I. The Doctrine of Christ's Person.
(De persona Christi.) It has often become the custom to complain about an excessively detailed and cumbersome presentation of the doctrine of the person of Christ, especially by Lutheran dogmatists, but also already in the Formula of Concord and by Luther.!® There is a detailed discussion of the true, perfect divinity (de Christo vero Deo sive de veritate divinae naturae), then of the true, perfect humanity of Christ (de Christo vero homine sive de veritate et integritate humanae naturae), and finally a particularly detailed discussion of personal union (de unione personali), the communion of natures and the communication of attributes (de communione naturarum et de communicatione idiomatum). This very detailed treatment is a fact. It must also be admitted that some of the old dogmatists could have presented some parts more briefly without the thoroughness of the presentation suffering as a result. viniani, dum controversias, quae de unione personali et eam consequente idiomatum communicatione verae ecclesiae cum ipsis intercedunt, extenuant. [Google] (Locus de persona et officio Christi, § 4.)
But historically and factually untrue is the idea that the old teachers, out of sheer quarrelsomeness and to the plague of mankind, had made such a detailed presentation. The fault for this detailed and often very detailed account lies with the false teachers. They never tired of denying in great detail and in many ways both the true perfect Godhead and the true perfect humanity, and the personal union of the divine and human nature in Christ. Thus it was and is appropriate in the circumstances for the teachers of the Church, recognizing the importance of the teaching of Christ's person, to present and defend all these truths as taught in Scripture. In our time, too, we cannot escape a detailed presentation of the teaching of Christ's person for the sake of opposition, although we would prefer to be exalted from the necessity. Luther already complained that he was forced by the false teachers to argue about the doctrine of Christ!. Gerhard also speaks out appropriately about what prompted the detailed teaching of Christ.! Summary presentation of the doctrine of Christ's person. * It would be acompletely wrong idea to assume that the Christian church only in the course of time and by the development of ecclesiastical termini would have come to the right knowledge of the person of Christ. Luther is absolutely right when he states that the right doctrine of Christ's person, including the communicatio idiomatum, has been known and believed in Christendom from the very beginning and before all the councils'
one should always rejoice, sing, praise and thank God the Father for such inexpressible mercy, that he has let us have his dear Son, become like him, man and brother, without bickering, without doubt in right faith. Thus the wretched Satan, through proud, ambitious, desperate people, causes us such displeasure that we must be prevented and corrupted from loving and blessed joy. May God hear our plaint!"
alicujus arce ac metropoli oppugnanda vires hostium potissimum occupantur: sic diabolus omnes calliditatis et potentiae suae vires in mysterio de Christo, quod doctrinae coelestis, metropolin esse novit, oppugnando jam inde a primo N. T. initio, imo a mundi usque exordio experiri voluit, modo enim divinam, modo humanam Christi naturam evertere, modo unionem personalem dissolvere, modo officium ejus labefactare conatus est ac viis dissimilibus ad eandem perpetuo contendit metam, videlicet ut sinceritatem ac puritatem hujus doctrinae corrumperet ac consequenter hunc salutis thesaurum hominibus eriperet. [Google decisions, on the basis of the clear statements of Scripture.!*) Everything that is expressed under the doctrine of Christ's person, e.g. in the Lutheran confession, is believed and recognized by the Christian because it is clearly revealed in the word of the prophets and apostles. The Christian believes the two natures in Christ when he reads or hears that the eternal Son of God became man from the Virgin Mary. '* He does not doubt the unity of the person because he hears that one and the same person presents himself as the Son of Man and as the Son of the living God.! Nor does he doubt the real communion of natures, because Scripture says that the fullness of the Godhead dwells not beside but in Christ's human nature.!® He believes, on the testimony of the Scriptures, that the Lord of glory was crucified,! and that therein lies the value of Christ's suffering and death '® (first genus of the communication of the attributes). He also believes in the statements of the Scriptures that
nothing new in the faith, as we said above, but defended the old faith against the new conceit of Nestorii, that one cannot make an example of it nor give power to the Council to set new or different articles of faith. For this article has been known in the Church from the beginning, and has not been made anew by the Council, but has been preserved by the Gospel or Holy Scripture. For it is written in St. Luke, chap. 1:32, that the angel Gabriel announces to the Virgin Mary that out of her shall be born the Son of the Most High. And St. Elisabeth (Luke 1:43): From where does it come that the mother of the Lord comes to me? And the angels all together at Christmas (Chap. 2:11): "A Saviour is born to you today, who is Christ the Lord. Item, St. Paul Gal. 4:4: "God has sent his Son, born of an image of a woman. These sayings (I know for certain) hold firmly enough that Mary is the Mother of God. Thus speaks St. Paul 1 Cor. 2:8: "The princes of this world have crucified the Lord of majesty"; Acts 20:28: 'God has purchased the Church with his own blood', but God has no blood to judge according to reason; Phil. 2:6-7: 'Christ, being equal to God, became a servant and invented in all human ways. And childlike faith, Symbolum Apostolorum, says: I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived, born of Mary, suffered, crucified, died, buried etc. There are clearly the idiomata of human nature, and yet they are attributed to the one and only Son and Lord, in whom we believe like the Father, and as a true God.
Christ was given omnipotence, omniscience, etc. in time according to his human nature.!® In view of the statements of Scripture, he does not even come out of the thought that omnipotence, omniscience etc. is to be understood only as "finite, great gifts". And when Christ promises his Church that he wants to be with her every day until the end of the world, then the Christian does not think of his God-man Savior without and outside, but with and within his human nature present, that is, he attributes to Christ according to human nature, like omnipotence and omniscience, so also omnipresence (second genus of the communication of attributes). And when Scripture says that the Son of God appeared in the flesh precisely for the purpose of destroying the works of the devil and saving humanity through his activity in the accepted flesh and through the accepted flesh, the Christian does not think of the matter in any other way than that Christ does not work his official works as prophet, high priest and king alongside but in the accepted flesh and through the same, that is, according to both natures. He believes una actio Seavdpiky even if he does not know the expression (third genus of the communication of the attributes). The thought that the finite is not capable of the infinite (finitum non est capax infiniti) is quite stern for him, because it is clear to him from the statements of Scripture that the Son of God has actually entered the flesh, that is, has united the infinite with the finite into one person. In this brief exposition, based on clear scriptural statements that are understandable to every Christian, the whole doctrine of the person of Christ is contained to its farthest reaches. Seeberg also makes the correct comment with regard to the theological presentation of the doctrine of Christ's person that from the admitted personal union of God and man in Christ the most intimate communion of natures and the communication of attributes is self-evident.
idiomatum is the proposition that, on the basis of the incarnation of the Son of God as the Second Person of the divine Trinity, there is a unified subject of the God-man, by virtue of the initiative of the Logos who takes human nature upon himself, so that now both complete natures, the divine and the human, are inseparably connected with each other in personal unity. Whoever denies the unification of the two natures into personal unity,