Truth Unites - How is Jesus God AND Man? Lutheran vs. Reformed Views of Chalcedon

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

Gavin Ortlund compares Lutheran and Reformed views of Chalcedonian Christology, examining how each tradition understands the relationship between Christ’s divine and human natures and the question of whether divine attributes like omnipresence can be communicated to Christ’s humanity.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

What 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, that we've got a lot of common ground. Now, the Council of Calcedon 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. And what the early church was trying to oppose is on the one side, monophysite and meaphysite 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 Calcedonian Christology, the desire here is to avoid two persons or two acting subjects, like a divine Jesus and a human Jesus. two people, Nestorius' own views are much more complicated. But also the desire is to keep a distinctness between the two natures. There'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 Calcedonian 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. And 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 Christ's Christ's Christophrology, 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 the so-called genus myestatica, a Latin term that you can see there on screen, This is the Lutheran teaching that there's a communication 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. And the reform 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.

Now, 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 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 traditions are very rich and intelligent. You can learn a lot by trying to dive into this and follow the conversation in both directions. But I don't want to make criticizing Lutheranism a big topic of my YouTube channel. I'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 so I hope it won't annoy my Lutheran viewers. If it does, it'll be the last time because I'm not going to talk about this again. But so far as I can tell, my critique has been that I think they are unique and I will say eccentric in their Christology. 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 Maya Statica, I do think their view is a departure. and I also think it's unique among contemporary traditions and even actually individual theologians.

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. 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 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. My last video got a fair number of responses. 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. Jordan Cooper put out three different videos, all excellent

as always. I 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. Let 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 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.

And 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 Gavin, your critique of Lutheranism. only applies to some Lutheran views, not to Lutheranism as such. More specifically, 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 distinguish more clearly between different modes of Christ's presence. And so you're just criticizing Johann Brenz, but that doesn't apply to the other Lutherans. That's a fair point, but I want to interact with that here. So just to catch, this video is 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 oversimplify a bit by saying there's two kind of trajectories in the Lutheran tradition on this topic. 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 Kemnitz, though others as well, and that's later defended in the early 17th century disputes by the school of Giesin. You don't need to remember all the terms there. And the idea here is that Kemnitz's view avoids the problems of Brins. It clarifies the mode of Christ's presence, and it focuses on the exaltation rather than the incarnation and so on and so forth. And so the Reformed view is just applying to Brinz. So that's what I want to interact with 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. Number one, why did the reformed critiques focus on Brenz early on? Number two, did Kempnitz'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 do want to kind of keep putting forward. I do think it is a departure from Catholicity. Again, not on Calcedonianism in general, but on the specific point of, as we look at the communication of attributes and the particular claim that certain of these

divine attributes like omnipresence are communicated to the human nature in some sense. So the first point that I want to make, though, here is that Kempnitz's views are relatively late within the early Reform versus Lutheran disputes. So Kemnitz writes his seminal treatment of this topic entitled The Two Natures in Christ in 1570, that's the first edition. The second edition is 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. In fact, the later Kamitsian, 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 chronology here to understand what the reformed are responding to in most of these early decades of the dispute here. Kempnitz's major work,

Kempnitz had some earlier writings on this, but his major work is not yet published during this huge span of fireworks flying up as there's this significant disagreement. I mean, 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 Maulbron colloquy, for example, so much of the formative time of this Christian disagreement is going on prior to the publication of Keminist's view. And many of the reform critiques of the Lutheran position are coming at this time. Okay, so Jan Lasky or John Alasko, his name is English-sized sometimes, and John Calvin are engaging in lots of their polemics against the Lutheran position in the 50s and in the 60s.

Calvin writes several things on this topic. Peter Marta Vermeagle wrote his famous dialogue on the Two Natures of Christ in 1561. Heinrich Bollinger wrote his, a discussion concerning the one and only mediator Jesus Christ in same year, 1561. 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. perhaps 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 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 to say that the Lutheran view is entirely uniform during this time either. But during these middle decades of the 16th century, the reformed are just responding to the views on the table. For example, Jacob 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 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. Quote, 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. Quote, 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 sun 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 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 Malbron in 1564, which I referenced earlier. Here's how Richard Cross puts it, quote, the colloquy assumed that Brenz's Christ's Christology, or as it turned out a close variant of it, straightforwardly represented the Lutheran position. For 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. If 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. 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. And 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. 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 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. 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 with, 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? And quote. Again, that's two years prior to even the Marburg dispute with Zvingly. Zwingli had written on this topic prior to this point. Nonetheless, this is very early on. So before the 1529 dispute, you have this spatial language in Luther and Melancthon, And the point is simply to observe that for almost half a century, during some of the most significant and informative discussions on this topic,

you don't really get Kemnitz's view in its mature state. It's Brenz's view that's taken to be representative. That's the first point. That timeline is important to get, I think. Now, and therefore, 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. of 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,

okay, what about the later view then? Does Kempnitz's view overcome some of the earlier problems of Brinze's view? The later Lutheran view articulated by Kemnitz 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 as incarnation. And there's other improvements as well. But 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. That idea is still on the table as an implication of the genus myostaticum. For example, the Book of Concord teaches that Christ can be present wherever he wills according to his humanity. So the solid declaration of the Book of Concord cites 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's presence, but you can still see the idea there. Jesus is and can be everywhere, even according to his human nature in some sense, even if that's in a qualified matter 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 it's 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, end 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 this is still a doctrine of

ubiquity or omnipresence in some sense, even if the manner of presence is qualified. Now, I'm not alone in finding the Book of Concord to teach the ubiquity of the human body of Christ. Here's 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. These 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. I'll just read this section that I hopefully have emboldened and you can. 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.

You find similar statements in Chemnitz. So there's some adjustments from the first edition to the second edition of the two natures in Christ from 1570 to 1578. And again, some of the qualifications do seem to be safeguarding against various critiques among the reformed, for example. But Kemnitz 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 Kemnitz 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 multilocation is one of them.

and Kemnit 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. The 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 insofar 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 Keminence here is kind of inferring omnipresence

from omnipotence, 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 beginning with the exaltation, not just the incarnation. That basic idea is not just Brins. It's the Book of Concord. That leads to the third. question. Is this Christology eccentric? And the reformed critique was rooted in a couple of issues. One of them was the concern 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. And here's how Vermeagely put it, 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's one of the basic concerns here is you need to have 100% humanity, and that by definition means to be finite and not capable of being everywhere. There's other concerns that arise as well.

In my previous video I talked about the danger of confusion between the two natures, which is kind of related to what I just said. Richard Cross, so Richard Cross is a very good scholar on this topic. He's a Roman Catholic 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 brings up that concern. I'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 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. It seems to be a novel

And let me observe, I'll defend my views on that and work through some possible counter-examples in the patristic literature in a second, but let me just observe first that I'm not alone in coming to that conclusion. This is, you know, Richard Cross, for example, 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, time is whether Christ's human body is ubiquitous. And you can find the Anglican theologian John Jewel, writing to Peter Martyr from meagli stating, the articles do not differ from you by a nail's breath. For 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, basically is borrowing from Beza. This is what Richard Cross summarized. He's describing the response

to Lutheran Christology and the counter-reformation. And 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. Belarmean 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. Cross's view himself, when he introduces these early statements from Luther and Melanchthon in the late 1520s, he takes the position that they are arguing for a novelty. Quote, if the claim that Christ's human accidents are born by the divine person is Luther's

principal, crystallological insight, the view that the human nature must be omnipresent constitutes a further signal innovation. And he thinks it may originate with Melancthon, and then maybe Melanchthon moves on from this, but basically he uses this phrase IBS to describe the impossibility of bodily separability. and 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 Calcedon 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 Lutheran views will qualify the nature of the mode of presence and when it starts, but you still have this idea. And Cross ends his whole book saying that even the later Lutheran qualifications with Chemnets 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 Kemnitz himself, difficulties that strike me as more fundamental and more intractable were ignored, problems common

both to Kemin's 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. This is one of the claims that we will sometimes hear that certain divine properties can be possessed by Christ, but they're sort of hidden or something like this, are not accessed. And Cross has a concern that this is ambiguous in what it means. And he even argues that gaps and unsolved issues in Lutheran Christology that remain, even in the Khamnisian views, are surprising because there are developed theories in medieval Christology that could have applied to those topics. So you're not to agree with Cross. I'm just saying, when I look at the landscape

and I say, I think Lutheran Christology is eccentric. I am not alone in that. It's not just me, it's many people. But let me try to justify that a little bit. I mentioned earlier how Jordan had raised the concern about not really 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. Essentially, I can state my concern in response very briefly.

the 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've talked about that a lot in my work on the Transfiguration, but that really isn't the point in dispute. The 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 Vamigli drew this distinction. Quote, I confess that immortality, light, glory, and so forth, which human nature is capable of receiving, are communicated to him. But 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 Catalogue of Testimony 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. The attributes like omnipresence are not in view in the vast majority of them, so far as I can tell. So, for example, Athanasius 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 the flesh is life-giving because it is united to the Word and the human nature receives the dominion of God and the body is worshipped because it belongs to the divine person. and many of these statements the reformed could agree with, if 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. And I think that move, that second point is innovative and eccentric and so forth. So 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 Oocuminius and Theophelact

in their comments on Ephesians 410, 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 410, 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 Eucuminius explains thus, for indeed he long ago filled all things with his bare divinity and having become incarnate that he might be able. fill all things with his flesh, he descended and ascended, and theophilact on the same passage, in order that he might fill all things with his dominion and working, and that in the flesh, 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 Oikuminias, and I've only engaged theophelact once,

if I recall. I thought I was, and then I remember, I actually watched one of my old videos where I drew from him a little bit. I have lots of questions about what these passages mean in the context of citing Ephesians 4. Are they talking about a general ubiquity of Christ's human body, a polemic against Nestorian division? Is this just rhetorical exegesis on the Paulian language of filling all things? 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. So, for example, the next citation is from Pope Leo, quote, the Church Catholic

lives in 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 foreign person can totally agree with that. Yeah, there's an inseparability between, and some of the other passages about something other than the point of dispute. The Lutheran position is a further extension from these statements into a claim of spatial ubiquity, among other things, which Leo doesn't say, and 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.

I'm not, I guess, it remains to be seen, kind of, is there more to point to and what do those texts mean? Let 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. 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 schema.

He's everywhere as God and he's local as man. Now, 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 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. I put up, 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. repletively or any other sense. And I'm giving this passage in Augustine as representative. I think you find

something similar in Thomas Aquinas. Quote, 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 more emphatic statement of something like the Reformed view 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 that. I'll go through one or two more here. You 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 the thesis that Christ's human body can be in multiple locations at the same time.

So, for example, he quotes from Vigilius, who's a fifth-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, that's the end of the quote there. It seems harder to construct a clearer affirmation of this reformed position than that. 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 appearth 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. Kramer also cites Fulgenchius as writing, quote, one in the self-same person as concerning his man's substance was not in heaven when he was on earth

and forsook the earth when he ascended into heaven, but 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. And 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 just to summarize, I would say, it seems to me that the Reformed position is better attested and more Catholic, and it does seem to me like this particular aspect of the Lutheran position does go in a strange direction. Now, I know the Lutherans will say that we agree Christ is not locally everywhere in his humanity. You know, and you get these different modes of presence. He can be everywhere repletively in these kinds of things. But those very distinctions themselves are part of what I think is this new idea coming in. Because 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 think the basic

fundamental issue is this. Why do we need to posit ubiquity to the human nature of Christ rather than to the person? The danger here is a blurring of the full and real humanity. 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? Here's how you can sum up the reform position from the statement from Heinrich Bollinger.

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 Calcedonian 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 to gather to form one person at subsistence. Now, this position, the Reform 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 Calvin would put it, life-giving from a distance. And 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 big concern that probably would need to get further fleshed out here is the biggest critique of the Reformed, which is an historian divide in Christ.

And I'll just say, I don't think a Reformed view necessarily goes to. down that path. Now, some individual reform thinkers may have statements that have raised worries about that. But 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 that reform 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 written about that specific issue more elsewhere. So, all right, that's it for this video. Like I said, I don't think I'll address this topic again. If somebody wants a 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 their correct one on this topic. and 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 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.

All right, thanks for watching everybody. God bless.