C.3 Contributions for Contemporary Doctrinal Retrieval
In 1631, as the Thirty Years’ War raged around them, three Reformed and three Lutheran theologians met at Leipzig. On the table were the same issues that just over a hundred years earlier had occupied Luther and Zwingli at Marburg: Protestant unity in the face of Catholic military threat and the prospect of confessional rapprochement. Over weeks of debate and negotiation, the two parties pronounced agreement on twenty-six of the twenty-eight articles of the Augsburg Invariata. On this occasion, the impasse was not the presence of Christ in the eucharistic elements, as at Marburg. The confessional parties concurred that “in the spiritual partaking not only the power, benefit, and effect, but also the being and the substance of the body and blood of Jesus Christ are partaken in the Lord’s Supper as it takes place here in the world.” Thus it seemed the fault line over eucharistic presence had been overcome, the only remaining point of contention being the question of the eating for those who lacked faith—the manducatio impiorum. Yet the Leipzig Colloquy laid bared the deeper division between the confessional bodies that the Marburg Articles had passed over in silence. This fissure was over the hypostatic union and its implications for the body of Christ. After laying down twelve points of agreement on Christ’s person, the Reformed demurred:
One thing only they [the Reformed] steadfastly deny and hold to be contrary to the Holy Scripture—that Christ, according to the manhood (or according to His human nature and being; or the body of Christ according to its substance and being in some invisible manner) is in all places and with all creatures, either in the state of humiliation or in the state of exaltation, either because of the personal union or because of the session on the right hand of God.
The extra Calvinisticum, here expressed in its negative form as the rejection of ubiquity, was the immovable point, and unlike the Marburg Articles the importance of this division was clearly stated and brought to light. Despite over one hundred years of polemics and theological developments as well as the pressing demands of a war-torn Europe, the person of Christ and especially the nature of his body remained the main cause behind the parting of ways between the Lutheran and Reformed traditions.
The early work of Ulrich Zwingli highlights the emergence of the extra from his understanding of the saving significance of Christ as mediator and of the ascension. The historic meeting at Marburg demonstrates how the extra emerged and developed through polemical engagement with Luther and how different understandings of the place of reason, the interpretation of Scripture, and the nature of God’s power contributed to the christological divide between Luther and the Swiss. The extra was then perpetuated by the work of Bullinger and Calvin and confessionalized in the Consensus Tigurinus, which disseminated the doctrine throughout the Reformed world and represented the definitive break between the Lutheran and Reformed wings of the Reformation as a result of the extra and the view of eucharistic presence that it supports. The Consensus led to renewed polemics over the Supper, which quickly moved firmly into the locus of christology, as proponents of the doctrines of ubiquity and the extra vied for Protestant support. Peter Martyr Vermigli took up this challenge with his Dialogue against Johannes Brenz through an exposition of Chalcedonian logic of the extra and further support from the church fathers and a scripturally modified, Aristotelian cosmology. In the period of early Reformed orthodoxy Chandieu further supported the Reformed doctrine in his work De veritate. Chandieu’s treatise revealed that the scholastic method, rather than distorting the doctrine, built on the same foundations and produced a rigorous account of the extra based on the principia of Scripture. Chandieu developed his scholastic account in dialogue with the church fathers to address advancing Lutheran polemics.
Rather than being a peripheral or esoteric question, the extra rests at the heart of the division between the Lutheran and Reformed traditions in the sixteenth century. In fact, it is this dispute over the nature of Christ’s humanity that represented the impassible divide between the traditions as they developed over the course of the sixteenth century even more than the dispute over the Lord’s Supper, which can be seen as both the site and the product of the christological divergence. The formulation arose from a complex set of doctrinal concerns and had ramifications for various aspects of the theological development of each tradition, ranging from concepts of the sacraments, christology, anthropology, cosmology, theological method, and so on.
The debate over the extra and ubiquity revealed a deep theological division between the two leading magisterial Protestant traditions, which would exercise great influence on each tradition’s development beyond the sixteenth century. The divergent paths of the Reformed and Lutheran traditions on christology were not an isolated concept but overflowed into various theological, philosophical, and practical topics. To demonstrate the usefulness of this study for understanding later developments and to support the centrality of the extra in intra-Protestant dispute, I will offer three brief case studies that demonstrate the far-reaching consequences of the christological debate beyond christology. First, the commitment to the finitude of Christ’s humanity led the Reformed to a different understanding of theology itself through the discussion of the knowledge of God accessible to Christ’s human mind, the theologia unionis. Second, each tradition’s understanding of Christ’s body contributed to different concepts of bodies themselves and to the confessionalization of physics in early modern universities. Third, the different concepts of the presence of Christ’s body resulted in different eucharistic ritual practices.
From the logic of the extra Calvinisticum, Reformed theologians drew conclusions regarding the knowledge of Christ’s human mind, the theologia unionis, which had ramifications on their understanding of the telos of theology itself. The question of the theologia unionis asks what type of knowledge of God Christ’s human mind possesses according to its union with the divine nature. The Reformed scholastic theologians distinguished between archetypal and ectypal knowledge of God. Archetypal knowledge of God is God’s own self-knowledge, which is complete, infinite, perfect, and one with his nature. Franciscus Junius, one of the first Reformed theologians to make this distinction, defines archetypal knowledge as “the divine wisdom of divine matters. Indeed, we stand in awe before this and do not seek to trace it out.” On the other hand, humans possess only ectypal knowledge of God through his revelation of himself. This ectypal knowledge applies both to theology in via, or theology of the pilgrim (viator), and in patria, the perfected human knowledge of God in humanity’s final state. Ectypal knowledge is the subject of our theology, which is true only inasmuch as it reflects God’s archetypal knowledge of himself. As Herman Bavinck explains, “The distinction contains the true idea that the ectypal knowledge of God that is granted to creatures by revelation is not the absolute self-knowledge of God but the knowledge of God as it has been accommodated to and made fit for the finite consciousness.” Following the medieval scholastics, Reformed theologians reflected on the nature of knowledge that Christ’s human nature/mind possessed, which is held to be the proper telos at which human theological thinking should aim. Is this knowledge ectypal or archetypal?
The Reformed answer to this question is predicated on their understanding of the hypostatic union and the insistence that the human nature does not partake of divine attributes in such a way that a comingling of natures occurs. As the extra expresses the effect of Christ’s two natures with regard to space and locality, the theologia unionis attempts to express the epistemological implications of the hypostatic union. Junius defines the theologia unionis as follows: “[T]he theology of union is the whole wisdom of divine matters, communicated with Christ as God-man, that is, as the Word made flesh, according to His humanity.” This knowledge is “most absolute according to the mode of a created nature.” Thus the Reformed followed through the christological implications of the extra, which have been seen since Zwingli, such that a true human growth and development and true ignorance is possible for the human nature.
Thus the person of Christ has both archetypal knowledge, as the eternal Son of the Father, and the highest conceivable form of ectypal knowledge:
And so in Christ our Redeemer the mode of communicating theological wisdom is twofold: One is divine, according to His deity. The other is quasi-divine according to His humanity. This quasi-divine mode, moreover, is on the one hand divine in its own eternal foundation and remaining eternal in the unity of his person. And on the other hand it is quasi-divine or very close to the divine, according to its own manner. For both had to exist simultaneously in Christ our mediator, so that by this arrangement He could reconcile and unite divine with things human, reconcile God to men, and lead men to God.
Junius here is moving from the same Chalcedonian logic that underpinned the extra: the single person of Christ possesses the infinite perfection of the eternal Son and the finite perfection of humanity. This theologia unionis is the foundation of all proper creaturely knowledge of God and makes it possible, since the theologia unionis’s final cause, the end for which it exists, is “the illumination of those who have been created according to God’s image.” Therefore, the Reformed saw Christ’s role as mediator extending beyond salvation to all the ways of knowing God, which continues into the eschaton. All creaturely knowledge of the Creator flows from the one created nature that has been perfectly united with God without losing its creatureliness. Thus the theologia unionis, “in Christ is the mother of” both the knowledge of God on the earthly pilgrimage (theologia viatorum) and the knowledge of the glorified saints in heaven (theologia beatorum).
The Reformed doctrine of the theologia unionis further separated the Reformed and Lutheran traditions with regard to theological prolegomena. The Lutheran orthodox, based on their definition of the communicatio idiomatum and especially the genus maiestaticum, held that the full infinite knowledge of the eternal Son is communicated to the human mind of Christ in an infinite manner. The seventeenth-century Lutheran theologian Abraham Calov (1612–1685), while commenting on Colossians 2:3, states, “According to Christ’s human nature, by virtue of the personal union, all these treasures [of wisdom and knowledge] have been hidden in Him. Hence Christ according to his human nature, in virtue of the personal union, is omniscient with a complete and truly divine omniscience.” By this doctrine, the Lutheran orthodox sought to secure the certainty of the church’s theology, which not only flows from the fountain of divine truth but also is divine truth. As Robert Preus summarizes, “The deep concern of the Lutherans, therefore, in the whole discussion of original and derived theology is to show that the church possesses and teaches doctrina divina.” Therefore, because the theologia unionis is the final cause of all theology, Lutheran orthodox dogmatics saw theology tending toward archetypal knowledge of God mediated through Christ. Lutheran theologians argued that as a result of the theologia unionis Reformed christology “will likely result in the false conception of a theology that has definite limitations, is finite and not grounded sufficiently in God’s Self-manifestation.” As Willem van Asselt concludes, “One is justified to say that the results of Reformed and Lutheran christology played a significant role in shaping the form and contents of the [sic] prolegomena. Christology articulates the presuppositions and approaches to theology in both Reformed and Lutheran orthodoxy.” Therefore, the logic of the extra eventually extended beyond christology and comes to define the ends of theological prolegomena itself.
The doctrine of the extra had implications beyond the bounds of what would be generally considered theological discourse. Because the extra and the Lutheran doctrine of ubiquity had necessary implications for the nature of bodies and cosmology, these two theological positions affected the development of physics at the universities founded according to the principles of each tradition in the early modern period. This gave rise to what has been termed “confessional physics.” Cees Leijenhorst and Christoph Lüthy note the important substratum of Aristotelian physics that underlies the eucharistic controversy between the Lutheran and Reformed: “Aristotelian concepts and arguments played a crucial role in these controversies. Notably the concepts of body or matter, and of place or space, were of paramount importance in these early battles.” Yet Leijenhorst and Lüthy are mistaken to locate the difference exclusively in the respective understandings of eucharistic presence without acknowledging the foundational christological differences that both propelled the doctrines of eucharistic presence and applied pressure to their physics.
One of the driving factors for the development of physics within the confessional traditions revolved around the issues arising from the extra. Of particular importance is the argument over the nature of bodies and place. As we have seen, the Reformed argued—following Augustine—that the quality of being-in-a-place is an essential attribute of a body. Lutheran critics, however, often responded with the claim from Aristotelian physics that the universe itself cannot be said to be in a place yet is a body. Both Luther and Brenz made use of this argument, and it was often replicated during the period of Protestant orthodoxy. According to Aristotle’s concept of place, a thing is in a place only insofar as it is surrounded by another medium that marks the boundary of the object, which is sometimes called the container view of space. Since the universe is all that exists, there is nothing outside of it to denote its boundary, and therefore it is a body but is not in a place. The Lutherans reasoned from this that Christ’s body could likewise be a body and yet lack a definite boundary. Thus according to Lutheran thought, the property of being-in-a-place is not essential to being a body. This line of argument resulted in a definition of bodily physics in general that corresponded to the doctrine of ubiquity. Leijenhorst and Lüthy show how the confessional questions of whether the universe can be said to be in a place, and whether place belongs to the essence of a body, were determining factors for many early modern natural philosophers.
The dispute over faith versus reason that divided the Reformed from the Lutherans in questions regarding christology functioned similarly in the field of physics. The opposition of faith and reason can be seen in Leijenhorst and Lüthy’s assessment of the work of the Lutheran thinker Conrad Meisner: “In a stunning outburst of fideism amidst hundreds of pages of philosophising, Meisner declares that all philosophical talk about locality, place and suchlike cannot capture the mystery of Christ’s presence, but that faith alone can help us here.” The Reformed concern to maintain that the quality of being-in-a-place was essential to all bodies, however, led many Calvinist thinkers substantially to change or to abandon Aristotelian concepts of place. Many Calvinist natural philosophers and theologians, therefore, opted for Julius Scaliger’s concept of space that focused on the concept of void and “three-dimensional space as the place (locus) of all corporeal entities.” While it would be too simplistic to claim the doctrine of the extra determined the Reformed understanding of physics or vice versa for the Lutherans and ubiquity, the theological, philosophical, and cosmological implication of these christological positions influenced what a successful theory of space and place could include. As Leijenhorst summarizes:
Historical reality is far too rich and varied in order to speak of “a” Lutheran versus “a” Calvinist position with respect to the concepts of place and space. Nevertheless, we can note some important structural differences. For most Lutheran philosophers up until the end of the seventeenth century, any concept of place or space had to fulfill one important criterion: it should leave open the possibility for natural bodies not to be circumscribed by a finite, definite place. In other words: it should allow for illocalitas as a viable concept in natural philosophy.
The issues of the extra thus exercised surprising influence beyond the traditional theological realm and reshaped how Reformed theologians viewed the world itself.
The issues surrounding the extra, ubiquity, and the question of Christ’s presence had implications on the ceremonial eucharistic practices of the Lutheran and Reformed churches, which likewise led to controversy. One example of this effect of the extra on liturgical practice can be seen in the controversy surrounding the eucharistic liturgy of the second Book of Common Prayer in 1552. Largely composed by Thomas Cranmer, this edition, written during England’s further reformation under King Edward VI, still left open the practice of kneeling at the communion rail. Those who sought a more extensive reform of the English Church, such as John Knox, rejected this practice. Preaching before Edward VI’s court in autumn of 1552, Knox railed against the practice of kneeling and caused uproar. The reforming party would prevail with the inclusion of the Black Rubric, so-called because it was inserted into the document days before its final publication and, therefore, was not in red ink like the other rubrics in the text. This Black Rubric did not prohibit kneeling but reframed the act as one of gratitude to God and rejected any adoration of the eucharistic elements. The author, likely Cranmer, bases the reinterpretation of the ritual act on the logic of the extra that Christ’s body is in heaven and cannot be in multiple locations:
Whereas it is ordered in the book of common prayer, in the administration of the Lord’s Supper, that the Communicants kneeling should receive the holy Communion: which thing being well meant, for a signification of the humble and grateful acknowledging of the benefits of Christ, given unto the worthy receiver, and to avoid the profanation and disorder, which about the holy Communion might else ensue: lest the same kneeling might be thought or taken otherwise, we do declare that it is not meant thereby, that any adoration is done, or ought to be done, either unto the Sacramental bread or wine there bodily received, or unto any real and essential presence there being of Christ’s natural flesh and blood. For as concerning the sacramental bread and wine, they remain still in their very natural substances, and therefore may not be adored, for that were Idolatry to be abhorred of all faithful Christians. And as concerning the natural body and blood of our Saviour Christ, they are in heaven and not here. For it is against the truth of Christ’s true natural body, to be in more places than in one at one time.
The Black Rubric, and the christological rejection of corporeal presence it supported, would be a point of contention throughout the next century of debate over the Eucharist in the English church. For our purposes, this incident reveals both the spread of the concept of the extra beyond the continent and its import for liturgical practice. The doctrine of the extra, likely mediated to the English church through Bucer and Vermigli, would be one of the definitive factors in England’s adoption of a Reformed rather than Lutheran view of the Supper.
Another example of such a debate was the conflict over the fractio panis, the practice of ritual breaking of the bread in celebrating the Lord’s Supper, which distinguished the eucharistic ceremony of the Lutheran and Reformed traditions and issued into controversy in Brandenburg in the early seventeenth century. In developing his liturgy of the Lord’s Supper, Luther omitted the medieval practice of breaking the bread, which he saw as a ritual representation of the doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice. This act was retained, however, by many Reformed pastors because Christ himself broke the bread at the Last Supper. As the two camps entered into conflict in the Holy Roman Empire, the fractio panis took on the additional significance of an enacted polemic against Lutheran doctrines of corporeal presence in the seventeenth century.
The practice of breaking the bread would take on this additional importance in Brandenburg during its so-called Second Reformation. The controversy heated up after the conversion of the Elector John Sigismund, who on Christmas Day 1613 declared his public conversion to Calvinism by taking communion according to the Reformed manner in Holy Trinity Cathedral. The public confession explaining his conversion—ghostwritten by Martin Füssell—presented the person of Christ and the extra as one of foundational differences between the Lutheran and Reformed traditions. This distinction in turn provided a rationale for fracture:
Christ is with us and remains until the end of the world according to His infinite nature, supported by His divine majesty and strength, but not with respect to the nature in which He went into heaven and from thence will come again which even in the highest exaltation cannot be everywhere present with respect to its essence, without the destruction of its own character since ubiquity is only attributable to the divine nature.
Because Christ has ascended and there is no corporeal, physical, or local presence in the elements, and Christ is said to have broken the bread at the Last Supper, fractio panis ought to be practiced. Additionally, this act was a ritual polemic against the Lutheran doctrine of ubiquity. By breaking the bread, the Reformed were signaling to the people that Christ’s presence is not corporeal. This ceremonial act also indicated a protest to the Lutheran doctrine of ubiquity. As summarized by Bodo Niachan, Füssell asserts, “ ‘Ubiquity’ is like a Sauerteig, or poison, that eventually will destroy the entire gospel.” Thus in the Brandenburg fractio panis debate, the foundational soteriological motivation for the extra is signified by liturgical performance.
These case studies demonstrate that the controversy over the extra issued into theological developments well beyond the locus of christology and eucharistic doctrine, where it was initially deployed. For the historical understanding of the confessional divide and confessionalization of the Reformed and Lutheran traditions, the extra is not a piece of theological trivia. Instead the extra Calvinisticum represents one of the deepest fissures between the traditions and had wide ramifications. Therefore, the affirmation or rejection of the extra not only distinguished Protestant traditions on the Lord’s Supper but also underlay other doctrinal, philosophical, and liturgical demarcations. Acknowledging this point will clarify and deepen our understanding of Lutheran-Reformed relations and polemics from the sixteenth century to the present day.
What can understanding the historical development of the extra Calvinisticum contribute to contemporary discussions of the doctrine and attempts to retrieve it? The fact that the past decade has witnessed the first monographs on the extra since work, as well as increased engagement with the theme in scholarly journals, demonstrates the growing interest in the extra. These projects have often proceeded in the mode of theologies of retrieval and analytic theology. For instance, Myk Habets proposes that the extra should be retrieved as a firewall against modern passibilist doctrines of God. On the other hand, James Gordon in The Holy One in Our Midst offers a contemporary defense of the extra using analytic method and establishing the doctrine biblically through temple christology. This recent work, however, is largely disconnected from detailed study of the original exposition of the doctrine in the sixteenth century. If the extra is to be placed in the service of contemporary dogmatic and constructive theology, then the doctrinal exposition within the Reformed tradition is an essential partner in the conversation. As John Webster notes, projects of theological retrieval thrive when historical study is used to deepen theological understanding beyond the constraints of present-oriented urgency: “Historical work enables theologies of retrieval to place, interpret, and in some measure transcend the constraints of modern theology by unearthing the neglect and disorder by which they are imposed. . . . And this, in turn, necessitates a further historical task, namely the reclamation of tracts of the Christian past as a resource for present constructive work.” Thomas McCall, who argues that analytic theology is an example of doctrinal retrieval, has also noted this need for careful historical study as a necessary component of contemporary analytic theology: “Put baldly, one must really know the past—and not just a shadowy simulacrum of our own preferred positions that we call ‘the tradition’—in order to reclaim it.” I hope that this historical study will help to dispel some of the shadows surrounding the history of the extra and can assist the contemporary reception of the doctrine by revealing the theological resources used to formulate and defend it in the sixteenth century and offer fruitful paths for future theologizing. The following are a few suggestions for how the history of the extra can contribute to such a task.
First, I have shown that many of the modern concerns that swirl around the doctrine were not present in its early formulation. For instance, questions revolving around natural theology, the nature of revelation, the relationship between the economic and immanent Trinity, and the relation of the ensarkos and asarkos result from modern theological questions, which have arisen largely due to Barth’s discussion of the extra and the contemporary concerns over perfect being theology. Not that the extra lacks implications for these issues or that they are beyond the doctrine’s scope. If one desires to accurately and faithfully retrieve the doctrine from the Reformed tradition, however, one must be clear-sighted about what is present or absent in the earlier formulations of the doctrine. The Reformed theologians in the sixteenth century derived the extra through scriptural exegesis, especially reflection on the implications of Christ’s ascension into heaven, and the nature of the hypostatic union, and did not have in mind the contemporary concerns that would come into prominence only with the changes and challenges of twentieth-century theology. This should serve as a warning that retrieval projects of the extra should avoid anachronistic readings of Calvin and his contemporaries and carefully distinguish the positions being retrieved from the operations on and developments of the doctrine through the act of retrieval.
For instance, Willis makes claims regarding Calvin’s use of the extra and natural theology while attempting to address issues arising from the Barth-Brunner debate, around which Willis explicitly frames the issue. But if one investigates Willis’s arguments closely, his claim that Calvin in his own reasoning connected the concept of the extra with natural theology seems tenuous. Rather than offering Calvin’s position, Willis presents his own theological pastiche. To conduct a retrieval project of the extra with integrity and precision vis-à-vis contemporary theological disputes, one must recognize where the historical theological reconstruction ends and the systematic or dogmatic construction begins.
Second, I have documented the biblical and exegetical support for the sixteenth-century doctrine of the extra that contemporary discussion largely neglects. James Gordon repeatedly laments the lack of biblical justification for the doctrine of the extra within the modern theological literature. He claims that “one of the most significant criteria is whether the doctrine has biblical warrant, that is, whether the doctrine is either explicitly stated in the contents of Scripture or implicitly found in the judgments of the biblical authors. However, this criterion in relation to the extra Calvinisticum has been almost entirely ignored.” To overcome this apparent paucity, Gordon offers an argument from the current trend of temple christology. This criticism of a lack of biblical argument, however, holds only if one restricts oneself to contemporary constructive utilizations and historical descriptions of the extra. The sixteenth-century Reformed theologians reflected on various biblical texts to promote the extra. Chandieu is a clear example of this through his use of scriptural principia ordered around the whole redemptive-historical career of Christ. The sixteenth-century appeals to statements of Christ’s absence in the present age as well as to reflections on the ascension and session are especially significant and worthy of further study.
My study of the historical development of the extra calls for greater reflection on the ascension for theological articulations of the extra. While the doctrine of the extra Calvinisticum might seem arcane, it naturally arises from a rather simple question provoked by the biblical witness and the Christian tradition: Where is Christ’s body now? If the incarnation is not to be understood as transitory or temporary, as the tradition of conciliar christology maintains, the whither of the ascension, the where of the flesh, and the thence of the second coming must be addressed. These questions, as seen from Zwingli onward, must lead one to reflection on Christ’s human nature and the hypostatic union.
Perhaps one reason for the extra’s neglect by many theologians and within periods of church history lies in a failure to reflect on the meaning, purpose, and significance of the creedal phrase “he ascended into heaven.” In much contemporary work on the extra, this concrete event of Christ’s earthly life has been entirely neglected. For instance, Gordon’s lengthy argument for the extra makes no reference to the ascension; Habets’s argument for reclaiming the extra does not even mention this act of Christ; and Darren Sumner passes over without comment the event in the standard litany of resurrection, ascension, and session. The neglect of the ascension is not unique to studies on the extra but is a blind spot in most discussions of christology. Contemporary arguments for and dogmatic elaborations of the extra as well as Christ’s person and work should follow the lead of the sixteenth-century Reformed theologians and reflect deeply on what it means that Christ has ascended to heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father.
The previous two points arising from this study lead to a third, which ought to allay contemporary anxieties concerning the extra on the basis of foundational metaphysical considerations. One critique raised against the extra by Barth and those who follow him is that it relies on a doctrine of God that is not sufficiently modified by christology. This dovetails with a more recent criticism that the traditional doctrine of the extra is beholden to “perfect being theology.” Gordon raises this issue plainly in The Holy One in Our Midst and attempts to argue that while the traditional doctrine likely falls prey to this critique, the doctrine can be reconstructed biblically by utilizing temple christology. As I have shown, however, one need not grant that the extra falls prey to these criticisms in the sixteenth century. The thinkers of the Reformation era did not construct the extra from some sort of “perfect being theology” but rather reflected on the concrete nature of humanity, the event of the ascension, and the proper articulation of Chalcedonian christology to preserve the soteriological significance of the mediator.
Whether sixteenth-century proponents of the extra succumbed to perfect being theology is almost wholly dependent on the term’s definition. The extra does presuppose certain qualities of the Triune God, such as that he exists a se and is infinite, eternal, and omnipresent, as well as certain qualities of human nature, such as finitude, spatial boundedness, and spatial locatability. If understanding God in these terms qualifies as “perfect being theology” then the extra cannot avoid this label without abandoning central tenets of the doctrine of God as expressed in the Reformed tradition. This would mean that another doctrine of God would need to be devised. This seems to be the route taken by Sumner in his attempt to preserve a qualified doctrine of an extra in Barth despite Barth’s repeated and strenuous rejections of the doctrine. Webster, however, has argued that omnipresence can be derived from revelation and not perfect being theology. In fact, Webster argues that the entire line of theological critique based on perfect being theology is not applicable to the early modern period at all. As Webster argues, “The antecedent of ‘perfect being theology’ is thus not the pre-modern theology of the church, but rather the development from the seventeenth century onwards of a systematic natural theology, in which the divine attributes are deduced from a conception of God which is itself established as part of the project of giving a theistic explanation of the world.” If Webster is correct, and I believe that he is, Gordon’s claim that the extra has yet to be biblically established is historically myopic. Moreover, Gordon’s failure to engage with any primary sources in the origination of the doctrine other than Calvin further weakens his argument. In his concern to ground the extra biblically, he in fact overlooks the main locus of reflection for the doctrine in the early modern period and the concrete event that gives it shape and grounds it in redemptive history—the ascension of Christ.
This historical study also should draw contemporary theological attention to the soteriological import of the extra. As I have shown, the nature of Christ as mediator and the integrity of the human nature of Christ were the driving theological motivations behind the sixteenth-century theologians’ arguments for the extra. Both of these issues are largely absent from the modern constructive literature on the doctrine. Likely because of the influence of modern kenotic christology, more attention has been given to guarding the divine nature from diminution than the preservation of the true humanity of Christ. The Reformed tradition takes its starting point from the nature of the gospel and what must be true of Christ if he is the mediator between God and humanity and whether his death on the cross secures our salvation. Reflection on the soteriological foundation of the doctrine of the extra could also be fruitfully extended to questions of the ascension. Possible areas of reflection would be the relationship of the extra to the Reformed configuration of nature and grace as well as questions of theosis and deification, which are currently in vogue.
The extra Calvinisticum can stem from the simplest of questions: Where is Christ’s body now? Yet answering this in a complete manner sends one headlong into the mysteries of the Trinity and incarnation and contemplation of Christ as Emmanuel and the gap of the already/not yet age. In the extra the mystery of the incarnation is in full view. The humility and grandeur of the eternal Son and Galilean carpenter should lead to the confession of the unfathomable otherness of God and yet his intimate closeness to humanity through Christ. The extra places this tension firmly before us, eliciting from the Christian both contemplation and praise. Even after thorough and rigorous examination, we will not likely surpass Calvin’s exclamation: “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.”
For the context and outcomes of the Leipzig Colloquy (1631), see Bodo Nischan, “Reformed Irenicism and the Leipzig Colloquy of 1631,” Central European History 9, no. 1 (1976): 3–26.
“Leipzig Colloquy (1631),” in Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., trans. Peter Van Der Schaaf (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformed Heritage Books, 2008), 4:175.
Although the agreement on this point likely stemmed from a double-reading technique or strategic vagueness, such as advocated by Bucer for the Wittenberg Concord, without the deeper theological issues being resolved. The Leipzig document would not have any ultimate effect on Reformed and Lutheran unity.
“Leipzig Colloquy,” 4:173–74.
Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1985), 304.
For a helpful introduction to these categories, see Willem J. Van Asselt, “The Fundamental Meaning of Theology: Archetypal and Ectypal Theology in Seventeenth-Century Reformed Thought,” Westminster Theological Journal 64, no. 2 (September 2002): 319–35.
Franciscus Junius, A Treatise on True Theology with the Life of Franciscus Junius, trans. David C. Noe (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2014), 107.
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend 4 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 1:214.
For an extended discussion of the theoloia unionis in the Reformed orthodoxy, see 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 Academics, 2003), 1:248–55; Asselt, “The Fundamental Meaning of Theology,” 330–32.
, 124.
, 126.
See, for instance, Ulrich in Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., trans. S. M. Jackson (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformed Heritage Books, 2008), 1:115.
, 126.
, 125.
, 129. Further reflection on this topic would likely have allayed Barth’s fears that the extra opens up the possibility of knowledge of God unmediated by Christ ensarkos. The knowledge of the Incarnate Word according to his humanity is the perfect object of theology such that through the Spirit and union of believers with Christ the archetypal knowledge of God is mediated to the ectypal capacity of humanity. Muller summarizes the Reformed Scholastic position: “The theology of union is the foundation of the theology of all who are in Christ, the basis for and substance of the vision of God ultimately bestowed upon believers in their final union with Christ.” , 1:255.
For discussion of the theologia unionis in Lutheranism, see Robert D. Preus, The Theology of Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 2 vols. (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1970), 1:113–14, 167–73.
Calov, Systema, Vii, 359, cited in , 1:168.
, 1:172.
, 1:172.
Asselt, “The Fundamental Meaning of Theology,” 332.
Christoph Lüthy, “The Confessionalization of Physics: Heresies, Facts and the Travails of the Republic of Letters,” in Heterodoxy in Early Modern Science and Religion, ed. John Brooke and Ian Maclean (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 81–114.
C. H. Leijenhorst and C. H. Lüthy, “The Erosion of Aristotelianism: Confessional Physics in Early Modern Germany and the Dutch Republic,” in The Dynamics of Aristotelian Natural Philosophy from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century, ed. C. H. Leijenhorst, C. H. Lüthy, and Johannes M. M. H. Thijssen, Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy and Science 5 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 383.
Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 50–71.
Leijenhorst and Lüthy, “The Erosion of Aristotelianism,” 392–93.
Leijenhorst and Lüthy, “The Erosion of Aristotelianism,” 387.
Monist 84, no. 4 (October 2001): 524.
Iain R Torrance, “A Particular Reformed Piety: John Knox and the Posture at Communion,” Scottish Journal of Theology 67, no. 4 (2014): 401.
For an overview of the controversy surrounding the Black Rubric, see Diarmaid MacCulloch, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 525–30.
Modern English of the rubric quoted from Gordon Jeanes, “Cranmer and Common Prayer,” in The Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer: A Worldwide Survey, ed. Charles Hefling and Cynthia Shattuck (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 29.
For the development of Cranmer’s eucharistic thought away from the Lutheran to a Reformed doctrine and its effect on the English Reformation, see Peter Newman Brooks, Thomas Cranmer’s Doctrine of the Eucharist: An Essay in Historical Development, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillian Academic, 1992).
Bodo Nischan, “The ‘Fractio Panis’: A Reformed Communion Practice in Late Reformation Germany,” in Lutheran and Calvinists in the Age of Confessionalism, Variorum Collected Studies Series (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1999), 17–29.
Thomas H. Schattauer, “From Sacrifice to Supper: Eucharistic Practice in the Lutheran Reformation,” in A Companion to the Eucharist in the Reformation, ed. Lee Palmer Wandel, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition (Boston: Brill, 2014), 216.
Bodo Nischan, Prince, People, and Confession: The Second Reformation in Brandenburg (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994).
Martin Füssel, “The Confession of John Sigismund (1614),” in Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., trans. Christina Munson and R. Sherman, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformed Heritage Books, 2008), 4:75–87.
Nischan, “The ‘Fractio Panis,’ ” 26.
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; 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); James R. Gordon, The Holy One in Our Midst: An Essay on the Flesh of Christ (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016).
443.
.
John Webster, “Theologies of Retrieval,” in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology, ed. John Webster, Kathryn Tanner, and Iain Torrance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 589–90.
Thomas H. McCall, An Invitation to Analytic Christian Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015), 86.
For an exposition of many of these contemporary concerns, see , 151–204.
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), 101–4.
, 206, passim.
, 115–49. At times in this section, Gordon seems to privilege temple christology over other strands of biblical witness to the incarnation. This leads him to offer anachronistic critiques of Calvin for failing to thoroughly develop a concept that has gained traction only in the past forty years as a site of christological reflection. See, for instance, 123.
; ; 47.
For contemporary studies on the ascension that would be worth bringing into conversation with the extra and its implications, see (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1976), 106–58; Peter Toon, The Ascension of Our Lord (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1984); Douglas Farrow, Ascension and Ecclesia: On the Significance of the Doctrine of the Ascension for Ecclesiology and Christian Cosmology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, Eerdmans, 1999); Douglas B. Farrow, Ascension Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2011); Gerrit Dawson, Jesus Ascended: The Meaning of Christ’s Continuing Incarnation (London: T&T Clark, 2004).
, 108–14.
John Webster, “The Immensity and Ubiquity of God,” in Confessing God (London: T&T Clark International, 2005), 89. While Gordon acknowledges Webster’s attempt to argue for divine omnipresence without perfect being theology, he ignores the fact that Webster himself rejects the claim that the perfect being theology critique has any purchase on early modern Reformed theology. , 109–12.
; .
George D. Dragas, “Exchange or Communication of Properties and Deification: Antidosis or Communicatio Idiomatum and Theosis,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 43, nos. 1–4 (1998): 377–99; Alasdair I. C. Heron, “Communicatio Idiomatum and Deificatio of Human Nature: A Reformed Perspective,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 43, nos. 1–4 (1998): 367–76; Bruce McCormack, “Participation in God, Yes, Deification, No: Two Modern Protestant Responses to an Ancient Question,” in Orthodox and Modern: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 235–60.
ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), 2.13.4.