I.3 Plan for the Book
One and the same Christ, Son, Lord. Only-begotten, acknowledged in two natures without confusion, change, division, or separation (the difference of the natures being in no way destroyed by the union, but rather the distinctive character of each nature being preserved and coming together into one person and one hypostasis), not parted or divided into two persons but one and the same Son, Only-begotten, God, Word, Lord, Jesus Christ.
With this definition, the Council of Chalcedon delimited the doctrine of Christ’s person to preserve the integrity of both the human and divine natures within an indissoluble unity. By this decree, the council attempted to end the ongoing controversy over Christ’s person by passing between the Scylla of Nestorianism and the Charybdis of Eutychianism. In time, the council’s proclamation established the foundation of christological orthodoxy for the Western Church. However, certain tensions found within the declaration’s logic would blossom into controversy again in the sixteenth century as Lutheran and Reformed theologians put forth opposing doctrines of the person of Christ, specifically around questions of Christ’s human body. How, for instance, does this personal union “without change . . . without separation” relate to the concept of divine omnipresence? This question would cause a rent in Magisterial Protestantism.
Classical theists agree that God is omnipresent or transcendent over space and that this quality therefore belongs to Christ’s divine nature. But since humans are finite and localized within their bodies, with a limited sphere of interaction and influence, Christ’s human nature must be considered finite and his body circumscribed. Therefore, the person (hypostasis) of Christ is at the same time transcendent over all creation as the eternal second person of the Trinity, according to his divine nature, and localized within human flesh, according to his human nature. Yet explaining the earthly career of the God-man and how the attendant theological ramifications resulting from the hypostatic union are worked out remains difficult. During the Reformation, these questions would rise to the surface within the first decade of the movement in the intra-Protestant debates over Christ’s presence in the Eucharist and evolve into a lasting distinction between Lutheran and Reformed christology, which gained the name, owing to Lutheran polemics, the extra Calvinisticum (the Calvinistic extra or beyond).
Despite its obscure appellation, the so-called extra Calvinisticum, which teaches that the eternal Son maintains his existence etiam extra carnem (still beyond the flesh) during his earthly ministry and perpetually, represents a fault line between Lutheran and Reformed theology. As these confessional parties formed their distinct identities in the sixteenth century, christology emerged as a key area of dispute—an issue that continues to divide these camps today. In this work I will broaden the study of the extra Calvinisticum by investigating how the doctrine arose within sixteenth-century Reformed theology and how its form and function developed, given polemic engagement and shifts in theological method from Zwingli through the period of early Reformed orthodoxy. The first question is historical: When and why did Reformed theologians first articulate the extra? Literature on the subject gestures toward the eucharistic controversy of the 1520s; however, a more exact answer is needed. At what point in the controversy was the extra first deployed? In what works did it appear? Was it the product of the internal logic of early Reformed theology, a defensive doctrine born of polemics with Luther’s doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ’s human nature, or some combination of both? The second major question is how the form and function of the extra Calvinisticum developed during the sixteenth century. How did theologians support the doctrine, and how did their arguments change over time in response to shifting circumstances, polemical needs, and theological method?
Scholarship on the extra Calvinisticum has largely been limited to the work of John Calvin, who is lifted up, often to the detriment and neglect of his fellow Reformed theologians, as the unique expositor of the doctrine within the sixteenth century. David Willis, Heiko Oberman, and Karl Barth set the agenda for research concerning the extra Calvinisticum in contemporary scholarship. Willis and Oberman produced historical studies of the extra that laid the groundwork for all subsequent historical studies. Barth’s sharp rejection and critique of the extra in his work on the Heidelberg Catechism and in the Church Dogmatics influenced the interpretation of the doctrine throughout the twentieth century. Barth’s critique reframed reflection on the doctrine within the discourse of revelation and natural theology. This focus has contributed to several attempts to utilize the doctrine in constructive theology.
In his quest to articulate a high christology throughout his career, Barth moved from acceptance to rejection of the extra Calvinisticum, and his rejection has cast a shadow over engagement with the doctrine ever since. Barth explicitly and enthusiastically endorses the extra in The Göttingen Dogmatics (1924–26) by stating that he “fully accept[s] this Calvinistic extra.” Yet, by 1948, in his reflections on the Heidelberg Catechism, Barth deems the extra Calvinisticum a “theological disaster” (theologischen Betriebsunfall) and regards “this statement [the extra Calvinisticum] [as] only to be one of unbelief.” Barth’s drastic reversal stems from his continued rejection of the possibility of God’s revelation distinct in any sense from the incarnate Christ—a logos asarkos. Therefore, the logos asarkos leads one only to another god. Barth states this most clearly in CD IV/1:
We must concede that there is something unsatisfactory about the theory [the extra], in that right up to our own day it has led to fatal speculation about the being and work of the logos asarkos, or a God whom we think we can know elsewhere, and whose divine being we can define from elsewhere than in and from the contemplation of His presence and activity as the Word made flesh. And it cannot be denied that Calvin himself (and with particularly serious consequences in his doctrine of predestination) does go a good way towards trying to reckon with this “other” god.
Barth’s rejection of the extra, on epistemological grounds, and its connection to the broader concept of natural theology influenced further scholarship on the extra Calvinisticum by shifting the locus of discussion to the doctrine of revelation.
In Calvin’s Catholic Christology, David Willis presents the first detailed study of the naming of the extra Calvinisticum, the pre-Reformation history of the extra carnem concept, and its function within the work of Calvin. Willis’s study has provided the historical foundation of all work on the extra Calvinisticum in the past fifty years and is an invaluable resource for further investigation. I will build on this foundation and extend research on the extra in the early modern period beyond the figure of Calvin by correcting for Willis’s neglect of Zwingli, Calvin’s contemporaries, and Reformed orthodoxy. Willis frames his work in a post-Barthian context, stating that the problems facing any contemporary engagement with the extra are twofold: the relationship between creation and redemption and “the predicament concerning christology in the present theological enterprise.” For Willis, the relationship between creation and redemption is tied up with the question of natural theology’s possibility, which he contends the extra Calvinisticum is not “intended to buttress.” In one sense, Willis attempts to save Calvin’s doctrine of the extra from Barth’s critique.
Willis begins the study by tracing the genesis of the term “extra Calvinisticum,” which first appears in intra-Lutheran polemics between the faculties of Tübingen and Giessen in the 1620s. He narrates the polemic terminology used against the Reformed by Lutheran theologians through the various colloquies and confessional controversies of the late sixteenth century, highlighting the shift from “Zwinglians” to “Calvinists” as the preferred term of disapprobation. Willis places particular emphasis on analogies that Reformed theologians used in these polemics, the most prominent being the analogy of Antwerp and the ocean. Caspar Olevianus used this comparison at the Colloquy of Maulbronn (1564) in response to an argument made by the Lutheran theologian Jakob Andreas regarding Christ’s relationship to the right hand of God after his ascension. Essentially, Olevianus’s point with this analogy is to establish that Andreas has committed a fallacy by conflating Christ’s presence at the right hand of God with the right hand of God itself. Even though Antwerp is on the sea and the sea stretches around the world, Antwerp does not stretch around the world. Willis claims that by using this and other analogies the early Reformed scholastics distorted their christology. He asserts:
[These analogies were] intended to illustrate the relation between Christ’s bodily presence in heaven (Antwerp) and his ubiquity according to the power of his divinity (the ocean). But they, unfortunately, came to describe, and were accepted by the Reformed theologians themselves as describing, the relation between the two natures of the one person.
Willis claims that the Reformed scholastics were taken in by their own analogies, leading to a defective understanding of the hypostatic union. Despite this bold assertion, Willis offers no evidence from any Reformed source of this conceptual slippage in the use of this or other analogies. His analysis of these analogies is part of a broader thesis that distances the Reformed orthodox understanding of the extra from Calvin’s formulation. In his conclusion, Willis states regarding Calvin, “Is the ‘extra Calvinisticum’ inevitably bound to such slogans as ‘Antwerp and the ocean,’ ‘novitas,’ ‘finitum non capax infiniti,’ or ‘back to a natural theology and ethics based on the logos ensarkos–logos asarkos distinction’? As it appears in Calvin’s theology—no.” Regarding the Reformed orthodox, Willis implies the answer is yes. Therefore, Willis claims a fundamental discontinuity between the basis of the extra Calvinisticum in Calvin and his successors.
Willis’s separation between Calvin and his successors is juxtaposed with the claims of continuity between Calvin and the catholic tradition. He demonstrates that far from being a peculiar innovation of Calvin, the so-called extra Calvinisticum—i.e., the etiam extra carnem—is an idea that finds ample attestation in ancient and medieval theologians. Willis presents statements in Cyril of Alexandria, Augustine, Lombard, and Thomas Aquinas similar to the later concept. Ultimately, he concludes that between these figures and Calvin there is a continuity of the content of the etiam extra carnem, going so far as to say, “One might coin ‘extra Catholicum’ or ‘extra Patristicum’ as being more appropriate than ‘extra Calvinisticum.’ ”
Willis produces three chapters on the function of the extra Calvinisticum in the thought of Calvin himself. The first is concerned with the proper christological place and function of the doctrine within Calvin’s works. Willis’s way into this subject is through the political imagery of kingship. The extra Calvinisticum allows Calvin to maintain that Christ has extended his reign through the incarnation without abrogating his previous reign over all things. In addition, the extra functions in Calvin to preserve the integrity of both the human and the divine nature while maintaining the union of the person of the one mediator. Also, of particular note is Willis’s insistence that Calvin’s use of the extra shuns the concept of the finitum non capax infiniti, that the finite cannot contain the infinite, a point seen even more clearly in Oberman. Willis’s final two chapters focus on the relationship between the extra and Calvin’s view of natural theology and ethics. These chapters, however, offer little insight into the extra itself, especially given that Calvin never invokes the concept of the extra in these contexts. Rather, Willis seems to adapt his interpretation to modern concerns, especially the influence of Barth as seen in the treatment regarding natural theology. Overall while Calvin’s Catholic Christology is groundbreaking in offering the first study of the extra, Willis’s understanding of the development of the doctrine in the sixteenth century is beholden to the now outmoded Calvin vs. the Calvinists paradigm.
Oberman’s 1966 essay “The ‘Extra’ Dimension in the Theology of Calvin” should be considered of a piece with the work of Willis both in terms of its perspective on the extra Calvinisticum and its foundational status for further studies. Oberman produced this essay in intellectual proximity to Willis’s monograph, as Oberman was Willis’s dissertation supervisor at Harvard. Oberman also briefly presents precursors to the doctrine and sets it at odds with the non capax dictum. The largest contribution of this text is its extension of thinking on the extra Calvinisticum as part of a larger “extra” component in Calvin’s theology, as the title suggests. Oberman states, “The extra Calvinisticum is not an isolated phenomenon but rather, like the top of an iceberg, only the most controversial aspect of a whole ‘extra’ dimension in Calvin’s theology: extra ecclesiam, extra coenam, extra carnem, extra legem, extra praedicationem.” Despite the assurances of a fine scholar, it is difficult to see from Oberman’s essay how this “extra” dimension can be supported. The extra ecclesiam (the reign of Christ beyond the church) and extra coenam (the grace and blessing of Christ beyond the Lord’s Table) are uncontroversial. Oberman, however, does not differentiate the extra carnem from the extra Calvinisticum. He barely discusses the extra legem (Oberman’s phrase for Calvin’s reorientation of the concept of the potentia absoluta) and neither defines nor discusses the extra praedicationem. On the level of historical exposition and contextualization, then, Oberman’s essay offers little besides what Willis has produced. Its main contribution, however, comes with the broadening of the concept in the study of Calvin beyond the doctrine of the incarnation, which has been taken by several scholars as license, abetted by Barth’s critique, to broaden the concept of the extra itself.
Flowing from these foundational texts, scholarship on the extra Calvinisticum in the past fifty years has followed two main lines: historical studies and constructive proposals. Historical studies focused on the extra exist almost exclusively within the purview of Calvin studies, the main exception being the recent monograph of Andrew McGinnis, which will be discussed shortly. Despite its almost perfunctory invocation in many works on Calvin, only a few scholars have offered extensive treatments of the extra Calvinisticum. Paul Helm presents a philosophic take on Calvin’s understanding of the extra in his work Calvin’s Ideas. Helm does not seek to situate Calvin’s concept historically but focuses on the viability and consistency of Calvin’s ideas in conversation with philosophical theology. While relying on Willis for the historical context of Calvin’s thought, Helm offers a corrective to Willis’s study by resisting the impulse to connect the extra to revelation or natural theology. Instead, he focuses on Calvin’s understanding of the communicatio idiomatum and the possible metaphysical foundation of the extra in Calvin.
Daniel Y. K. Lee presents a further study on the extra in Calvin in The Holy Spirit as Bond in Calvin’s Thought. This study builds on passing comments in Werner Krusche’s work on Calvin’s pneumatology, in which he connects the extra with Calvin’s doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Lee continues this line of study by arguing that the concept of “Holy Spirit as bond” functions in tandem with Calvin’s view of the extra to produce a unique pneumatological focus in both christology and the application of Christ’s work to believers, especially connected to the concept of union with Christ. On the level of expositing the extra in the Reformed tradition more broadly, Helm and Lee offer little insight for broader historical understanding of the idea. Yet, both scholars display a desire to connect the extra Calvinisticum to the uniqueness and particular genius of Calvin, which contributes to a general tone in scholarship that neglects the doctrine’s development in other Reformed theologians.
The constructive engagements with the extra Calvinisticum follow a common pattern. These studies begin with a brief historical discussion of the doctrine, derived largely from Willis, and then apply the extra to contemporary concerns. This commonly results in an amorphous articulation of the extra that is, to a degree, abstracted from its christological context. These constructive studies on the extra broaden its definition to a general concept of the presence of Christ beyond the flesh, with disregard for the intricacies of the early modern debate. For instance, André Gounelle claims that for the Reformed, “in his incarnation the Son is not confined or enclosed (to use a term preferred by Calvin) in the human person of Jesus; he is not limited to it; he keeps, so to speak, a certain independence.” Christina Aus der Au further states that general revelation as founded on the eternal Word of God to all people is “the comprehensive statement of the Extra Calvinisticum.” The areas of theology to which the doctrine is applied vary, yet all revolve around concepts of general divine presence. Aus der Au contends the extra is particularly relevant for understanding the relationship of the transcendent and the immanent, the nature of revelation, and natural theology. Gounelle, on the other hand, seeks to elucidate the christology of Paul Tillich by placing him in conversation with the extra Calvinisticum and the “intra Lutheranum,” a term Gounelle uses to denote the Lutheran claim that the human nature of Christ “expands to the dimensions of the divinity,” to show both the traditional shape and the innovation of Tillich’s doctrine. Besides these studies, the recently published dissertation of James Gordon offers a constructive defense of the doctrine of the extra from its Barthian critics using an analytic theological method. Gordon supports this project through a biblical-theological argument for the doctrine built on the New Testament theme of Christ as temple in light of contemporary christological models. These studies, along with other constructive attempts, offer insight into the understanding and the displacement of the doctrine in modern theology, but they bring us no closer to understanding its historical place or development.
The first historical monograph on the extra since Willis is Andrew . McGinnis carries forward Willis’s project of establishing the pre-Reformation roots of the doctrine through studies of Cyril of Alexandria and Thomas Aquinas, showing that each utilized a concept similar to the extra, though in a more limited range. Cyril’s use of the extra is primarily focused on preserving the divinity of the Son within the incarnate state by maintaining his universal, heavenly reign extra carnem. Thomas, following Lombard, reflects on the presence of the Son during the three days in the tomb. Christ’s body is in the tomb, his soul in hell, and his divinity is everywhere, yet the unity of person is not compromised.
McGinnis follows these sketches of Cyril and Thomas with a brief narrative of the sixteenth-century Lutheran/Reformed polemics over the extra Calvinisticum. This twenty-page chapter breaks little new ground in analyzing the debate, touching lightly on such figures as Zwingli, Bullinger, Vermigli, and Beza. He shows that the concept of the extra becomes significant in the eucharistic debates but provides no investigation into the reasons for this. McGinnis concludes:
In one sense, the extra Calvinisticum in and of itself did not play a significant role in the Reformed and Lutheran polemics of the sixteenth century. That is, the doctrine of the Son’s transcendence of his human nature was not a central point in Reformed and Lutheran debates over the Lord’s Supper and Christology. Rather, the extra Calvinisticum is best understood as one of several related points of dispute that developed out of the central matters of the relationship of the divine and human natures in Christ and the manner of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper.
McGinnis argues that in the sixteenth century the extra is a minor point in a broader dispute over the Eucharist and the relationship of Christ’s two natures. Thus, according to McGinnis, the extra is embedded within the sacramental debate while remaining fundamentally a point of christology. Moving from the brief treatment in the first two generations of the Reformation, McGinnis discusses the function of the extra in the thought of Zacharius Ursinus, especially in the Heidelberg Catechism and his commentary on it. McGinnis focuses primarily on Ursinus’s use of the doctrine to assure Christians of the continual presence of Christ in the current age.
Following his cursory treatment of the early modern discussion, McGinnis seeks to answer why the doctrine seems to have fallen on hard times during the nineteenth century, concluding that the shift to a focus on christology from below following Schleiermacher is to blame. In his final chapter he explicates the twentieth-century attempts to rearticulate the extra and determines that on the whole they have improperly removed it from its christological context. McGinnis argues that Barth and Helmut Thielicke contribute to this displacement and find an unlikely ally in Oberman. McGinnis’s assessment of the contemporary reorientation of thought on the extra beyond christology seems broadly correct.
On the whole, McGinnis’s work is a continuation of Willis’s efforts to situate the doctrine within the broader Christian tradition and to explicate one of the classic Reformation expressions of the doctrine, appealing to Ursinus instead of Calvin. He succeeds in establishing a broader foundation for the extra in pre-Reformation thought and offers insightful analysis of the contemporary appropriation of the doctrine. Yet McGinnis’s treatment falls short of an in-depth account of the emergence of the extra within sixteenth-century intra-Protestant polemics. My argument builds on McGinnis’s insistence that the extra is fundamentally a christological doctrine that informed the broader debate on the Lord’s Supper. Nevertheless, I will challenge McGinnis’s conclusion that the extra was a minor point in sixteenth-century polemics. Rather, it was the crux of both the eucharistic debate and christological debates.
To this point there has been no extended historical study of the doctrine beyond Calvin and some pre-Reformation precedents. And even those studies have been overly influenced by the preoccupation with twentieth-century concerns over its relation to natural theology and revelation, owing to Barth’s influence. The doctrine in the reformers preceding Calvin, Calvin’s contemporaries, and Calvin’s successors has largely been ignored. The exception to this is McGinnis’s chapters on the sixteenth century and the work of Ursinus. McGinnis’s treatment, however, is still incomplete because it fails to explicate how and why the doctrine first entered into the Reformation debate. Additionally, McGinnis only passingly addresses the question of how the doctrine was received in light of the shift to scholastic method in the third generation of the Reformed movement.
From these texts a basic narrative emerges. The extra Calvinisticum appears in the eucharistic debate between Wittenberg and Zürich, although the exact reason for this is left unexplored. It then becomes a staple of polemics between the Lutheran and Reformed as their thought develops, although only as a minor point. The height of the narrative is the work of Calvin, who through the exercise of religious genius expounds the extra in an integrated way that issues into pneumatology, ethics, sacramentology, and concepts of Christ’s reign. Calvin’s contribution is distinguished from the other Reformed thinkers who arrive at the extra through the philosophic concept of finitum non capax infiniti. In this narrative, Calvin’s use of the extra sets him apart from the later Reformed tradition, which fails to live up to Calvin’s doctrine in the coming generations. I seek to overturn this narrative by broadening the study of the concept to thinkers besides Calvin, including Zwingli, Peter Martyr Vermigli, and the Reformed scholastics.
I propose a narrative that overturns the Calvin-centric understanding of the history of the extra in the Reformation period. Zwingli’s initial formulation of the doctrine in the eucharistic debate was motivated by the soteriological concern that Christ be like humanity in every way except sin, including locality. If Christ is to be the mediator and savior of humanity, he must be human in every essential respect. Therefore, with the extra Calvinisticum, the Reformed sought to maintain the integrity of Christ’s human nature by avoiding any commingling of properties between the natures. Bullinger and Calvin confessionalized this emphasis in the Consensus Tigurinus (1549), drawing an enduring line between the Lutheran and Reformed traditions. This driving concern led to the further elaboration and reflection on the relationship of Christ’s human and divine natures, which emerged as a controversy in its own right after the Consensus. As the Reformed tradition developed, theologians incorporated more sophisticated arguments and scholastic distinctions to support and elaborate the extra, including philosophical reflection on the infinite and finite. Yet, despite more numerous and intricate arguments for the extra, a basic continuation of theological intent exists from Zwingli to the beginning of Reformed orthodoxy to secure the place of Christ as the mediator between God and humanity within a Chalcedonian articulation of Christ’s person. This project then coincides with a larger trend in scholarship that has attempted to overcome the tendency to unduly elevate Calvin himself at the expense of the rest of the Reformed tradition.
Study of the so-called extra Calvinisticum has been hindered by the term itself. The phrase has unduly directed the scholarly eye to Calvin to elucidate the idea, as seen earlier. The phrase arose within intra-Lutheran debates of the 1620s between faculty members of the Universities of Giessen and Tübingen over the acceptable Lutheran teaching on the ubiquity of Christ’s human body, known as the Crypto-Kenotic Controversy. In this debate the Tübingen theologian Theodor Thumm accused his Giessen counterparts of perpetuating “illud ipsum extra Calvinisticum.” From this point, variations on the phrase became a mainstay of Lutheran polemical writings. Yet, I have found no evidence that Reformed theologians applied the term to their own doctrine until the twentieth century. For instance, one will find no use of this title in any Reformed scholastic dogmatics. Reformed reticence on this point is likely due to worries of conceding to the Lutherans that the doctrine is a Calvinistic novelty. As shown conclusively by Willis and supported by McGinnis, the concept that the Son continues to exist beyond the human flesh was present in both the ancient and the medieval church; however, the Reformed utilized and extended this concept in new ways.
For this study, I derive the working definition of the extra from the recognized loci classici in Calvin’s Institutes and the Heidelberg Catechism. In his refutation of the heavenly flesh doctrine of some of the radical reformers, Calvin exclaims:
For even if the Word in his immeasurable essence united with the nature of man into one person, we do not imagine that he was confined therein. Here is something marvelous: the Son of God descended from heaven in such a way that, without leaving heaven, he willed to be borne in the virgin’s womb, to go about the earth, and to hang upon the cross; yet he continuously filled the world even as he had done from the beginning.
The Heidelberg Catechism elaborates on this “marvelous thing” in its question on the creedal article “he ascended into heaven”:
47. But is not Christ with us even unto the end of the world, as He has promised?
Christ is true man and true God. According to His human nature He is now not on earth, but according to His Godhead, majesty, grace, and Spirit, He is at no time absent from us.
48. But are not, in this way, the two natures in Christ separated from one another, if the manhood is not wherever the Godhead is?
Not at all, for since the Godhead is incomprehensible and everywhere present, it must follow that it is indeed beyond the bounds of the manhood which it has assumed, but is yet nonetheless in the same also, and remains personally united to it.
Calvin and Heidelberg acknowledge a twofold presence of Christ: qua divinity, which is omnipresent, and qua humanity, which is spatially located. This twofold presence is brought about by the incarnation and confirmed by the ascension, which reveals a change in the relation of Christ’s body to the earthly sphere. The twofold presence of Christ is not intended to divide Christ’s natures, which remain “personally united.” Moving from these texts one can establish basic desiderata for the extra.
A definition for the extra Calvinisticum cannot simply be reduced to the Son’s existence extra carnem during his earthly life but must also include the permanence of the extra/intra carnem relation through both stages of humiliation and exaltation, as well as the understanding of the hypostatic union that accounts for this relation. From the moment that Christ was conceived in Mary’s womb, he exists both in a spatially located manner, according to his human nature, and a spatially transcendent manner, according to his divine nature. This dynamic of extra and intra persists perpetually throughout this earthly life, death, resurrection, session, and second advent. During Christ’s earthly life he is bodily present on earth while he is divinely present everywhere, and following his ascension, he is bodily present in heaven while he is divinely present everywhere. To maintain this picture, an account must be offered of the hypostatic union, christological predication, and the communication of attributes (the communicatio idiomatum). Such an account will take the form of what Oliver Crisp has labeled a “weak communicatio idiomatum”:
The attribution of the properties of each of the natures of Christ to the person of Christ, such that the theanthropic person of Christ is treated as having divine and human attributes at one and the same time, yet without predicating attributes of one nature that properly belong to the other nature in the hypostatic union, without transference of properties between the natures and without confusing or commingling the two natures of Christ or the generation of a tertium quid.
This position is distinguished from and rejects a “strong” version of the communicatio expressed by Lutheran dogmaticians in which attributes are metaphysically transferred from the divine to the human nature.
For this study, the following four propositions will constitute the extra Calvinisticum: (1) Jesus Christ, the God-man, maintained an existence extra carnem during his earthly ministry; (2) after the ascension and session the human body of Christ exists locally in heaven; (3) the presence of Christ to the Christian in the time between his first and second comings is according to his divinity, power, and the Holy Spirit; (4) the communicatio idiomatum within the hypostatic union terminates on the person of Christ, and therefore excludes a sharing of properties between the divine and human natures themselves. When these aspects are present, the full doctrine of the extra is achieved.
To re-present the Reformed doctrine of the extra Calvinisticum, I proceed diachronically in order to elucidate how particular ideas about Christ’s person and work coalesced in specific theologians during the Reformation, tempered by controversy, to produce a larger development of the extra as a constitutive doctrine in the Reformed tradition. I will restrict myself to three points in the history of Reformed christology, with representative figures from each. These three periods offer particular points of controversy or change within the Reformed tradition recognized broadly in the literature on the Reformation: the eucharistic debate and its aftermath (152040s), the second eucharistic controversy or ubiquity controversy (1555–70), and the emergence of a self-conscious scholastic, Reformed theology (1580s). The first two of these are disputes wherein the extra Calvinisticum played a key role as the confrontation between figures of the Lutheran and Reformed traditions forged their rival views of the nature of Christ’s body. The third period witnessed a shift within Reformed theological method, which previous literature on the extra has claimed marks a deformation of the concept. In the periods of the eucharistic and ubiquity controversies, I attend to the christological formulations of the Reformed party. The controversies themselves and the position of the opponents will be explored only insofar as they illuminate the context of the extra Calvinisticum. I have chosen a representative figure or figures for each period who are recognized as influential for the Reformed tradition and who wrote works of significance for Reformed christology: Ulrich Zwingli, Heinrich Bullinger and John Calvin’s Consensus Tigurinus, Peter Martyr Vermigli, and Antoine de la Roche Chandieu. Each figure exercised significant influence in their respective time on Reformed thought and participated directly in Reformed polemics for the extra. Regarding primary texts from these figures, I have chosen works in which christology functions prominently either in an ad hoc fashion, as a stand-alone treatise, or as a doctrinal locus within a confessional document. I contextualize each work within the appropriate polemical, historical, and philosophical setting before analyzing its contribution to the extra Calvinisticum.
In I investigate Zwingli’s early works that demonstrate how he used the extra to support his understanding of Christ’s mediatorial work and to reject transubstantiation through reflection on Christ’s ascension and later against Martin Luther’s doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ’s human body. In I analyze Zwingli and Johannes Oecolampadius’s christological polemics against Luther at the Marburg Colloquy (1529), Zwingli’s mature works, and the doctrine’s reception in the early works of Bullinger and Calvin, culminating in the Consensus Tigurinus (1549). In I investigate the doctrine in Peter Martyr Vermigli’s Dialogue on the Two Natures of Christ (1561) in relation to the christology of Lutheran theologian Johannes Brenz. Vermigli offers further support for the extra from the church fathers and reflection on Christ’s ascension to a local heaven. In the final chapter I look at the doctrine after the shift to a self-consciously scholastic theology in the 1580s by investigating the work of French theologian Antoine de la Roche Chandieu, who is considered one of the fathers of Reformed scholasticism. In De Veritate Humanae Naturae Christi (1585) Chandieu offers an exposition and defense of the Reformed position on the human nature of Christ. Chandieu’s work is distinguished from other treatments of the extra Calvinisticum in both scope and depth.
The rationale of the extra must be understood within the internal logic and concerns of the Reformed tradition in both its inception and its continued significance. The extra arose in the eucharistic controversy primarily over the Swiss Reformation’s emphasis on Christ’s salvific role as the mediator, which revealed a deeper fissure over sacramentology with Luther and his followers. This doctrine then bloomed in the doctrinal locus of christology in the face of the ubiquity controversy between Lutheran and Reformed theologians, motivated by a soteriological concern to preserve the integrity of Christ’s human nature. This reflection on the extra resulted in a distinctive character of Reformed christology, especially regarding understandings of the communicatio idiomatum. This result overturns the previous narrative that prevails in literature on the extra that places Calvin’s articulation at the center.
This study shows the dynamics of the unremembered christological controversy at the root of the divergent traditions of Magisterial Protestantism. Accounting for the divergent theologies of the Lutheran and Reformed traditions, while not reducible to christology, cannot be accomplished without it. Early modern Reformed christology also functions as a case study for the development of doctrine in the postmedieval world. The basic articulation of the extra, that the Son did not leave heaven while incarnate, finds doxological expression as early as Athanasius; however, it is only during the Reformation that this concept is established as a doctrine proper. The Reformed theologians discussed in this book were compelled by controversy with the Lutheran conception of ubiquity to offer a thoroughgoing elaboration and defense of the extra in light of its denial. To accomplish this, they built an edifice of argument by collecting a canon of biblical exegesis, enlisting the church fathers, and plundering the resources of Aristotelian philosophy and scholastic theology.
In the development of the extra in early modern Reformed theology, there emerged not merely a doxological affirmation of Christ’s perpetual existence etiam extra carnem but an account of the incarnation itself with reflection on the Creator/creature distinction, Christ’s mediatorship, the hypostatic union, the communicatio idiomatum, and the nature of heaven. As the doctrinal debate intensified, a stable set of theological questions and objections arose: What is necessary for Christ to be the mediator? How can we accurately predicate attributes to Christ? What does it mean that Christ ascended into heaven? What does it mean for a human body to be in a place? Is heaven itself a place? If so, in what sense? And so on. The Reformed theologians’ reflections on christology therefore offer a window into the manner of doctrinal development and the process of confessional differentiation within early modern Europe. Additionally, by covering the period from Zwingli into early Reformed orthodoxy, I contribute to the contemporary revisionist account of Reformed scholasticism and its relationship to its Reformation forebears.
Richard Price and Michael Gaddis, eds., The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, Translated Texts for Historians 45 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005), 3.204.
In this study I use the terms “extra Calvinisticum,” “so-called extra Calvinisticum,” and “the extra” synonymously to refer to Christ’s continued existence etiam extra carnem and the corollary claims discussed later.
See the following for contemporary discussion of the Reformed-Lutheran divide: Robert Kolb and Carl R. Trueman, Between Wittenberg and Geneva: Lutheran and Reformed Theology in Conversation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017); Jordan Cooper, The Great Divide: A Lutheran Evaluation of Reformed Theology (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2015).
Following the general usage in the literature, I will often refer to Luther’s doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ’s human nature and body with the shorthand “doctrine of ubiquity.”
E. David Willis, Calvin’s Catholic Christology: The Function of the So-Called Extra Calvinisticum in Calvin’s Theology, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought 2 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966); Heiko A. Oberman, “The ‘Extra’ Dimension in the Theology of Calvin,” in The Dawn of the Reformation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986), 234–58; Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, trans. G. W. Bromiley, 2nd ed. (London: T&T Clark, 1956).
See, for instance, current studies focusing on Barth’s view: Myk Habets, “Putting the ‘Extra’ Back into Calvinism,” Scottish Journal of Theology 62, no. 4 (January 1, 2009): 441–56; Darren O. Sumner, “The Twofold Life of the Word: Karl Barth’s Critical Reception of the Extra Calvinisticum,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 15, no. 1 (2013): 42–57; James R. Gordon, The Holy One in Our Midst: An Essay on the Flesh of Christ (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016), passim.
Karl Barth, The Göttingen Dogmatics, ed. Hannelotte Reiffen, trans. Geoffrey William Bromiley, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991), 159.
Karl Barth, Learning Jesus Christ through the Heidelberg Catechism, trans. Shirley C. Guthrie Jr. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1981), 77.
, 181.
See, for example, Christian Link, “Die Entscheidung der Christologie Calvins und ihre theologische Bedeutung: Das sogenannte Extra-Calvinisticum,” Evangelische Theologie 47, no. 2 (1987): 97–119; Christina Aus der Au, “Das Extra Calvinisticum: Mehr als ein reformiertes Extra?,” Theologische Zeitschrift 64, no. 4 (2008): 358–69.
6.
6.
20–21.
11–19.
15–16. For further discussion on this analogy, see Andrew M. McGinnis, The Son of God Beyond the Flesh: A Historical and Theological Study of the Extra Calvinisticum, T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology 29 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 88–89.
, 23.
153.
60.
For recent treatments overturning this paradigm, see Richard A. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Willem J. van Asselt and Eef Dekker, eds., Reformation and Scholasticism: An Ecumenical Enterprise (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2001); Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, 2nd ed., 4 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003); Richard A. Muller, After Calvin: Studies in the Development of a Theological Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Carl R. Trueman and R. Scott Clark, Protestant Scholasticism: Essays in Reassessment (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2005); Maarten Wisse et al., eds., Scholasticism Reformed: Essays in Honour of Willem J. van Asselt, Studies in Theology and Religion, vol. 14 (Leiden: Brill, 2010); Michael A. G. Haykin and Mark Jones, eds., Drawn into Controversie: Reformed Theological Diversity and Debates within Seventeenth-Century British Puritanism (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011); Willem J. van Asselt, Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism, trans. Albert Gootjes (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2011); Richard A. Muller, Calvin and the Reformed Tradition: On the Work of Christ and the Order of Salvation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012).
Oberman, “The ‘Extra’ Dimension in the Theology of Calvin.”
E. David Willis, “Interview of E. David Willis,” by Ray F. Kibler III, November 18, 1993, 1, Graduate Theological Union Digital Library, http://cdm15837.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15837coll1/id/329.
Oberman, “The ‘Extra’ Dimension in the Theology of Calvin,” 255.
See, for example, ;
For example, H. J. Selderhuis, ed., The Calvin Handbook (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 264–67; Charles Partee, The Theology of John Calvin (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 151–53; Byung-Ho Moon, Christ the Mediator of the Law: Calvin’s Christological Understanding of the Law as the Rule of Living and Life-Giving (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2006), 105–11; Stephen Edmondson, Calvin’s Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 210–15; Peter Wyatt, Jesus Christ and Creation in the Theology of John Calvin (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 1996), 31–36.
Paul Helm, John Calvin’s Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 58–92.
Daniel Y. K. Lee, The Holy Spirit as Bond in Calvin’s Thought (Bern: Peter Lang, 2011).
, 4; Werner Krusche, Das Wirken des Heiligen Geistes nach Calvin (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1957), 128.
André Gounelle, “Conjonction ou disjonction de Jésus et du Christ: Tillich entre l’extra calvinisticum et l’intra lutheranum,” Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses 61, no. 3 (1981): 250, my translation. “En s’incarnant le Fils ne s’est pas enfermé, enclos (selon un terme cher à Calvin) dans la personne humaine de Jésus; il ne s’est pas limité à elle; il garde, si je puis dire, un certaine indépendance.”
369.
362–69.
Gounelle, “Conjonction ou disjonction de Jésus et du Christ,” 251.
Gounelle, “Conjonction ou disjonction de Jésus et du Christ,” 257.
.
.
, 15–45.
, 47–72.
, 73.
, 93–123.
For details on this debate, see Isaak August Dorner, History of the Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ, trans. D. W. Simon (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1890), 4:281–306; Franz Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, trans. John Theodore Mueller (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1951), 2:296–301; Joar Haga, Was There a Lutheran Metaphysics? The Interpretation of Communicatio Idiomatum in Early Modern Lutheranism, REFO500 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), 213–69.
, 20–22.
The first use of the term “extra Calvinisticum” by a Reformed theologian comes in . He states, “[T]he Logos, truly present in Jesus’ manhood, is none the less existent outside it.” In a footnote Mackintosh classifies this understanding as the extra: “This is what is meant by illud ‘extra’ Calvinisticum, of which Lutheran divines speak with an approach to horror.” Mackintosh’s use of the term, however, is far from laudatory, arguing that this idea threatens to make the incarnation unreal: “It is not surprising that opponents should at once have rejoined that on these terms the incarnation was made of none effect, since the relation of the Logos to Jesus now resembled that which He bears to other men alike in degree and in kind.” H. R. Mackintosh, The Doctrine of the Person of Jesus Christ (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912), 244, 244n1.
; .
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), 2.13.4. Calvin will further elaborate this “something marvelous” with regard to the ascension in 4.17.30.
“The Heidelberg Catechism,” in Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation, ed. James T. Dennison Jr. (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformed Heritage Books, 2008), 2:780.
Oliver D. Crisp, Divinity and Humanity: The Incarnation Reconsidered, Current Issues in Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 7–8.
Crisp, Divinity and Humanity, 8–9.