Antithesis.

Antithesis.

Antithesis.

§ 242. The real communication of divine properties to Christ’s flesh is denied both by the Papists and the Calvinists, like Samson’s foxes here tied together by their tails [cf. Judg. 15:4], though in other chief parts of doctrine they disagree with each other. (I) The Papists. At the time of the publication of the Augsburg Confession, before the Jesuits were born, the Papists thought nothing was lacking in our doctrine about Christ’s person and office. Emperor Charles V and the Roman Catholic princes speak thus, Resp. ad art. 3: “In the third article [of the Augsburg Confession], there is nothing that is offensive because the entire confession agrees with the Apostles’ Creed and with the sure rule of faith.” Protest. in art. Schmalc., 1537: “Regarding these articles” (on God, one and three and on the incarnation of the Son) “there is no controversy between us and our adversaries” (the Papists) “because we both confess them.”¹⁵ At this time, however, Luther’s doctrine on the real communication of properties and on the majesty of Christ the man was not unknown. In fact, he had explained it in his public writings against Karlstadt and Zwingli, and we have a summary of it repeated in that very Article III. In it, our churches confess that “Christ ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father, to rule forever, and to have lordship over all creatures.” Here observe both: The naming of that nature according to which we confess that Christ was exalted to the right hand of God, because as He ascended into heaven according to the human nature so also He sits at the right hand of God according to the same nature. And the explanation of His sitting at the right hand of God, that it is the granting of lordship over all creatures.

As time passed, however, the Jesuits followed the example of the Calvinists and began to attack the real communication of divine properties and actually bore witness that Luther, in his book De conc. et eccles., wrote correctly: “Among the Papists are hiding many Nestorians who deny in Christ the real communication both of the natures and of the properties.” Bellarmine, De Christo, bk. 3, ch. 1: “The Lutherans teach two things, from which it follows that they are either Nestorians or Eutychians or a monster composed of both heresies, for they say that the flesh of Christ has the attributes of divinity. If they wish those attributes to be joined essentially to the humanity, they are Eutychians; but if accidentally, they are Nestorians.” (However, in ch. 8 Bellarmine himself acknowledges that there is a third possibility, namely, that those attributes are communicated personally. Cf. our De glor. Dei, disput. 2, § 12.) In the Theses Jesuitarum Ingolst. published at Wittenberg in 1564 by a crypto-Calvinist with the recommendation of the rector, thesis 34: “The divine properties can be ascribed to the human nature neither verbally nor in reality.” The same thing is taught by Busaeus, Contra Gerlachium; Gregorius de Valentia, Contra Heerbrandum; etc.

§ 243. (II) The Calvinists. The Apol. admon. Neostad., p. 14: “The third genus of predication” (which we have placed in this locus as the second, by which the divine properties are predicated about the assumed nature), “new and unheard-of up to this time, is nothing other than a monster brought together partly from the madness of Eutyches and partly from the blasphemy of Nestorius, and also from the dreams of the Monophysites and Monothelites. It opens a window to Arianism and other errors.” The same thing is repeated by the crypto-Calvinist Saxon theologians at the Synod of Dresden in 1571, whose words we cited in our treatise On the Person of Christ [1610 Loci Theologici, locus 7], § 124. Beza, Coll. Momp., p. 262: “There can be no communication of omnipotence and of its properties in the human nature unless it be changed into divinity.” Page 265: “We also confess that the greatest gifts of divinity that can come to a creature and of which the human nature is capable of receiving were conferred on the humanity of Christ. However, these gifts are not the properties of the divinity, which are incommunicable, but created habitual gifts that the human nature has in itself, by which it surpasses all creatures.” Resp. ad Colloq., part 1, p. 93: “It is clear that nothing can be said truly about the humanity except what it is essentially or what is in it accidentally and subjectively.” (On the basis of this hypothesis, one quickly infers a dissolution of the personal union because the hypostasis of the Word belongs to the flesh neither essentially nor accidentally.) Danaeus, Exam. contra Chemn., p. 294: “No essential property of the Word is really ” (that is, communicable and capable of being shared) “to anything created, unless we say blasphemously that the very divine essence is really communicable and capable of being shared by the assumed flesh.” Bucanus (Locus 2, p. 16) lists among the heretics “the Ubiquitarians,¹⁶ who attribute to Christ’s humanity the essential properties of the divinity, not remembering the dictum: ‘Removing the properties removes the nature,’ etc.” (Cf. our De glor. Dei, disp. 7, §§ 26–27, where we cited more statements from the Calvinists in this vein.)

§ 244. In particular, the communication to Christ the man of: (1) Omnipotence is denied by the Papists. Bellarmine, De Christo, bk. 3, ch. 16: “The power conferred to Christ’s humanity is not absolutely omnipotence over all creatures, for with the words ‘You have put all things under His feet’ and ‘The Father gave all things into His hand,’ there is only signified that Christ’s humanity is in charge of all creatures and that it has authority over all.” Gregorius de Valentia, in Destruct. labyrinth., p. 56: “To Christ, power was communicated, not omnipotence.”

The Calvinists also deny it. Coll. Mompelg. p. 279: “ ‘All power,’ about which Christ speaks in Matthew 28[:18], must not be understood as a reference to God’s omnipotence but only to Christ’s lordship, which was given Him according to His humanity after His exaltation to the right hand of God. For this ‘all power’ is completely different from that which is essential in God and which is considered absolutely.” Tilenus, Not. ad l. Bell. de Christo, bk. 1, ch. 8: “Christ is speaking not about omnipotence but about , or ability. We cannot claim that Christ as man is capable of omnipotence without confounding the properties of His natures and transfusing into the human nature that which befits the divine, which is the madness of both old and recent Eutychians.” Similar statements occur in Danaeus (Contra Chemn., p. 363), Piscator (Disp., vol. 2, p. 11), Tossanus (Not. Bibl. Germ., Matt. 28:19), whose words we cited in De glor. Dei, disp. 7, § 30.

(2) Omniscience. We cited the words of the Coll. Momp. (p. 310), Adm. Neostad. (p. 23), Bucanus (Locus 38, q. 7) in our aforementioned disputation, § 23. Nahum, in Conc. evang. for the First Sunday after Epiphany, urges the argument that Christ is said to have increased in wisdom.

(3) The power to give life. The Coll. Momp., p. 338: “The power to give life is so specific to the deity that it cannot be communicated to Christ’s flesh nor to any creature, unless it be changed into divinity.” Danaeus, Contra Chemn., p. 118: “But Christ’s flesh no more conferred the divine works of giving life, healing, etc., than the apostles’ flesh was useful for performing their miracles or the rod of Moses for working his miracles.” (Cf. Martinius, Contra Mentz., pp. 285 and 305.)

(4) The power to execute judgment. Bellarmine, De Christo, bk. 3, ch. 16: “When Christ says in John 5 that the Father gave Him the power to execute judgment because He is the Son of Man, we can understand it in this sense, that He is speaking about the power to judge not in just any way but outwardly and perceptibly.” We quoted the words of the Adm. Neostad. (p. 23) and Bucanus (Locus 38, q. 5) in our aforementioned disputation, § 34.

(5) Omnipresent dominion. Of the Papists, Bellarmine, De Christo, bk. 3, ch. 11: “Ubiquity conflicts with the clear Scriptures, which say that Christ the man was not everywhere with regard to His humanity.” Chapter 12: “Ubiquity conflicts with the articles of the Creed about Christ’s conception, birth, death, burial, descent into hell, resurrection, ascension, and descent to judgment.” Chapter 13: “Ubiquity conflicts with the sacrament of the Eucharist.” The other Jesuits and all the Calvinists teach the same thing. (See Beza, Colloq. Mompelg., p. 33; Peter Martyr, Dial. contra Brent., f. 6; Contra Steph. Gardinerum, objection 2.) Palatinus Kednadon, Dial. de pers. union., p. 96: “They claim that it is not possible by any power, not even divine, for Christ’s body to be present in many places at one and the same time. (Cf. our aforementioned disputation, § 37.)

(6) Miracle-working power. We cited the words of the Adm. Neost. (p. 23) and Danaeus (Contra Chem., p. 157) in our aforementioned disputation, § 35.

(7) The power to cleanse from sins. Bellarmine, De Christo, bk. 3, ch. 16: “As man, Christ forgave sins as an instrument of divinity, and that does not require infinite power.” Danaeus, Contra Chem., p. 371: “Christ’s blood itself does not forgive us our sins.”

(8) The power to raise the dead. The Coll. Momp., p. 277: “The raising of the dead is the work of the divinity alone, and that cannot be attributed to the humanity.”

§ 245. Finally, the worship of religious adoration is taken away from Christ the man by: [a] The Papists. Tanner, In Thom., 2, disp. 4, § 27:

On the basis of the faith it is evident that, because Christ the man is at the same time God, He must be worshiped with the same worship by which God is worshiped, with the most perfect latria. The actual difficulty is about Christ as man, the humanity itself. Some people seem to deny—such as Alexander of Hales, Biel, Paludanus, and Cordula in Vasquez, bk. 1, no. 26—that it can be worshiped with the perfect adoration of worship by which we worship the incarnate Word. Others—such as Vasquez, d. 4, ch. 4, citing Bonaventure, the Waldensians, Catharinus, Sanctesius, Clichtoveus—think that this alone is worshiped appropriately. Indeed, it is certain that Christ as man, if the word “as”¹⁷ is taken not reduplicatively but as specifying—and even the humanity of Christ—is rightly worshiped and adored at the same time along with the Word with the same adoration. There are some who hold this opinion with reference to the faith, but in a different way: [The humanity of Christ is worshiped] because the Word is the object of worship or adoration of Himself, containing with Himself intrinsically the absolute and primary reason for worshiping, but the humanity is merely the material object of adoration and indeed only secondary and respective, so to speak; that is, it is worshiped because of an excellence not proper to itself but of another, so to speak.

 

(These statements could seem sound and orthodox, but one should note that they claim that the humanity is the object of adoration only by accident, for they say, “The flesh is worshiped along with the Word in the same way as the purple robe is honored accidentally when the king is honored.”) For this reason Tanner adds, § 28:

Therefore Durandus also said, Sent., 3, dist. 9: “Christ of Himself is adored with latria, His humanity by accident.” This manner of speaking, though rare and to be avoided, should not be reprehended by anyone. Suarez, vol. 1, Disput. 53, sect. 2: “This signifies that the humanity has been united with the Word only by accident,” wanting, rather, that it should be said that it is worshiped of itself, not primarily, but secondarily. Nevertheless some people, namely Vasquez (bk. 1, v. 76), defend it as acceptable. Others—such as Thomas, Bonaventure, Richard (3, dist. 9)—have said in a safer and better way that it is worshiped subsequently [ ex consequenti]; and others say not badly that it is worshiped through something else [ per aliud]. We have an example in a body that is simultaneously respected correctly along with a person, though the excellence because of which it is respected may be in the soul and not in the body.

 

(This example comes closer to reality than the other one that they use commonly about the king’s purple robe being honored accidentally when the king is honored. Meanwhile, we should note that the union of body and soul is essential and separable, because the soul is separated from the body in death; but the union of the Word and His body is personal and inseparable and even closer. Thus this example does not correspond in all respects.) Tanner goes on, [§] 29:

Meanwhile, we must also confess in general that Christ, precisely as man, and even His humanity considered according to itself alone, nonetheless can be worshiped correctly (for in many places it is neither fitting nor expedient that He be worshiped in this way) with a lesser worship that they commonly call hyperdulia, in which the reason for the worship is His created dignity and excellence, namely, either the grace of the union—in which case some also call this worship a latria that is imperfect and “in a certain respect,” which probably proceeds from the actual virtue of religion—or habitual grace and created sanctity inhering in His soul, in which case it is also properly called hyperdulia, and, according to what is truer, it does not differ in quality [habitu] from the dulia given to the other saints.

 

In § 30: “The reason for this opinion is that Christ, even viewed as such, has an exceptional and notable excellence and is even worthy of a [kind of] worship, but not that perfect latria as that which can be given to nothing unless the proper and immediate reason for worshiping, the uncreated excellence, be there, which is not here.”

As Christ’s humanity after the union does not subsist apart and separately but in the Word by whom it was assumed, so also it cannot and should not be worshiped apart and separately either with religious latria or with hyperdulia. For this reason the Council of Ephesus (anathema 8) and the Fifth Council (collat. 8, canon 9) agree¹⁸ that it is the Nestorian heresy to “worship together” and “glorify together” the Word with the flesh, because from this the dissolution of the person follows.

Tanner objects: “These definitions of the councils have been set forth only against the Nestorians but not against those who, when they acknowledge one worship of Christ on the part of the person as a complete and total terminus, merely double the worship of Christ according to the double manner of worshiping, either in order to two incomplete ends or to one complete and the other incomplete.”

However, these words contain a clear begging of the question, for the question here is whether we are permitted to double the worship of Christ in any way or respect at all. The councils and fathers deny this, because from the double worship is inferred a doubling of the person. For this reason Tanner himself admits that “it is neither fitting nor expedient for the humanity of Christ, considered according to itself, to be so worshiped everywhere,” obviously because he sees that this very idea is connected to the very present peril of the Nestorian sundering of the union.

§ 246. [b] The Calvinists. See Danaeus (Contra Chem., p. 417), Beza (Opera, vol. 2, Apol. 3. ad Selnecc., p. 462), Herb. Incis. 86. Spin. p. 171, Pelargus (Comp. correct., p. 372). See their words, cited in our aforementioned disputation, § 38. Paraeus, Meth. controv. Ubiq., p. 30: “We adore Christ with one adoration, not in respect and grade but in number.” Iren., p. 144: “As with faith, so also with adoration do we discern the natures in Christ according to the Scriptures.” Matthias Martinius, Not. ad method., p. 445: “He who will thus worship Christ’s flesh as he does the deity in the union makes it deity, from which blasphemy Christ’s flesh itself shrinks as far as possible.” Here, note¹⁹ against the specious pretexts of some Calvinists, that when the real communication of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresent dominion is taken away from Christ’s flesh, the worship of religious adoration cannot be given to Christ the man, because that is its foundation.

§ 247. The general arguments of our adversaries are taken: (I) From a clear denial of the communication. “God bears express witness that He will not give His glory to another (Isa. 42:8; 48:11). Therefore divine and infinite gifts have not been given to Christ according to His human nature.” We respond. He is not giving His glory to another who exists outside Himself and His divine nature. (See the full explanation of this response in our De glor. Dei, disp. 9, § 1.)

§ 248. (II) From the multiplication of the divine properties. “If divine omnipotence, omniscience, the power to give life, etc., are said to have been communicated to Christ’s human nature, then two omnipotences, two omnisciences, two powers to give life have been established.” Bellarmine, De Christo, bk. 3, ch. 10: “From the communication of properties it follows that there are in the world two omnipotent, immense, and infinite things, namely, the deity and humanity of Christ.” We respond. A multiplication can be inferred not from a personal communication of this sort but from a physical transfusion and subjective inhesion. (See our aforementioned disputation, § 2.)

§ 249. (III) From a subversion of the foundations of deity. “Whoever claims that infinite divine gifts have been communicated really to Christ’s assumed flesh subverts the foundations with which Christ’s deity is proved against the Photinians and Arians.” We respond through an inversion. The doctrine of the real communication of properties rather presupposes the true and eternal divinity of Christ and solidly refutes the chief argument of the Arians against Christ’s deity (as is shown by our De fund. consol., disp. 2, § 139, and the aforementioned disputation, § 13).

§ 250. (IV) From the destruction of His true humanity. “Christ’s true humanity is shattered through the hypothesis of the communication of the divine properties to His flesh.” We respond. It is one thing to speak of the natural [ physica] and essential transfusion of the divine properties into the human nature and the abolition of the properties essential to the human nature; it is another thing to speak of the personal communication of the divine properties. We reject the former and embrace the latter. (See our De fund. consol., disp. 4, §§ 34ff., and De gloria Dei, disput. 9, § 19.)

§ 251. (V) From the introduction of immensity. “If Christ’s humanity is really omnipotent, omnipresent, etc., it will also be infinite and immense.” We respond. As the human nature with the finite quality of its essence preserved was able to be elevated into the hypostasis of the Word and be made a partaker of the infinite hypostasis, so through the personal union and the exaltation to the right hand of God, with the same finite quality of its essence being preserved, it was able to become a partaker of the divine properties. (See the aforementioned disp. 9, § 17.)

§ 252. (VI) From the undermining of the personal union. “If we attribute the attributes of divinity to the flesh essentially, we introduce Eutychianism; if accidentally, Nestorianism; and both of these undermine the personal union.” We respond. We say that they are communicated to the assumed flesh neither essentially nor accidentally. See our aforementioned disputation 9, § 18, and De glor. Dei, disp. 2, § 12, where we showed from Bellarmine himself that there is necessarily a third [possibility], something that can be proved from the article of the Trinity. “Begetting” is predicated about the Father, “being born” about the Son, “proceeding” about the Holy Spirit, and these are predicated neither essentially nor accidentally. Not the former, because that would be common to all the persons; not the latter, because accidents do not belong to God. Therefore they are predicated personally.

§ 253. (VII) From the condition of the finite. “The finite is not capable of the infinite. The flesh is finite; the divine properties, infinite. Therefore the assumed flesh cannot be capable of them.” We respond. Capability is of three kinds: (1) Of union, by which one thing is united with another in whatever way and is conjoined or can be conjoined to it. (2) Of knowing, by which a cognitive power knows something and, by knowing it, receives it. This is either adequate, by which everything that pertains to a thing is comprehended by understanding it adequately, or inadequate (or imperfect), by which something is known in some way. (3) Of physical comprehension, or a quantitative capacity, by which an amount is comprehended by an amount, such as a jug by wine.

The finite is not capable of the infinite as it is such in actuality by the capability of physical comprehension (or by quantitative capacity), nor [is it capable of the infinite] by the capacity of adequate knowing. Meanwhile, the finite is capable of the infinite by the capacity of inadequate knowing, because the finite human and angelic intellect knows the infinite God; and by the capacity of union: (a) Because the infinite God is present to all finite creatures through power, to the faithful through grace, and this presence cannot take place without a union and participation. (b) Because the finite, assumed flesh has become a partaker of the infinite hypostasis of the Word through the personal union, which mystery Irenaeus describes in these words (bk. 3, ch. 18, p. 203): “The Son of God became the Son of Man, etc., while the man was carrying and containing and embracing the Son of God.” Book 4, ch. 75, p. 310: “The Word of God became an infant with the man and thus is capable of effect, just as the man was able to contain Him.” (c) Because the whole fullness of the Godhead (which certainly is not something finite but infinite) is said to dwell in Christ bodily, or in Christ’s finite body, and this indwelling includes a capacity that is proper to “union.” (See our treatise On the Person of Christ [1610 Loci Theologici, locus 7], § 128.)

§ 254. (VIII) From a denial of the communication of properties. “Things proper cannot be communicated. But the divine properties are supremely proper to the Word. Therefore.” Bellarmine, De Christ., bk. 3, ch. 50: “If they are communicated, then they are no longer properties but commonalities.” We respond. If the communication of properties is denied absolutely and simply, the union itself must also be denied. We draw this conclusion: If the communication of the hypostasis is denied, the personal union must be denied, because the form of the union consists in the communication of the hypostasis, as we showed above. But now, if all communication of properties is denied simply and absolutely, the communication of the hypostasis must be denied. The reason is that the hypostasis of the Word is supremely proper to the Son of God and indeed is so proper that nothing can be said to be more proper to Him, because by it there is a distinction between the Father and the Son in the utterly simple unity of the divine essence. Therefore if all communication of properties is denied absolutely and simply, the personal union must be denied. In fact, examples of the soul-endowed body and the fiery iron bear witness that there is a communication of properties, because a body partakes of life, sense, and movement from its soul, and the fiery iron partakes of the power to glow and burn from the fire. (See Scaliger, Exerc. 12, sect. 3.) About this communication by coupling [] Aristotle speaks in this way: “For it sometimes happens that the subject is not hot, but when coupled it is hot” (De part. animal., 2, ch. 2). For this [communication] described by the Philosopher, three things are said to be required: First, that the subject of the property (to which [the property] adheres as to the primary recipient []) be united in some manner of union with another to which it is communicated. Second, that one of the things united be born to act, while the other be born to suffer or receive. Third, that this communication happen by coupling. All of these can be applied by analogy to the personal communication. Properties are considered either inherently and primarily (proper according to being inherent)—and thus they are in only one subject—or by coupling and secondarily (according to common naming and use)—and thus they are communicated to the other. (See Havenreuterus, Theorem.; Regius, Prob. log. de accid; D. Cramer, Org. de praedic.; Dr. Schroeder, De comm. propr.; and Dr. Mentzer, Contra Martin., pp. 290, 366, 552.)

§ 255. (IX) From a denial that the divine properties are inherent. “Making statements about something requires that what is stated be within it. But the divine properties are not subjectively in Christ’s flesh. Therefore.” We respond. The expression “be within” in that philosophical axiom is not to be taken strictly and specifically as a subjective inherence (for otherwise it could not protect its own truthfulness), but broadly and generally as any attribution. Now if we wanted to take “be within” strictly for subjective inherence alone, we would become tangled in many difficulties. Action is said about the one who acts; meanwhile, passing action is not subjectively in the one who acts. With regard to a thing, it is said to be true or good. Omnipotence and omnisapience are stated about God, but they are not in Him subjectively. Creation is predicated about God, but it does not inhere in Him subjectively.

In Phys., bk. 4, ch. 3, the Philosopher lists eight modes in which something can “be within” something. (1) By which a part is in a whole. (2) By which the whole is in its parts. (3) A species in a genus. (4) A genus in species. (5) An accident in a subject. (6) Originated things in their origins. (7) Subordinates in their end. (8) A located thing in a place. The interpreters add: (9) By which a form is in its material, and (10) A thing in time. But none of these modes is understood in that rule when many things are said about other things and yet they are within those other things by none of these modes. Therefore we must understand the most general mode of “being within” as that which denotes nothing else than the truth of the reality, namely, when the intellect places them together, as the reality itself requires. “Making statements about something requires that what is stated be within it” [ Dici de aliquo requirit inesse], that is, the truth of the predication has its foundation in the reality itself, and something cannot be truly attributed to someone in a declaration unless the thing expressed in the predicate truly befits the subject. Therefore the mind ought to follow the union of things when putting things together.

Once one has observed these points correctly, it readily appears that the minor premise in the argument must be limited. The divine properties are not within the flesh through being subjectively inherent; meanwhile, however, they are within it, that is, they truly belong to it, through personal communication, for we must distinguish between the subject of the predication and that of the inherence. The subject of the inherence is also the subject of the predication, but vice versa the subject of the predication is not the subject of the inherence.

§ 256. (X) From a sufficient enumeration. “If the divine properties had been communicated to the flesh, either all or some would have been communicated. It is not all, because the human nature is not infinite, eternal, and immense. It is not some, because the divine attributes are in reality the same thing [] and in reality cannot be separated from one another. Therefore none have been communicated.” Sadeel, Oper. theolog., f. 154b: “If the properties are communicated in reality, then they all are communicated, because the properties of the divinity are in reality indivisible and inseparable.” Grabius, Refut. libr. D. Hunn. de pers. Christ., p. 115, in the notes to q. 88: “The divine essence as the fullness or properties of the deity cannot be separated from God’s essence. Therefore the best logical conclusion is that if Christ’s humanity is really omnipotent, it is eternal; or if it is not eternal, then it really is also not omnipotent.” The Liber Badensis, p. 110, repeats the same thing.

We respond. (1) The conclusion of this argument conflicts with the clear statements of Scripture that speak about gifts given in time. Therefore it is not to be heard in the Church. In fact, the conclusion actually is heretical, namely Samosatene, for Paul of Samosata taught that the two natures were completely incommunicable. Therefore it ought not be heard.

(2) The structure of this argument rests on this foundation alone: that, of those things that are really one, if one is communicated, the other necessarily must be communicated. But this proposition suffers much opposition in the divine mysteries. Hypostasis and essence in God the Father are really one, yet the Father through His eternal begetting communicated to the Son His essence, not His hypostasis. The hypostasis, essence, and attributes of the Word—namely, eternity and infinity—are really one, yet when the Word communicated His infinite and eternal hypostasis to the assumed flesh, He did not thereby make the flesh infinite and eternal. Hypostasis and personal property in the Word are really one, yet even though the hypostasis of the Word was communicated to the flesh, the flesh cannot and ought not be said to have been begotten from eternity of the Father, which is the personal property of the Word. (Cf. the oration placed at the end of our treatise On the Person of Christ, vol. 1, Loci [1610 Loci Theologici, locus 7].)

(3) Even in nature examples occur that can diminish the universality of this declaration. The soul is something whole in all places [] and undivided and does not in reality differ from its powers. Meanwhile, however, it communicates to its body the power to sense and to move, but not its spirituality, immortality, etc. Fire communicates to iron the power to burn and give light, but not its lightness in weight.

(4) Therefore we distinguish between immediate and mediate communication. The whole fullness of the Godhead dwells in the assumed flesh (Col. 2:9), and this indwelling cannot exist without communication. But now, the whole fullness of the Godhead embraces in its circle all the divine properties. Consequently, just as the whole fullness of the Godhead of the Word is communicated to the flesh, so also all the properties of the Word must be said to have been communicated to the same, if not immediately, then mediately. Thus the infinity, eternity, and immensity of the Word were not communicated immediately to the flesh, because the flesh has not become infinite, immense, and eternal through the indwelling of the whole fullness of the Word and through the personal union of the infinite and immense Word. Otherwise God would be doing things that are in conflict with the truth of His nature, because He would be communicating something to something that did not yet exist, since Christ’s human nature did not exist from eternity but began in time, namely, at the first moment of its conception. Also, the verity of the human nature would be overturned, because infinity, immensity, eternity, and spirituality are opposed contradictorily to the finity and corporeity (so to speak) of the human nature. Meanwhile, however, these attributes also have been communicated mediately to the assumed flesh, because the hypostasis of the Word that was communicated to the flesh is infinite and eternal, etc.

(5) “Immediate communication produces immediate predication, mediate communication produces mediate predication,” but not immediate.²⁰ That is, because eternity, infinity, and immensity are communicated to the flesh not immediately but mediately, therefore I cannot predicate the same things about Christ’s flesh immediately so as to say, “Christ’s flesh is eternal, immense, and infinite,” but only mediately, so as to say, “Christ’s flesh has been given an infinite hypostasis; Christ’s human nature has become a partaker of an eternal and immense omnipotence.”

(6) The basis for this distinction consists in the distinction of the divine attributes, which Athanasius teaches in his Sermon de sanctiss. Deipara and which Zanchi, Sohnius, and other Calvinists embrace, a distinction among the properties of the first and second class or among the inactive [] and active [] attributes of God. Attributes of the first class are those attributes in the divine essence and nature that are and are considered as not exerting themselves outwardly through their workings. Attributes of the second class are those of which the divine nature consists, as substantial and operational acts, and which exert themselves in workings toward creatures. You see, though the attributes considered in themselves within the Godhead are nothing other than the utterly simple essence of God (in which regard they are distinguished neither from the essence of God nor from one another), nevertheless if they be considered outwardly and with regard to their working [], they are distinguished from one another, for some works are attributed to divine omnipotence, others to justice, still others to mercy.

(7) Therefore whatever properties of the divine nature have been communicated to the flesh in such a way that it possesses them not only through the personal union in the hypostasis of the Word, but the Word also exerts them in the flesh through His working, those properties have also been communicated in such a way that they are immediately predicated about the assumed flesh. For example, the omnipotence of the Word has been communicated to the assumed flesh in such a way that the assumed nature possesses it not only in the person of the Word, but the Word also exerts works of omnipotence through the flesh in His omnipresent dominion in heaven and earth, in the working of miracles, in the raising of the dead, etc. Therefore omnipotence is also immediately predicated about the assumed nature so that I can say, “Christ according to the human nature is omnipotent.” But whatever properties have been communicated in such a way that the flesh possesses them in the person of the Word, but He does not exert them through working, those are not predicated immediately about the assumed nature. For example, the infinity of the Word does not exert itself through the assumed flesh; therefore I cannot immediately predicate infinity about the assumed flesh. The reason why the assumed flesh has all the properties of the divine nature communicated to itself in the person of the Word, and yet not each and every one of them is predicated about the assumed flesh immediately, is not that considered inwardly they are really distinguished from one another or are separated from one another, but because considered outwardly they do not all exert themselves in working.

Bellarmine objects, De Christo, bk. 3, ch. 10: “Even if the deity were to do all things through the humanity and if all the attributes were to consist in action, the humanity could still not be called omnipotent, etc., for adjectives of the principal cause do not befit the instrument. Otherwise when someone would write in wise and learned fashion, his pen would be called wise and learned.” We respond. A distinction must be made between a separate and idle [] instrument and a united and cooperative [] instrument. A pen is a separate writing tool, but the flesh is an instrument of the Word personally united to Him.

(8) Scripture leads us to the purpose of the incarnation and teaches that from it we must pass judgment about the communication of the divine properties. The Son of God assumed the human nature so that in and with it He might perform the office of mediation, redemption, and salvation. Therefore He communicated those divine properties to the assumed flesh and used them in His office of mediation, redemption, and salvation. Those properties were omnipotence, omniscience, the power to give life, omnipresent dominion of heaven and earth, the power to execute judgment, the power to cleanse from sins, etc., for all these were required for administering the prophetic, priestly, and royal office. Eternity, infinity, and immensity, however, do not exert themselves in carrying out the works of the office, and we do not see the use of these attributes of themselves and separately in the administration of that office. I say “of themselves and separately” because it still remains true that the power which acts in the works of the office is infinite, immense, and eternal. Thus it is predicated mediately, not immediately, about the flesh.

§ 257. (XI) From the reciprocation of the union. “As the union is reciprocal, so also is the communication that arises from the union. But now, the reciprocal communication of properties is possible only in the concrete, or in the person, but not in the natures. Therefore as the deity cannot be called mortal, so also the human nature cannot be called omnipotent.” We respond. That reciprocation belongs in the first but not in the second genus of communication (about which we are speaking here). For though the union of natures is equal and reciprocal, nevertheless the condition of the united natures is not equal. The Word is the assuming person; the human nature is assumed. The Word communicates His hypostasis to the flesh, but the flesh is assumed and exalted into that hypostasis. The Word’s deity united to the flesh is utterly pure act, is utterly perfect and immutable, is like [“actuality, perfection”]. Therefore through the union nothing could have been added to it in itself, but the human nature was able to be perfected and endowed with divine eminence, for it is like [“potentiality”]. For this reason Scripture nowhere says that the deity of Christ died as it says that Christ’s flesh is life-giving. Damascenus, Orth. fid., bk. 3, ch. 7: “One should know that though we say that the natures penetrate each other, nevertheless we know that the interpenetration comes from the divine nature, for it passes through all things wherever it wishes and permeates all things, but nothing passes through or permeates it.” What is true in the personal interpenetration of natures also has a place in the personal communication of properties.

§ 258. (XII) From how the union is constituted. “As I cannot say because of the union that the human nature is God, so also because of the communication I cannot say that the human nature is omnipotent.” We respond. Those predications, “is God” and “is omnipotent,” are not the same in every detail with respect to the human nature, absolutely and simply speaking. For Christ does not call His human nature “God,” but meanwhile He does call it “life-giving” (John 6:51) and, hence, also omnipotent, because the power to give life and omnipotence are one in God. However, the predication “The human nature is God” is synonymic because God and the deity do not differ in the article on the Trinity. That other predication, that the human nature is omnipotent or that Christ is omnipotent according to the human nature, is a paronymous²¹ predication. Surely, therefore, these predications are not equal and the same as regards the human nature. Whatever is communicated with the other according to the union, that is predicated about it not synonymously but paronymously. For this reason I do not say that Christ’s human nature is God or the deity but that it is united with God, deified, subsisting in the hypostasis of the Word [.], etc., just as I do not say, “This iron glows and burns, therefore it is fire”; rather: “therefore it is fiery.” And I do not say, “This body lives and feels, therefore it is the soul”; rather: “it is soul-endowed.” You see, whatever is predicated about the other paronymously according to the union, the subject of that predication ought to be predicated about the same also not homonymously but paronymously. Indeed, Luther, in his Post. domest. for the festival of the Annunciation, speaks thus: “Our flesh and blood is God.” But there he is taking the predicate not synonymously as “deity” but paronymously as “deified, assumed into God, personally united with God,” in which sense we, too, say after the incarnation: “The Word is flesh” and “The flesh is the Word”—not through conversion, change, or adoption but through hypostatic union.

The devout ancients speak in this way: “Christ’s human nature has been deified,” Athanasius, Contra Arian., orat. 4. “Anointed with deity,” Nazianzen, Orat. 5 in pasch. “Divine humanity,” Augustine, De ovib. “Christ’s deified body,” Athanasius, Letter to Epictetus. “The body filled with deity,” Athanasius (ibid.) and Epiphanius (Contra Dimerit., bk. 3, vol. 2). “The divine [] body,” Epiphanius, De adv. Christi, bk. 1, vol 1. “The divine body,” Cyril (Ad success., Letter 1) and Theodoret (Dial. 2). “The assumed, deified temple,” Cyril, bk. 8 on John 1. The flesh is said to be “deified,” Nazianzen (in Theoph.), Damascenus (bk. 3, ch. 17), etc. We must take all these as references both to the personal union of the flesh with the Word and to the communication of the divine properties made to the flesh.

§ 259. (XIII) From the denial of the communication of personal properties. “If the personal properties are not communicated, neither then are the essential ones, because they really do not differ in the Word.” We respond. (1) Just as the Father through the eternal begetting of the Son was able to communicate His essence and essential properties, yet in such a way that He remained distinct from Him with regard to His hypostasis, so also the Word was able to communicate His essential properties to the assumed flesh, yet in such a way that He did not communicate His personal property.

(2) To be begotten from eternity of the Father, which is the personal property of the Word, could not have been communicated to the assumed humanity while preserving the finity of its nature and birth according to the flesh in time. But now, the communication of those things did take place that do not destroy or overturn the human nature.

(3) The external works of God are works of His utterly free will and of the economy. Therefore the Word was able to communicate to the assumed nature whatever He wished to whatever extent and in whatever way.

(4) In the communication of the personal properties²² [to Christ’s human nature], we do not have Scripture leading the way as [we do] in the communication of divine omnipotence, omniscience, etc. Therefore as it is most simple, so also it is most safe to follow only the leading and light of the Scriptures.

(5) No finite intellect can comprehend how the hypostasis of the Word has been communicated to the flesh (and the personal union certainly requires this communication), and yet when the hypostasis is communicated, the personal property of the Word is not communicated, which nevertheless in reality does not differ from the hypostasis. From this we draw the firm conclusion that in these mysteries we must hold reason captive under the obedience of faith.

(6) To the assumed flesh, those attributes were communicated that were used in the works of Christ’s office. For that, however, the personal property of the Word was not required, but rather the essential property, namely, omniscience, omnipotence, the power to give life, the power to execute judgment.

Arguments against omnipresence.

§ 260. The specific arguments against omnipresence come: (I) From passages of Scripture. Bellarmine says (De Christo, bk. 3, ch. 11): “Omnipresence conflicts: (1) With those passages of Scripture which testify that, with regard to His humanity, Christ the man was not present somewhere and thus was not present everywhere at all times. ‘When the crowd had seen that Jesus was not there’ (John 6[:24]). ‘I rejoice that I was not there’ (John 11[:15]). ‘He is not here; He is risen’ (Matthew 28[:6]).” We respond. One cannot proceed legitimately from a negation of a natural and local presence to a negation of a personal presence, because it is impermissible to draw an argument from a negation of the species to a negation of the genus, from what is negated in a certain respect to an absolute negation. For as we must not deny the subsistence of Christ’s humanity in the infinite hypostasis of the Word and its placement at the right hand of God due to an essential property of the human nature, namely finity, so also personal presence is not taken away on the basis of natural and local presence. This is because Christ’s humanity, according as it is in the Word and at the right hand of God, is not in a place, because neither the Word nor the right hand of God is local.

Therefore we proceed in this way: If there are plural modes of presence, then where one mode or grade of presence is denied, all the rest are not immediately denied. Thus four modes or grades of divine presence are established: the presence of power, of grace, of glory, and of hypostasis, to which some people add the presence of consubstantiality [] by which the Son is in the Father, and typical, symbolic, and sacramental presence, which can be referred to gracious presence. Therefore one may not proceed from a negation of gracious presence to an absolute negation of all presence. We read in 1 Kings 19:11[–12]: “God was not in the wind, He was not in the earthquake, He was not in the fire.” Yet this does not deny the presence of God absolutely, namely, that presence which is called the presence of power. In the same way, because there are two modes of presence in Christ—personal and majestic, flowing forth from the personal union and His sitting at the right hand of God, and natural, flowing forth from the essential properties of the human nature—therefore it is impermissible to proceed from a negation of one²³ mode of presence to an absolute denial of omnipresence. In Luke 24:44 Christ says to the disciples: “I spoke these things to you when I was with you.” Yet He was very present to them. How, then, does He say, “When I was with you,” except according to another mode of presence that He previously had among them? There is one mode of presence of Christ’s flesh when it is considered in itself and naturally [ physice], another when it is considered as the glorified body, another when it is considered in the union, another when it is considered in its sitting at the right hand of God. Thus when it is denied that the human nature is present everywhere locally and naturally, we must not immediately infer from this that its presence is being denied absolutely, for the circumstances themselves supply a further specification about natural and local presence. The angel says, “Why are you looking for the living among the dead? He is risen; He is not here” [Luke 24:5–6]. Christ says: “The poor you always have with you. You can do good to them whenever you wish. Me you will not always have” [John 12:8], namely, in that mode that you will be able to alleviate My poverty and do good to Me in My own person. The things that Bellarmine brings out as opposition presuppose that Christ’s presence is denied absolutely in the passages cited.

§ 261. (2) From “those passages that testify that God is everywhere in order to discern Him in this way from all creatures. ‘I fill heaven and earth’ (Jeremiah 23[:24]). ‘Where shall I go from Your Spirit?’ (Psalm 139[:7]). ‘The Spirit of the Lord filled the whole earth’ (Wisdom 1[:7]), from which the fathers prove that the Holy Spirit is true God.” We respond. God is omnipresent essentially; Christ’s assumed nature is omnipresent personally. The argument for affirming the divinity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is reported as: “Whoever is omnipotent and omnipresent is God. The Son is omnipotent and omnipresent. Therefore He is God.” But the major proposition must be limited in this way: “Whoever is omnipotent and omnipresent of himself and essentially.” In this regard, omnipotence and omnipresence cannot be predicated about Christ’s human nature, for that is not omnipotent and omnipresent through essence but through the grace of the union, according as it subsists nonlocally in the Word and has been exalted to the infinite right hand of God.

Bellarmine objects: “Nevertheless the argument that is produced in favor of the deity of the Holy Spirit from omnipresence is undermined. For the Arians will say that the Holy Spirit is indeed everywhere, but by accident, and therefore He is not true God but a creature.” We respond. The entire argument goes like this: “Whatever is omnipresent either is God by nature or is personally united with the Word. But now, the Holy Spirit is omnipresent; therefore He is either God by nature or is personally united with the Word. The latter cannot be said; therefore the first remains.” Or the argument runs as follows: “Whatever is essentially omnipresent is true God by nature. The Holy Spirit is essentially omnipresent. Therefore.”

§ 262. (3) From “those statements by which the fathers prove that there are two natures in Christ. The chief passage is John 3[:13]: ‘No one has ascended into heaven.’ “ We respond. Nothing at all departs from this proof due to the hypothesis of the omnipresence of Christ the man. You see, being omnipresent remains an essential property of the deity, just as being in a place and going from place to place remain a property of the humanity. Therefore as it is correct to prove the deity of Christ from that essential property of deity, so also it is correct to prove Christ’s true humanity from a property of humanity.

Bellarmine adds: “One cannot claim that Christ’s body is present in the same place visibly and invisibly at the same time without in this way claiming that it is in the same place twice.” But this is frivolous, because a different mode does not make the thing itself different. To the extent that Christ’s flesh was present to creatures locally and visibly in one place, to that extent the Word was not present except personally and invisibly, because the Word is neither local nor visible.

§ 263. (II) From articles of faith.

 

Omnipresence conflicts: (1) With the conception of Christ, for faith holds that Christ’s flesh was in the womb of Mary alone. Yet according to the Ubiquists,²⁴ that flesh was in the wombs of all women shortly after the conception. (2) With Christ’s birth. Faith teaches that Christ’s body came forth from the womb into the light after nine months and thus was truly born. Yet according to the Ubiquists, before the ninth month and, in fact, on the first day of its conception, it was outside the womb and after the tenth month was still in the womb. In fact, it never came forth from it. (3) With Christ’s death. Faith requires that in Christ’s death His body and soul were separated, the body indeed lay in the tomb, and His soul descended into hell. Yet according to the Ubiquists, the soul was also in the tomb with the body and the flesh was with the soul in hell. (4) With His burial and descent into hell. (5) With the resurrection. (6) With His ascension into heaven. (7) With His return to judgment.

 

We respond. Here we are speaking narrowly about Christ the man’s omnipresent lordship in heaven and earth, which we deduce from His placement at the right hand of God. Therefore arguments from His conception, birth, death, etc., are outside the question. In those articles of faith we very simply defend and hold the literal meaning. We do not say that Christ’s flesh was conceived and gestated in the womb of other women but solely in the womb of the Virgin Mary. We do not change His ascension into a disappearance or vanishing. Rather, we follow exactly the literal sense of the words. Meanwhile, because articles of faith do not militate against each other, therefore we must not oppose them to the nonlocal mode of presence that the flesh receives from its subsistence in the Word nor to the majestic dominion that was conferred on the human nature from its sitting at the right hand of God. The ultimate terminus of the ascension, you see, is not a circumscribed place in heaven but the very right hand of God, which cannot at all be defined and proved from Scripture as a corporeal and circumscribed place.

§ 264. (III) From the sacrament of the Eucharist. “Omnipresence conflicts with the sacrament of the Eucharist, even though it was invented to establish it. For if Christ’s flesh is everywhere, then we surely do not need the Eucharist, and we go to our temples in vain, we recite the words of the Supper in vain, we prepare for that Supper in vain, because we have Christ’s body in bread, wine, and all other foods.” We respond. The personal and majestic mode of presence is being confused with the sacramental presence. Sacramental presence depends only on Christ’s institution and ordination. Because His sitting at the right hand of God is cited as the foundation for that presence, therefore it happens that the Calvinists blasphemously deny that Christ could provide what He promised. Therefore we prove the will of Christ only from the Words of Institution; the ability, from the infinite majesty and power communicated to Christ through the union and His sitting at the right hand of God.

§ 265. (IV) From the testimonies of the fathers. We respond. Those prove that Christ, according to His human nature, is not present in the same way as God, namely essentially, and that omnipresence never becomes an essential property of the human nature. Meanwhile, they do not deny that Christ the man is omnipresent personally and that He administers His royal office according to both natures.

To these arguments of Bellarmine, some of the Calvinists add: (1) Various absurdities. “The flesh of Christ cannot be present in many places at the same time unless it be multiplied, expanded,²⁵ or extended.” We respond. The hypostatic and majestic presence that we attribute to Christ the man is divine, not human, having come from the essential principles of the human nature. But now, with regard to divine omnipresence, one cannot say or think that God is present through a multiplication or expansion or extension of His essence, which Athanasius treats in detail in his Orat. contra gregales Sabelii, past the middle. (2) The passages of Scripture that speak about Christ’s departure to the Father. We respond. Just as Christ was sent by the Father and came into the world not by a change of place but by the assumption of the flesh and visible appearance in it, so also He departed to the Father and left the world not by a change of place but by putting aside the form of a servant and by the use of the complete majesty communicated to Him.

§ 266. They take a specific argument against the worship of adoration “from the apostle’s words in Gal. 4:8: ‘When you did not know God, you served those who are not gods by nature.’ But now, Christ’s human nature is not God by nature. Therefore.” We respond. (1) The apostolic proposition is speaking about the personal object of worship (so to speak), not the substantial [reali] object, that is, the meaning of the statement is that we must worship no person who is not by nature God. However, we cannot infer from this that Christ’s human nature is not a true, substantial [ reale] object of worship. You see, though it is not a person distinct from the Word, yet it is a part, so to speak, of that person that is God by nature. We do not worship it according as it is a human nature but according as it personally subsists in the Word, so that in this way we do not direct our worship to another person than the one who is God by nature. (2) The apostle is speaking about the idols of the heathen that were consecrated through deification [] and were being set up as objects of religious worship. Therefore this passage cannot be opposed to the religious worship of Christ the man. In fact, on the contrary, the apostle is making a direct opposition between those idols of the heathen and between Christ, to whom the Galatians had been converted from idols. (See Gal. 3:26–27; 4:6–8. Cf. Eph. 2:12–13.) (3) If that statement were extended more broadly and taken generally, one would necessarily (as we have said) have to distinguish between the personal and the substantial [ reale] objects of worship, whence these two theorems result: The first is concretive, that is, it speaks about the person in the concrete. Whoever is to be worshiped, he must be God by nature, for a person who is not God by nature cannot be worshiped. Rather, the person who is divine by His essence is the immediate object of worship. The second is abstractive, that is, it speaks about the nature in the abstract. Whatever is worshiped is either God by nature or is personally united with Him who is God by nature. For there is a twofold principle of worship: the divine nature and the hypostatic union with the divine nature, as the arguments of our position confirm. (4) Accordingly, what the apostle brings out in the concrete, that we must worship no one who is not God by nature, we must not change into the abstract, that we must worship nothing that is not God by nature.

The mode of communication is personal.

§ 267. Specific Thesis IV: The mode of communication by which truly divine and infinite gifts have been communicated to Christ according to His human nature is and is called personal.

As is the union, so is the communication that comes from that union. But now: (1) The union is not just verbal, therefore neither is the communication. But if that communication about which we are speaking here were merely verbal and only a manner of speaking, it would have brought no real improvement to the assumed human nature. The apostle asserts the contrary in Heb. 1:4, and nothing in the actual reality—that is, in Christ’s person—would correspond to this predication, and therefore that predication would be unable to defend the truth. For words are symbols of things, and as a thing is in being, so also is it in predication. Take away the verity of the thing and you have also taken away the verity of the predication.

(2) The union is not essential; therefore neither is the communication. What is proper to one nature in Christ never becomes proper to the other nature but is a distinctive property [] and remains unmoved []. The divine properties are not derived and transfused into the assumed flesh as into another subject through falling down [] nor through flowing out []. Rather, they remain the properties of the Word, for which reason the communication also cannot be called essential. In the Godhead, when the Father communicates the divine essence and all the essential properties of the divinity to the Son through His eternal begetting, this is essential communication on which the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son depends. However, when the Word communicates His own attributes to the assumed nature, that is not an essential communication, because the essence and nature of the Word and of the assumed humanity are not one.

(3) The union is not accidental; therefore neither is the communication. If those divine properties belong to the human nature by accident, then they are within and inhere in the human nature subjectively. However, this cannot be said, because the divine properties are not accidental and cannot inhere in the other subjectively.

(4) The union is not natural; therefore neither is the communication. If the communication were natural, those divine attributes would befit the assumed nature naturally. May this never be!

(5) The union is personal; therefore so is the communication. For as the assumed nature has been elevated into the hypostasis of the Word through the personal union, so also has it been elevated into the communication of properties [] in that very elevation. The divine nature of the Son retains the divine properties within the intimate embrace of its hypostasis, for by assuming the human nature into its hypostasis, it also assumes the same into the communication of the properties of its hypostasis. Thus the human nature has divine majesty not from itself originally but from the Word, not through itself essentially, nor in itself subjectively, but in the Word truly and really, yet hypostatically and personally.

The devout ancients speak about this as follows: Athanasius, Ad Epictet.: “The communication took place from the communion and union of the Word to the humanity.” Gregory of Nyssa: “… through the union.” Cyril, De rect. fid.: “Christ’s flesh gives life not according to its own nature but according to its union with the living and life-giving Word, that is, not according to itself from the natural principles of its own essence” but according to something else, because of its intimate and pure union with the Word. They also explain this mode of communication with comparisons: of a soul-endowed body (Justin, Athanasius, Cyril, Augustine), of fiery iron (Basil, Homily in s. nativ.; Augustine, De incarnat. Verbi; Origen, De princ., 2, ch. 6; Athanasius; Cyril; Damascenus, Orth. fid., 3, chs. 15 and 17), and of firstborn light (Justin, De exp. fid.; Athanasius, De Trinit., dial. 5; Oecumenius, Colossians 2). For as the firstborn light communicates itself entirely to the body of the sun, as the fire introduces and communicates its whole self to the fiery iron, and as the soul through formation and animation communicates its own properties and workings to the body, so also the divine nature of the Word communicates all its glory and power to the flesh without conversion, confusion, abolition, and equating. The light does not become the body of the sun, the fire does not become the iron, the soul does not become the body, but the body of the sun becomes luminous, the iron becomes fiery, the body becomes soul-endowed.

Antithesis.

§ 268. The Jesuits and Calvinists: (I) Claim that “the communication is merely verbal,” as we showed earlier (ch. 10, “On the Communication of Properties in General” [§§ 174–85]). In his Not. ad lib. 3 Bellarm. de Christo, ch. 9, Tilenus imitated the words of Bellarmine and asserts that “this communication is both verbal and real in diverse respects.” He says:

It is verbal not because it is made up or gives nothing except words, but because it belongs to the correct explanation of words or phrases. When the question inquires about the two natures of Christ in contrast to each other, the properties of the one nature should not be considered to be communicated with the other. It is called “real” when the discussion involves the natures not in contrast but as put together in the person, that is, when the properties of both natures are communicated with the person.

 

But with his words he is only selling smoke. You see, if you ask whether Christ’s assumed nature is really and truly omnipotent, he answers: “It is omnipotent in the person, that is, it is the nature of that person who is omnipotent, but it is not a partaker of omnipotence.” Accordingly, as Bellarmine trifles (De Christo, bk. 3, ch. 15): “The humanity is given the sitting at the right hand of God not in itself but in the subject [ suppositum]. For it did not happen that the humanity in itself sits at the right hand of God but that it is the humanity of that person who sits at the right hand of God.” He explains this with this comparison: “When the king puts on his purple robe and sits on his throne, he exalts the purple robe to that throne not in such a way that the purple robe is said to sit or rule but that it is said to be the clothing of the one who sits and rules, and it is said that the purple-clad king sits and rules.” Chapter 16: “The glory of God the Father has been given to Christ’s humanity not in itself but in the subject.”

Against this sophism we set forth the following distinction: It is ambiguous to say that “sitting at the right hand of God was given to Christ’s humanity not in itself but in the subject [ suppositum].” For it is either understood in this way: that it was given not separately nor according to its essential properties but is considered according as it exists in the person of the Word; or it is understood in this way: that this sitting does not have anything to do with the humanity but pertains only to the hypostasis or the subject. We concede the assertion in the first sense; we deny it in the latter. You see, through the union the hypostasis of the Word is communicated truly and really to the assumed flesh, and the assumed flesh afterward was exalted to the right hand of God. Therefore divine gifts, majesty, and glory were really and truly given to this same flesh. Therefore this opposition is very faulty: “Sitting at the right hand of God and divine glory have been given to the humanity according as it subsists in the hypostasis of the Word; therefore it was not given to the humanity itself.” We must rather infer the contrary: therefore it was given to that humanity which subsists in the hypostasis of the Word. (Cf. our De glor.

Dei, disp. 2, § 14.)

§ 269. (II) Through false accusation they say that through our doctrine about infinite gifts having been communicated to Christ the man we introduce the Eutychian confusion of natures, the equalization of the same, the destruction of the human nature; that we establish a dual omnipotence, a dual omniscience, and even a dual divinity; etc. But these and similar clouds of false charges are immediately dissolved by the sun of truth—that is, the clear and lucid explanation of our position. Bucanus, Loci, p. 15, describes the heresy of Eutyches in this way: he taught that “after the union, Christ’s human nature was endowed with the properties of the divinity,” of course, that by an appearance he [Bucanus] might be able to make us guilty of Eutychianism because of our doctrine of the communication of the divine properties. However, on the basis of the history of the Church and the writings of the devout ancients, the heresy of Eutyches must be described far differently. [According to] Evagrius, bk. 2, ch. 4, Eutyches claimed that in Christ “something else was made from the two.” Theodoret, Epit. haeret. fabul.: “He also denied the assumption of the flesh, for he did not say that God the Word took on humanity from the Virgin but that He changed unchangeably and became flesh.” Damascenus, Orth. fid., bk. 3, ch. 3: “We say that the union has been produced from two perfect natures—divine and human—not by mixture or confusion or blending or mingling, as is said by the God-rejected Dioscoros and by Eutyches and Severus and their accursed company.” (Cf. our treatise On the Person of Christ [1610 Loci Theologici, locus 7], § 137, and the disputation of D. Rungius, De Eutychianismo.)

The time of the communication is the very moment of the incarnation.

§ 270. [Specific] Thesis V: The time of the communication is the very moment of the incarnation.

We must distinguish between the communication () and the plenary use of the things communicated (). The communication of the divine attributes occurred at the first moment of the incarnation because: (1) The communication is the immediate effect and consequence of the hypostatic union.

(2) No greater majesty and glory can happen to the assumed nature than to be assumed into the unity of the person of the Word and become His own temple in which the whole fullness of the deity dwells.

(3) Scripture itself determines this time. “A shoot will come out from the root of Jesse … upon which the Spirit of the Lord will rest” (Isa. 11:1[-2]), namely, with all His fullness, because the Spirit is given to Him “without measure” (John 3:34). Because of this anointing of the Holy Spirit, He is called “Christ” in the first moment of His incarnation, and “that which is born of” Mary “is called holy” because of the communication of the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:[35]). On account of this, the Word is said to have become flesh, “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). And when Christ “increased in wisdom and age and grace before God and men” (Luke 2:52), He was “filled with wisdom” (v. 40), not only in the same sense as Stephen is said to have been full of faith and power (Acts 6:8) because of the gracious indwelling of the Holy Spirit, but in a far more sublime way because of the personal indwelling of the Word along with the whole fullness of deity (John 1:14; Col. 2:9). In this respect, “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” are said to be “hidden in Him” (Col. 2:3).

(4) The use of the things communicated presupposes or requires communication. But now, before His exaltation, amid His state of emptying, He showed the rays of divine majesty communicated to Him by looking into secret thoughts, by the working of divine miracles, by His transfiguration, by the institution of the Eucharist, etc. For this reason, after He received His Baptism in the Jordan, it says that He came up from the Jordan “full of the Holy Spirit” (Luke 4:1). In fact, in the Baptism, the Holy Spirit not only “came down on Him” (Luke 3:22) but also “remained upon Him” perpetually (John 1:[32]). The full use of the communicated properties did not follow until Christ’s glorious exaltation, because in the days of His flesh, Christ did not always exert [ exseruit] the glorious and divine majesty communicated to Him according to the flesh through the personal union, but He only sent out some rays of it. From this the distinction between the states of emptying and exaltation is born, about which we shall say more below [§§ 293–319].

Antithesis.

§ 271. From this distinction between communication and the full use of the things communicated we can remove many arguments that our adversaries invent against the communication of divine properties to Christ’s flesh, such as: “Christ advanced in age and wisdom; therefore He was not omniscient. Christ went from place to place; therefore He was not omnipresent. Christ died on the cross; therefore His flesh was not life-giving.” We respond. One must distinguish between the states of emptying and of exaltation and also between the personal communication of the divine properties and the full use of them. Christ asserts amid His state of emptying that the Father had given Him all things [Matt. 11:27]. He calls His own flesh life-giving [John 6:54]. He promises to be present in the midst of those who beseech Him [Matt. 18:20]. Yet for our sakes He is said to have become poor, truly died on the cross, and confessed that He did not know the Day of Judgment. The full use of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresent lordship does not agree with the weaknesses that Christ underwent for us and for our salvation and with the death that He endured for our sakes. Rather, the personal communication of these divine properties agrees in the best way with His emptying. For if the fullness of the deity dwelling in the flesh did not hinder Christ from assuming the form of a servant, surely the communication of omnipotence, the power to give life, etc., did not hinder Him.

Questions about the second genus of the communication of properties.

§ 272. (I) The question arises: How does this second genus of communication differ from the first? We respond. It does so especially in four ways: (1) With regard to the subject. In the propositions of the first genus, a concrete word or name of the person is always placed as the subject; however, in this second genus, often an abstract word or name of the human nature is placed, which nevertheless does not indicate the human nature as subsisting separately and apart but according as it subsists in the Word and with Him constitutes one subsisting thing [ hyphistamenon].

(2) With regard to the predicate. In the first genus, divine things are predicated about Christ the man and human things about Christ our God; and, in turn, divine things about Christ our God and human things about Christ the man; and especially the discussion involves the essential properties to be appropriated and asserted to each nature. In this second genus, however, divine glorifications are declared about Christ according to His human nature, and the discussion involves only the high exaltation of the human nature. Therefore what is predicated is always and only a divine property.

(3) With regard to reciprocation. In the first genus, reciprocation takes place, for as divine things are declared about Christ the man, so also, going the other way, human things are declared about Christ our God. However, in this second genus, reciprocation does not take place, for though the flesh is said to be life-giving, the deity is not likewise said to be mortal or dead. The reason for the difference is that the Word assumed the flesh; the flesh did not assume the Word. But now, giving belongs to the one assuming and not to the assumed, and, in turn, advancement belongs to the assumed rather than to the one assuming. Christ’s divine nature is utterly perfect, in need of nothing, subject to no change, because with God there is no variation (James 1:17). But Christ’s human nature is in need, so that it can receive, be perfected, and be exalted.

(4) With regard to the expression “according to the other” []. In the first genus, “according to the other” is distinctive. For example, “the Lord of glory was crucified,” namely, “according to the other,” that is, according to His humanity or according to the flesh. In the second genus it is causal. The flesh is life-giving, omnipotent “according to the other,” that is, not from the property of its own nature but through and because of the personal union.

(5) in the manner of predication. In this second²⁶ genus, a divine property is predicated and considered as it has been communicated to the flesh; but in the first genus, it is predicated and considered as it is a property of the deity. (Cf. what we said earlier at the beginning of this chapter XII [§ 201].)

§ 273. (II) The question arises: is it right for abstractive terms or names of the human nature to be placed as the subject in this genus of communication? The Calvinists are extremely reluctant to tolerate this, but we should note that the word “abstract” is ambiguous. (To philosophers, “abstract” [abstractum] is the quiddity of a thing, the thing in itself or substance, the being itself, the essence [], when a thing is considered in itself, through itself, and in conformity with its own nature, according to its natural properties and according to its proper definition. In this sense we deny that Christ’s human nature is omnipotent in the abstract.) You see, sometimes when an abstract word is used, it means Christ’s human nature according as it is considered of itself and through itself, that is, formally. But at other times when an abstract word is used, it means Christ’s human nature considered not through itself and of itself but according to the grace of the union (namely, according as it subsists in the Word), of which union and because of which union a great addition took place. The flesh of Christ is not concrete when I consider it with the intimate embrace of the other nature and of the communicated hypostasis. But if I compare it with the entire person consisting of the two natures, it is concrete.

From this distinction we can resolve that apparent contradiction that occurs among our people regarding the use of abstract expressions. Hesshusius said that Christ’s human nature was not to be worshiped in the abstract, that is, outside the union and separated from the Word, because Christ’s human nature of and through itself is not such that it can be worshiped. On the other hand, Wigand claimed that Christ’s human nature is to be worshiped in the abstract, that is, that it is worthy of religious reverence, because it subsists in the Word and with Him constitutes one person. The same distinction should be set forth against the sophisms of the apostate Pelargus, who in his antithesis to Apologet. cont. D. Bald., thesis 83, writes as follows: “It is very certain that Luther and Philip and all the more sincere Lutherans meant the person when using the word ‘concrete’ and the nature when using the word ‘abstract.’ Today’s new subdistinctions concerning a divided abstract or a nonconcrete concrete smell like something completely sophistical or utopian.” And in thesis 85 he cites a passage from Selnecker, Exam. ordin., part 1, p. 387, in which he disapproves of “abstractive expressions, [such as] ‘The human nature is omnipotent and everywhere.’ “ He could have added the words of Luther on Isaiah 53: “We must believe in the concrete and keep completely silent about the abstract.” But anyone can see that Selnecker is using the word “abstract” in the first sense, so “abstract” is the same as “what has been torn apart and divided.” You see, in the second sense, placing the name of an abstract as the subject is in agreement with: (1) Scripture, which calls the flesh of Christ “life-giving,” asserts that Christ’s blood cleanses us of our sins, and teaches that Christ’s body was given into death for us. (2) The orthodox fathers, who did not at all shrink from abstractive expressions in this genus of communication, as is apparent from their words cited above. (3) Reason. For if the divine properties really and truly were communicated to Christ’s flesh,²⁷ surely the same attributes can be justly predicated about His flesh.

Some describe concrete and abstract in this way: “It is concrete when one considers either the whole person or the two natures personally united, or one nature not according as it is in itself separately and apart but as it is in the very person of the Son of God and with respect to the personal union. It is abstract when one considers the natures in, through, and of themselves and with their own natural and essential properties outside the mutual embrace of the union.” However, if we wish to pass judgment on the use of “concrete” and “abstract” in accord with these descriptions, we shall have to deny absolutely that abstract words should be used in this genus, because the divine properties cannot be predicated about Christ’s flesh considered in itself and outside of the union; otherwise they would befit it essentially, though they nevertheless befit it only hypostatically. Those things that belong to the human nature of Christ through essence and that it has in common with others (such as, to consist of body and soul, to be finite, to have a part outside of the part, etc.) are said to be predicated about it essentially. They are predicated about it hypostatically not because of its own nature but through and because of the personal union (such as, to subsist in the Word, to partake of divine omnipotence, to be placed at the right hand of God, which can be predicated about no other man).

It should also be noted that mental abstraction is twofold: one is of precision, by which I consider a thing without the other things that are joined to it, but in such a way that I do not assume the contrary; the other is positive, by which I abstract not only the things joined, but at the same time I posit contrary things. When we say that Christ’s flesh is considered abstractively in the first sense, then this should be understood not as a positive abstraction, but as an abstraction of precision alone through which the flesh that always is in the Word and is never abstracted from the Word is considered in its own nature and with its essential properties. If we were to abstract Christ’s flesh from the Word by the positive abstraction of the mind and consider it as subsisting with its own subsistence outside the Word, we would fall into the snare of Nestorius. Gesner, Disp. 11 in L. Conc., D. 11: “ ‘Abstract’ () is one thing; ‘torn away’ () is something else. An abstraction happens in the mind while the thing remains whole; tearing away happens in reality and in mental actuality [] by which the thing is destroyed and divided into parts. Abstract and distinguishing are surely something different.”

§ 274. (III) The question arises: Can the communication of the divine properties to the flesh be described with the word “effusion” [“pouring out”]?” Brenz, De majestate Christi, uses it quite often, and because of that word the Calvinists charge him with Eutychianism. However, one should note that he does not take it to mean a physical transfusion by which properties go from one subject into another, as water is poured from one jar into another, for he denies such a pouring out several times in clear language. He also did not want to express the mode of communication with this expression. Rather, through a colloquial way of speaking that the Hebrews used, he wanted the expression “pouring out” to mean the real and full communication of majesty and the indwelling not of some part but of the whole fullness of the deity in the assumed flesh. With the word “effusion,” he refers to: (1) The grace of the Giver. From grace, the heavenly Father gave Christ the name that is above every name. This grace is indicated by the word “effusion.” You see, the greater the grace and generosity of the giver, the more bountifully does he disburse his gifts. (2) The supply of gifts. What is generously and richly given is said in the Scriptures to be “poured out” (Isa. 44:3; Ezek. 36:25; Joel 2:28; Zech. 12:10; Acts 2:17; Titus 3:6; etc.). Therefore because the Holy Spirit is given to Christ not according to measure but with all His fullness, it is most right to say that He was poured out on Him. (3) The efficacy of the gift. “From that fullness” of the Spirit poured out on Christ and indwelling in Him, we also receive (John 1:16). “Your name is oil poured out, and we shall run in the fragrance of Your perfumes” (Song 1:3).

§ 275. (IV) The question arises: is it an essential property of every body to be circumscribed in a place? The Calvinists affirm this, and from this principle they attack the omnipresent dominion of Christ the man as greatly as possible. However, it must be noted that “to be circumscribed” refers to: (1) The essence of a body. (2) An external place. The first is called internal circumscription; the later, external. The former is a perpetual and inseparable property of a body and indicates nothing other than the finity of its essence, which is a necessary accident of every being except for God alone, because He is not circumscribed with the proper limits of essence. He is infinite. But now, no body is infinite. In the latter we must distinguish the primary actuality from secondary actuality, or potentiality from actuality in the proper sense. We concede that the primary actuality of circumscription is essential to every body, inseparable and perpetual, for every body can be circumscribed to a place because of the finite nature of its own physical essence. However, we deny that the secondary actuality of circumscription is essential and inseparable to every body, because a stronger agent can hinder it while the primary actuality remains preserved.

We prove this: (1) From the power of God. What can be separated from a body through God’s power while its essence remains preserved is not an essential, perpetual, and inseparable property of the body. Yet to be circumscribed in an external place can, through God’s power, be separated from the body while its essence remains preserved, as we shall prove in the next question. Therefore.

(2) From the clearness of examples. If being circumscribed in an external place were a perpetual and inseparable property of every body, then there would be no body that was not circumscribed in actuality in an external place. But the logical conclusion is false. This is because: (a) The farthest and highest heaven, according to Aristotle’s hypotheses, is not in a place. The Philosopher discusses this in De coelo, bk. 1, ch. 9: “It is clear that no place nor emptiness nor time exists outside of heaven. Hence whatever is there is of such a nature that it does not occupy a place nor does time cause it to grow old.” Scaliger, Exerc. 5, sect. 1: “All people admittedly take the first heaven not to be in a place, though this is a rule for other bodies.” (b) The body created on the first day was a true body, but it was not circumscribed to an external, physical place because nothing else was created except it. (c) Bodies that are glorified with regard to their essence will be true bodies, but they will not necessarily be circumscribed in an external place, which we confirmed in detail in our treatise On Eternal Life [Commonplace XXXIV]. We confirmed this from their spirituality, agility, subtlety, conformity with the angels, from the property of Christ’s body, from the condition of “place,” the constitution of heaven, the removal of the causes for location, etc. (d) According as the body of Christ subsists in the Word, it is not circumscribed to a place because it subsists in the Word neither in a place nor locally.

(3) From firm, logical conclusion. If “place” were entirely necessary for all bodies in such a way that they could not exist without it, it would be necessary either a priori or a posteriori, but neither agrees with the truth. It is not the former, because it does not enter the definition of its essence [], which nevertheless would have to happen. Scaliger, Exerc. 307, sect. 17. It is not the latter, because no body would be able to exist without it, the contrary of which the cited examples bear witness.

(4) From the support of the philosophers. In Phys., 4, chs. 1 and 5, Aristotle says that “place befits a perceptible and moving body.” In De coelo, 2, ch. 4, he argues that “place befits bodies only because of their mortal weakness.” Metaph., bk. 2, ch. 4: “Place befits only a perishable body.” Scaliger, Exercitat. 5, sect. 6: “I admit that place is not of the essence of a body nor is it necessary to a body according as it is a body.” (In the same place he adds that “a body cannot be without place.” This must be understood according to the hypothesis set forth in sect. 3, that place is not an encompassing surface of the exterior body but is that which is contained within that surface, namely, the space within the body.) Zabarella, De nat. scient. constit., ch. 12: “Place is an external situation [ ] and a foreign accident of natural bodies.”

§ 276. (V) The question arises: Can it happen by divine power that one body is in many places? Scaliger denies this but adds modestly (Exerc. 5, sect. 6): “This discourse concerns the natural body, not the supercelestial gathering, for the latter can be in many places.” The Calvinists absolutely and simply deny this, even with regard to Christ’s body. Against them we justly set forth the disputations of the Scholastics, which say that through divine power any natural body can be in many places. Johannes Duns Scotus, Comm. ad 4. libr. Lomb., dist. 19, q. 2: “Can the same body be locally in different places at the same time? Here many hold a negative conclusion. However, different people prove it in different ways.” After listing his own arguments and those of several doctors, he adds: “Contrary to this opinion, that is, the denying one, this is enough in general that anything may be considered as possible for God that is not manifestly impossible on the basis of its terms and from which evident impossibility or contradiction is not concluded.” Then, after refuting the arguments brought out first, he concludes:

Therefore, to the question, I say that it is most utterly certain to me that with God everything is possible that does not include an evident contradiction and from which a contradiction does not necessarily follow. And this is of that sort. Therefore this is possible to God, as will become clear by explaining the reasons. Therefore I say that for God it simply is possible to put the same body in different places at the same time locally. This is clear from an understanding of the terms, because when I concede that anything, according to what is most known to me, is possible, this does not include an evident contradiction (nor does any author assert that it is included). This is of that sort, because the reasons that are brought out to prove the contradiction do not appear to conclude it, as will become clear by responding. I simply concede that to God it is possible for the same body to be in different places locally at the same time.

 

Franciscus Mayronis, Sent., bk. 4, dist. 11, q. 3:

Can God cause the same body to be everywhere? I say “yes,” because whenever something is limited to one place, if it be unlimited to more of the same definition, by the same logic it extends itself to anything. Therefore since one body does not limit itself to one place in number, it follows that it can by divine power occupy all things. However, this is difficult: Can it be in infinite places? I say “yes.” But the opposite [is claimed], because it would be infinite. I say that this does not follow, both because this happens by divine power and because the definition of “place” is an extrinsic definition.

 

Biel, Sent., bk. 4, dist. 11: “Not only can Christ’s body be in different places definitively and sacramentally, but also it and any other body can, through God’s power, be in many places circumscriptively.”

We confirm this opinion with these foundational truths: (1) “God can do more than we understand”; it can be done by Him (Eph. 3:20). Therefore though we may not be able to understand how it can happen that one body is in many places at one time, God can accomplish this. Questions as to what and how much God can accomplish must be dealt with carefully, lest we act wrongfully toward the infinite power of God. (2) For one body to be in one place depends on the will of God and on that order which nature has prescribed. But now, when God acts, He is not restricted to the natural order of things but is and remains the Lord of nature. Hugh, De sacram., bk. 2, part 8, ch. 12: “How can one body be in many places at one time? It is here and it is there and all of it is everywhere. Do not be surprised that He who has made ‘place’ has made a body and a place in the body and a body in a place, and that He caused one body to be in one place just as He wished. Had He so wished, He could have done otherwise.” (3) There is no contradiction when it is said that one body is in many places, because place does not come into the definition of “body.” Rather, being circumscribed in one place is an external accident of the body. But every accident is added to its subject outside the essence. Therefore if local and external circumscription is denied, the essence of “body” is not denied. Rather, that which is added outside its essence is denied. And if something is taken away that is outside the essence, the essence itself is not immediately taken away. (4) Whenever God wished, He was able to separate properties from things and creatures effectively through a miraculous and extraordinary act. For example, He separated the properties from iron (2 Kings 6:6), from water (Exod. 14:21; Josh. 3:16), from fire (Dan. 3:25), and from the sun (Josh. 10:13) while their essences were not destroyed but continued to exist. Therefore it is possible to separate “being circumscribed in one place” from a body without destroying the essence of the body. (5) Examples in nature prove that it is not so absurd for one being to be in many places [ in multis ubi]. Sound, which is one thing, is still whole in the individual ears of its hearers without any division thereof nor without having to gather the ears together. Our mind can conceive images of very different and very far removed things and can carry them about in the memory along with itself. (See Augustine, De spiritu et anima, ch. 2.) One body reveals its image in many eyes and mirrors. Angels are wholly in this place [ ubi] or that place without any multiplication of themselves, for they do not have parts according to which they exist in a place. Thus where they are, they are there wholly. All of the soul is in the head and all of it is in the feet.

§ 277. (VI) The question arises: Is the Lombard correct in saying (Sent., bk. 3, dist. 22. B): “It is not true to say, ‘Everywhere Christ was, He was man’ nor only, ‘Everywhere He is, He is man,’ because He is everywhere according to His deity, but the man is not everywhere, because He is not everywhere united to the man. But rather, ‘Everywhere He is according to the man, there He is man’ “? The Jesuits and Calvinists embrace this eagerly, but we respond that this principle of the Lombard is false. This is because: (1) The union of the Word and the flesh occurred not at a place nor in a place as a demarcation [terminus] but in the divine hypostasis of the Word, to which no intervals of places extend, because the Word is not a place and is not circumscribed to a place. Therefore the flesh, assumed into the nonlocal hypostasis of the Word, has been given a nonlocal mode of subsisting. (2) Wherever Christ is after the incarnation and glorious exaltation to the right hand of the Father, there He is man and there He has with Him the assumed human nature, because the Word is personally united with it, and this union is perpetual and indissoluble. (3) Hence, just as the Son of God is always man after the incarnation, so also He is man everywhere and remains so without any exception of time or place. For wherever the human nature of Christ does not exist, there Christ also is not man, unless one should wish to say that Christ is a man without a human nature. (4) Therefore we draw a conclusion in this way: Whoever is always and everywhere personally united to the humanity is always and everywhere man. But the Word is always and everywhere united to the humanity, because otherwise the union would be subject to place and time and thus would be local and temporary, which is absurd. Therefore the Word is always and everywhere man. (5) While the union of body and soul lasts, wherever a man is whole, the body and soul are also present there. Likewise, while the personal union of the natures lasts, there Christ is whole, and there He is present as the God-man, and thus according to both natures.

§ 278. (VII) The question arises: Does Christ’s ascension into heaven overturn His presence on earth according to His human nature? The Calvinists affirm this, but one must note that His presence can, instead, be established with the ascension of Christ. You see, Christ’s ascension must be considered not only with regard to its starting point and local movement (that Christ was carried up from the Mount of Olives on high and was lifted up from His disciples) but also with regard to its ending point, which is not a circumscribed place but is rather the infinite and immense right hand of God.

Some declare it in this way: Christ’s ascension is considered either abstractly and distinctly, so that it is only the movement of ascending by which Christ’s body in a visible form was suddenly carried higher and higher out of the sight of the disciples, in which respect the ascension and exaltation to the right hand of God are described distinctly in Mark 16:19 and Acts 1:9. Or it is described concretely and conjointly, so that the ascension embraces and includes the exaltation to the right hand of the Father (Ps. 68:[18]; Acts 2:33; Eph. 4:10; 1 Pet. 3:21[–22]; etc.). Because this exaltation occurred according to Christ’s human nature, one cannot draw an argument from the ascension to infer a complete absence of the human nature. Rather, on the contrary, one can draw an argument from the ascension to assert His human nature’s infinite majesty and the effects of divine power by example of Scripture in the passages just cited.

§ 279. (VIII) The question arises: is Christ’s return to judgment opposed to His presence among us? The Calvinists and Jesuits affirm this. We showed the contrary in our treatise On the Last Judgment [Commonplace XXXI], §§ 24 and 34.

(IX) The question arises: Do the Papists teach the same things as we do about the omniscience of Christ the man? There is no more correct way to judge about this than to set out the opinions of both sides. In our churches we teach that the soul of Christ, at the very first moment of the incarnation, was personally endowed with the Word’s own omniscience (as well as with the other divine excellences) because of the real, intimate, and indissoluble union and communion with the omniscient Word. However, just as in His state of emptying He did not always use the other gifts that had been truly and really communicated to Him, so also He did not always exert in secondary actuality²⁸ the omniscience personally communicated to Him as man. Hence Christ’s soul truly advanced according to natural and habitual knowledge, as the omniscient Word did not always exert His own working [] through His assumed humanity, that is, knowing and perceiving all things in actuality. Rather, the full use of His omniscience finally followed in His state of exaltation.

We prove this position: (1) From Mark 6:6: “He was surprised because of their unbelief.” Where surprise takes place, there actual omniscience cannot be established, because surprise comes from the object of an unexpected and unforeseen thing. However, Christ the man was surprised in the days of His flesh by the unbelief of the people of Nazareth. If you should wish to make the exception that Christ was surprised in appearance and in the opinion of men, we press the actual words, from which it is not proper to depart in articles of faith without urgent necessity—otherwise no certainty will remain for faith. If Christ was surprised only in appearance and in the opinion of men, a Manichaean could say, “The Son of God became incarnate in appearance, walked from place to place in appearance, ate food in appearance,” etc. The heretical Docetists would be able to claim from this passage: “Christ was saddened and suffered in appearance.” The Calvinists would be able to defend their thesis that Christ died for the reprobate only in appearance.

(2) Mark 13:32: “About that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels who are in heaven, nor the Son Himself, but only the Father.” Surely, then, in His state of emptying, Christ truly did not know some things. (See the various explanations of this passage listed in Bellarmine, De Christi anim., bk. 4, ch. 5, and in our treatise On the Last Judgment [Commonplace XXXI], § 76.) Here we urge the emphasis of the text, and we explain it with two arguments. First: If the knowledge of the Last Day is denied to angels and men, it is also denied to the Son of Man. The reason is that Christ is using a comparison of unequals in order that that discourse might rise higher and higher. He says, “Of that day and hour, no men know” (and yet men can acquire the knowledge of many things for themselves), “not even the angels in heaven” (who, because they always look at the face of the Father, seemed especially to know), in fact, “nor does the Son know.” But now, angels and men do not know that day, not only for others but even for themselves. That is, not only do they not know so that they are unwilling to tell it to others, but they actually and really do not know it. Therefore in the same way the Son does not know it. Now if the Son knew, but did not know only with regard to revealing it to others, this would not be a greater thing, nor would His discourse rise in comparison. Second: The knowledge of the Last Day that is attributed to the Father in the last part is denied to angels and men in the first part, as the contrast shows. But now, even the Father did not know that day with regard to revealing it to others, since He did not reveal it. Therefore the Son did not know it for Himself, not only for others.

(3) Luke 2:40: “The boy grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom.” Verse 52: “He increased in wisdom and age.” Here note, first, that it is affirmed literally that Christ advanced in wisdom. But now, the advancement of wisdom does not remain with actual omniscience. Second, the same expression is used regarding the boy Samuel (1 Sam. 2:21, 26). Yet it cannot be denied that he truly did advance. Third, these two things are connected: “Christ advanced in age and wisdom.” But now, He truly and really advanced in age, or stature of body and size of members. Therefore He also truly and really advanced in wisdom. Fourth, it is said of Him that He advanced in wisdom not only “among men” but also “before God.” Bellarmine, loc. cit., refers this further specification only “to grace, because the other members (wisdom and age) are absolute, and one cannot be said to advance in wisdom and age ‘before others.’ “ However, the mode of speaking that is used with reference to Samuel (loc. cit.) shows the contrary. Some explain “before God and men” as this: “in those things that are of God and of men” or “to the praise of God and the advantage of men.” Others explain it “as a more excellent and divine manner.” The simplest explanation can be taken from the expression of 2 Cor. 8:21: that “to grow before God” is not a fiction and pretense but means truly and sincerely advancing in these things with God as witness, judge, and approver. “To grow before men” means increasing in the judgment of men who take note of that increase. Thus Christ is said to be “a great prophet, mighty in deed and word before God and all the people” (Luke 24:19). See the explanation of this expression in our Harm. de resur. From these, one may readily pass judgment as to what must be thought about the exception of Thomas ([ST,] p. 3, q. 12, art. 2), of the Lombard (Sent., 3, dist. 13, letters B and E), Bellarmine (De Christo, bk. 4, ch. 5): that Christ’s humanity “did not advance in itself but only in effect with regard to demonstration” and that it advanced in the same way “as a doctor of the church and of the academy is said to ‘advance’ when his disciples advance through his wisdom.” Some people add that He advanced only in appearance and in the opinion of men. However, arguments brought out into public show the opposite. If one is permitted to claim that Christ only increased in wisdom according to appearance, surely a Manichaean will also be permitted to say that He advanced in stature according to appearance. When Luke in the same chapter calls Joseph “the father of Christ” (2:48), he immediately adds the explanation: Christ was Joseph’s son “as was supposed” (3:23). If he had not wanted us to understand that Christ truly did advance, he would have added this same explanation to this verse (2:40).

(4) Phil. 2:[6]–8: “Although Christ was in the form of God, He emptied Himself, taking on the form of a servant, and was established in the likeness of men, being found in fashion as a man.” As Christ in the days of His flesh did not always reveal and fully use the divine omnipotence and majesty that was truly and really communicated to His assumed human nature through the personal union, so also He did not always exert His omniscience through His human nature, for exercising the full use of His omniscience in actuality conflicts with His state of emptying.

(5) Heb. 2:17: “He had to be made like His brothers in every respect,” “yet without sin” (Heb. 4:[15]). It is natural for the human soul to advance in wisdom. But now, Christ was made like us in all things, though not in sin nor in personal illnesses [aegritudines]. Therefore. In addition, Christ took on Himself not only the true, whole, and perfect human nature and the essential properties of the human nature but also our weaknesses and defects, as we showed earlier, not “by the necessity of condition” but “by the will of mercy,” Augustine, De c. D., ch. 9; not all defects, but those that were fittingly assumed for the work of redemption; not the defects of fault, but of punishment. But now, to advance in wisdom likewise pertains to those defects. Therefore. (We have listed the statements of the fathers in our treatise On the Last Judgment [Commonplace XXXI], loc. cit.)

§ 280. So that is our position about the omniscience of Christ the man.

Now, the Papists ascribe actual omniscience²⁹ to Christ’s soul from the very first moment of the incarnation³⁰ “in such a way that He knew all things that God knows, and none of them were ever hid from Him” (Thomas; the Lombard; and Bellarmine, loc. cit.; Osorius, Conc., vol. 1, p. 256), and they accuse as heresy the opinion of those who claim that “Christ’s human nature did not know all things at any time in His state of emptying.” Bellarmine (De anim. Christi, 4, ch. 1) and Pistorius (Spiritu 4, ch. 13–14, azoa. 2) ascribe to the soul of Christ sometimes three, sometimes four, sometimes five kinds of knowledge: (1) Uncreated, which He never lacked at any time. (2) Created, by which He, being in the Word, sees all things that God sees with the knowledge of vision. Others call this blessed, which they describe by saying that the soul of Christ simply receives the light of the Word and knows all things that God knows. As a result they attribute to Him the knowledge of all things without exception. Nevertheless some people add that the divine knowledge of the Word exceeds the knowledge of Christ’s soul in reference both to the mode of knowing and the number of things known. For this reason they make this created or blessed knowledge of Christ’s soul common with blessed souls, preserving only the difference of levels or extent. (3) Infused, which they say is similar to angelic knowledge. They define it as the infusion of all intelligible species³¹ and even the idea [ notitia] of all things and natures, even immaterial ones, impressed on Christ’s soul from the first moment of conception. (4) They call “acquired knowledge” that knowledge by which the acting intellect abstracts intelligible species from appearances [of objects]. Because this cannot be done all at the same time, but is done successively, they think that Christ did not arrive at this knowledge of all things that can be recognized by this intellect except in His full age, from those things that the senses perceive because of His excellent power of reason for arguing and reasoning. (5) Experimental. Some people connect this with acquired knowledge and consider it the same thing, but some distinguish the one from the other.

We respond. (a) We require the proof of all these from the Scriptures. (b) In fact, we even say that these ideas cannot be reconciled to the passages of Scripture that we have just set forth. (c) If they take uncreated omniscience to mean the omniscience that was communicated to Christ the man along with the other divine properties but whose full use He did not exert in the days of His flesh or in His state of emptying, but rather finally in His exaltation, they have us as their supporters. (d) If, on the other hand, they claim that that blessed or uncreated wisdom inheres subjectively in Christ’s soul and if they claim that Christ’s soul is the subject of the inhering of that knowledge by which He knows all things that God knows—something that they certainly seem to be doing when they attack the personal communication of the properties—then they are establishing two omnisciences in Christ: a divine one that is proper to the Word and a blessed one inhering subjectively in the soul of Christ. (e) From this it follows that they truly are Agnoëtae, Themistians, and Nestorians, because when they imagine a “blessed omniscience” that inheres subjectively, they reject the communication of the prior omniscience and thus actually deny that the humanity united to the Word knows all things according to its united subsistence, or, what is the same, they deny that the property of omniscience was communicated to Christ’s humanity through the personal union. (f) We concede that an infused knowledge, no less than other finite and habitual gifts of the Holy Spirit, was present in Christ’s soul, but we deny that it was so perfect in His state of emptying that He was not able to advance in it. (g) As Christ did not have a glorified body until in His state of exaltation after the resurrection, so also He did not have a glorified soul perfectly endowed with angelic gifts until in His state of exaltation. (h) Acquired and experimental knowledge are removed through the uncreated, blessed, and infused knowledge. If Christ’s soul knew all things absolutely and perfectly with the knowledge of beatific vision, how did He begin to know some things through intelligible species? If in Christ’s mind there shone forth the idea [ notitia] of all intelligible species and immaterial substances and of all things individually, past, present, and future, what use and place will there be for acquired and experimental knowledge? If all intelligible species were infused into the soul of Christ at the first moment of conception, how did it not know some things? (i) Nor can they flee to the “manifestation and showing of His knowledge,” for who would say that Adam, fully illumined with the light of knowledge, advanced in wisdom when he was giving names to the animals that were being brought before him? He showed that he was very wise, but he received no increase in wisdom. We treated the heresy of the Agnoëtae, with which the Papists try to smear us, in our treatise On the Last Judgment [Commonplace XXXI], § 31.

Practical use.

§ 281. The practical use is (1) Consoling. According to that nature by which He is our brother, Christ received all power in heaven and earth, is most present with us, is aware of our calamities, etc. How, then, will He be able to turn us away? How will He lack the power to help us?

(2) Instructing. Just as a personal change [] came about from the personal union of the two natures in Christ, so also a spiritual change comes about from the spiritual union of God and the faithful soul, of Christ and the Church, through which and because of which divine works are attributed to faith and to the Christian with respect to faith. “All things are possible for one who believes” (Mark 9:23), from which passage blessed Luther correctly infers in his commentary on Galatians 3 that “faith is an omnipotent thing and its power is inestimable and infinite.” Our faith is “the victory that overcomes the world” (1 John 5:4). It overcomes the dragon of hell (Rev. 12:11); it justifies, regenerates, and saves the believer (Mark 16:16). No one can deny that these works are truly divine.

Here we should mention all the miracles that are done from faith and through faith. “These signs will accompany those who believe: in My name they will cast out demons,” etc. (Mark 16:17). “If you have faith like a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here,’ and it will move” (Matt. 17:20). “Whoever believes in Me will himself do the works that I do, and he will do greater ones than these” (John 14:12). “Through faith the devout conquered kingdoms, worked justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the rage of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, became strong out of weaknesses,” etc. (Heb. 11:33–34). We also include the works of divine power that ministers of the Church perform in functions of their office, since “they demolish all arrogance that is extolled against every knowledge of God” (2 Cor. 10:5). They regenerate and save human beings (1 Cor. 4:15; Gal. 4:19; 1 Tim. 4:16; etc.). Nevertheless the power by which they do such things is not in man essentially, subjectively, or formally. Rather, the grace of God is what accomplishes such things. The power of Christ is what works in them. Meanwhile, God does them not separately from the devout but in them, with them, and through them because of that spiritual union which exists between the devout and Christ by faith, all of which can be deduced in greater detail with no difficulty. (Cf. Dr. Philipp Nicolai, De omnipraes., bk. 1, ch. 4.)

1 Read with Cotta instead of .

2 Noncontradictory things or propositions of which one is contained under the other. For example, Gerhard says that the Holy Spirit and the water of Baptism are related to each other as subordinates in the giving of salvation, not as opposites. The water of Baptism is a means by which the Holy Spirit gives salvation, and thus the one does not rule out the other in the giving of salvation (Commonplace XXIII, On Holy Baptism, § 104). See also Commonplace XXX, On the Resurrection of the Dead, § 101.

3 Read et ea demonstratur instead of et ex ea demonstratur.

4 Read sed ad tempus ea quasi se abdicavit with Cotta instead of sed ad tempus, eaque se abdicavit.

5 Read obedientis instead of obedientia.

6 Read externam instead of aeternam.

7 Read tibi with Cotta instead of sibi.

8 Sermons on John 17 (1538), LW 69:67–68, WA 28:136–37; Labors on the Psalms (1519–21), LW 65, WA 5:637ff.

9 Read putabimus? Sancti with Cotta instead of putabimus sancti.

10 Read instead of

11 Read corpora with Cotta instead of corporea.

12 Read ecclesia instead of ecclesiae.

13 Read omnia with Cotta instead of omnium.

14 Hyperdulia is understood as veneration in the highest degree, yet not the adoration (latria) that is due to God alone. In Roman Catholic theology, dulia (“veneration”) is due to the angels and saints, hyperdulia is due to St. Mary, and latria is due to God alone.

15 Luther’s Smalcald Articles (1537) I IV.

16 See §179, footnote 2.

17 Read ut instead of et.

18 Read constant instead of Constant.

19 Read nota with Cotta instead of notat.

20 Read immediatam with Cotta instead of immediata.

21 That is, etymologically related, but not exactly synonymous.

22 Such as the Son’s eternal begottenness from the Father.

23 R ead unius with Cotta instead of unionis.

24 See § 179, footnote 2.

25 Read expandatur with Cotta instead of expendatur.

26 Read secundo with Cotta instead of tertio.

27 Read enim carni Christi with Cotta instead of enim Christi.

28 “In operation.” That is, Christ the man did not always make use of His omniscience, even though He actually (according to primary actuality) possessed it.

29 That is, the full use of His omniscience.

30 Read incarnationis with Cotta instead of increationis.

31 Intelligible species are conceptual images that represent real objects to one’s intellect.

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