Christology Archives - Jack Kilcrease

December 19, 2025December 22, 2025

Baptized in the Substantial Blood of Jesus – Literally

Johann Gerhard asserts that the word and the water do not merely mediate the presence of the Triune God. The sacrament also conveys the presence of the risen man Jesus, who possesses a hypostatic unity with the second person of the Trinity. Jesus is not merely present according to his divinity, but also according to his deified and, therefore, omnipresent humanity. The substantial blood of the risen Jesus is literally present in the waters of baptism, which cleans us from our sins. Gerhard writes:

[T]he Son of God in the fullness of time took upon Himself a true human nature and united Himself with it in an indissoluble link. Thus it further follows that He is present at Baptism not only according to His divinity, but also according to His assumed human nature. And especially the blood of Christ is not to be excluded from holy Baptism: 1. Because the Son of God’s true human nature also assumed flesh and blood, in which, with which, and through which His human nature now performs all His works; 2. because the power of holy Baptism arises and springs forth from the merits of Christ and from the shedding of His blood as it occurred on the timber trunk of the cross; 3. Because in holy Baptism we were washed from sins through the blood of Christ; 4 because we were baptized into Christ’s death. Now, however Christ’s death also includes His shedding of blood.¹
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April 6, 2025April 7, 2025

The Suffering Servant as Our Eternal High Priest

Throughout so-called Deutero-Isaiah, the Servant eschatologically fulfills the role of priestly and prophetic mediation, but also seems to be the Davidic Messiah spoken of earlier in Isaiah. Earlier, Isaiah speaks of the Davidic Messiah as “a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch” (Isa. 11:1) and “root of Jesse who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of him shall the nations inquire” (Isa. 11:10). Parallel to this, the Servant of the later chapters of Isaiah is called a “shoot” coming “out of dry ground” (Isa. 53:2) and a “light to the nations” (Isa. 49:6).

The Suffering Servant

Another parallel between the two figures is that the Davidic Messiah and the Servant are both described as redeemers and servants of YHWH.¹ Indeed, like David prior to his enthronement, the Servant suffers before receiving glory. Hence, it seems logical to think that Isaiah is speaking of the same figure when describing the Davidic Messiah and the Servant of the YHWH.

It should also not go unnoticed that Isaiah’s Servant of YHWH takes on divine qualities as well. As we have noted earlier, after having left during the Babylonian exile (Ezek. 10), Isaiah informs us that YHWH himself will return to Zion (Isa 40). The returning divine presence merges throughout the latter half of Isaiah with the Servant. In this vein, the Servant is the luminous glory of the Lord in that he is a “light to the nations”(49:6). It cannot be denied that this description parallels the manifestation of the returning Kavod in Isaiah 40:5. Moreover, the Servant is also called the “arm of the Lord”(Isa. 53:1, 63:12), well as the divine “Angel of the presence” sent to save the people of God (Isa. 63:9).²

December 25, 2024December 27, 2024

The Son of God’s Incarnational Epic

The Incarnational Arc of Creation

Even in the midst of judging the old creation and its mangled narrative, God begins anew. He speaks forth a new narrative of creation through his gospel promise (Gen. 3:15). God’s promise is effective speech; creation gains its identity from its story. Thus, in order to redeem creation, God had to speak forth a new story. The historical narrative of redemption culminated in Christ’s recapitulation of the old creation (Rom. 5; 1 Cor. 15) and its transcendence in the resurrection.

Every act of human rebellion within the biblical narrative meets with both an act of judgment and an act of grace. God’s possibilities are not exhausted by those established in his protological order and law. These are hardwired into creation as an expression of the eternal divine will, but they do not exhaust the divine will. God is not merely the necessary being of the philosophers, but as Eberhart Jüngel puts it, God is the “more than necessary being.”¹

The new creation does not negate the old creation, but envelops it, and incorporates it into itself. The new creation’s incorporation of the old creation into itself is analogous to the eternal Son’s incorporation (enhypostasis) of an impersonal human nature into his center of identity (anhypostasis). In this way, the tragic narrative of the Fall becomes a subplot in the comic story of redemption.

September 9, 2024September 9, 2024

“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

September 5, 2024September 5, 2024

Stuck in the Middle: Between “Nestorian” and “Eutychian” Reformers

Confessional Lutheran Christology Part I

When it comes to Luther’s Christology and that of the subsequent Lutheran tradition, we must tread a fine line between the Scylla of claiming the Reformer was an absolute innovator and the Charybdis of claiming there was no meaningful difference between Luther and his medieval predecessors. There are, in fact, some interesting differences between confessional Lutheran teaching and the previous medieval tradition. However, the Lutheran Reformers were faithful students of Scripture and the ancient Church. Discontinuities existed between Lutherans and their medieval predecessors because the Reformers drew out the logic of biblical and patristic Christology. The seeming innovations of Lutheran theologians regarding the metaphysics of the Incarnation were, in fact, valid extensions of enhypostasis-anhypostasis Christology, sometimes termed “Neo-Chalcedonianism.”¹

Throughout his career, Luther fought on the same two fronts that the ancient Church had. Like the early orthodox Church Fathers, Luther found himself combating both Nestorian and Eutychian Christological tendencies. As we will see below, in Luther’s mind, the Swiss Reformer Ulrich Zwingli played the role of Nestorius. Kaspar Schwenckfeld played the role of Eutychus. Most popular accounts of Luther focus on the Reformer’s conflict with Ulrich Zwingli and his belief that Zwingli was essentially Nestorian. Sadly, this tends to distort the truly balanced nature of the Reformer’s Christology (i.e., rejecting both Nestorian and Eutychian tendencies), and therefore undercuts his continuity with the earlier tradition.

Luther’s Conflict with Zwingli and “Nestorianism”

The major source of strife between Luther and Zwingli was the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper.² We will return to this conflict again in a future chapter, but it is worth touching on here because there was a Christological issue at the heart of the Reformers’ debate over the Eucharist. Zwingli, following an undercurrent in medieval theology, argued that there could be no substantial presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper because, as true man, he could not be present in multiple locations simultaneously.