of Alexandria’s body and soul and John Duns Scotus’s substance bearing an accident, Brenz very much supported the Cyrilian approach.²⁶  

As a result, Brenz argues that although the two natures do not lose their integrity, the natures genuinely take on each other’s attributes. The divine nature does not change, but because of the union of natures, the divine nature bears the human nature and what occurs to it as a real property. Likewise, the human nature genuinely possesses the attributes of divine glory without being transmuted into the divine.²⁷ 

This of course raises the issue how a human nature can gain divine attributes and yet remain human. Brenz argued the essential nature of humanity in Christ is a substance and as a substance it remains unchanged. Nevertheless, appealing to Aristotle’s distinction between substance and accidents, Brenz notes that any substance can maintain its integrity and gain accidents. Hence, the human nature can take on accidental qualities in the form of the divine attributes that are foreign to it while remaining a human nature.²⁸ 

To illustrate Brenz’s point by analogy, a cat is not normally green, but if someone dyed a cat’s fur green (as cruel as this might be!) the cat would substantially remain a cat even if it took upon itself an accident (the color green) normally foreign to its nature as a cat. In the same way, it is not normal for human nature to possess omnipotence and omnipresence. Yet, it can bear these qualities as additions without losing its essential characteristics as human.   

Brenz is not wrong that a substance can take on accidents that are normally foreign to it. The difficulty with his position is how he marginalizes the Chalcedonian nature/person distinction. First, for Luther as well as the classical Chalcedonian tradition, there is a real communication of attributes within the hypostatic union. Nevertheless, these are received hypostatically. In other words, their sharing is anchored in the unity of the person. There is a union of natures, but the union of natures only occurs through the person. 

Brenz comes very close to Eutychianism by treating Christ as a single subject that has a list of qualities, some of which are human and some of which are divine. Although Brenz does not intend a melding together of the two natures, and frequently affirms their distinction, his position tends to drift in the problematic direction of Eutychianism.  

The second difficulty with Brenz’s concept of the human nature receiving the qualities of the divine nature as accidents is that it functionally calls into question the unity of the two natures and the anhypostatic constitution of Christ’s humanity. If the human nature of Christ is anhypostatic and has its center of identity in the Logos, then the divine attributes of the person of Christ cannot be construed as accidental. This is because the divine attributes of the person of Christ are essential to the divine person that the humanity of Christ participates in. 

Making the divine attributes accidental suggests that the human nature possesses an independent hypostasis, rather than being anhypostatic. It also makes the divine attributes separable from the divine person and thereby contradicts the principle of divine simplicity. Conversely, the qualities of the divine nature cannot be essential to the human nature either since that would be blatant Eutychianism. The resolution of this dilemma would fall to Martin Chemnitz and the settlement of the Formula of Concord.   

Chemnitz on the Communication of Attributes

Basing himself on his extensive knowledge of patristic and medieval theology,²⁹ Martin Chemnitz created a schematization of the communicatio idiomatum. He was therefore able to integrate Luther’s insights with the theology of the ancient catholic consensus regarding Scriptural Christology.³⁰ Since his schematization appears in the Formula of Concord, this synthesis became the basis for all future confessional Lutheran theology.³¹ In short, Chemnitz articulated a threefold genus of the communication of attributes within the hypostatic union: genus idiomaticum, genus apotelesmaticum, genus majestaticum.³² 

Chemnitz took both the meaning of the biblical texts and the Chalcedonian definition seriously when describing these different kinds of communication of attributes within the hypostatic union. Viewing the Incarnation from multiple perspectives, Chemnitz saw value in both Cyril’s body-soul union analogy,³³ as well as the late medieval theory of supposital union.³⁴ Chemnitz saw the communication of attributes as a function of the hypostatic unity of the person of Christ and not the melding of the natures. 

To formulate the communication of attributes correctly, Chemnitz distinguished between understanding the attributes in the concrete and in the abstract. Doing so clarifies meaning when speaking about the communication of attributes. Establishing this clarity was essential to avoid muddled ways of speaking that could give the impression of either Nestorianism or Eutychianism. 

Speaking of the attributes in the “concrete” refers to the attributes as they exist in the actual union of the God-man. The “abstract” refers to their existence as they are in themselves as distinctive natures.³⁵ Hence, the first genus, the genus idiomaticum, refers to the fact that when Scripture speaks of Christ in his concrete existence as the God-man, all attributes are held in common by his person. When speaking of the attributes in the abstract, each nature possesses its own unchanging properties. But in the concrete, the person of Christ subsists through the two natures and therefore holds all their properties in common.³⁶

The second genus is the genus apotelesmaticum, which refers to the sharing of actions between the two natures in the concrete reality of the hypostatic union. In and of himself, God cannot suffer and cannot die. Orthodox Lutheran Christology stands firmly in the tradition of classical theism and will not allow for any change or mutability in the Godhead. Nevertheless, the Logos does really and truly make the human nature his own. In the concrete unity of the Incarnation, one must say that God died or that this man made the world.³⁷  

Indeed, Scripture and the ancient ecumenical consensus both teach this communion of agency in the hypostatic union. This genus simply affirms what the Third Ecumenical Council had affirmed. Whatever happens to the human nature happens to the total person of Christ. Elizabeth calls the Blessed Virgin Mary the “mother of my Lord” (Lk 1:43). Kyrios here is not merely a polite means of address like “Mr.” as in some Synoptic texts. Rather, since kyrios is the LXX translation of YHWH,³⁸ Luke applied it to Jesus in his quotation of Elizabeth to affirm that he is God returned to his covenant people. Mary is the new Tabernacle whom the divine Kavod “overshadowed,” just as it had “overshadowed” the old Tabernacle when it descended into it (compare Lk 1:35 with LXX Exod. 40:35).³⁹ Similarly, Paul tells us that the rulers of this age crucified the “Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8) and not merely the human Jesus.

Finally, Chemnitz affirms the most controversial of all the genera, the genus majestaticum. The genus majestaticum refers to the communication of the fullness of divine glory to the human nature, even when considered in the abstract.⁴⁰ Both the Roman Catholic and Reformed traditions have charged that this genera amounts to Eutychianism. However, those charging the Lutheran tradition with Christological heresy misunderstand how Chemnitz constructs the doctrine. Indeed, his explication of the doctrine is based on both a very careful reading of Scripture as well as the teaching of the perichoresis of the two natures found in the Greek Fathers, particularly St. John of Damascus.⁴¹  

When speaking of Christ’s human nature in and of itself, Scripture very clearly attributes to it thing that only God can do. For example, St. John tells us that Christ’s blood “cleanses us from all sin” (1 Jn. 1:7). Likewise, St. Matthew writes that the man Jesus has received glory and dominion only proper to God: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt. 28:18, Emphasis added). Therefore, Christians must accept a real participation of the human nature in the divine glory, even when considered in the abstract.

Contrary to the criticisms of Reformed theologians, this real participation in the divine glory does not constitute a transmutation of the human nature. Rather, it constitutes a participation in the divine glory. Here Chemnitz invokes the Greek Patristic simile of metal heated in fire, and even makes direct reference to John of Damascus’s description a perichoresis between the two natures. The metal does not cease to be metal, but nevertheless takes on the qualities of fire and glows as a result.⁴² 

To use a more contemporary example: by the properties native to him a human cannot move at the pace of eight-hundred miles an hour. Nevertheless, if he is on an airplane, he participates in the abilities of the airplane to go at this speed. This is true even without being hypostatically unified with the airplane.

Objections to Lutheran Christology

Roman Catholic and Reformed theologians have raised several significant issues with Chemnitz’s argument that the human nature receives these attributes of divinity in the abstract. First, considering the human nature in the abstract means analyzing what the human nature is in and of itself, apart from the concrete unity of the Incarnation. Nevertheless, metal receives its glow through its unity with fire. Likewise, a human being can travel at eight-hundred miles an hour not on the basis of his natural powers, but rather because of the speed of the airplane. Therefore, it is appropriate to say that Christ’s human nature glows with the divine glory in the concrete unity of the Incarnation, but in itself is a human nature with human properties. 

Cross raised a second possible problem by noting that the Lutheran account contradicts the notion of divine simplicity.⁴³ If God’s essence is his attributes, then the human nature’s reception of divine attributes in and of itself would divide the divine attributes into ones that existed in the divine essence and ones that existed in the human nature. Cross argues that this would be an impossible violation of simplicity. Hence a real reception of divine attributes would constitute a Eutychian absorption of the human nature into the divine. 

Enhypostasis-Anhypostasis Christology and the Communication of Attributes

In response to these objections, we must again emphasize the importance of the Fifth Ecumenical Council’s conceptual breakthrough by developing enhypostasis-anhypostasis Christology. The key thing to understand is that since Christ’s human nature (unlike the divine person/nature) is anhypostatic, it possesses no reality apart from the concrete unity of the Incarnation. Hence, even when considering it in and of itself, it can only ever be the human nature as it exists in union with the divine person, through which it hypostatically participates in the divine glory and its possibilities. 

Of course, one could take the approach (as Tilemann Heshusius does)⁴⁴ of insisting that the abstract can only refer to the essential properties of the human nature, and not merely what the human nature is in and of itself. But, as Johann Gerhard notes, this would merely be a linguistic and definitional adjustment.⁴⁵ The value of Chemnitz’s approach over that of Heshusius is that it drives enhypostasis-anhypostasis Christology to its logical doctrinal conclusion. Chemnitz’s approach emphasizes that the human nature’s true center of identity is found in the divine person. Therefore, even in the abstract can never be considered apart from it.  

Gerhard, expanding on Chemnitz’s theology, argues that Brenz’s description of the divine attributes being accidental to the human nature is inappropriate. Because the human nature finds its center of identity in the divine person, the divine glory in which the humanity participates is proper to its personal reality.⁴⁶ Hence, the attributes are not communicated either essentially or accidentally, but hypostatically. 

This also resolves the conceptual problem raised by Cross as to whether a real reception of the divine attributes would divide the simplicity of the essence. The human nature possesses the attributes of the divine essence not by dividing it into parts. Rather, Christ’s humanity ecstatically finds its center of identity in and living through the divine person who possesses those attributes.  

Chemnitz’s Evolution on the Exercise of Absolute Omnipresence

Finally, unlike Brenz, Chemnitz does not see the absolute omnipresence of Christ’s human nature as the necessary consequence of the reception of divine glory, but as only a potential effect. Neither does he affirm Luther’s idea that without omnipresence the person of Christ would be inappropriately divided. In his first edition of The Two Natures in Christ, Chemnitz affirms that Christ’s humanity is only potentially omnipresent. Christ does not necessarily exercise this power apart from his presence with the Church and in the means of grace.⁴⁷ 

This alternative position to absolute omnipresence is sometimes called the “multivolipresence.”⁴⁸ Nevertheless, Chemnitz’s position continued to evolve and was altered in both his contribution to the Formula of Concord⁴⁹ and in the second edition of The Two Natures in Christ (1578).⁵⁰ Chemnitz continued to affirm the potential omnipresence of the human nature as a result of the hypostatic union. He repeatedly emphasized the fact that because of Christ’s omnipotence, he can, if he so chooses, make himself present to all creatures. Nevertheless, the later Chemnitz seems to assert that Jesus does indeed exercise his power of absolute omnipresence in order to be present to all creatures.⁵¹  

Chemnitz’s theology helpfully clarifies and works out the conceptual difficulties with Luther’s theology regarding the implications of the biblical and ecumenical doctrine of the Incarnation. Importantly, Chemnitz’s work demonstrates how the Lutheran doctrine of the Incarnation is the fulfillment of the ancient Church’s Christology, particularly the Neo-Chalcedonian enhypostasis-anhypostasis concept. In short, biblical and orthodox Patristic Christology comes to its logical conclusion in confessional Lutheran doctrine regarding the person of Christ.

• Facebook
• X
• Bluesky
• Mail

---

---

1. ↩︎
2. ↩︎
3. Rowan Williams misinterprets Luther on this point by claiming a spatialization of Christ’s divinity and glorified humanity.  See: Williams, Christ the Heart of Creation, 139.  ↩︎
4. oar Haga, Was there a Lutheran Metaphysics? The Interpretation of Communicatio Idiomatum in Early Modern Lutheranism (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), 55-56. ↩︎
5. Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper (1528); LW 37:214-218. ↩︎
6. Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper (1528); LW 37:218. ↩︎
7. Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper (1528); LW 37:216-218. ↩︎
8. Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper (1528); LW 37:216. ↩︎
9. ICR, 4.17.29; Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2:1400. ↩︎
10. See example in popular Catholic apologetics: Dave Armstrong, Biblical Catholic Eucharistic Theology (Morrisville, NC: Lulu, 2011), 106. ↩︎
11. Chemnitz, The Two Natures in Christ, 241-402. ↩︎
12. Cross, Communicatio Idiomatum, 59-65. ↩︎
13. Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper (1528); LW 37:218. ↩︎
14. K.J. Drake, The Flesh of the Word: The Extra Calvinisticum from Zwingli to Early Orthodoxy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021); Andrew M. McGinnis, The Son of God Beyond the Flesh: A Historical and Theological Study of the Extra Calvinisticum (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014). ↩︎
15. Cross, Communicatio Idiomatum, 64. ↩︎
16. Tom G.A. Hardt, The Venerable and Adorable Eucharist: A Study of the Lutheran Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper in the 1500s, trans. Mark DeGarmeaux (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2023), 40-43.  ↩︎
17. Cross, Communicatio Idiomatum, 64-65, 70. ↩︎
18. See the following passages cited by Cross: The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ-Against the Fanatics (1526); LW 36:342; Vom Reich Christi: Der CX, Psalm, Gepredigt und ausgeleget (1535); WA 41:91; Disputation on the Divinity and Humanity of Christ (1540); LW 73:267; That These Words of Christ “This is My Body,” Etc. Still Stand Firm Against the Fanatics (1527); LW 37:98-99; That These Words of Christ “This is My Body,” Etc. Still Stand Firm Against the Fanatics (1527); LW 37:100-101. ↩︎
19. Cross, Communicatio Idiomatum, 65-69. ↩︎
20. On the Last Words of David (1543); LW 15:293-294.  Cited from Cross, Communicatio Idiomatum, 67.  Emphasis my own.  ↩︎
21. Disputation on the Divinity and Humanity of Christ (1540); LW 73:267. ↩︎
22. Hardt, The Venerable and Adorable Eucharist, 44-52. ↩︎
23. See summary in: Theodor Mahlmann, Das neue Dogma der lutherischen Christologie: Problem und Geschichte seiner Begrindung (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1969). ↩︎
24. Hans Christian Brandy, Die späte Christologie des Johannes Brenz (Tübingen: Mohr, 1991), 13-27. ↩︎
25. See: Cross, Communicatio Idiomatum, 95-119.  Wilbert R. Gawrisch, “On Christology: Brenz and the Question of Ubiquity,” in No Other Gospel: Essays in Commemoration of the 400^th Anniversary of the Formula of Concord, 1580-1980, ed. Arnold Koelpin (Milwaukee: Northwestern Publishing House, 1980), 229-254. ↩︎
26. Cross, Communicatio Idiomatum, 109. ↩︎
27. See summary in: Cross, Communicatio Idiomatum, 104; Mahlmann, Das neue Dogma der lutherischen Christologie, 44-92, 125-205. Also See mature position in: Johannes Brenz, Recognitio propheticae et apostolicae doctrinae de vera majestate Jesu Christi ad dexteram Dei patris etc (Tübingen: Vidua Ulrici Morhardi, 1564).  ↩︎
28. Brandy, Die späte Christologie des Johannes Brenz, 174-186. ↩︎
29. G. L. C. Frank, “A Lutheran Turned Eastward: The Use of the Greek Fathers in the Eucharistic Theology of Martin Chemnitz,“ St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 26 (1982): 155- 71; James Heiser, “The Use of Irenaeus’s Advenus Haereses in Martin Chemnitz’s Loci Theologie¡,” Logia 7 (Epiphany, 1998): 19-31; Paul Strawn, “ Cyril of Alexandria as a Source for Martin Chemnitz” in Die Patristik in der Bibelexegese des 16 Jahrhunderts (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1999), 205-30; Francis Watson, “Martin Chemnitz and the Eastern Church: A Christology of the Catholic Consensus of the Fathers,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 38 (1994): 73-86; Robert Kelley, “Tradition and Innovation: The Use of Theodoret’s Eranistes in Martin Chemnitz’s De Duabus Naturis in Christo,” in Perspectives on Christology: Essays in Honor of Paul K . Jewett, ed. M arguerite Shuster and Richard Muller (Grand Rapids: Zondevan, 1991), 105-125.  ↩︎
30. See my article: Jack Kilcrease, “Thomas Aquinas and Martin Chemnitz on the Hypostatic Union,” Lutheran Quarterly 27, no 1 (2013): 1-32. ↩︎
31. FC SD, 8; CT, 1015-1049. ↩︎
32. See summary: Haga, Was There a Lutheran Metaphysic?, 159-165;  Olli-Pekka Vainio, Justification and Participation in Christ: The Development of the Lutheran Doctrine of Justification from Luther to the Formula of Concord (1580) (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 136-137. ↩︎
33. Chemnitz, The Two Natures in Christ, 137-138. ↩︎
34. Chemnitz, The Two Natures in Christ, 87-88.  ↩︎
35. Chemnitz, The Two Natures in Christ, 31-33 ↩︎
36. Chemnitz, The Two Natures in Christ, 171-214. ↩︎
37. Chemnitz, The Two Natures in Christ, 215-232. ↩︎
38. Gary M. Burge, Lynn H. Cohick, and Gene L. Green, The New Testament in Antiquity: A Survey of the New Testament Within Its Cultural Context (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 455. ↩︎
39. Arthur Just, Luke, 2 vols. (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1996-1997), 1:69. ↩︎
40. Chemnitz, The Two Natures in Christ, 241-486 ↩︎
41. See comments in: Watson, “Martin Chemnitz and the Eastern Church: A Christology of the Catholic Consensus of the Fathers,” 85. ↩︎
42. Chemnitz, The Two Natures in Christ, 396. ↩︎
43. Cross, Communicatio Idiomatum, 24-25. ↩︎
44. See: Tilemann Heshusius, De praesentia corporis Christi in Coena Domini. Contra Sacramentarios (Jena, 1560).  Also see: Cross, Communicatio Idiomatum, 126, 128-131, 140-141; Thilo Krüger. Empfangene Allmacht: die Christologie Tilemann Heshusens (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), 38-47.  ↩︎
45. Gerhard, On Christ, 277-278. ↩︎
46. Gerhard, On Christ, 272-273. ↩︎
47. Cross, Communicatio Idiomatum, 186-187. ↩︎
48. See Elert, The Structure of Lutheranism, 231–32; Haga, Was There a Lutheran Metaphysics?, 170; Sasse, This is My Body, 268–279. ↩︎
49. FC SD, 8; CT, 1025. ↩︎
50. Chemnitz, The Two Natures in Christ, 462-463. ↩︎
51. See the whole discussion in: Chemnitz, The Two Natures in Christ, 423-465. ↩︎

---

From the draft manuscript for Lutheran Dogmatics: The Evangelical-Catholic Faith for an Age of Contested Truth (Lexham Press).

---

Cover image: Detail of Trevana Hana, Second Coming Coptic Icon, November 6, 2020, accessed June 25, 2024, https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3804069102984307&id=1216232375101339&set=a.1217975324927044; other images from Jason Micheli, “Christ in Glory,” Tamed Cynic, accessed June 25, 2024, https://jasonmicheli.substack.com/; “Emerald Green Cat Running Around Bulgarian Town Returns to Its Natural Color,” People, August 28, 2017, accessed June 26, 2024, https://people.com/pets/green-cat-bulgaria-returns-to-natural-color/; “Saints’ Remembrance Days: Martin Chemnitz,” Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, accessed July 19, 2024, https://www.luterilainen.net/kirkkovuosi/pyhien-muistopaivat-martin-chemnitz/; and Lionel Windsor, “The Language of Chalcedon,” Forget the Channel, December 22, 2009, accessed June 26, 2024, https://www.lionelwindsor.net/2009/12/22/the-language-of-chalcedon/.