¶1What does it mean to say that Jesus is both God and man at the same time? In this video, let's explore Lutheran versus Reformed views of this and how we answer this question a little bit differently, though we've got a lot of common ground. Now, the Council of Chalcedon in the 5th century, the fourth ecumenical council, declared that Jesus is one person with two natures. We're going to go really deep in this video. If you forget everything else, just remember one person, two natures, that's orthodox Christology.
¶2And what the early church was trying to oppose is on the one side Monophysite and Miaphysite views that in some way or another were perceived to blend the two natures together too much. But also then in the other direction, Nestorian errors that implied some kind of division in the person of Christ. So, Chalcedonian Christology, uh the desire here is to avoid uh two persons or two acting subjects, like a divine Jesus and a human Jesus, uh two two people. Uh Nestorius's own views are much more complicated. But but also the desire is to keep a distinctness between the two natures.
¶3There's a real union between the divine nature of Christ and the human nature of Christ, but they remain distinct natures in that union. So, you find this language that Jesus is recognized in two natures without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence. Now, different Protestant traditions can come together to rally around Chalcedonian Christology along with our Eastern Orthodox friends and our Roman Catholic friends. Happily, this is a part of our common heritage, but there are differences in how we construe faithfulness to that tradition. And these differences have been a huge debate between Lutheran and Reformed traditions.
¶4And this is a particular interest of mine just because I find this so fascinating. I've done one video on this in the past where I laid out my concerns with Lutheran Christology and especially the basic issue is this notion that there's a communication of some divine attributes, for example, omnipresence to Christ's human nature. And this relates to uh the so-called genus maiestaticum, a Latin term that you can see there on screen. This is the Lutheran teaching there's a communication of the of divine majesty to Christ's human nature, typically including attributes like omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence. So, for example, Christ is in some sense omnipresent in his humanity specifically.
¶5And the Reformed position, in contrast to that, says we should posit attributes like omnipresence and omnipotence to the person of Christ, not specifically to the human nature. And the basic there's a number of concerns behind that different conviction. One of them is to safeguard the integrity of the human nature. This is a real human nature. Human beings are not omnipresent.
¶6Now, in this video, I'm going to return to this. This will be the last video I do on this topic, very likely. Even though I just find it personally interesting and I just I don't know, the Lutheran versus Reformed relationship is just kind of fascinating and it's edifying to get into it and try to you know, these two both both traditions are very rich and intelligent. You can learn a lot by trying to dive into this and follow the conversation in both directions. [snorts] But I don't want to make criticizing Lutheranism a big topic of my YouTube channel.
¶7I'd much rather celebrate. I mean, if I were to put out a video on everything I appreciate about Lutheranism, it'd be 50 times longer than this one. This is really the one area where I have a real concern about Lutheranism. And um so, I hope it won't annoy my Lutheran viewers. If it does, yep, it'll be the last time cuz I'm not going to talk about this again.
¶8>> [snorts] >> But, so far as I can tell, my my critique has been that I think they are unique and I will say eccentric in their Christology. I I do think they depart from the prior Christian tradition on this particular point. I mean, a lot of the other things that some of the response videos to my first video were going into could be points of agreement, but on the specific point I just outlined about the genus maiestaticum, I do think their view is a departure and I I also think it it's unique among contemporary traditions and even actually individual theologians. Uh people could correct me and give an example, but I don't know any individual well-known theologians who are outside of Lutheranism, but who follow the Lutheran view on this point. And uh but I know that's disputed, so I want to try to honor some of the responses that came into my last video and just work through this and kind of defend my my [snorts] uh my position here a little bit, hoping not to alienate Lutherans, but also just to explain why I think the Reformed view is superior on this point.
¶9Um my last video got uh a fair number of responses. Uh I'll have to apologize. I can't get to every point in this video. The Lutheran Scholastic channel put out a lengthy video that I thought was quite good. Uh Jordan Cooper put out three different videos, all excellent as always.
¶10I love Dr. Cooper. He's an excellent theologian and a friend. If you watch my channel, you know I'm an admirer of his. But, and so I can't respond to everything.
¶11Let me just respond to one objection that I believe has come up in this video. Because I think it's a pretty important one. And then I'll just leave it open. If if Jordan or any of these other Lutherans want to do a dialogue, I'm down. But, also if they want to do a rebuttal to this video, if they'd rather, that's fine, too.
¶12And I'll give them the last word. This is my last word on the topic of my own. So, here's the objection I want to respond to and that's um Gavin, your critique of Lutheranism only applies to some Lutheran views, not to Lutheranism as such. More specifically, uh you're critiquing the view of Johann Brenz, which had a more absolute communication of divine attributes to the human nature from the time of the incarnation, but later Lutheran views don't go that route with him. They put more emphasis upon the exaltation, and they have uh they distinguish more clearly between different modes of Christ's presence.
¶13And uh so you're just criticizing Johann Brenz, but that doesn't apply to the other Lutherans. That's That's a fair point, but I want to interact with that here. So just to catch This This video's going to get pretty deep, so I'll keep trying to pull back and abstract for newcomers to this conversation. It's a really important topic. So we can over simplify a bit by saying there's two kind of trajectories in the Lutheran tradition on this topic.
¶14Um there's actually more, but just to get our bearings. The earlier view articulated by Johann Brenz, a key early Lutheran theologian, and that's later defended early 17th century by the school of Tubingen, and then a later view articulated mainly by Martin Chemnitz, though others as well. And that's later defended in the early 17th century disputes by the school of Giessen. You don't need to remember all the terms there. And the idea here is that Chemnitz's view avoids the problems of Brenz.
¶15It clarifies the mode of Christ's presence, and it focuses on the exaltation rather than than the incarnation, and so on and so forth. And so the Reformed view is just applying to Brenz. So that's what I want to interact with as a as a concern. I think that came up from a number of the different response videos. And basically I'll respond by asking three questions along the way.
¶16Number one, why did the Reformed critiques focus on Brenz early on? Number two, did Chemnitz's view really overcome the problems with the earlier Brenzian view? And number three, ultimately and at the end of the day is Lutheran Christology eccentric? And this is where I I do want to kind of keep putting forward. I I do think it is a departure from catholicity on again, not on Chalcedonianism in general, but on the specific point of where as we look at the communication of attributes and the particular uh claim that certain of these divine attributes like omnipresence are communicated to the human nature in some sense.
¶17So, the first point that I want to make though here is that Chemnitz's views are relatively late within the early Reformed versus Lutheran disputes. So, Chemnitz writes his seminal treatment of this topic entitled The Two Natures in Christ in 1570. That's the first edition. The second edition is I uh 1578, a year after the Book of Concord is signed and a little couple years before it's published. So, many of these Reformed versus Lutheran colloquies that are going on, many of the Reformed polemical texts that are published against the Lutheran position date prior to the 1570s during times when Brenz's view was very prominent.
¶18In fact, the later Chemnitzian more qualified Lutheran views, which eventually come to be favored after the 17th century discussions can be interpreted at least in part as responding to some of these early Reformed critiques, I think. That doesn't mean Lutherans have to follow the view of Brenz, of course, but it does make the Reformed critiques intelligible. And so, this is a matter of historical context and and chronology here to understand what the Reformed are responding to in most of these early decades of the dispute here. Chemnitz's major work Chemnitz had some earlier writings on this. But his major work is not yet published during this huge span of fireworks flying up as as there's this significant disagreement.
¶19I mean, I if you if you study this the Protestant Reformation at all, you're probably familiar with the 1529 Marburg Colloquy because here's where you have this massive dispute between Luther and Zwingli. So, between that time and the 1560s discussion where you've got a lot going on, the 1564 Maulbronn Colloquy, for example, uh so much of the formative time of this Christian disagreement is going on prior to publication of Chemnitz's view. And many of the Reformed critiques of the Lutheran position are coming at this time. Okay, so Jan Łaski or John Alasco, his name is Anglicized sometimes, and John Calvin are engaging in lots of their uh polemics against the Lutheran position in the '50s and in the '60s. Calvin writes several things on this topic.
¶20Peter Martyr Vermigli wrote his famous dialogue on the two natures of Christ in 1561. Heinrich Bullinger wrote his uh a discussion concerning the one and only mediator, Jesus Christ, in same year, 1561. Uh he had other earlier writings as well. The Heidelberg Catechism, which addresses this topic, was written in 1563. Beza, Calvin's successor, wrote a number of works on this.
¶21Perhaps the most significant of which came in 1565. And then the Second Helvetic Confession is written in 1566. So, these are just some of the examples of kind of leading Reformed Reformed articulations over and against the Lutheran view. And the point is you can't fault them for focusing on brands because the major Lutheran alternative had not emerged until well after. Even if not not to say that the Lutheran view is entirely uniform during this time, either.
¶22But during these that you know, middle decades of the 16th century, the Reformed are just responding to the views on the table. For example, Jakob Andrea is one of the leading Lutheran theologians in the 16th century, alongside Chemnitz, he's one of the major architects for the Formula of Concord. His 1573 sermons uh helped initiate the process that eventually produced the Formula. But, as late as 1564, Andrea can still write, quite simply and without qualification, the humanity of Christ is also present everywhere. Listen to how Andrea characterized the Lutheran position in a different work from a year later.
¶23Quote, "This is the teaching of our churches on the communication of the properties of the divine nature made to the human nature, by which the highest majesty and all properties of the divine nature are communicated to the man Christ." End quote. Now, that is not where Andrea is necessarily going to end up, but I'm saying that's the kind of articulation on the table up into the 1560s. And in the dialect with the Reformed at this time, this is how the Reformed side is understanding the Lutheran view. So, this is what they're arguing against. For example, here's how Beza will summarize the difference between them.
¶24Quote, "You wish that the flesh of Christ is adorned with all the properties of the divinity. We wish to unite it to the divine essence of the Son so that one and the same thing, that is the person, is essentially God and man." Now, when Beza says, "You wish to communicate all the properties of the divinity on the flesh," he is summarizing what at least some people were saying at that time, even if later Lutheran views are are are able to kind of chop that statement up. So, for example, the previous April, Andrea had defended this particular account of the communication of attributes in his disputation with the Reformed at the Colloquy of Maulbronn Maulbronn in 1564, which I referenced earlier. Here's how Richard Cross puts it. Quote, the colloquy assumed that Brenz's Christology, or as it turned out a close variant of it, straightforwardly represented the Lutheran position.
¶25For example, Andrea argues in the colloquy that unless Christ's humanity is omnipotent, it will be false that Christ the man is omnipotent, a standard case of Brenzian communicatio. So, this way of construing the communication of attributes is problematic from the Reformed perspective. The Reformed would say the proper use of the communication of attributes is a communication of human attributes to the divine person. Whereas Brenz has it as a communication of divine attributes to the human nature, which is a completely different kind of communication of attributes, and leads to some problems from a Reformed perspective. So, you can see how bracing Brenz's view is in its own articulation.
¶26If you go back to his commentary on John, published back in 1529. Quote, Christ not only as God but also as man was from the beginning of his incarnation of the same glory, majesty, and authority as God. But, in the time of his flesh, the man Christ hid this equality and even emptied himself of this genuine majesty. Now, again, the later Lutheran tradition is going to qualify this in all kinds of ways, one of which is going to put more emphasis on the Christ's exaltation, not incarnation. For the late Brenz, the communication of divine majesty to the humanity of Christ becomes more and more important, and it becomes itself the means of grounding the hypostatic union.
¶27And what I'm trying to show is that this wasn't just Brenz, this broad idea, what I just summarized as the point of contrast, is widely taken to be, not universally, but widely taken to be the Lutheran view until you get to the 1570s. Uh so now, you know, which isn't to say that the view cannot be qualified or changed later, but it's to try to contextualize the Reformed critiques because the the Brenzian view here is able to be predicated on certain statements in Luther and Melanchthon themselves. So, for example, Luther is often cited as saying, "If you could show me one place where God is and not the man, the person is already divided." That's often cited in these discussions. And it seems as though Luther's tough to pin down. He's probably easier to defend than Brenz because he's got so many different statements and he's maybe not always thinking as systematically in every passage, but at least in some of his text, it seems like he is construing the indivisibility of the two natures of Christ as involving a spatial indivisibility.
¶28Uh so, you know, there's disputes here about who's thinking more spatially, the Lutheran or the Reformed, and I had referenced Thomas Torrance's critiques of the Lutherans in this regard, but I would say it is undeniable that the introduction of spatial categories for the activity of the humanity of Christ comes with Luther and Melanchthon themselves in the 1520s. Richard Cross argues that the earliest articulation of this comes from Melanchthon in 1527. Quote, "We should not think that the divinity of Christ is anywhere where the humanity is not." "What is this other than to separate Christ?" End quote. Now again, that's 2 years prior to even the uh Marburg dispute with Zwingli. Though Zwingli had written on this topic prior to this point, nonetheless, this is very early on.
¶29So, before the 1529 dispute, you have this spatial language in Luther and uh Melanchthon. And the point is simply to observe that for almost half a century, during some of the most significant informative discussions on this topic, you don't really get Chemnitz's view in its mature state. Chemnitz uh it's Brenz's view that's taken to be representative. That's the first point. That timeline is important to get, I think.
¶30Now, uh and so and therefore it's it's totally fair for people to express concerns about the Brenzian view, especially if it's still held by people today or if it's often traced back to certain views from Luther. However, now let's get to the more substantive point. The second two This will be a long video. The second two will be a little more substantive. And that is um okay, what about the later view then?
¶31Does Chemnitz's view overcome some of the earlier problems of Brenz's view? The later Lutheran view articulated by Chemnitz and the Formula of Concord, in my judgment, does not ultimately overcome the difficulties here, though they make a lot of razor-sharp qualifications and so forth. But because the effort in these later Lutheran writings is to talk about different modes of presence to avoid a crude understanding of omnipresence. And as I've mentioned, more emphasis is put on the exaltation of Christ, not just his incarnation. And there's other improvements as well.
¶32But here's the issue. I mean, if you get lost in all of the discussion here, here's the fundamental point. You still have omnipresence of the human nature of Christ in various ways. >> [snorts] >> That idea is still on the table as an implication of the genus maiestaticum. For example, the Book of Concord teaches that Christ can be present wherever he wills according to his humanity.
¶33So, the Solid Declaration of the Book of Concord sites Luther with approval that he is and can be in every place where God is and all things are through and through full of Christ also according to the humanity. Now then a qualification follows that is with respect to the particular mode of Christ presence, but you can still see the idea there. Uh Jesus is and can be everywhere even according to his human nature in some sense even if that's in a qualified manner of being. Similarly in the epitome of the Book of Concord, you also have a condemnation of the claim that Christ's human body cannot be in multiple locations at once much less everywhere. So on screen here is a statement that is being condemned that because of the property of the human nature, it is impossible for Christ to be able to be present at the same time in more than one place much less everywhere with his body.
¶34End quote. So that assertion is being condemned there. In other words, it's saying positively that Christ's human body can be in multiple locations at once and then note the word again everywhere. The addition of that phrase much less everywhere seems to constitute an affirmation that Christ can be present everywhere with his body. So [snorts] this is still a doctrine of ubiquity or omnipresence in some sense even if the manner of presence is qualified.
¶35Uh now I'm not alone in finding the Book of Concord to teach the ubiquity of the human body of Christ. Here's uh Richard Cross who is an amazing scholar on this whole topic by the way. The Solid Declaration expressly accepts the omnipresence of Christ's exalted body. The epitome makes just the same claim. So that's Cross summarizing his own exegesis of those texts.
¶36These are just two different parts of the Formula of Concord. The epitome is the shorter summary and the Solid Declaration is the fuller exposition. Similarly in the Catalog of Testimonies, Jordan had brought up a concern that I didn't bring up the catalog of testimonies. So, this is a kind of appendix to the Book of Concord, and it qualifies the mode of Christ's presence, stipulating that the human flesh of Christ is not locally expanded into all places, but it nonetheless maintains that wherever the divine nature is, the human nature also is present. I don't know if I want to read this whole quote or not.
¶37I'll just read this section that I hopefully have emboldened and you can see. His entire person, namely as God and man, according to the mode of his personal union with the humanity, which is an inscrutable mystery, is everywhere present in a way and measure which is known to God. So, it's God as God and man that Christ is everywhere present there. Uh you find uh similar statements in Chemnitz. So, there's some uh adjustments from the first edition to the second edition of the two natures in Christ from 1570 to 1578.
¶38Um and again, some of the qualifications do seem to be safeguarding against various critiques among the Reformed, for example, but Chemnitz is clear to deny that the human nature of Christ is transformed into the divine essence or that essential divine attributes become essential properties of the humanity. So, he's going to make a lot of careful protections, but you still get this idea that divine attributes are communicated to the human nature of Christ, including a kind of omnipresence. So, when Chemnitz denies that attributes like being creator are conferred to the human nature of Christ at his exaltation, he affirms a number of divine attributes that are conferred upon the human nature, and multi-location is one of them. And Chemnitz says that all things are present to the human nature of Christ since the human nature rules over all things. There's a number of passages that we could cite in this regard, but here's one of them.
¶39The humanity in and with the Logos rules all things, not in the sense of being absent, far away, or removed by an immense interval of space, or through some vicarious work and administration such as kings are accustomed to exercise when their power is extended widely through many provinces, but just as the human nature subsists in the Logos and in so far as it personally adheres to the Logos, it also has all things before it in the Logos, and in being present, it rules over all things in the Logos. So, Chemnitz here is kind of inferring omnipresence from omnipotence, uh both of which are predicated of the human nature of Christ in this union with the divine nature, albeit in a very qualified way. So, the point is omnipresence being granted to the human nature of Christ is fairly characterized as a Lutheran view, provided you allow for the qualifications of the mode of presence and it being more uh beginning with the exaltation, not just the incarnation. That is that basic idea is not just Brands, it's the Book of Concord. That leads to the third question.
¶40Is this Christology eccentric? And the Reformed critique was rooted in a couple of issues. One of them was the concern uh that the integrity of the human nature has been impugned here. Because we want to say the person of Christ is everywhere, but not the human nature. Jesus' human body is a human body, and human bodies are not omnipresent.
¶41Uh here's how Vermigli put it, that to want the man to so exist that he be immense, infinite, and unlimited, What is this but to deny that he is truly a man? So, that that that's one of the basic concerns here is you need to have 100% humanity and that and that by definition means to be finite. And and uh not capable of being everywhere. There's other concerns that arise as well. In my previous video, I talked about the the danger of a confusion between the two natures, uh which is kind of related to what I just said.
¶42Richard Cross, so Richard Cross is a very good scholar on this topic. Uh he's a Roman Catholic uh theologian and philosopher, if I understand. And he brings up the concern about divine simplicity. And that is how is it that some attributes of the divine nature are communicated to the human nature like omnipresence but not others like eternity if all divine attributes are identical to the divine essence. And so, he's he brings up that concern.
¶43I'm not 100% sure what to make of that myself, but that's one that comes up. But one of the concerns that comes up here is this idea of attributing properties like omnipresence to the human nature does seem eccentric and novel. And it it it it doesn't seem to be the view really outside of Lutheranism. There are broader principles that are outside of Lutheranism that they draw from, but that specific idea seems to be a novelty. And let me observe I'll I'll defend my views on that and work through some possible counterexamples in the patristic literature in a second.
¶44But let me just observe first that I'm not alone in coming to that conclusion. Uh this is uh you know, uh Richard Cross, for example, uh is well even just historically, like the Anglicans, for example, the 39 Anglican articles tended to follow reformed views of the Lord's Supper by and large. Certainly on the mode of Christ's presence, for example, Article 28 addresses that. But another issue being disputed at the time is whether Christ's human body is ubiquitous. And you can find the Anglican theologian John Jewel writing to Peter Martyr Vermigli stating, "The articles do not differ from you by a nail's breath.
¶45For as to the ubiquitarian theory, there is no danger in this country." That's the language at this time used to describe this idea of the ubiquity of Christ's human body. Similarly, interestingly, Roman Catholic critiques of Lutheranism in the 16th century also tended to draw from the reformed critiques and basically agree with them. So, Robert Bellarmine, for example, uh basically is borrowing from Beza. This is what Richard Cross summarized. He's describing the response to Lutheran Christology in the Counter-Reformation.
¶46And Cross notes, {quote} In their most capable exponent, Robert Bellarmine, they by and large repeat what can be found in reformed sources, in particular Theodore Beza. Bellarmine has a clear view of the differences between Brenz's view and that of Chemnitz, for example, and indeed a very acute grasp of the precise metaphysical structure of the former's view, but he seems to have borrowed all this from Beza, whom he follows closely. Uh Cross's view himself, when he introduces these early statements from Luther and Melanchthon in the late 1520s, he's he he takes the position that they are arguing for a novelty. {quote} If the claim that Christ's human accidents are borne by the divine person is Luther's principal Christological insight, the view that the human nature must be omnipresent constitutes a further signal innovation. And he thinks it may originate with Melanchthon, and then maybe Melanchthon moves on from this, but basically he uses this phrase IBS to describe the impossibility of bodily separability.
¶47And basically this means wherever the divinity is, the humanity will be also. And you see that some of the language like this in Luther and also in the Book of Concord as we have seen. And what Cross takes the view that IBS is a novel interpretation of Chalcedon so far as I know, making two-way spatial inseparability a necessary consequence of the hypostatic union and thus making omnipresence a feature of Christ's body even during his earthly life. Now again, the later Lutherans aren't always going to say during his earthly life. But again, a lot of the later later Lutheran views will qualify the nature of the mode of presence and when it starts, but you still have this idea.
¶48And Cross ends his whole book saying that even the later Lutheran qualifications with Chemnitz don't solve the problem. Here's how he puts it. Quote, "These 17th century moves do not take us much beyond the technical issues raised in the Christology of the previous century. And while much effort was expended on these issues, in particular by Chemnitz himself, difficulties that strike me as more fundamental and more intractable were ignored, problems common both to Chemnitz and his Brenzian opponents." So he brings up problems related to divine simplicity. He also brings up a concern of vagueness in the claim that a divine power can be possessed but not employed.
¶49This is one of the claims that we will sometimes hear that certain divine properties can be possessed by Christ, but he's not They're sort of hidden or something like this or not accessed. And Cross has a concern that this is ambiguous in what it means. And he even argues that gaps and and unsolved issues in Lutheran Christology that remain even in the Chemnitzian views are surprising because there are developed theories in medieval Christology that could have applied to those topics. So, you don't have to agree with Cross. I'm just saying when I when I when I look at the at the landscape and I say, "I think Lutheran Christology is is eccentric." I'm not alone in that.
¶50It's not just me, it's it's many people. But let me let me try to justify that a little bit. I mentioned earlier how Jordan had raised the concern about not really just just getting this from Reformed sources and not reading the catalog of testimonies because the catalog of testimonies gives a bunch of biblical and patristic citations to defend the Lutheran view. So we need to get into that to finish here. >> [snorts] >> Essentially, I can state my concern and response very briefly.
¶51The citations are mainly about Christ sharing in divine glory and majesty. So the human body and the human nature of Christ receive glory and majesty. Those are statements we agree on. I I've talked about that a lot in my work on the transfiguration. But that really isn't the point in dispute.
¶52The Reformed have always agreed with a communication of divine glory, divine immortality, divine light, etc. to the human nature of Christ. Just not divine properties like omnipresence. So here's how Peter Martyr Vermigli drew this distinction. Quote, "I confess that immortality, light, glory, and so forth which human nature is capable of receiving are communicated to him.
¶53But other attributes such as eternity, immensity, and ubiquity, since the human nature cannot receive them, cannot be communicated to him." So this is the Reformed concern. It's one thing for a human body to receive divine glory. It's another thing for a human body to receive divine omnipresence. Now the Lutheran catalog of testimonies spends a lot of time showing that the Father spoke of Christ's human body being exalted, being glorified, being worshipped, being quickened, being seated at God's right hand, being a participant in divine majesty, etc. But the vast majority of these citations do not say Christ's human body can be everywhere.
¶54Attributes like omnipresence are not in view in the vast majority of them so far as I can tell. So, for example, Athanasius and and John Damascus and Cyril and others are quoted, but much of the material is just along these lines that the human flesh of Christ is glorified, and [snorts] the flesh is life-giving because it is united to the word, and the human nature receives the dominion of uh God, and uh the body is worshipped because it belongs to the divine person. And many of these statements the Reformed could agree with, uh if not not all of them. But that doesn't really hit, in my view, the main central issue, which is ubiquity or omnipresence and attributes like that. The Lutheran move comes with this transition from the humanity participates in divine majesty to the implication, the humanity is present everywhere, according to its humanity, through its union with the word.
¶55And I think that move, that second point, is innovative and and eccentric and so forth. So, let me let's work through this just a little bit. The only passages I can find in the catalog of testimonies that would support that would come from early medieval Christians like Oecumenius and Theophylact in their comments on Ephesians 4:10, and this language of Christ filling all things, and filling all things with his flesh, which does sound closer to the Lutheran claim. So, let's just work through this a bit to finish. Ephesians 4:10, you may remember, "He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all things that he might fill all things." So, the catalog cites this passage and then says, "This Oecumenius explains thus, for indeed, he long ago filled all things with his bare divinity, and having become incarnate, that he might fill all things with his flesh, he descended and ascended." And Theophylact on the same passage, "In order that he might fill all things with his dominion and working and that in the flesh.
¶56Uh since even before he filled all things with his divinity. Now, these two figures are somewhat obscure. I'm not familiar with the broader context of Oecumenius and I've only engaged Theophylact once if I recall. I thought I was and then I remembered I actually watched one of my old videos where I >> [snorts] >> drew from him a little bit. I have lots of questions about what these passages mean in the context of citing Ephesians 4.
¶57Are they talking about a general ubiquity of Christ's human body? Uh a polemic against Nestorian division? Is this just rhetorical exegesis on the Pauline language of filling all things? I'm I'm uncertain. But these two obscure medieval theologians are doing a lot of heavy lifting here because the remaining sections the citations in this section are just talking about the inseparability of the persons so far as I can tell, not the general omnipresence of Christ's body.
¶58So, for example, the next citation is from Pope Leo, quote, "The Church Catholic lives and advances in this faith that in Christ Jesus there is believed neither the humanity without the true divinity nor the divinity without the true humanity." Well, a Reformed person can totally agree with that. Yeah, there's an inseparability between and and some of the other passages are about something other than the point of dispute. The Lutheran position is a further extension from these statements into a claim of spatial ubiquity uh among other things. And which Leo doesn't say and the most of these passages don't really address so far as I can tell. So, it's significant that the only explicit language that Lutherans can point to for the humanity filling all things and this kind of thing seems to come from these more obscure thinkers.
¶59I'm not I guess it remains to be seen kind of is there more to point to and what do those texts mean? Let [snorts] me give some documentation for the position that I think is generally representative of the pre-reformation tradition. This is a passage from Augustine that I think is a good representative example. Do not doubt therefore that the man Christ Jesus is now in heaven from where he will come. In accord with this form, he should not be thought to be spread out everywhere.
¶60For as For we must be careful not to defend the divinity of the man in such a way that we remove the reality of his body. For one person is God and man, and the two are the one Jesus Christ. Everywhere as God, in heaven as man. So, you have this this this uh schema. He's everywhere as God, and he's local as man.
¶61Now, of course, the Lutherans are going to want to say, "Well, we can affirm that Christ's body is circumscriptively in heaven, but it can be everywhere or is everywhere in some other mode." But, right now, what I'm observing in Augustine is that he doesn't make that distinction, and I don't see that distinction in the prior tradition. I don't see any sense in the prior tradition much beyond those two the I I put up I I wanted to be fair to put up those two that I can find. I don't see that very much, this idea that Christ's human body can be everywhere in any sense whatsoever, replete-ively or any other sense. And I'm giving this passage in Augustine as representative. I think you find something similar in Thomas Aquinas.
¶62Quote, "Nothing prevents the word of God from being everywhere, although the human nature assumed by the word of God is not everywhere." Thomas is not offering any distinction of different modes here. He just says the humanity is not everywhere, full stop. And I think it'd be harder to find a a more emphatic statement of something like the Reformed view than than those. If you want a full list of patristic and medieval passages to this effect, I'm not going to go through a bunch of them. I'll go through one or two more here.
¶63You could read through Thomas Cranmer's text, a defense of the true and Catholic doctrine of the sacrament of the body and blood of our savior Christ. He gives a plethora of patristic citations against this the thesis that Christ's human body can be in multiple locations at the same time. So, for example, he quotes from Vigilius, uh who's a 5th century bishop and a defender of trinitarianism, as follows, quote, "If the word and the flesh were both of one nature, seeing that the word is everywhere, why is not the flesh then everywhere? For when it was in earth, then verily it was not in heaven. And now, when it is in heaven, it is surely not in earth." It seems And that's the end of the quote there.
¶64It seems harder to construct a clearer affirmation of this reformed position than that. Uh If the human flesh of Christ is on earth, then it's not in heaven. If it's in heaven, it's not on earth, and so forth. Just a bit later, Vigilius writes, quote, "Therefore, in as much as the word is everywhere, and the flesh is not everywhere, it appeareth plainly that one Christ himself hath in him two natures, and that by his divine nature he is everywhere, and by his human nature he is contained in a place." End quote. Cranmer also cites Fulgentius as writing, quote, "One and the selfsame person, as concerning his man substance, was not in heaven when he was on earth, and forsook the earth when he ascended into heaven.
¶65But as concerning his godly substance, which is above all measure, he neither left heaven when he came from heaven, nor he left not the earth when he ascended into heaven." End quote. That's a mouthful. Point is, the second member of the Trinity, the Son of God, is everywhere with respect to his divinity and local with respect to his humanity. It's a real human body with ordinary human finitude. There are lots of other passages like this we could work through, but I I just to summarize I would say it seems to me that the reformed position is better attested and more Catholic.
¶66And it does seem to me like this particular aspect of the of the Lutheran position does go in a strange direction. Um now, I know the Lutherans will say that we agree Christ is not locally everywhere in his humanity. You know, now you get these different modes of presence. He can be everywhere repletely and these kinds of things. But those very distinctions themselves are part of what I think is this new idea coming in.
¶67Because that that really isn't how I see people like Augustine and Thomas speaking. I'm open to new information. So, finishing off, what does all this have to do with anything? Well, I I think the the basic fundamental issue is this. Why do we need to posit ubiquity to the human nature of Christ rather than to the person?
¶68It It The The danger here is a a blurring of the full and real humanity. Uh we want to keep the distinctness of these two natures. The human nature of Christ and the divine nature of Christ are united inseparably, but they remain distinct in that union. Otherwise, it wouldn't really be a union of two different things. It would just blend into one thing, right?
¶69Here's how you can sum up the reformed position from the statement from Heinrich Bullinger, quote, "These diverse natures, the divinity and humanity, are conjoined and united in one inseparable person, such that, however, the properties exist and remain inviolate in unity of person and are not destroyed or obliterated or confused to the extent that one nature is constituted of the two." End quote. And this seems particularly focused on the language of the Chalcedonian definition which I quoted earlier, which rejects this idea of confusion between the two natures and says the distinction of the natures is in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature are preserved and come together to form one person at subsistence." Now, this position, the Reformed view, does not rule out a robust account of Christ's presence during the Eucharist. Although the physical body of Christ is locally present in heaven, it does not need to be locally present on earth for there to be a real participation in Christ in the Eucharist. Any more than it would need to be for our broader union with Christ. The body of Christ can be as as Calvin would put it, life-giving from a distance.
¶70And the position of Thomas Aquinas is going to be especially relevant here because this is going to be another example. You can have a very high view of the Eucharist without positing omnipresence to the human nature. The The big concern that probably would need to get further fleshed out here is the biggest critique of the Reformed, which is a Nestorian divide in Christ. And And I'll just say I don't think Reformed view necessarily goes down that path. Now, some individual Reformed thinkers may have statements that have raised worries about that.
¶71But in the early church, when you have Cyril of Alexandria saying the Son of God died with respect to his human nature, but he did not die with respect to his divine nature, the same way that he can say both of those things are true and it doesn't imply a division in the personhood, seems to me to be the exact same argument the Reformed can use to say we've got a real distinction between the human and the divine natures, but they are united in one person because of the creator-creation distinction, which is absolute and qualitative. I've I've written about that specific issue more elsewhere. So, all right, that's that's it for this video. I Like I said, I don't think I'll address this topic again. If somebody wants to dialogue, happy to do it, but I just wanted to put out my thoughts here, not wanting to step on Lutheran toes, but just wanted to explain why I think the reformed position is is is the correct one on this topic.
¶72And if others do response videos, that's fine. Just you guys can have the last word, but I wanted to put this out there since I finally had the chance to go back and kind of work through those videos and and and do some more reading and get my thinking clear on this topic. Even though who's going to watch this video? This got really obscure. If you watched to the end, let me know in the comments and I'll heart your comment.
¶73All right, thanks for watching everybody. God bless.