17. Why must he also be true God?
That by the power of His Godhead He might bear in His manhood the burden of God’s wrath,1 and so obtain for2 and restore to us righteousness and life.3
1 Isaiah 53:8. Acts 2:24. 2 John 3:16. Acts 20:28. 3 I John 1:2.
Already in the NT the church faced one of its greatest and deadliest heresies: the denial of Jesus’ humanity. The Greeks had room for men becoming gods and human-like behavior among by the gods but they had no room for a God-Man. Many of them had a great deal of trouble with the goodness of creation. They were deeply suspicious of the physical, material world. Many of them tended to regard the physical, material world as inherently corrupt and corrupting merely because of its materiality. The idea of God becoming man was, therefore, impossible, because it was mean that God had become corrupt. They associated the purity a god or the gods with their immateriality. This sort of dualism in being (ontological) between the good immaterial (spiritual) world and the evil material world probably lay behind some of the difficulties in the Colossian congregation that Paul addressed. Certainly the congregations in Asia Minor (central Turkey) to which the Apostle John wrote were troubled by this sort of false dualism (see 1 John 1:1-3; 4:2-3). For John it is “anti-Christ” to deny that Jesus is true God and true man.
Throughout post-Apostolic Christian history the church has continually been troubled by this great heresy. The apologists of the second century (100-200) addressed this error in various forms sometimes lumped under the heading of “Gnosticism.” In the high middle ages a sect, the Albigensians, arose who denied or downplayed Jesus’ humanity. Many of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists taught a theory that Christ had a “celestial” humanity thereby denying the true consubstantiality (i.e., sharing our human substance) between us and Christ. Perhaps the most central conflict between the confessional Reformed and Lutheran theologians and churches was the question of the nature of Jesus’ humanity. It seemed to the Reformed that the Lutheran doctrine of the genus maiestaticus, i.e., that Jesus’ humanity belonged to a class of one, threatened the doctrine of Jesus’ true humanity . They affirmed that he was truly human but that the communication of the divinity with the humanity is such that his humanity is also quite distinct from ours. Thus, the Lutherans affirmed that Christ could know, in his humanity, what God knows the way he alone knows it (theologia archetypa) whereas the Reformed affirmed more clearly that his true humanity is consubstantial with us such that even in his humanity he knows only what humans can know (theologia ectypa). To the Reformed it seemed that the Lutheran Christology verged on Eutychianism (the confusion of the human and the divine natures) and, of course, to the Lutherans, the Reformed were nothing but crytpo-Nestorians (dividing the two natures). We say, however, that we are Chalcedonian (451 AD):
Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the fathers has handed down to us.
It is with these categories in mind that the Heidelberg Catechism says what it does about the Son bearing in his humanity the wrath of God against sin. We need a substitute and he must be like us in every respect, sin excepted (Heb 4). This is why we speak of “consubstantiality.” He must be one of us. He cannot merely appear to be like us. Why not? Because it was one of us, created in righteousness and true holiness, who sinned, who violated God’s law and incurred the greatest penalty.
According to Scripture, as understood and confessed in the ancient church and by the Reformed churches, the justice of God is such that it must punish disobedience. This is the nature of justice even in our world. If a criminal is obviously, manifestly guilty but not punished we experience outrage. How can that be? If we know what justice is, why do we struggle so with the notion of divine wrath? We do because the modern world has been in revolt against the notion of divine justice (except when it suits us) for two centuries or more. Humans, of course, have been in revolt against God’s justice since the fall but never before, at least since the ascension, have whole societies been at war institutionally with the notion of divine justice. We invoke it (e.g., “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord….”) when it agrees with us but we deny it when it doesn’t.
Scripture testifies repeatedly to the existence and righteousness of God’s judgment. The strongest evidence for it is that Jesus taught it (e.g., Matt 5:22) and more than that he submitted himself to it. How can Jesus be the great moral teacher modernity has tried to make him out to be if he accepted and taught the existence of divine justice and wrath against sin and sinners? If he was a great teacher, as the modernists want us to think, then wasn’t he right about divine justice? If he was wrong about divine justice, as all the modernists say, then how is he a great teacher? Why wasn’t he just another ignorant fundamentalist raver?
Of course Jesus was more than just a teacher. He was our Mediator and substitute. He came in our place. He came, was incarnate, was born, obeyed, died, and was raised for us (Rom 5:8). That prepositional phrase “for us” says it all. Only a substitute does something for us, in our place. If we need something but have to been somewhere else at the same time, we send a substitute, some one to do something we need to be done. That person acts in our place. We experience the blessings of substitution in small ways every day. Husbands and wives act as surrogates for each other constantly (“Sorry, Jen can’t be here tonight, she’s flying to Dallas”). Again, if substitution works on a micro scale, why not on the grandest scale of all time?
Jesus came as our consubstantial substitute and he mediates for us now with God. Paul says that there is “one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5). One of the major themes of the book of Hebrews is Jesus’ office and work as our Mediator before the Father. This is why we pray in Jesus’ name. He stands before the Father for us as the representative righteous man for all of his people. He can do so because he bore in his humanity the wrath of God against sin.
Next time: obtaining righteousness and life.
The Lutheran teaching is not that Christ only seems to be human. It is that His human and divine natures cannot be separated; hence He, in His entirety, shares the divine attributes. Christ is fully God and fully man, but only one Christ. He is not two separate Christs, one divine, one human, with separable attributes. Jesus Christ is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent in His entirety, just as He could die in His entirety and rise again in His entirety.
Your blog is a very fine one, and I enjoy your posts, even when, as here, I cannot agree with you. But you have to be careful–as the great 17th century dogmaticians in the three-sided debate between Geneva, Wittenberg and Rome were–not to set up a straw man, which you did here.
Ken,
I was very careful. I don’t think I said what you impute to me. I’ve actually spent a fair bit of time reading Lutheran orthodox writers on Christiology. See the chapter on Christology in Caspar Olevian and the Substance of the Covenant.
I see now that I didn’t finish the sentence but I didn’t say anything about Jesus seeming to be human to the Lutherans but I said that the Lutheran viewed seemed to the Reformed to imply certain things. Go back and read the post again.
Here’s what I wrote:
Please note this next line:
They affirmed that he was truly [ed. I changed this to an adverb] human but that the communication of the divinity with the humanity is such that his humanity is also quite distinct from ours. Thus, the Lutherans affirmed that Christ could know, in his humanity, what God knows the way he alone knows it (theologia archetypa) whereas the Reformed affirmed more clearly that his true humanity is consubstantial with us such that even in his humanity he knows only what humans can know (theologia ectypa). To the Reformed it seemed that the Lutheran Christology verged on Eutychianism (the confusion of the human and the divine natures) and, of course, to the Lutherans, the Reformed were nothing but crytpo-Nestorians (dividing the two natures).
This is all quite historically accurate and fair. I’m not taking shots at the Lutherans here, just giving an account of why the Reformed say what they do.
Ken,
I have to demure, for think RSC represented the Lutheran side fairly and without prejudice. Where you read his criticism, you must agree that he is only stating the confessionally Reformed critique of the Lutheran. He was even careful to note (without elaboration) that the Lutheran critique of the Reformed tends to think of our position as too-close-to-Nestorianism.
In your restatement of the Lutheran position, I read nothing at variance to what was already stated in the post above. You believe that the humanity of Christ is “in a class of one.” That is, it experiences things that no other human nature is capable of, due to its union with the divine nature.
And this is a difference with us, and in our opinion is an improper understanding of the Chalcedonian symbol that states, “two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence.”
If the *distinctive* characteristics of each nature are *preserved* in the union, then the human knowledge of Christ remains as limited as creaturly yet sinless knowledge must be. If Christ knows something extraordinarily, then it must be by revelation imparted by the divine nature.
And, as the well-known disagreement respecting the Supper reveals, the fact of a *body* necessarily implies *location*, as a sine qua non of bodily existence. Hence, Christ in the flesh remains in heaven, but he is “with us always” because of Holy Spirit. And because of Holy Spirit, we also have sweet communion with him, and commune with him there in heaven, where he feeds us spiritually (no less truly) on his true body and blood.
The Lutheran understanding of the doctrine of the communication of attributes seems to us in the Reformed church to make Christ’s humanity now so unique as to distinguish it from ours. Not even in our glorified bodies will we actually “be like him,” seeing him “as he is.” As we understand the communication of those nature-specific attributes, they are united, as belonging to the complete Person, who acts appropriately according to each nature as he wills; any act being attributable to the *whole* Person.
All I would say, to conclude, is: Let RSC and the Reformed be who they are. The critique is valid, from the Reformed perspective. You don’t have to agree, but you should appreciate the differences spelled out for us. Likewise, when I listen to the IssuesETC. personalities misunderstanding or misrepresenting the (confessionally) Reformed, I also recognize that those are quite logical from where they are standing.
Graciously submitted,
Indeed, as much as I love my Issues Etc brothers I have found some of their written caricatures of Reformed theology appalling. I’ve even written to them about one particular piece in their newsletter a few (several?) years back.
To be even more tediously self-referential see the essay I did for Brill on the Lutheran view of Calvin. You might find it illuminating.
“Calvin as Negative Boundary Marker in American Lutheran Self-Identity 1871–1934” in Johan de Niet, Herman Paul, and Bart Wallet, ed., Sober, Strict, and Scriptural: Collective Memories of John Calvin, 1800-2000 (Leiden: Brill, 2009).
See also:
http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/01/differences-between-lutheran-and-reformed-orthodoxy/
The most common problem I’m aware of in Lutheran representations of Reformed theology is a tendency to ascribe to the Reformed things that are really Arminian–hence, not Reformed at all but the exact opposite.
The discussions of the age of orthodoxy were the model we all ought to be following; when one reads Beza, Gerhard, Bellarmine, Turretin, Quenstedt, etc., they are careful to debate that which the opponent really holds.
If I misread your initial post, you have my apology.
Ken,
i appreciate this.
It is a thing to be desired that Reformed and Lutheran confessionalists should come to understand one another more clearly. Mike and the White Horse folks have tried and I’ve been happy to be in some of those conversations. I’m grateful for the time I’ve spent with Rod and David Scaer and Robert Preus and others.
You might take a look at the Brill essay. I wish more confessional Lutherans understood why Calvin and Reformed theology has been portrayed in their circles as it has. It’s mostly in-house politics and identity formation, not actual history.
Unfortunately, in both Lutheran and Reformed circles the attraction of the easy, in-house, stories that we tell to ourselves about “those other guys” is so strong that we can’t seem to escape them. I know that there are Lutheran historians who know better but I wonder if they get a hearing? What happens to them if they speak up? I get called a “Lutheran” all the time by Reformed folk who don’t know the first thing about Lutheran theology and I know how damning it would be, in Lutheran circles, to be called a “Calvinist so I imagine how that conversation goes.