Christ In The Seventeenth Century

Christ In The Seventeenth Century

Christ In The Seventeenth Century. —The 17th cent. is the age of Protestant scholasticism. A strong Catholic reaction had set in, which weighed on the minds of the defenders of the Protestant faith, and shackled the freedom of theological thought. In their treatment of the Christological problem, both Lutheran and Reformed theologians clung fervently to the traditions of the past, and to the Confessional theology of the previous century. The main results were regarded as finally attained; and while the religious motive was not wanting, the genial spirit that had guided Luther in his most surprising paradoxes was now weighed down by the love of system and scholastic disputation. Instead of reconsidering the first principles involved, the orthodox theologians wasted their ingenuity in inventing distinctions to conceal the most obvious doctrinal inconsistencies.

1. The Lutheran Church led the way in this scholastic development, by its endeavours to set in clearer light the unity of the God-manhood of Christ. The Formula of Concord (1577, published in the Book of Concord , 1580) struck a compromise between the divergent views of the Brenzian and the Chemnitzian doctrine. It held that the two natures of Christ had direct and real communion with each other; and it condemned as Nestorian the view that rested the unity of Christ upon the unity of the Person , as if the natures were combined in an external way, like two boards glued together. There was a real passing over of the properties of the Divine nature to the human nature; not in the sense that the human nature was essentially altered thereby, or made the Divine properties its own by a ‘physical communication’ or ‘essential transfusion,’ but in the sense of a real and permanent communication, such that Christ ‘performed all the works of His omnipotence in, through, and with His human nature.’ It was admitted that this majesty communicated to the human nature was hidden or withheld during Christ’s earthly life; He did not always manifest it, but only when it pleased Him to do so; or (as it is elsewhere expressed) He ‘divested Himself of His Divine majesty in the state of His humiliation,’ though retaining it through the personal union. By the resurrection this occultation of the Divine majesty came to an end, and He was placed in the plenary use, revelation, and manifestation of all Divine powers, so that ‘now not only as God but also as man He knows all things, is able to do all things, and exercises an omnipresent dominion.’

This Formula of Concord proved in reality a formula of discord to the Lutheran divines; it was variously interpreted, and not even universally accepted. The theologians of Helmstädt, who followed the more moderate Chemnitzian view, were all the more opposed to the Formula that it was interpreted by the Swabian theologians in a sense that restored the Brenzian tradition. The Swabians presented the doctrine of the Communicatio idiomatum in the most uncompromising form; and, in the most incautious and absolute terms, they attributed the Divine attributes of eternity, omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience to the earthly human Christ. For a time the Swabian views prevailed; but something had still to be done to harmonize them with the historical facts of Christ’s earthly life. A new controversy arose, in which the differences between Chemnitz and Brenz reappeared in an acuter form, as to what was involved in the state of humiliation, or the extent to which the human Christ had divested Himself of the Divine powers. The controversy raged chiefly between the theologians of Giessen and Tübingen. The theologians of Giessen, following the line of thought of Chemnitz and the divines of Helmstädt, endeavoured to reconcile theory with fact by distinguishing between the possession of Divine powers and their use . Looking to the facts of weakness, ignorance, and growing development in the life of the earthly Christ, they maintained that, while possessing all Divine properties, Christ did not make use of them in the state of humiliation, but entered on the full exercise of His powers at His exaltation. Only occasionally (miracles, transfiguration) did rays from the Divine majesty shine through; in general the Logos remained quiescent, and the human nature, though Divinely endowed, did not advance to the actuality of exercise (κένωσις τῆς χρήσεως). This doctrine was contested by the theologians of Tübingen, who regarded the distinction as futile and involving a betrayal of the Lutheran position. They insisted that there would be no real communication of Divine attributes to the humanity unless the human Christ both possessed and used them. They would admit only that the earthly Christ hid His majesty for the time, and usually made a veiled use of His Divinely communicated powers (κρύψις). This theory was apparently more logical than that of the Giessen theologians; but neither could be harmonized with the facts of Christ’s earthly life, and the Tübingen theory brought the inconsistency into more startling evidence. The Giessen distinction between use and possession of Divine powers might be applied with some meaning to the property of omnipotence; but it had no conceivable meaning as applied to omniscience or omnipresence. But it fared even worse with the Tübingen view when brought face to face with the facts. For how could a Christ who possessed and used the property of omnipresence in His humanity be at the same time and in the same nature circumscribed in time and space? How could a growing intelligence be at the same time endowed with absolute omniscience? Or how could the weak, human, suffering Christ be also in the full exercise of His omnipotence? The Tübingen theologians did their best to solve these startling contradictions by making small concessions, and minute distinctions that concealed these concessions. Thus they maintained that the earthly human Christ exercised His omnipresence not actu naturœ but actu personae  ; or, in other words, that the Person exercised it while the human nature remained under limitations—a verbal distinction which left the difficulty where it was. In regard to the omniscience of Christ, which seemed to clash with the fact of His gradual growth in knowledge, they submitted that omniscience was not incompatible with growth in a perfected human nature; and they suspected  Mark 13:32, where Christ confesses His own ignorance, of being an interpolation. Or, again, when pressed with the facts of Christ’s suffering and weakness as being inconsistent with a full energizing omnipotence, they admitted that Christ, for the sake of His redemptive work, ‘retracted’ somewhat of His Divine majesty. They made a distinction between the ‘reflex’ and the ‘direct’ use of omnipotence, declaring that Christ, qua Sacerdos , withdrew the reflex use of His majesty with reference to His own body, while He still, qua Rex , exercised the direct use of it in reference to creation.

These explanations of an intelligence that writhed under its own obvious inconsistencies, served only to bring in doubt the reality of Christ’s human life, and more moderate views at length prevailed. The Saxon Decision of 1624 expressed a view favourable to the Giessen theology: ‘We constantly affirm that He used His royal majesty most freely when, how, and where He would; but we deny that Christ as a man, immediately from His incarnation, always, fully, and universally exerted His Divine majesty of omnipotence and omnipresence, … since Christ could not have been taken, crucified, and put to death had He willed to use fully and universally His omnipotence and omnipresence.’ The Tübingen theologians adhered to their views till nearly the end of the century, but they became more and more isolated in their opinion. The common Lutheran view was that represented by Quenstedt, the Lutheran Aquinas, who completely systematized the Lutheran doctrine. He held that, from the first moment of the Incarnation, Christ was, even in His human nature, in possession of the Divine majesty, and did exercise it occasionally when His work made it expedient to do so; but He abdicated its plenary use. The human Christ on earth emptied Himself by giving up for the time the glory of the μορφὴ θεου, i.e. the ‘divinae majestatis plenarius, universalis, et non interruptus sive indesinens usus.’ He thus reduced the possession by the human Christ of omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience to a mere potentiality. Christ was omnipresent while on earth, but not actu  ; He was everywhere present in fact, but not in act. He was omnipotent, but He preferred usually to act according to His natural powers. He had the primum actum of omniscience, but not the sccundum actum  ; He had the potentiality of absolutely Divine knowledge, but ordinarily He willed not to use it.

On the whole it must be admitted that the Lutheran theologians had little success in their efforts to unify the God-manhood of Christ. Their well-meant endeavour to supplement the defects of the two-natures theory by a doctrine of intercommunication brought only more prominently into relief the contradictions involved. The further development of doctrine in this century shows that the Lutherans themselves were becoming less sure of their own principles. The old axiom that the human was susceptible of the Divine ( finitum capax infiniti ) was still maintained in its non-ethical sense, but it was surrounded with more definite cautions and limitations. Thus, in order to meet the charge made against them by G. Calixtus, and still more forcibly by the Reformed and the Roman Catholic Churches, that by their doctrine of Communicatio idiomatum they overthrew the distinction between the human and the Divine, they distinguished more carefully than hitherto between a personal and an essential communication of properties. It was insisted that the Divine properties communicated did not become the essential properties of the human nature, but were only personally possessed and exercised. Or, as it was otherwise expressed, the human nature of Christ possessed the Divine powers, not by absolute appropriation (μέθεξις), but by conjunction (κατὰ συνδιασμόν, per unionem et conjunctionem , Meisner, Hollaz, Buddeus). Still further, it was held that the principle finitum capax infiniti was applicable in the case of Christ alone. It was admitted that human nature was naturally and in general incapable of receiving the Divine powers, and that the human nature of Christ had been endowed with this capacity by a special act of the Divine power. When the principle of the Communicatio idiomatum is thus narrowed down on this side and on that, the old dualism reappears, and the Lutheran doctrine of the thorough union of the Divine and the human is in a state of collapse. Later attempts to rescue the Communicatio idiomatum from oblivion by removing it from its basis, the doctrine of the two natures (Dorner, and still more elaborately H. Schultz, Lehre von der Gottheit Christi ), only repeat the mistake of pouring new wine into old bottles; for, as Baur says, when once the duality of natures is abandoned, there can be no further talk of a Communicatio idiomatum . Schultz tries to revitalize the doctrine in its triple form by an infusion of new ideas which have little historical connexion with it, and which could be better expressed in less scholastic forms.

The different kinds of Communicatio as given by Quenstedt may be here tabulated:—

I. Genus idiomaticum , where the qualities of either nature are attributed to the person: ( a ) when the person is the subject: Christ is eternal: Christ has died; ( b ) when the concrete human nature is subject: the Son of Man is from heaven; ( c ) when the concrete Divine nature is subject: God has suffered.

Ii. Genus apotelesmaticum , marking some activity in the redemptive work in which both natures concur: God is redeemer ( i.e. God incarnate): the Son of Man is redeemer ( i.e. He who is Son of Man and Son of God): the blood of Christ cleanses ( i.e. the blood of Him who is both God and man).

Iii. Genus majestaticum , the attribution of Divine properties to the human nature: ( a ) Divina nomina  ; ( b ) Opera divina  ; ( c ) Cultus divinus  ; ( d ) Essentialia Dei attributa: e.g . omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience. The main controversy raged around this last genus.

2. The Reformed Church took a different path. Its theologians held fast to the principle of the Middle Ages, that finite human nature is not capax infiniti  ; but they applied it, as the Middle Ages had failed to do, to set in stronger relief the reality of Christ’s human life. They considered the unity of Christ to be sufficiently safeguarded by the fact of the personal unity and the correspondence of the two natures, and emphasized the distinctness of the natures to the point of being charged with Nestorianism by their Lutheran opponents. Instead of such a communication between the natures as the Lutherans maintained, they were content to think of the human nature of Christ as working in harmony with the Divine through the anointing and activity of the Holy Spirit. Through this Holy Spirit, coming by way of the Logos, the human nature of Christ received certain Divine charisms; but it did not receive the absolute Divine attributes, or any other powers than such as a human nature, remaining human, could receive. Thus they claimed for the human Christ sinlessness, infallibility in His teaching, and abiding fellowship with God the Father; but they were earnest also in maintaining a true growth in Christ of positive knowledge, holiness, and power. Not even did the risen and exalted Christ surpass the limits of the human, or arrive in His humanity at complete coincidence with the Divine. On the other hand, they balanced this doctrine of a truly human development by the position that the personality of Christ lay in the Logos, who, in assuming this human nature, and appearing on earth in lowly guise, at the same time also remained outside of the human Christ, clothed with all the attributes of heavenly glory. (The Logos was totus in carne , but also totus extra carnem ). Their theory results practically in the doctrine of a double life , the eternal life of the Son of God, the pure Logos ex carnc , who remains unchanged in heavenly dominion and glory; and the life in time of the man Christ Jesus, the Logos Incarnate, the God-man in lowly form. (This is the interpretation given by Bruce, Humiliation of Christ , 163 ff., Schultz, Gottheit Christi , 180, and others). It may be mentioned, as indicating the growing importance attached to the humanity of Christ, that the idea of Christ’s pre-existent humanity gained ground during this century as well among the Reformed as the Lutheran divines. It recommended itself to the Lutheran theologian as exalting the human nature, and affording some support to his doctrine that the whole earthly life of Christ rested on the voluntary self-humiliation of the God-man; while to some of the Reformed side it seemed to explain the position of Christ as the type and instrument of creation, and the medium of revelation prior to the Incarnation.

Comparing the views of the Reformed and Lutheran Churches, we may say that while both adhered to the ancient formula of Chalcedon, the Lutheran Church emphasized the Divinity of Christ, and the Reformed Church the humanity. In the Lutheran field of vision stands the figure of the Divine, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Christ, upon which the humanity hangs like a thin transparent garment; while, for the Reformed Church, the human Jesus of Nazareth stands in the foreground, and the Divinity lies in the background of faith, constituting a union with the human Jesus that is beyond comprehension. It cannot be said that either Church solved the problem of Christ’s Person, for indeed no solution is possible on these terms. So long as the Divine and the human are defined by categories that are absolutely inconsistent—omnipotence and weakness, omniscience and ignorance, the infinitude of omnipresence and local bodily finitude—the union of these in one person is inconceivable. It is only when we read the glory of God in the face of Christ, and realize that the central and essential attributes of God are love, grace, compassion for human frailty and need, that we can recognize the Divine and the human as one, and acknowledge in Christ the revelation of the Divine, the Word of God Incarnate.

3. Outside of the orthodox theology a freer development of thought took place, under the influences derived from the anti-Trinitarianism of the 16th cent., and the growth of modern philosophy. Socinianism was a growing power, and the influence of its criticisms passed into every land. The Socinians made a clean sweep of the old Trinitarian and Christological dogmas, and so cut the knot of the intellectual difficulties involved. In their view it was irrational and unscriptural to speak of God as being three. It was equally irrational to think of God generating a Son after the manner of corruptible animals, or to speak of two natures, each complete in itself, coming together and forming one person. The rational and Scriptural doctrine was that Christ was verus homo . Yet, having once made this fundamental position clear, the Socinians made many concessions in favour of Christ’s uniqueness in respect of Divine supernatural endowment. He was born supernaturally of a virgin. He was equipped for His work on earth by ascending into heaven, and receiving there all needful supernatural knowledge. He also exercised supernatural powers on earth; and after His ascension He was exalted to the right hand of God, and was endowed with new Divine powers for the guidance of His Church. As thus exalted He might be called God, and Socinus himself went so far as to justify the adoration of Christ. This Socinian doctrine rests on the same presupposition as the orthodoxy of the day, viz. that the supreme and essential characters of Deity are omnipotence, omniscience, unchangeableness; but by applying this conception logically to the Person of Christ, Socinians emptied their Christology of all religious value. For union with God is the need of the human heart; and the doctrine of the God-man, contradictory as it was, held a truth for which Socinianism found no expression.

4. The Arminian doctrine was a via media between the Socinian and the orthodox doctrine. The Arminian theologians adhered to the doctrine of the Trinity, but maintained that the Son, as begotten of the Father, was essentially subordinate, though still a Person within the Deity. They also maintained the full humanity of Jesus. Though one with the Son or Logos, He lived a truly human life; He had a human body and a human soul, and, according to Curcellaeus, a human personality. The union with the Logos appeared in the communication to Jesus of Divine spiritual powers, but only of such as were possible to a creature. While they held His actual sinlessness, they denied His impeccability. Had they carried out their conception logically, they could scarcely have halted short of Socinianism.

Before the close of the century the Arminian Christology had multitudes of adherents, not only in Holland but also in Switzerland and England. In the latter country Deism had already begun to undermine the Trinitarian and Christological doctrines, and Arminian and even Arian views were widely spread within the Church. The whole tendency of the period was towards a more frankly humanitarian view of Christ’s Person; and leading representatives of thought, like Milton, Locke, and Newton, whose sympathies were with the Christian faith, were estranged from the orthodox rendering of the Christian verities. The great variety of view, prevailing both in the Churches and beyond them, indicated the approaching dissolution of the old dogma, while as yet the rationalism of the age had little to set in its place.

5. In this as in other centuries, Mysticism pursued its own path, and afforded to some minds relief from the high and dry dogmatism of orthodoxy. Starting from the true thought of the affinity of God and man, the Mystics tended either to lose sight of the historical Jesus entirely, or to see in Him but one manifestation of the eternal Word. Jacob Böhme may be taken as their noblest representative. Böhme stood too near to the Christian faith to sublimate Christ, and see in Him nothing more than the type of a universal incarnation; but history and dogma are but the material of his all-mastering speculation. The Trinity represents for Böhme the thought that God has life and movement, that He is no abstract, changeless entity apart from the world, but a living God, working in and through all, the source and goal and spirit of all, the unity in which all contradictions are resolved. He interprets the dogma in a variety of ways. The Father is the abyss; the Son is the first forthgoing of desire in the form of will; the Spirit is the eternal out-breathing of that will. Or, the Father is the originating will, the Son is the power of love which the will generates in determining itself, and the Spirit is the will’s eternal outgoing. Or again, the Father is the source of all powers, Himself the one all-inclusive power; the Son is the heart and kernel of all powers; and the Spirit is their living movement. But Böhme sees the Trinity everywhere: in the soul of man (power, light, and the spirit of understanding), in plants (power, sap, peculiar virtue), nay, in all things that conceivably exist—even in the burning candle with its heat, light, and ascending air. In similar ways Böhme descants on the Person of Christ,—His double birth, in time and in eternity; His double body, the heavenly and the mortal. In spite of their incoherence, one may gather from Böhme’s writings a suggestion here and there, but so far as definite ordered thought goes, his vagaries resemble the play of shadows on a wall. His meaning may be profoundly spiritual, but his language is a perverse interweaving of physics and chemistry with ethics and theology.

In no century was the rabies theologica more pronounced. The scholastic extravagance of the orthodox doctrine did not fail to work injuriously and sometimes disastrously on the religious life, while the intellectualism of the more critical circles did not directly serve the growth of religious piety. For the evidence of true and sincere devotion to Christ in this age we must look rather to the obscure and humble in the Churches, who found sustenance for their souls in a faith that surpassed all formulas, and which no scholasticism or criticism could rob of its transcendent power.

Literature.—Planck, Gesch, der prot. Theologie von der Concordienformel bis in die Mitte des achtz, Jht .; Schneckenburger, Vergleichende Darstellung des Luther. u. Reform. Lehrbegriffs  ; Dorner, Doctrine of the Person of Christ , div. ii. vol. ii.; Schultz, Gottheit Christi  ; A. Réville, The Deity of Jesus Christ  ; G. Bonet-Maury, Des origines du Christianisme unitaire  ; A. B. Bruce, The Humiliatum of Christ  ; artt. in Pre [Note: Re Real-Encyklopädie fur protest. Theologic und Kirche.] 3 [Note: designates the particular edition of the work referred] on ‘Kenosis,’ ‘Communicatio Idiomatum,’ and on the various theologians referred to.

J. Dick Fleming.