PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

NOVA LINGUA DEI:

THE PROBLEM OF CHALCEDONIAN METAPHYSICS AND THE PROMISE OF

THE GENUS TAPEINOTICON IN LUTHER’S LATER THEOLOGY

IN FULFILLMENT OF THE

PH.D. QUALIFYING EXAMINATION IN THE HISTORY OF DOCTRINE

DAVID W. CONGDON

JANUARY 12, 2011

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 1

INTRODUCTION

Scholars have long noted that Luther makes a decisive contribution to the debate over divine impassibility. That he speaks of God’s suffering and death is well-attested in the literature.

The question is the precise nature of this provocative language. It is widely acknowledged that

Luther’s theology exhibits a radicalization of the communicatio idiomatum: the properties of divinity and humanity are not merely communicated to the one person, but they are also shared, at least in some respect, between the natures. In one direction (from divine to human), the result is the genus maiestaticum (“genus of majesty”), employed by Lutherans within the eucharistic debates as the basis for Christ’s bodily ubiquity. This paper will instead focus on the communication in the other direction (human to divine), known as the genus tapeinoticon

(“genus of humility”; from the Greek, ταπεινωσις).1 While scholars such as Paul Althaus and

Marc Lienhard have mentioned this concept with respect to Luther’s christology,2 the notion of a genus tapeinoticon remains controversial and raises a number of complicated questions regarding the relation of Luther to the orthodox tradition associated with the Council of

Chalcedon. There is a continual danger of reading the modern acceptance of divine passibility

1 “The phrase genus tapeinoticum . . . refers to a logical possibility treated under the more general heading of the ‘communication of attributes’ in post-Reformation theology. Whether it is instantiated in the ancient world or not is a question I would have to ask patristic scholars. The idea set forth in the phrase is that the union of divine and human in Jesus Christ has as at least one of its consequences a sharing by the divine in the being of the human such that human attributes are rightly ascribed to the divine. It was thus the polar opposite of the Lutheran genus majestaticum . . . . In any event, both Reformed and Lutheran theologians identified the genus tapeinoticum as a strictly logical possibility which they rejected. They held that the idea of an ascription of human attributes to God was unthinkable largely as a consequence of their commitment to a concept of divine immutability that was itself controlled by the notion of impassibility.” Bruce L. McCormack, “Divine Impassibility or Simply Divine Constancy? Implications of Karl Barth’s Later Christology for Debates over Impassibility,” in Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering, ed. James F. Keating and Thomas Joseph White (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009), 175. 2 See Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, trans. Robert C. Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 197; Marc Lienhard, Luther: Witness to Jesus Christ – Stages and Themes of the Reformer’s Christology, trans. Edwin H. Robertson (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1982), 339-41, 344-45. Among contemporary Luther scholars, Dennis Ngien has explored the theme of divine suffering most extensively. His main work on the topic mentions the genus tapeinoticon in two places. See Dennis Ngien, The Suffering of God According to Martin Luther’s ‘Theologia Crucis’ (New York: Peter Lang, 1995), 79, 81.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 2 back into Luther and thus exaggerating his similarity to contemporary theology; but there is equally the danger of overemphasizing his dependence on the tradition and his late medieval context and so obscuring his creativity. As Heiko Oberman argued throughout his career,3 Luther occupies a turning-point in history: he stands between the medieval synthesis and the modern revolution, between the institutional fides catholica and the iconoclastic spirit of reform.

Moreover, his unsystematic, occasional, and voluminous writings resist easy categorization. He nowhere offers a scholastic-like articulation of the communicatio idiomatum, with its corresponding genera, as in the later Lutheran dogmaticians. For these reasons, the notion of a genus tapeinoticon in Luther “must be used with care,” always recognizing that “one cannot always tie Luther down rigorously to specific categories.”4

The purpose of this paper is to assess the question of the genus tapeinoticon in the ancient church and in Luther’s later theology. Specifically, I will bring Luther into conversation with

Cyril of Alexandria and the neo-Chalcedonian tradition, especially Maximus the Confessor and

John of Damascus. By focusing on this particular genus in the doctrine of the communication of attributes—as opposed to looking more broadly at the theologia crucis—we can gain a more precise evaluation of Luther’s innovation with respect to the church’s tradition. Though Luther stands squarely within the “Alexandrian” school of thought associated especially with Cyril’s theology, he breaks with what I am calling the limits of its “Chalcedonian metaphysics.”5 That is to say, Luther breaks with the metaphysical presupposition of a priori definitions of divinity and humanity, defined in advance and in the abstract. He asserts instead the concrete reality of Jesus

3 See, e.g., Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil, trans. Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). 4 Lienhard, Luther, 339, 344. 5 Of course, Cyril and others within that tradition predate the Council of Chalcedon, and I do not wish to ignore their differences. I use the term “Chalcedonian” here as a shorthand way of referring to the attempt within the ancient church to maintain a single-subject christology while preserving the metaphysical distinction between the natures. In any case, Cyril’s approach to the problem is, I take it, the driving force and inspiration behind the Chalcedonian Definition, so it seems acceptable to refer to his theology as essentially Chalcedonian in retrospect.

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Christ, the single divine-human subject, as the revelation of what it means to be God and human.

It is on this christocentric basis that Luther advances a true genus tapeinoticon—albeit only implicitly, since he was not aware of the later scholastic distinctions.

This paper will focus, in particular, on three of Luther’s later writings: his 1539 study of patristic christology, Von den Konziliis und Kirchen,6 and two of his later disputations, the 1539

Disputatio de sententia: Verbum caro factum est and the 1540 Disputatio de divinitate et humanitate Christi.7 These later writings lay the basic foundation for a genuinely postmetaphysical two-natures christology that advances beyond the ancient and medieval resistance to the genus tapeinoticon. The paper will proceed by (a) assessing the reasons for rejecting the genus tapeinoticon as articulated in the ancient church and in Lutheran orthodoxy, and (b) examining the historical contexts and theological developments within Luther’s later works—particularly as they relate to his disputes with the Parisian school of theology,

Ockhamist nominalism, and Schwenckfeldian docetism—in order to demonstrate the way his

“new language” and “new grammar” allow for the affirmation of a genus tapeinoticon.

THE METAPHYSICAL RESISTANCE TO THE GENUS TAPEINOTICON IN CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA, NEO-CHALCEDONIANISM, AND PROTESTANT ORTHODOXY

The genus tapeinoticon is situated within the larger context of the communicatio idiomatum, which is itself a subset of the communio naturarum. That is to say, within orthodox christology, the communication of properties (or attributes) is a function of the more basic

6 Martin Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1883-), 50:488-653; hereafter cited as WA (Weimarer Ausgabe). English translation published in Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehman, American ed., 55 vols. (St. Louis; Philadelphia: Concordia; Fortress Press, 1955-72), 41:3-178; hereafter cited as LW. The editor of the English edition explains the reason for translating Kirchen as “Church,” instead of “Churches,” on p. 8. 7 WA 39/2:1-33, 92-121. The English translation of the 1539 disputation on “the Word was made flesh” is available in LW 38:235-77. The 1540 disputation on Christ’s divinity and humanity is available in translation as Martin Luther and Mitchell Tolpingrud, “Luther’s Disputation Concerning the Divinity and Humanity of Christ,” Lutheran Quarterly 10, no. 2 (1996): 151-78; hereafter cited as DDHC.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 4 communion of natures in the one person of the incarnate Son according to the unio hypostatica sive personalis. The notion of the communication of attributes has its origin in the fourth-century debates over Nestorianism, though the term (in Greek, ἀντίδοσις τῶν ἰδιωµάτων or κοινωνία

ἰδιωµάτων) was not used regularly until the sixth-century neo-Chalcedonian debates. In

Protestant scholasticism—building off the distinctions established in medieval scholasticism, and initially developed within a Reformational context by Martin Chemnitz in 15788—the doctrine gained a high level of systematic precision as it was subdivided into four genera: genus idiomaticum, genus apotelesmaticum (also called the communicatio operationum), genus maiestaticum (or auchematicum), and the genus tapeinoticon. The first genus refers to the predication of the attributes of both natures to the one person of Christ; the second refers to the fact that the singular operation of Christ’s mediatorial work applies to both natures; the third refers to a sharing of the divine majesty with the human nature; and the fourth refers to a sharing of the humility of the human nature with the divine nature.9 For both the ancient doctors and the

8 See Martin Chemnitz, The Two Natures in Christ, trans. J. A. O. Preus (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1971). References to the Latin edition are to Martin Chemnitz, De duabus naturis in Christo: de hypostatica earum unione, de communicatione idiomatum, et aliis quaestionibus inde dependentibus libellus (Lipsiae: Lantzenberger, 1600). 9 The order of these genera went through some changes during the early seventeenth century. Chemnitz arranged them as I have, with the genus idiomaticum first and the genus tapeinoticon last, though the latter he dismissed as unacceptable for reasons that I will discuss shortly. The 1609 Compend of the Wittenberg theologian, Leonhard Hutter, still has Chemnitz’s ordering. At the same time, however, other Lutheran theologians switched the second and third genera. We see this already in the work of the Tübingen theologian, Matthias Hafenreffer, Loci Theologici (Tubingae, 1603), 3:336-99. Hafenreffer’s divides the communicatio idiomatum in the following threefold way (ibid., 445): (1) “Genus communicationis,” subdivided as (a) “quo de Christo utriusque Naturae Idiomata enunciantur” (“by which the properties of each nature are predicated of Christ”) and (b) “quo de Filio Dei Humana enunciantur” (“by which the humanity is predicated of the Son of God”); (2) “Genus, quo de Humana Natura enunciantur Divina proprietates” (“by which the divine characteristics are predicated of the human nature”); and (3) “Genus est ἐνεργειῶν ad officium Christi perficiendum κοινωνία” (“in which the operations or activities of the office of Christ are accomplished in communion”). The Greek words for “communion of operations” are a reference to Cyril of Alexandria’s Letter 29, where Cyril speaks of a κοινοποιία and κοινοποίησις, meaning “common working.” Johann Gerhard, professor at Jena, follows this order exactly in his own Loci Theologici of 1625. Much of the material is identical to Hafenreffer, including scriptural and patristic quotations. See Johann Gerhard, Theological Commonplaces, Exegesis IV: On the Person and Office of Christ, ed. Benjamin T. G. Mayes, trans. Richard J. Dinda (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 2009), 170-297. In particular, see ibid., §182, 175-76: “Three genera of the communication of properties are commonly established. In the first, the properties of the natures are predicated about Christ: the divine because of His deity, the human because of His humanity. In the second, His divine majesty,

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Protestant scholastics, the fourth genus was a merely logical possibility. For this reason, before we can assess the grounds for identifying a genus tapeinoticon in Luther, it is first necessary to examine the basis for its rejection in both ancient and early modern theology in order to accentuate Luther’s christological innovations. I will do this by investigating the theologies of

Cyril and later neo-Chalcedonianism, followed by a brief look at later Lutheran orthodoxy.

glory, and power are predicated about Christ according to His human nature through and because of the hypostatic union. In the third, the names and works of His office are predicated about Christ according to each nature.” In §184 he discusses whether there should be a fourth genus. Isaak Dorner summarizes and assesses these developments in his Entwicklungsgeschichte der Lehre von der Person Christi. Dorner very helpfully situates Chemnitz, Hafenreffer, Gerhard, and others within the context of the dispute over the use of the divine attributes within the status exinanitionis between the Tübingen and Giessen schools—the so-called Crypticists and Kenoticists, respectively, because of the affirmation of either a κρύψις χρήσεως (“veiling of power”) or a κένωσις χρήσεως (“renunciation of power”). Hafenreffer is the key representative of the Tübingen school, while Balthasar Mentzer (Catholisches Handbüchlein, 1620) represents the Giessen theologians. Dorner sees in Hafenreffer’s twofold division of the first genus the basis for the later Tübingen identification of four genera, found in the work of Theodor Thumm. See Theodor Thumm, Majestas Jesu Christi... (Tubingae, 1620-22), 89ff. The four genera, as described by Dorner, are (1) “the participation of the divine nature in the human—the appropriation of the latter, with all its weaknesses, defects, sufferings . . . [T]hey make it matter of blame that usually only a communication to human nature is spoken of; and lay down the communication to the divine nature, which since Luther had mostly been overlooked, as the first genus”; (2) “the appropriation of the divine by the human on the ground of the self-communication of the Logos”; (3) “the community of the activities of the divine-human person”; and (4) “the communication of the natures to the person.” According to this list, the first would be the genus tapeinoticon and the second the genus maiestaticum, followed by the genus apotelesmaticum and genus idiomaticum. Dorner slightly misconstrues Hafenreffer’s account of the communicatio idiomatum when he describes the first genus as “the appropriation of the human nature, with its predicates, by the Son of God.” As demonstrated above, that is in fact the second part of the first genus. So when Dorner then goes on to say that Hafenreffer alludes to the need for a fourth genus “according to which the attributes of both natures are predicated of the entire person,” this is not quite right, since Hafenreffer already accounts for that in the first part of the first genus. Dorner reads Hafenreffer in light of later developments at Tübingen, when these two aspects of the first genus were indeed more sharply distinguished, and so he seems to read back into Hafenreffer the seeds of this later development in a stronger way than is perhaps accurate. See Isaak A. Dorner, Entwicklungsgeschichte der Lehre von der Person Christi: von den ältesten Zeiten bis auf die neueste dargestellt, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Berlin: G. Schlawitz, 1851), 2:787-807, esp. 796 and 787n16; ET Isaak A. Dorner, History of the Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ, trans. William Lindsay Alexander and David W. Simon, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1891), 2/2:281-98, esp. 288 and 281n37 (p. 421). In another footnote, Dorner notes the slightly different arrangement of the communicatio idiomatum put forward by Abraham Calov, in his Theologia positiva (1682) and Systema locorum theologicorum (1655-77). Instead of the usual threefold or fourfold division, Calov distinguishes between two main genera. The first genus concerns the communication from nature to person, which includes two species: (a) the communication of one nature to the person (usually called the genus idiomaticum) and (b) the communication of both natures (i.e., their joint working) to the person (also called the genus apotelesmaticum). The second genus concerns the communication “from nature to nature” (a natura ad naturam), which for Calov is simply the genus maiestaticum. According to Calov, there is “a µετάδοσις of divine attributes to the human nature,” but no sharing of human attributes with the divine. See Dorner, Entwicklungsgeschichte der Lehre von der Person Christi, 2:824-25n36; ET Dorner, History of the Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ, 2/2:303n44 (p. 438).

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Cyril of Alexandria and the metaphysical logic of the communicatio idiomatum

The problem of the genus tapeinoticon goes back at least as far as Cyril of Alexandria’s debate with Nestorius over the relation between divinity and humanity in Christ. Cyril’s primary concern is to establish a single-subject christology, that is, a christology in which “God is the single personal subject of the incarnation.”10 The controversy over whether Mary is theotokos is really a christological problem—more specifically, a soteriological problem—that has the

“union” (ἕνωσις)11 of divinity and humanity in Christ at its center. The logic goes something like this: (a) our salvation (i.e., theosis or theopoeisis, for Cyril) depends upon the marvelous exchange (admirabile commercium) between divine righteousness and human sinfulness in Jesus

Christ; (b) this exchange itself depends upon the complete assumption of our flesh into union with the Logos in the incarnation, such that wherever we find the flesh of Jesus we find the Son of God, too; (c) we find the flesh of Jesus in the womb of Mary; ergo, (d) Mary is the mother of

God. It is this soteriological logic that leads Cyril to oppose the “two sons” that he sees in

Nestorius. On Cyril’s reading, Nestorius divided Christ into two subjects by identifying the

Logos as Son of God “by nature” in contrast to the humanity, which becomes the Son of God “by grace.” The problem, as Cyril points out in On the Unity of Christ, is that “we too are sons and gods by grace” by virtue of God’s Son dwelling within us, meaning that there is no qualitative distinction between Christ and us.12 This casts doubt upon the ground of our own adoption and salvation, if our savior—the incarnate one—is not himself God by nature. For this reason, Cyril speaks of “one nature of God the Word incarnate” (µία φύσις τού θεοῦ λόγου σεσαρκωµένη).13

10 John A. McGuckin, Saint Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2004), 191. 11 Cyril used this term against Nestorius’s use of the word συνάφεια (conjunction). 12 Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ, trans. John A. McGuckin (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995), 80. 13 See, e.g., ibid., 79.: “My friend, if anyone says that when we speak of the single nature of God the Word incarnate and made man we imply that a confusion or mixture has occurred, then they are talking utter rubbish.” Cf.

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He also speaks of one hypostasis formed “out of two natures” (ἐκ δύο φύσεων)14—i.e., as “one out of both” (εἷς ἐξ ἀµφοῖν)15—though Cyril never wavers from his conviction that divinity remains divine and humanity remains human, not only in Christ but also in those who are deified by grace. As Hans van Loon has recently argued, Cyril’s christology is correctly viewed neither as monophysite nor miaphysite, but as dyophysite.16

The necessary consequence of a single-subject christology is some concept of a communicatio idiomatum. This manifests itself in Cyril’s repeated use of deliberately paradoxical statements such as “God wept” and “the Impassible One suffered.” But Cyril always carefully qualifies such statements with the traditional phrase, “according to the human nature

(or flesh).” In his treatise on the unity of Christ, he thus writes: “[Christ] suffers in his own flesh, and not in the nature of the Godhead. . . . [W]e do not deny that he can be said to suffer . . . but this does not mean that we say that the things pertaining to the flesh transpired in his divine and transcendent nature.”17 At the very end of this treatise, Cyril offers a classic articulation of his understanding of the communication of properties: “To the same one we attribute both the divine

Cyril of Alexandria, Letter to the Monks of Egypt, ¶18; McGuckin, Saint Cyril of Alexandria, 255: “He is not made God in the way that others are ‘by grace’, rather he is true God revealed for our sake in human form.” 14 The emphasis on “out of two natures,” along with the ambiguous phrase “one incarnate nature,” was later viewed as the basis for the monophysite heresy. For the sake of clarity, Chalcedon dropped Cyril’s “out of two natures” in favor of “in two natures” (ἐν δύο φύσεων). There are, however, no shortage of passages in Cyril’s writings which demonstrate his concern to properly differentiate between the two natures of Christ. By speaking of “one incarnate nature,” Cyril refers to what later became known as the hypostasis. In the eighth anathema against the so-called “Three Chapters,” the Second Council of Constantinople (553 CE) makes this interpretation orthodox by anathematizing anyone who does not interpret “one incarnate nature” as “one incarnate hypostasis (in two natures).” Cf. John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (New York: Fordham University Press, 1974), 35. One must also remember that Cyril was battling Nestorianism, and so he emphasizes the personal unity of Christ; Chalcedon was battling monophysitism, and so it emphasizes the distinction between the natures. 15 For instances of this formula, see Festal Letter 8.6 in Cyril of Alexandria, Lettres Festales VII-XI, trans. Louis Arragon, Pierre Évieux, and Robert Monier, vol. 392, Sources Chrétiennes (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1993), 100; Festal Letter 17.3 in Cyril of Alexandria, Lettres Festales XII-XVII, trans. Marie-Odile Boulnois and Bernard Meunier, vol. 434, Sources Chrétiennes (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1998), 282; Cyril of Alexandria, Sancti patris nostri Cyrilli Archiepiscopi Alexandrini in D. Joannis Evangelium, ed. Philip Edward Pusey, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1872), 1:140 (96a), 1:224 (150e), 1:442 (301b). 16 Hans van Loon, The Dyophysite Christology of Cyril of Alexandria (Leiden: Brill, 2009). 17 Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ, 130.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 8 and human characteristics, and we also say that to the same one belongs the birth and the suffering on the cross since he appropriated everything that belonged to his own flesh, while ever remaining impassible in the nature of the Godhead.”18 On the basis of statements like these, we can say that while Cyril’s single christological subject involves a true ontic union of divinity and humanity, the communication is only semantic-grammatical. To help clarify what I mean by this,

I will borrow some diagrams that Loon uses to explain Cyril’s christology.19

Fig. 1 the properties that belong to both natures

the the INDIVIDUAL INDIVIDUAL NATURE NATURE of the Word of the flesh

i.e. the divine and human properties

Fig. 2

Figure 1 represents Loon’s depiction of Cyril’s position, in which there is no mixing of the natures themselves, but a mixing of the attributes that are, as he puts it, “separable” from the natures. These properties “are attached to or lie round the substance, nature or individual being,”

18 Ibid., 133. 19 See Loon, Dyophysite Christology, 287.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 9 such that Cyril “speaks of the mingling or the flowing together of the properties, not of the Word and the flesh, not of the natures.”20 Loon contrasts this position with the models represented in figure 2: the first shows a mingling of the natures along with the properties, while the second shows a separation of the properties along with the natures. The former results in a tertium quid and represents the danger of Eutychian monophysitism; the latter results in the “two sons” heresy that Cyril finds represented in Nestorian dualism. Loon’s diagram is helpful in that it captures

(via the large oval) the single-subject christology that Cyril advocates, but by keeping the natures ontologically separate, it also shows the metaphysical distinction between impassible divinity and passible humanity that he presupposes.

Cyril’s communicatio idiomatum is based on the fact that “the properties belonging to both natures now lie round the combination of the INDIVIDUAL NATURE of the Word and the

21 INDIVIDUAL NATURE of the flesh.” To use the later scholastic terminology, Cyril has a semantic- grammatical genus idiomaticum grounded in the “mingling” of the properties that are shared within the single subject (or hypostasis) of Jesus Christ.22 This is where we must locate the theory of “appropriation”—what McGuckin calls “the very heart of his christological argument”23—in which the Word appropriates the experiences and properties of the flesh assumed in the incarnation, so that we can speak of the Impassible One suffering and of the flesh of Jesus being “life-giving.” Cyril also clearly has a genus apotelesmaticum, in the sense that the deifying work of Christ is attributed to the operations of both natures. But we cannot fully attribute either a genus maiestaticum or a genus tapeinoticon to Cyril. This is because of an

20 Ibid., 286. 21 Ibid. Emphasis added. 22 Loon notes that the language of the “mingling” and “confluence” of properties is only found in Cyril’s earlier christological writings, since he later drops it for different terminology in order to distinguish his position from the Apollinarian position. That said, his basic position remains the same, in that he still insists on a semantic sharing of idioms without a mixing of the natures. 23 Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ, 45.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 10 implicit distinction in Cyril between what Loon calls “separable” and “inseparable” properties, i.e., the “accidents” (τὰ συµβεβηκότα) and the “inherent factors” (τὰ ἐνόντα) or “natural properties.”24 The natural, inherent properties of the divine nature include things like

“uncreated,” “incorruptible,” and “impassible”; the natural properties of the human nature, by contrast, include “created” and “passible.” An accidental property of humanity would be

“fallen,” whereas an accidental property of divinity would be “life-giving,” since that depends upon a corrupt creaturely object that needs to be given new life.25 With this analysis in mind, it becomes clear that Loon’s diagrams, while helpful, need to be further nuanced. The reason is that, in figure 1, both the separable and inseparable properties are commingled, so that we can speak of the flesh as life-giving and of the impassible God as suffering in the flesh. The result is that “the communication of idioms is here a linguistic one.”26 If it were an ontological sharing, that would involve precisely the “mixing” of natures that Cyril rejects. However, this leaves us with a serious problem: how do we explain the deification of human nature that occurs in the incarnation? On what basis do we have a “marvelous exchange” in Christ—an exchange that must be ontological in nature? The only way to make sense of this dilemma in Cyril’s theology is to allow for an ontological communication of the accidental or separable attributes, while insisting on a merely semantic-grammatical communication of the natural or inseparable attributes. Of course, the only basis for making such a distinction is to allow for Cyril’s soteriology to coexist with his metaphysical presuppositions.

While Cyril’s conception of the communication is thus primarily linguistic in nature— and only ontological for the sake of specific soteriological ends—there are occasional indications

24 Loon, Dyophysite Christology, 136. 25 This distinction is similar to the modern distinction between God’s absolute and relative attributes posited by Gottfried Thomasius in order to establish his version of a kenotic christology. 26 Loon, Dyophysite Christology, 429.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 11 of a nascent genus maiestaticum. For example, after referring to the common patristic trope of the iron-in-the-fire, Cyril then states that “in an even greater degree the Word who is God can introduce the life-giving power and energy of his own self into his very own flesh.”27 Loon also notes that in both Oratio ad Theodosium and De Incarnatione, Cyril says that the Logos

“communicates [κοινοποιεῖν] the goods of his own nature to his own body.”28 Whether statements such as these are best read in the direction of a genus maiestaticum, or whether instead they are to be understood as explications of a semantic genus idiomaticum or a soteriological genus apotelesmaticum, it is nevertheless clear that Cyril can in no way entertain the possibility of a genus tapeinoticon.29 Despite his emphasis on a single subject, he retains a metaphysical (i.e., competitive, philosophically-derived) differentiation between divinity and humanity in Christ based on a presupposed conception of the “natural” and “inseparable” properties of the divine and human natures.

The near-acceptance of the genus tapeinoticon in neo-Chalcedonianism

While Cyril’s influence was decisive for the Council of Chalcedon,30 various groups of loyal Cyrillians, many of whom leaned monophysite, strongly opposed the council’s decision as overly Nestorian. Their creed was: “there is no nature without a hypostasis.”31 Others remained within the bounds of Chalcedon—viz. retaining the distinction between person/hypostasis and

27 Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ, 132-33. 28 See Loon, Dyophysite Christology, 430. 29 Norman Nagel’s judgment is correct: “What Cyril says of the Incarnation presses hard upon this principle [of divine apathy], but yet does not break it.” See Norman E. Nagel, “‘Heresy, Doctor Luther, Heresy!’: The Person and Work of Christ,” in Seven-Headed Luther: Essays in Commemoration of a Quincentenary, 1483-1983, ed. Peter Newman Brooks (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), 29. 30 I agree with McGuckin that the Chalcedonian Definition is thoroughly Cyrillian: three out of the four terms in the Chalcedonian Definition derive from Cyril’s writings. See Cyril’s First Letter to Succensus, ¶6 in McGuckin, Saint Cyril of Alexandria, 354: “And so, we unite the Word of God the Father to the holy flesh endowed with a rational soul, in an ineffable way that transcends understanding, without confusion, without change, and without alteration.” 31 Demetrios Bathrellos, The Byzantine Christ: Person, Nature, and Will in the Christology of Saint Maximus the Confessor (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 34.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 12 nature/essence—but sought to interpret the Chalcedonian Definition in a Cyrillian direction. This response has been given the name “neo-Chalcedonianism”32 or “Cyrillian Chalcedonianism,” and its origin is traced to the writings of John the Grammarian, Leontius of Jerusalem, and

Leontius of Byzantium.33 The basic ecumenical-theological move involved using both the

Cyrillian µία φύσις formula and the Chalcedonian δύο φύσεις formula—“one to ward off

Nestorianism, the other to exclude Eutychianism.”34 Neo-Chalcedonianism thus argued that Cyril of Alexandria and the Chalcedonian Definition were two aspects of the same christology, and this view eventually received conciliar acceptance at the second Council of Constantinople in

553 CE. The “battle slogan”35 of this council was the famous theopaschite formula of the

Scythian monks: “one of the Holy Trinity suffered in the flesh” (ἓνα τῆς ἁγίας Τριάδος

πεπονθέναι σαρκί; unus ex trinitate carne passus [or crucifixus] est). Whether this statement actually constitutes a real advance beyond Cyril and Chalcedon depends on whether one places the accent on “one of the Trinity” or “in the flesh.”36 Properly understood, the formula remains

32 Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, trans. John Bowden, et al., 2 vols. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1975-96), 2/2:429-34. Grillmeier traces the first use of the term “neo-Chalcedonian” to Joseph Lebon, Le monophysisme sévérien: Étude historique, littéraire et théologique sur la résistance monophysite au Concile de Chalcédoine jusqu’à la constitution de l’Église jacobite (Louvain: Universitas Catholica Lovaniensis, 1909). David Yeago lists three characteristics of neo-Chalcedonian christology: (1) christology begins with the person of Jesus and then explicates the relation between the natures, rather than beginning with the natures and attempting to understand the person (the movement, in other words, is from actuality to possibility); (2) christology explicates “the logic of Christian claims about Jesus of Nazareth,” instead of forming a speculative account of the incarnate Son; and (3) the technical language used in neo-Chalcedonian theology is “formal-grammatical” in character, not the carrier of a presupposed ontology or metaphysical system. See David S. Yeago, “Jesus of Nazareth and Cosmic Redemption: The Relevance of St. Maximus the Confessor,” Modern Theology 12, no. 2 (1996): 166-68. 33 Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, 2/2:430. 34 Ibid., 2/2:431. 35 Paul R. Hinlicky, Luther and the Beloved Community: A Path for Christian Theology after Christendom (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 51. 36 The theopaschite debate is complicated by the controversy over the addition of the phrase “who was crucified for us” to the Trisagion, so that it read: “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, who was crucified for us, have mercy on us.” This addition is often attributed to Peter Fullo (or “the Fuller”) during the late fifth century, though Matti Moosa has shown that it goes back to the early fourth century in Antioch. See Matti Moosa, The Maronites in History (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986), 69-70. In Antioch, the Trisagion was applied exclusively to Jesus, “and thus the theopaschite addition was not a scandal”; but in Constantinople, the Trisagion referred to the triune God as such, and consequently the phrase “crucified for us” became a serious problem (Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, 2/2:259). Moreover, the claim that “God was crucified for us” was a favorite of the

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 13

“persistently scandalous” in relation to the patristic axiom of “the apathetic, impassible God.”37

The high point of neo-Chalcedonianism appears in the seventh-century writings of

Maximus the Confessor, whose opposition to monenergism and monothelitism in favor of dyothelitism was not a retreat from but rather an anti-docetic radicalization of Cyril’s single- subject christology. Whereas Cyril spoke of Christ as being “out of two natures,” and Chalcedon defined Christ as being “in two natures,” Maximus uses a tripartite formula that he borrows from

Leontius of Byzantium and which has its origins in the writings of the Cappadocians: “Christ is

monophysites. As a result, while an orthodox interpretation of the Trisagion addition was put forward by some, it was generally interpreted as indicative of the monophysite heresy. Amidst the Chalcedonian backlash against Peter Fullo, the letter of Flaccinus (part of the so-called “forged letters”) stands out as a particularly strong example of a Nestorian-leaning “christology of distinction,” as Grillmeier puts it. In this letter, the author presumes to speak on behalf of Christ himself: “What belongs to my created flesh you should not tie to me and should not assign createdness, being made, suffering or death [to me] as one of the Trinity. Nothing beyond what was, is and will be [namely the divinity] should you introduce into it [the Trinity] . . . . The property of each of the natures is intact in me. Whoever does not preserve these [natures] and maintains that I had only one nature, maintains that the incarnate God is no longer God, not uncreated, no longer free from suffering, but passible; they render me completely bereft of everything which is mine” (ibid., 2/2:262). Complicating matters further is the edict of 533 issued by Emperor Justinian following doctrinal discussions with the Severans. In this document, Justinian declares that “one of the Trinity, the God-Logos, became flesh,” which is very similar to the statement attributed to Peter Fullo that “one of the Trinity died, who is the God-Logos himself” (ibid., 2/2:339, 260). In any case, the Fifth Ecumenical Council accepted the statement that “God was crucified” or “one of the Trinity suffered,” but it rejected the addition to the Trisagion, since that implied, they claimed, that the divinity itself suffered. For this reason, the Scythian formula that “one of the Trinity suffered” was declared to be true only secundum quid (i.e., according to the flesh), and not simpliciter or absolutely (i.e., according to the divinity). Cf. E. B. Pusey, Is Healthful Reunion Impossible? A Second Letter to the Very Rev. J. H. Newman (London: Gilbert and Rivington, 1870), 230 (quoting Jacques Bossuet). 37 Oswald Bayer, “Das Wort ward Fleisch: Luthers Christologie als Lehre von der Idiomenkommunikation,” in Creator est Creatura: Luthers Christologie als Lehre von der Idiomenkommunikation, ed. Oswald Bayer and Benjamin Gleede (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2007), 10. For a seminal essay on the theopaschite formula, see Werner Elert, “Die Theopaschitische Formel,” Theologische Literaturzeitung 4, no. 5 (1950): 195-206. As an example of how to improperly read the theopaschite formula, in a way that dissolves any advance made in 553 and regresses towards Leo’s Tome, see Alyssa Lyra Pitstick, Light in Darkness: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Catholic Doctrine of Christ’s Descent into Hell (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 132-33: “One of the Trinity did indeed suffer for us—but in the flesh. Hence, to say Christ suffered for us is to attribute suffering to Christ in exactly the same way it is attributed to other human beings, i.e., it attributes suffering to Christ in the flesh. It does not attribute suffering to God as God at all. Moreover, suffering is ascribed to the Son (and only to the Son) only in virtue of the communication of idioms, that is, only because the flesh in which Christ suffered subsists in the Person of the Word. The Word’s divine nature as absolutely impassible remains unchanged by the hypostatic union, and hence also by the fact that the communication of idioms is possible. Much confusion about God’s impassibility could be avoided by recalling that a person suffers in a nature. If one were to say the immaterial God chooses to suffer as God out of love for His creation, His perfection, eternal ‘fate,’ and happiness have been made dependent on creation. Under the same supposition, one must question why the Son became incarnate. God could have suffered as God for our redemption without doing so.”

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 14 out of two natures, in two natures, and two natures.”38 The first clause preserves the single subjectivity of the hypostatic union, the second maintains the distinction between the natures, and the third prevents turning the hypostasis into a tertium quid alongside the two natures. The person of Christ is nothing other than the natures of Christ. Maximus speaks of this incarnational subject as “theandric,” which is not “a composite nature, a kind of borderland between two extremes, but most naturally existing as God made man, that is as perfectly Incarnate.”39

Borrowing from Cappadocian trinitarian theology—and appropriating certain neoplatonic conceptualities—Maximus distinguishes between logos (λόγος τῆς φύσεως; the natural principle of one’s being) and tropos (τρόπος ὑπάρξεως; the mode of existence). Divinity and humanity each have their own logos that defines the law of their being. The incarnation thus does not involve any confusion or mixing of these two logoi; instead, the act of God becoming human involves the actualization of a new theandric tropos within history. This new mode of existence entails a communication (ἀντιδοσις) of properties within the unio hypostatica. Maximus makes this point most clearly in Ambiguum 5, written in the mid-630s in the context of the debate over monenergism:

For since the Lord is double in nature, it is appropriate that he is manifest having a life corresponding both to divine and human laws, welded together without confusion to become the same. . . . And perhaps the one who understood used the appellation ‘theandric,’ as appropriate to this mystery, so that he might make plain the mode of exchange [τῆς ἀντιδόσεως τρόπον; modum communicationis] that accords with the ineffable union, that makes whatever naturally belongs to each part of Christ interchangeable with the other, without changing and distorting each part into the other at the level of the logos of nature. . . . Neither suffers any change by the exchange with the other in union [τῇ καθ᾽ ἓνωσιν ἀντιδόσει], but each remains unchanged in its own being

38 Cf. Maximus the Confessor, Opusculum 6, in J.-P. Migne, ed., Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Graeca, 161 vols. (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1859), 91:68A (hereafter referred to as PG); ET Maximus the Confessor, On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ: Selected Writings, trans. Paul M. Blowers and Robert Louis Wilken (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003), 174: “[Jesus] admits of no opposition between [the two natures], even though he maintains all the while the difference between the two natures from which, in which, and which he is by nature” (emphasis added). Cf. Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguum 5, PG 91:1052D in Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor (New York: Routledge, 1996), 175: “. . . from which and in which and which he is.” 39 Ambiguum 5, PG 91:1057A; Louth, Maximus the Confessor, 177.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 15

as it acquires the property of its partner in union. So also in the mystery of the divine Incarnation: the Godhead and the humanity are united hypostatically, but neither of the natural energies is displaced by the union, nor are they unrelated to each other after the union, but they are distinguished in their conjuncture and embrace.40

What really distinguishes Maximus from other (neo-)Chalcedonian theologians is his insight regarding the human agency of Jesus as manifested most decisively in the Garden of

Gethsemane and in the subsequent passion narrative. Whereas Cyril places the christological emphasis on the incarnation, Maximus makes the temptation, suffering, and death of Christ the center of gravity in his theology—already foreshadowing Luther’s theologia crucis. It is in this context that he comes closest to advocating a genus tapeinoticon. A full analysis of Maximus’s understanding of Christ’s humanity is well beyond the scope of this paper. There are two key points worth noting. The first is that Maximus identifies the human struggles and sufferings in the flesh as a drama occurring within the single subjectivity of the Logos.41 What happens in the flesh happens to God. Maximus can thus speak of “God suffering economically” (θεὸς παθητὸς

οἰκονοµικῶς).42 The temptation in Gethsemane, for example, is part of the historical actualization of a new humanity—the divinely willed recapitulation of human existence within the being of the New Adam.

This leads to the second point: Maximus’s primary concern regarding suffering is not that the Logos participates in the experiences of the flesh, but that the Logos is the active agent of these experiences, and not a merely passive recipient. The problem with fear and other passions is that they have “fallen into the deviant tropos of human self-love and self-interest,” and thus

Christ “models the transfigured ‘use’ of fear [among other experiences] and makes it a precious

40 Ambiguum 5, PG 91:1057D-1060B; Louth, Maximus the Confessor, 178-79. 41 The dramatic reading is very helpfully made in Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor, trans. Brian E. Daley, S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2003), 256-75. 42 Ambiguum 2, PG 91:1037B.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 16 resource of salvation and deification.”43 All of these themes come together in his fifth

Ambiguum, just after the passage quoted above:

For by the active power of his own Godhead, the Word made flesh, possessing the whole power of his humanity, with all its openness to suffering, quite unimpaired by the union, being humanly God [ἀνθρωπίνως θεὸς], performs wonders, accomplished through the flesh that is passible by nature, and being divinely man [θεῖκῶς ἂνθρωπος], he undergoes the sufferings of nature, making them perfect by divine authority. Or rather in both he acts theandrically [θεανδρικῶς], being at the same time both God and man, sufferings showing that he is what we have become . . .44

According to Maximus, Christ possesses and perfects the sufferings of the human nature in and through the power of his divinity. As a single theodramatic subject, Christ is both “humanly

God” and “divinely man”; the Word of God is what he does in the flesh. In Jesus, God thus becomes passible in order to eschatologically transfigure the human condition.

In light of such affirmations, Robert Jenson is surely right to find in Maximus an incipient overturning of the impassible deity of classical metaphysics.45 But Maximus does not follow this radical line of thinking consistently. He often makes recourse to the old Cyrillian qualification “according to the flesh” as a way of preserving the impassibility of God. And the logos-tropos distinction that is operative throughout effectively precludes a real genus tapeinoticon, insofar as it bifurcates between being and act, thus locating the sufferings of the flesh within the economic drama without allowing the theandric activity to constitute a real event on the level of logos. This is reinforced by Maximus’s notion that the fall into sin coincides with

43 Paul M. Blowers, “The Passion of Jesus Christ in Maximus the Confessor: A Reconsideration,” in Studia Patristica 37, ed. M. F. Wiles and E. J. Yarnold (Louvain: Peeters, 2001), 368-69. 44 Ambiguum 5, PG 91:1060B; Louth, Maximus the Confessor, 179. Emphasis added. 45 See Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology, 2 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997-99), 1:137: “It was dogmatically settled before Maximus that ‘one of the Trinity suffered in the flesh.’ But it had still been possible to regard his suffering as in such fashion ‘in the flesh’ as to be exterior to his identity as God. That is no longer possible for Maximus. The man who is the Son suffers in that he freely assents to the Father’s command to do so, and so possesses his suffering as his own. Maximus therefore can and must name this person, with full conceptual rigor and intent, ‘Suffering God.’”

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 17 the fall into passibility,46 and thus conversely our sanctification is a freedom from passion, a movement toward ἀπάθεια.47 For this reason, like Cyril, Maximus’s affirmations of a “suffering

God” and God’s “being-human” in the economy of grace, though they point toward a genus tapeinoticon, remain for the most part within the scope of the genus idiomaticum and genus apotelesmaticum (the Word acting in and through the humanity for the sake of salvation).

Despite the creative advances made by Maximus, the pathway toward a true genus tapeinoticon was officially closed when neo-Chalcedonianism was systematized in John of

Damascus’s Expositio fidei orthodoxae. Following the neo-Chalcedonian union of Cyril with the church’s creedal statements, the Damascene speaks of the “one synthetic [or composite] hypostasis of God the Word” (τῆς µιᾶς τοῦ Θεοῦ Λόγου συνθέτου ὑποστάσεως).48 The change from “one incarnate nature” to “one composite person,” while more strictly Chalcedonian, indicates John Damascene’s concern to protect the metaphysical distinction between the natures.

This becomes especially evident in his exposition of the communicatio idiomatum, where he retrogresses to an almost Leonine perspective by excluding any communication between the natures: “When speaking of the divinity, we cannot assign to it the properties of the humanity.

For we cannot say that the divinity is either passible or created [θεότητα παθητὴν, ἢ κτιστήν].”49

The nail in the coffin of the genus tapeinoticon finally comes a few chapters later:

Although we say that the natures of our Lord indwell [περιχωρεῖν] one another, we know that the indwelling comes from the divine nature. For indeed this [nature] penetrates and indwells all things, as it wills, while nothing penetrates it. It gives the flesh a share in its own glories, while remaining itself impassible [ἀπαθὴς], and having no share in the

46 According to Maximus, humanity was created in a state of impassibility without any physical pleasure or pain, designed by God only to experience “spiritual” pleasure. With the immediate use of his senses, however, Adam “squandered this spiritual capacity” and fell into sin, which is a fall into the dialectics of creaturely existence: pleasure and pain, knowledge and ignorance, body and soul, male and female, etc. See Maximus the Confessor, Cosmic Mystery, 85n10, 97, 131. 47 Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy, 281-84. 48 Expositio fidei orthodoxae 3.7, PG 94:1008C. 49 Expositio fidei orthodoxae 3.4, PG 94:997C. Likewise, he goes on to say, we cannot ascribe the properties of the divinity (e.g., uncreated) to the humanity.

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sufferings of the flesh [τῆς σαρκὸς παθῶν].50

Even though he speaks about the perichoretic interpenetration of the natures, John Damascene refuses to permit a reciprocal sharing of attributes. The divine nature remains immutable and impassible, wholly unaffected by the assumed flesh. In this way, he would define the course of orthodox christology until the Reformation.

The rejection of the genus tapeinoticon in Lutheran orthodoxy

Before turning to Luther, it is helpful to see how the Lutheran scholastics employ this patristic metaphysical logic in their rejection of a fourth genus within the communicatio idiomatum. Central to their theology is the notion of the rigid immutability of God, i.e., the notion that the divinity is unmoved by the incarnational union with humanity. Martin Chemnitz is paradigmatic in this regard. His work on the two natures of Christ set the basic parameters for orthodox Lutheran christology. In his initial description of the three genera that constitute the communicatio idiomatum, he adds the following statement while discussing the genus maiestaticum: “This communication is not mutual or reciprocal [non est mutua seu reciproca], as in the first genus, for since nothing is either added to or subtracted [nihil vel accedat vel decedat] from the divine nature of Christ as a result of the hypostatic union, only His human nature receives and possesses innumerable things because of this union.”51 Chemnitz cites numerous passages from the church fathers in order substantiate this point, including Cyril and, especially,

John Damascene.52 Regarding the latter, he writes: “[Damascenus] adds that in speaking of the deity we do not predicate of it the attributes of the humanity, such as capability of suffering or

50 Expositio fidei orthodoxae 3.7, PG 94:1012C. 51 Chemnitz, Two Natures, 165. 52 Ibid., 166-68, 244-46.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 19 creatureliness [esse passibilem, creatam].”53 This view is repeated by all of the later scholastics.

Gerhard, for example, states that the genus tapeinoticon is impossible because the divine nature

“cannot be exalted in itself to a higher position nor can it be brought down to a more humble position.”54 Even though “the flesh is said to be life-giving, the deity is not likewise said to be mortal or dead,” because “giving belongs to the one assuming and not to the assumed.”55 Johann

Friedrich König repeats this judgment almost exactly in his 1664 dogmatics, representing the height of Lutheran scholasticism.56 Unfortunately, in its pursuit of metaphysical precision,

Lutheran orthodoxy did not remain faithful to Luther’s own christology, as I hope to show in what follows.57 It would not be until the historicist revolution of the nineteenth century that

Lutherans would reach a different judgment on the genus tapeinoticon.

“THE HOLY SPIRIT HAS ITS OWN GRAMMAR”: THE POSTMETAPHYSICAL NEO-CHALCEDONIANISM OF LUTHER’S LATER DISPUTATIONS

Luther’s christology stands firmly, even radically, within the neo-Chalcedonian tradition.

He shares their emphasis on a single-subject christology and a communication of properties as a result of the communion of natures within the hypostatic union. He also makes the “marvelous

53 Ibid., 175. A little later he adds, citing Cyril, that “death does not apply to both natures but only to the human” (ibid., 177). 54 Gerhard, Theological Commonplaces IV, §184, 179. 55 Ibid., §272, 276-77. 56 “In secundo nulla est reciprocatio: non enim natura Divina corruptibilis & mortalis dicitur, sicut caro dicitur vivifica: est vero reciprocatio in primo, ita ut propria Divinae naturae per appropriationem personalem praedicentur de Christo Homine.” Johann Friedrich König, Theologia positiva acroamatica (Rostock 1664), ed. Andreas Stegmann (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), §178, 222. 57 A rare exception seems to be Leonhard Hutter, in his Compend of Lutheran dogma. Though he does not affirm the genus tapeinoticon, he also does not deny it. But what’s interesting is the way he quotes some of Luther’s more radical affirmations of God’s suffering and death. He then explicitly states that “they err who have said and written that the propositions which we have mentioned (God suffered, God died) are only verbal expressions, i.e., mere words, without any corresponding reality. For our simple Christian faith teaches, that the Son of God, who became man, suffered and died for us, and redeemed us with his blood.” Leonhard Hutter, Compendium locorum theologicorum ex Scripturis sacris et libro Concordiae, ed. Johann Anselm Steiger, 2 vols. (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 2006), 2:927. Unfortunately, he elsewhere qualifies this in the usual way, by stating that such attributions of suffering and death to the Son of God are “yet according to his human nature,” since “a divine nature can neither suffer nor die” (ibid., 2:921). Nevertheless, Hutter comes closer than any other scholastic to Luther’s own position. It is thus understandable why he was referred to as “Lutherus redivivus” (cf. ibid., 894).

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 20 exchange” the basis of his soteriology and affirms the life-giving power of Jesus’ flesh. Despite the many points of convergence, it seems Luther was only familiar with the first four ecumenical councils—based in large part on his 1539 study of patristic christology, Von den Konziliis und

Kirchen.58 As David Yeago points out, Luther inherited his neo-Chalcedonian instincts through

Peter Lombard’s Sentences, which draw heavily upon John of Damascus.59 Moreover, the Greek fathers were largely unavailable to him, and “Luther had almost certainly not read Cyril, whom he would have liked enormously.”60 The numerous similarities between Luther and the Cyrillian line of christological thinking is thus almost entirely a coincidence.

At the center of Luther’s christology stands the communicatio idiomatum. Johann Steiger rightly calls it the “axle and motor of Luther’s theology.”61 While Luther’s recourse to the doctrine of communicatio in his later works may seem to place him in greater proximity to the subsequent Lutheran orthodoxy, in actual fact it reveals the full radicality of his theology in contrast to the ancient tradition, his nominalist philosophical context, and his orthodox followers.

We can even speak (albeit somewhat anachronistically) of Luther’s postmetaphysical christology, i.e., his radically neo-Chalcedonian theology. He unknowingly represents the apotheosis of the christological insights of Cyril and Maximus, though freed from certain classical limitations. To defend this claim, I will (a) look at the role that the communicatio idiomatum plays in Luther’s discussion of Eutyches and Nestorius in his treatise On the Councils and the Church, (b) examine Luther’s differentiation between philosophy and theology as demonstrated in his 1539 disputation on John 1.14, and (c) assess Luther’s mature christology in

58 WA 50:488-653; LW 41:3-178. The editor of the English edition explains the reason for translating Kirchen as “Church,” instead of “Churches,” on p. 8. 59 David S. Yeago, “The Bread of Life: Patristic Christology and Evangelical Soteriology in Martin Luther’s Sermons on John 6,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 39, no. 3 (1995): 269n11. 60 Ibid., 270n15. 61 Johann Anselm Steiger, “The communicatio idiomatum as the Axle and Motor of Luther’s Theology,” trans. Carolyn Schneider, Lutheran Quarterly 14, no. 2 (2000): 125-58.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 21 his 1540 disputation on the two natures of Christ, wherein he argues for a new theological language grounded in the grammar of the Holy Spirit. It becomes clear that while Luther stands in the neo-Chalcedonian tradition, his pneumatic freedom from certain metaphysical presuppositions enables him to affirm a genus tapeinoticon in the Christ-event.

Between Eutyches and Nestorius: Luther’s assessment of classical christology

Luther’s later disputations on christology are directly preceded by On the Councils and the Church, published in 1539, a lengthy study of the first four ecumenical councils and their significance for the Protestant Reformation.62 Though he had been thinking about it since 1533, he began to write On the Councils and the Church after Pope Paul III called for a new council in

1536, working concurrently on the Smalcald Articles (1538) and the Three Symbols (1538), his edited versions of the Apostles’, Athanasian, and Nicene creeds.63 These writings came after several years of intense interest in the history of the church, during which time he wrote and edited documents on church history and authority. In light of the impending council to determine

Rome’s response to the Protestant community, the goal of Luther’s 1539 treatise was to demonstrate that the Reformation is not a heretical break with the tradition but truly in keeping with the scriptural marks of the church. While the ancient creeds and councils serve a necessary negative function by excluding erroneous views, according to Luther they have no positive authority for creating new articles of faith. As he argues in the first section, the councils and church fathers cannot serve as the basis for reforming the church. The tradition has only a relative authority; scripture alone is the norm for determining the true identity of the church.

62 For discussions of the material in this treatise, see Lienhard, Luther, 310-17; Melvin G. Vance, “Martin Luther’s Incarnational Theology: The Intentions and Consequences of Martin Luther’s Christology in His Late Disputations” (Dissertation, Marquette University, 2002), 132-40. 63 See the “Introduction” to On the Councils and the Church, in LW 41:6-7. More detailed information about the history of the treatise is available in WA 50:493-500.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 22

Luther concludes the treatise with his list of the seven marks or signs of the ecclesia.

The middle section of On the Councils is devoted to a discussion of the Jerusalem

Council (Acts 15) and the first four ecumenical councils. In his analysis of Ephesus and

Chalcedon, Luther discusses the theologies of Nestorius and Eutyches, respectively. Regarding both anathematized theologians, Luther seeks to reconstruct and reassess their heresies. The result is only somewhat successful, and in truth the discussion of these two theologians is more revealing of Luther’s theology than of the historical figures under consideration. His basic claim is that Eutyches and Nestorius each represent a failure to affirm a necessary consequence of the confession that Christ is both divine and human in one person: Eutyches rejects the communicatio idiomatum with respect to the genus maiestaticum, while Nestorius rejects the communicatio with respect to the genus tapeinoticon—though Luther does not put the matter this way.64 In other words, each affirms the unity of two natures in one person while opposing a reciprocal communio naturarum, wherein each nature participates in the properties of the other.

Reversing the order of the presentation, I will briefly treat Eutyches first, followed by Nestorius, since it is Luther’s assessment of the latter that bears the most importance for the disputations that follow.

1. Luther argues that Eutyches is wrongly portrayed as a monophysite. The “pope’s histories,” he says, referring to the catalogue of heresies in the Corpus Iuris Canonici, condemn

Eutyches for holding “that Christ is to be regarded solely as God and not as man.”65 But at the same time these histories acknowledge that Eutyches ascribes to the notion that “deity has

64 I use the phrase “with respect to” with caution, because Luther does not distinguish between the genus idiomaticum and other genera. So in his analysis of Nestorius and Eutyches, he makes occasional statements that technically fall into the categories of the genus tapeinoticon and genus maiestaticum, respectively, but by and large his discussion falls into the realm of the genus idiomaticum. Nestorius and Eutyches are primarily guilty, according to Luther, of failing to admit a linguistic communication within the one person, but Luther gives indications that the problem is also the lack of communication between the natures themselves. 65 WA 50:593.20-594.3; LW 41:107.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 23 assumed humanity,” which indicates two natures.66 Luther sees this as proof that the Catholic authorities do not understand the significance of their own creedal documents. The issue is not simply that there are two natures in one person, but rather how they are related. In other words, it’s not the mere confession of Christ’s divinity and humanity but the full acknowledgement of the communicatio idiomatum. On Luther’s idiosyncratic reading, Eutyches’s emphasis on the divinity is not the elimination of the humanity but the failure to include the humanity in the

Word through a sharing of the divine attributes with the human nature. Eutyches “firmly maintains that Christ is both God and man,” but “he rejects the divine idiomata of the human nature [die Goettlichen jdiomata von der menschlichen natur].”67 Eutyches cannot say, as Luther thinks one must, that “a man created heaven and earth.” Marc Lienhard criticizes Luther for misunderstanding the real error of Eutyches: “[Luther] reproaches [Eutyches] for failing to bind sufficiently strongly the humanity and the divinity, since . . . he refused to apply the attributes of the divinity to the humanity. In reality, Eutyches had so strongly bound them together that humanity disappeared!”68 Paul Hinlicky defends Luther, however, by recognizing that Luther’s concern is not how close the two natures are but rather where the union is located. The error of

Eutychian monophysitism is that it locates “the unity of Christ in the divine nature as such, which must then assimilate the human to itself, rather than in the divine person assuming a human nature to itself in the act of communicating properties of its divine nature to it and experiencing its human passions as its own.”69 By identifying Christ with the divine nature, and

66 WA 50:594.20; LW 41:108. 67 WA 50:595.23-25; LW 41:109. This is a good example of where Luther seems to indicate more than a mere genus idiomaticum. If it were simply a matter of each nature sharing its attributes with the one person, then Luther could charge Eutyches with speaking of Christ strictly in terms of the divine nature and not in terms of the divine- human person. But to speak, as Luther does, of “the divine idiomata of the human nature” indicates a communication between the natures, and not simply a semantic sharing of attributes within the incarnate hypostasis. 68 Lienhard, Luther, 317. 69 Paul R. Hinlicky, “Luther’s Anti-Docetism in the Disputatio de divinitate et humanitate Christi (1540),” in Creator est Creatura, ed. Oswald Bayer and Benjamin Gleede (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), 142-43.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 24 not with the divine-human hypostasis, Eutyches undermines the communicatio idiomatum. And though Luther does not make this point explicit, Eutyches is ultimately guilty, on this reading, of undermining the genus maiestaticum which, for Luther, has nothing to do with any overpowering or divinizing of the humanity by the divinity, but rather with God’s gracious glorification and exaltation of the humanity.70

70 In this regard, I agree entirely with Piotr Malysz that Karl Barth has misunderstood the Lutheran genus maiestaticum, and that his own communicatio gratiarum functions in precisely the way that Luther intends his genus of majesty to function, viz. as a way of affirming the concrete exaltation of humanity within the unio hypostatica. See Piotr J. Malysz, “Storming Heaven with Karl Barth? Barth’s Unwitting Appropriation of the Genus Maiestaticum and what Lutherans Can Learn from It,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 9, no. 1 (2007): 73-92. When Barth thus states that “in Jesus Christ . . . our human essence is given a glory and exalted to a dignity and clothed with a majesty which the Son who assumed it and existed in it has in common with the Father and the Holy Ghost—the glory and dignity and majesty of the divine nature,” he has eloquently captured the genus maiestaticum without realizing it. Of course, this does not mean there are not still significant differences between Barth and Luther regarding the communicatio idiomatum. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, 4 vols. (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1956-75), IV/2:100. For a helpful and detailed discussion of Luther and Barth on the genus maiestaticum, paying particular attention to Luther’s soteriological concerns and Barth’s polemic against the anthropocentricity of Schleiermacher, see Neal J. Anthony, Cross Narratives: Martin Luther’s Christology and the Location of Redemption (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2010), 197-262. Anthony correctly observes that the real difference between Barth and Luther is not the question of deification or the distinction between God and creation, but rather it is the spatiotemporal location of redemption—i.e., whether the reconciliation accomplished in Christ is to be understood as a past fact (the one “real human”), or whether the crucified Christ is present in his saving significance with each person, within each concrete present moment. Barth’s meticulous, albeit mistaken, engagement with Lutheran christology in his later dogmatic work is preceded by a far less nuanced assessment of the genus maiestaticum in his 1920 lecture on Feuerbach. There he asserts that, “according to this doctrine, the predicate of the divine glory belonged to the humanity of Jesus as such and in abstraction (in abstracto),” thus leading to “the possibility of a reversal of above and below, of heaven and earth, of God and man, a possibility of forgetting the eschatological boundary.” Luther, Barth thus claims, leads directly to Feuerbach! See Karl Barth, Theology and Church: Shorter Writings, 1920-1928, trans. Louise Pettibone Smith (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 230. Quite to the contrary, Luther always insisted that the communicatio idiomatum is true exclusively of the concrete, historical person of Christ. On that point, see in particular Bayer, “Das Wort ward Fleisch,” 14. Bayer quotes a passage from Bonaventure’s commentary on Lombard’s Sentences as representing Luther’s position. Bonaventure states that “non est communicatio idiomatum in abstractione, sed in concretione, quia Deitas non est humanitas, sed Deus est homo” (there is no communicatio idiomatum in the abstract, but rather in the concrete, because deity is not humanity, but God is a human). Cf. Bonaventura, Commentaria in Quatuor Libros Sententiarum, 1.33.1.3 ad 4. The problem of abstraction only appears in later Lutheran scholasticism. For example, Johann König (1664) differentiates between the genus maiestaticum (for him, the second genus) and the genus idiomaticum in the following way: “In secundo hoc genere subjecti loco quandoque ponitur vox abstractiva; in primo vero semper terminus concretivus subjecti loco deprehenditur.” König, Theologia positiva acroamatica, §178, 222. While this seems to confirm Barth’s judgment, the earlier dogmatics of Gerhard (1625) clarifies the matter. Acknowledging the Calvinist opposition to the use of abstract terms, he goes on to say that “the word ‘abstract’ is ambiguous,” because it can refer to “Christ’s human nature according as it is considered of itself and through itself” as well as “Christ’s human nature considered not through itself and of itself but according to the grace of the union.” It is in the latter sense, according to Gerhard, that abstract terms are used in the genus maiestaticum. See Gerhard, Theological Commonplaces IV, §273, 277. Gerhard’s view is preceded by Leonhard Hutter in his 1609 Compend, where he offers a similar judgment regarding the genus maiestaticum: “this communication was not effected by any essential or natural emptying of the properties of the divine nature into the human nature, as if Christ’s human nature had

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 25

2. According to Luther, if Eutyches undermines the communicatio idiomatum with reference to the genus maiestaticum, Nestorius undermines the communication with reference to the genus tapeinoticon. Luther defends Nestorius against the traditional charge of dividing Christ into two persons (as in Cyril’s charge of “two sons”). As with Eutyches, Luther sees in Nestorius an orthodox affirmation of two natures in one person. Again, the problem is not with the initial premise but with the unwillingness to draw the necessary christological consequences regarding the communication of properties due to certain presuppositions.71 Nestorius holds back from the communicatio idiomatum in a misguided attempt to preserve the impassible majesty of God. He wants to protect the qualitative distinction between God and humanity, but he conceives of this distinction on the basis of philosophically-derived definitions of divinity and humanity, and not on the basis of the incarnate history of Jesus Christ. Specifically, Nestorius cannot speak of God dying on the cross:

To be God is an immeasurably different thing than to be man; that is why the idiomata of the two natures cannot coincide. That is the opinion of Nestorius. . . . If I say, “The carpenter Jesus was crucified by the Jews and the same Jesus is the true God,” Nestorius would agree that this is true. But if I say, “God was crucified by the Jews,” he says, “No! For crucifixion and death are idiomata or attributes not of divine but of human nature.” . . . He had in mind . . . that God and death are irreconcilable. It seemed terrible to him to hear that God should die. . . . If it seems strange to Nestorius that God dies, he should think it equally strange that God becomes man; for thereby the immortal God becomes that which must die, suffer, and have all human idiomata.72

Taken on its own, the emphasis in this passage on God’s death, and the notion that God, and not simply Christ, “must have all human idiomata,” is already a strong affirmation of the genus tapeinoticon. Luther’s critique of Nestorius is really a critique of the whole Chalcedonian

these properties in itself, and when separate from the divine essence.” Hutter, Compendium locorum theologicorum, 2:929. 71 “Nestorius’ error was not that he believed Christ to be a pure man, or that he made two persons of him; on the contrary, he confesses two natures, the divine and the human, in one person—but he will not admit a communicatio idiomatum.” WA 50:587.19-22; LW 41:100. 72 WA 50:587-89; LW 41:101-3.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 26 tradition, insofar as it has been controlled throughout by the axiom of God’s impassibility.73

Even Cyril, Nestorius’s archrival, was unwilling to say that God could die in Christ. And yet this is precisely what Luther believes one must say if we confess that God became human.

Luther’s treatise remains ambiguous, however, due to the fact that a few lines later he says, “since God and man have become one person, it follows that this person bears the idiomata of both natures.”74 If we take this statement as authoritative, then the critique of Nestorius is in fact limited to the genus idiomaticum: the sharing of the attributes of both natures to the personal subject of Jesus Christ. To be sure, applying these scholastic categories to Luther is somewhat anachronistic; for him, there was only the communicatio idiomatum. Moreover, he was not a systematic thinker—being rather a pastoral and polemical theologian who wrote mostly for the sake of certain occasions and needs in the moment—so it has to be acknowledged that this analysis is bringing a certain level of consistency and precision to Luther’s writings.

Nevertheless, it is important to recognize precisely what he was claiming. Does Luther’s critique of Eutyches and Nestorius remain only on the level of the one person, or does it extend to a communication between the natures? For the most part, Luther’s treatise is concerned only with the communication to the person, but there are still a number of statements that are irreducible to the genus idiomaticum. The following passage is a good example of both aspects mixed together:

[I]f it cannot be said that God died for us, but only a man, we are lost; but if God’s death and a dead God lie in the balance, his side goes down and ours goes up like a light and empty scale. Yet he can also readily go up again, or leap out of the scale! But he could not sit on the scale unless he had become a man like us, so that it could be called God’s

73 Luther criticizes the Council of Ephesus for restricting its condemnation of Nestorius to the question of Mary as theotokos: “This council condemned far too little of Nestorius, for it dealt only with the one idioma, that God was born of Mary. . . . This is why they should not just have resolved that Mary was theotokos, but also that Pilate and the Jews were crucifiers and murderers of God, and the like” (WA 50:590.23-24, 29-31; LW 41:104). 74 WA 50:590.3-4; LW 41:103. Earlier in this same paragraph, Luther writes: “We Christians must ascribe all the idiomata of the two natures of Christ, both persons, equally to him. Consequently Christ is God and man in one person because whatever is said of him as man must also be said of him as God, namely, Christ has died, and Christ is God; therefore God died—not the separated God [der abgesonderte Gott], but God united with humanity” (WA 50:589.21-26; LW 41:103).

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 27

dying, God’s martyrdom, God’s blood, and God’s death. For God in his own nature cannot die; but now that God and man are united in one person, it is called God’s death when the man dies who is one substance or one person with God [der mit Gott ein ding oder eine Person ist].75

Luther affirms the traditional view of divine impassibility in the abstract (i.e., outside of the incarnation), but in light of God’s union with humanity in Jesus Christ, the death of Jesus is the death of God. In one sense, this is a matter of sharing predicates within the one person, but it’s also equally clear that this is not merely linguistic. The very being of God, the divine nature of

Christ, is itself affected, even changed, by virtue of this incarnational union.

In the end, it seems fair to say that even if Luther’s treatment of Nestorius in On the

Councils and the Church is primarily focused on the communicatio idiomatum in the more general sense of the genus idiomaticum, it is already strongly oriented in the direction of a true genus tapeinoticon. The same goes for his analysis of Eutyches, except in the direction of the genus maiestaticum. “Nestorius does not want to give the idiomata of humanity to the divinity in

Christ,” according to Luther, “even though he maintains that Christ is God and man. Eutyches, on the other hand, does not want to give the idiomata of divinity to the humanity, though he also maintains that Christ is true God and true man.”76 The unity of the natures in the person requires also a reciprocal communication between the natures, not just the divine to the human, but the human to the divine. And as Luther had already established in his debates with Zwingli, this communication cannot be a merely figurative or linguistic interchange—what Zwingli called

ἀλλοίωσις.77 Not surprisingly, Luther mentions Zwingli in the treatise as a current example of

75 WA 50:590.13-22; LW 41:103-4. 76 WA 50:595.3-7; LW 41:109. 77 See, e.g., Luther’s discussion of die Alleosis in his 1528 Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper (Bekenntnis vom Abendmahl Christi) in WA 26:317-26; LW 37:206-14. In particular, note the following famous passage quoted also in the Solid Declaration (8.39-40) of the Formula of Concord: “Beware, beware, I say, of this alloeosis, for it is the devil’s mask since it will finally construct a kind of Christ after whom I would not want to be a Christian, that is, a Christ who is and does no more in his passion and his life than any other ordinary saint. For if I believe that only the human nature suffered for me, then Christ would be a poor Savior for me, in fact, he himself would need a

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 28

Nestorianism, i.e., as someone who cannot honestly state that God, according to the divine nature, suffered in Jesus Christ.78 Though Luther’s analysis is uneven and unsystematic in nature, it clearly moves in a much more radical direction than a mere communication to the person. Indeed, the basic elements of the genus tapeinoticon are present in this treatise. Luther would develop these insights more fully in his subsequent disputations.

“Deus est homo”: laying the groundwork for the genus tapeinoticon in the 1539 disputation

Before Luther can fully reform the (neo-)Chalcedonian tradition with respect to the communicatio idiomatum, it is first necessary to reassess the relation between theology and philosophy. As we saw with both Cyril and (Luther’s) Nestorius, certain metaphysical presuppositions regarding the properties of Christ’s two natures prevent the affirmation of a genus tapeinoticon. Though Nestorius does not admit any communication of properties, Cyril and others at least allow for a linguistic sharing of properties. But they cannot affirm a real participation by the divinity in the sufferings of Jesus. To achieve that, theology must reassess its philosophical commitments. This is precisely what Luther sets out to do in his 1539

Savior” (WA 26:319.33-39; LW 37:209-10). The term ἀλλοίωσις does not originate with Zwingli, of course, but appears in patristic documents as synonymous with ἀντίδοσις. Chemnitz and other Lutheran theologians attribute the christological use of the term to John Damascene, but the word itself goes back to Plato’s Republic (454c) and Aristotle’s Physics (226a26), where it has the meaning of a change in the properties of a particular thing (e.g., the motion of an object or the aging of a person). The word ἀντίδοσις, by contrast—which appears in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (1133a6) and many other ancient texts—refers to an exchange between two parties, as in a trade or a loan repayment. According to the Liddell-Scott lexicon, the word may also refer to a situation in Athens in which a person who is charged with a special war-time tax or act of public service calls upon another citizen to act or pay on his behalf. It’s clear from this etymological inquiry that, regardless of the figurative connotations the word ἀλλοίωσις came to possess later, the term ἀντίδοσις is far more appropriate for use in christology, due to the soteriological emphasis on substitution and the “marvelous exchange.” 78 “I too have been confronted by Nestorians who fought me very stubbornly, saying that the divinity of Christ could not suffer. For example, Zwingli too wrote against me concerning the saying, ‘The Word became flesh.’ He would simply not have it that ‘became’ should apply to ‘Word.’ He wanted it to read, ‘The flesh was made word,’ because God could not become anything. . . . For reason wants to be clever here and not tolerate that God should die or have any human characteristics, even though it is used to believing, like Nestorius, that Christ is God.” WA 50:591.9-14, 18-21; LW 41:105. By contrast, as Nagel puts it, “Zwingli sees Luther as unwilling to have any Christ in whom the divinity did not suffer.” Nagel, “Heresy, Doctor Luther,” 43. Cf. WA 30/3:139.29.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 29

Auseinandersetzung with the school of thought associated with the Sorbonne in Paris, which

Luther calls the “mother of errors” (mater errorum).79 In this disputation against Paris—in many ways a follow-up to his 1517 Disputatio contra scholasticam theologiam—Luther proposes a christocentric approach to God-talk that allows the incarnate one to free our speech from external, philosophical limitations, however rational they may be. The “Word made flesh” transfigures our ordinary human expressions so that they become “new words” (nova vocabula).

The infinite becomes finite: Luther against the Sorbonne

Luther’s disputation on “the Word was made flesh” is a rejection of the Sorbonne’s position that “the same is true in philosophy and theology.”80 The christological implications of this thesis are discussed below. What concerns us at the moment is the larger theological conversation to which Luther is alluding. Broadly speaking, the issue is the so-called theory of the “double truth” (duplex veritas).81 The origin of this debate can be traced back to the Islamic philosopher, Averroes (1126-1198), known as the great “Commentator” on Aristotle in Latin scholasticism. Averroes faced the problem of how to reconcile Aristotle’s philosophy, which he judged to be the climax of the human intellect, with Islamic theology. He proposed the notion of a “double truth,” though whether he or his followers actually held to this notion is a matter of debate. As Frederick Copleston notes, “This does not mean that . . . a proposition can be true in philosophy and false in theology or vice versa: his theory is that one and the same truth is understood clearly in philosophy and expressed allegorically in theology. The scientific

79 The body of the disputation (Luther’s responses to various arguments following the theses) has been preserved in three different forms, identified as A, B, and C. The A version is the longest and most detailed of the three. 80 WA 39/2:3.7-8 (thesis 4); LW 38:239. Translation revised. 81 For more on the history of this concept, see Luca Bianchi, Pour une histoire de la “double vérité” (Paris: Vrin, 2008), especially the first chapter, “Sorbona, mater errorum: La ‘légende’ de la ‘double vérité’ et son retentissement jusqu’à Luther” (pp. 23-56).

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 30 formulation of truth is achieved only in philosophy, but the same truth is expressed in theology, only in a different manner.”82 Averroes’s position, while privileging philosophy over theology, was quite moderate and insisted on the unity of truth. The more problematic position came with what is called “Latin Averroism,” also known as integral or radical Aristotelianism, represented especially by Siger of Brabant (c.1235-c.1282), who taught in the faculty of arts at Paris.83 A number of controversies arose during this time, one of which concerned whether there is one intellectual soul in all human beings, as Aristotelian philosophy proves via reason, or whether there is an individual soul for each human person, as theology claims. According to his opponents, Siger appealed to the “double truth” theory, but this time “in the sense that what is true in philosophy is false in theology and vice versa.”84 Siger allowed philosophy to contradict theology in favor of philosophy. Against Siger, Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-1274) argued that reason and faith could not be in conflict, though certain things were indeed known only to faith and not by reason alone.85

The Latin Averroists, including Siger, were condemned by Bishop Stephen Tempier in

1270, and a general condemnation of Averroistic Aristotelianism followed on March 7, 1277, in the form of a list of 219 erroneous propositions. In the 1277 condemnation, Bishop Tempier rejects the notion that “things are true according to philosophy, but not according to the catholic faith, as if there are two contrary truths.”86 But as White has cogently argued, the more important

82 Frederick C. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, 9 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1946-74), 2:198-99. 83 Ibid., 2:437. 84 Ibid., 2:436. 85 The other major debate was over the eternality of the world. The radical Aristotelians argued that matter’s eternality could be rationally demonstrated, while Thomas Aquinas, following the biblical witness on creation, argued that while the eternity of the world was not impossible, it could not be proved true. 86 The full Latin statement reads: “Dicunt enim ea esse vera secundum philosophiam, sed non secundum fidem catholicam, quasi sunt due contrarie veritates, et quasi contra veritatem sacre scripture sit veritas in dictis gentilium dampnatorum.” Heinrich Denifle and Émile L.M. Chatelain, eds., Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis (Paris: Delalain, 1889-), 1:543 (my translation); cf. Graham White, Luther as Nominalist: A Study of the Logical Methods

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 31 event for understanding Luther happened eleven days later on March 18, 1277, when Edward

Kilwardby, archbishop of Canterbury, issued his own list of thirty prohibited propositions, known as the Oxford condemnation.87 The first two condemned theses of logic read:

1. Quod contraria simul possunt esse vera in aliqua materia [that contraries can be simultaneously true in a certain subject-matter]. 2. Item quod sillogismus peccans in materia non est sillogismus [that the syllogism which is materially erroneous (i.e., with respect to a subject-matter) is not a syllogism].88

By rejecting the first thesis, Kilwardby seems to affirm that truth is univocal; there can only be one kind of truth. In rejecting the second thesis, it is affirmed that as long as a syllogism is formally correct, it remains rational regardless of the subject-matter. These theses, along with the others, together imply a rejection of any contradiction between philosophy and theology; what is rational and true in one subject-matter must be rational and true in the other. Luther does not directly respond to the 1277 condemnations of either Oxford or Paris, but these are the themes and ideas that appear throughout the disputation. White seems to be correct in arguing that

Luther “probably thought of both condemnations as productions of the Sorbonne.”89

In contrast to the 1277 position of Oxford and Paris, Luther argues instead that philosophy and theology constitute two distinct realms with their own distinct logics. His first thesis states that “what is true in one field of learning is not always true in other fields of learning.”90 Luther follows this in the second thesis by using John 1.14 as the paradigmatic

Used in Martin Luther’s Disputations in the Light of Their Medieval Background (Helsinki: Luther-Agricola- Society, 1994), 374-75. 87 See White, Luther as Nominalist, 374-76. For a more detailed discussion of the Paris and Oxford condemnations, see Sara L. Uckelman, “Logic and the Condemnations of 1277,” Journal of Philosophical Logic 39, no. 2 (2010): 201-27. Cf. also P. Osmund Lewry, “The Oxford Condemnations of 1277 in Grammar and Logic,” in English Logic and Semantics from the End of the Twelfth Century to the Time of Ockham and Burleigh: Acts of the 4th European Symposium on Mediaeval Logic and Semantics, Leiden-Nijmegen, 23-27 April 1979, ed. H.A.G. Braakhuis, C.H. Kneepkens, and L.M. de Rijk (Nijmegen: Ingenium, 1981). 88 Denifle and Chatelain, Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, 1:558. 89 White, Luther as Nominalist, 376. 90 “Omne verum vero consonat, tamen idem non est verum in diversis professionibus.” WA 39/2:3.1-2; LW 38:239.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 32 instance of where philosophy and theology part ways: “In theology it is true that the Word was made flesh; in philosophy the statement is simply impossible and absurd.”91 It is the unity of God and humanity in the singular event of Jesus Christ that constitutes the impasse between theology and philosophy; faith alone is capable of understanding the truth of this reality that is utterly uncategorizable and sui generis. Theses 4-7 go on to identify the Sorbonne as the target of his polemic, condemning them for teaching “that articles of faith are subject to the judgment of human reason.”92 Luther clarifies this in thesis 10, where he criticizes the Aristotelian categories as being unable to account for the way in which God becomes a human being in Christ. Later, in a response to one of the arguments in the A version of the disputation, he addresses the so-called

“tree of Porphyry” (Arbor Porphyriana) as being unable to understand the meaning of “homo” when we say that “Deus sit homo factus” (“God was made a human being”) and “homo sit Deus”

(“a human being is God”).93 In the majority of the disputation’s theses (nos. 15-39), and throughout the body of the disputation, Luther offers and responds to examples of formally correct syllogisms that are appropriate in philosophy but not in theology. He even uses an example of “natural philosophy” (“liquid moistens” is true with respect to the atmosphere but

“manifest heresy when speaking of fire”)94 to show that this distinction between fields of learning is not limited to theology.

What precisely is Luther’s objection to the Sorbonne? There seem to be two main

91 “In theologia verum est, verbum esse carnem factum, in philosophia simpliciter impossibile et absurdum.” WA 39/2:3.3-4; LW 38:239. 92 “Nam hac sententia abominabili docuit captivare articulos fidei sub iudicium rationis humanae.” WA 39/2:4.2-3 (thesis 6); LW 38:239. 93 WA 39/2:12.3-10; LW 38:247. The Arbor Porphyriana is a reference to Porphyry’s Introduction to Aristotle’s Categories, the standard textbook of scholastic logic, which organizes concepts based on their level of generality (i.e., genus and species). The Arbor provides the philosophical infrastructure from which one can develop syllogisms. For a more detailed discussion of the Arbor and Luther’s response to it, see White, Luther as Nominalist, 158-68. By far the best treatment of Luther’s relation to Aristotle—though it only deals with the early Luther, focusing primarily on the Heidelberg Disputation—is Theodor Dieter, Der junge Luther und Aristoteles: Eine historisch-systematische Untersuchung zum Verhältnis von Theologie und Philosophie (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2001). Dieter also discusses the 1277 condemnations (cf. ibid., 214-16, 455-56). 94 WA 39/2:5.29-30 (thesis 37); LW 38:242.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 33 criticisms: the first is a problem internal to the Sorbonne’s position, while the second is the specifically theological objection to the Parisian notion that philosophy and theology must harmonize. The internal critique goes something like this:

(1) according to the Sorbonne, truth is univocal and so what is true in philosophy must be true in theology; (2) in order to accommodate a theological statement like “God became a human being” while retaining its allegiance to the metaphysical categories, philosophy has to equivocate regarding the word homo, so that it means one thing in reference to human beings generally and another thing in reference to the Word made flesh;95 (3) ergo, in attempting to maintain the univocal harmony between philosophy and theology, the Sorbonne testifies precisely to the differentiation between the two subject matters that it is trying to oppose.

Luther repeats this basic argument throughout the disputation in various ways.96 His point is that, regardless of how one approaches the theological subject-matter, at some point the claims made by faith require a differentiation between the realm of philosophical truth and that of theological truth.97 There is no straightforward way of harmonizing the two fields, since the claims made by each, taken univocally, are contradictory. One must allow that what is true in philosophy is in fact false in theology, even if, as Bengt Hägglund rightly argues, “the unity of theology and philosophy from the standpoint of faith is a self-evident postulate of Luther’s theology.”98

95 White argues that the work of John Mair and the early Ockham are the likely targets of Luther’s polemic. See White, Luther as Nominalist, 159-64, 373-74. Cf. Gerhard Ebeling, Lutherstudien, 3 vols. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1971), 2:158-60. 96 A good example is in the C version of argument 9; see WA 39/2:16-17; LW 38:273. 97 Luther approaches this differentiation between philosophy and theology in terms of two closely-related sets of distinctions. The first and most important is the distinction between the major premise and the minor premise. In the syllogisms that Luther uses as examples, the major premise tends to represent the position of philosophy (i.e., some general statement defining “human being” or “God”), while the minor premise represents theology (e.g., “Christ is a man”). Luther responds to the syllogism by questioning or jettisoning the major premise. Here’s an example, from argument 14 (version A): “Whatever existed before creation was not born. Christ existed prior to creation. Therefore, Christ was not born a man. Response: The form is valid, but the conclusion is false. The premises are true; nevertheless, the major premise must be differentiated. It is true in philosophy, not in theology.” WA 39/2:20.10-13; LW 38:253. Another distinction employed by Luther to accomplish this same purpose is that of simpliciter (“simply” or “without qualification”) and secundum quid (“in a certain respect”). The philosophical major premise approaches the object or the subject-matter simpliciter, whereas theology views the matter secundum quid, i.e., in accordance with the singularity of the object or in the unique perspective of faith. 98 Bengt Hägglund, Theologie und Philosophie bei Luther und in der occamistischen Tradition: Luthers Stellung zur Theorie von der doppelten Wahrheit (Lund: C.W.K. Gleerup, 1955), 100; emphasis added. Cf. Axel Schmidt, Die Christologie in Martin Luthers späten Disputationen (St. Ottilien: EOS, 1990), 210-19.

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The second, external response of Luther is that theology makes confessional claims that are impossible on strictly philosophical grounds. Take, for example, the first argument in the A version of the disputation. The argument against Luther is that philosophy attributes infinite power to God, therefore philosophy acknowledges God’s power to become flesh. Luther responds by stating that philosophy has not grasped the truly radical nature of theology’s claim.

It’s not merely that God is able to do something, but rather that God is able to become what philosophy defines as not-God.

For although the power of God is infinite, still, according to philosophy God cannot be spoken of as both Creator and creature, as God and man. It is true that philosophy acknowledges that God exists and that he is omnipotent; nevertheless, it is in no way possible to acknowledge on the basis of philosophy that he can become man, because God himself is infinite. For if he is of infinite power, he cannot become finite man because man is a part of the finite.99

The same issue appears again in argument 7, where Luther distinguishes between thinking and believing: philosophy may “think” (i.e., know by reason) that God is infinite and eternal, but only theology is able to “believe” (i.e., know by faith) that God’s infinitude includes the finite and God’s eternality includes time. As Luther puts it, “it does not follow [from its statements about God’s infinite power] that philosophy believes in the incarnation or that eternity can become temporality which is taken into the infinite . . . [or] that that which is infinite can be made finite like man.”100 In order to responsibly reflect on the unique claims of Christian faith, theology must develop a new language, one not determined in advance by philosophical conceptualities but governed rather by the singular history of Jesus Christ.

99 “Nam etsi Dei est infinita potentia, tamen Deus non potest secundum philosophiam dici, videlicet, quod ipse creator et creatura, Deus et homo secundum philosophiam dici non potest. Esto, quod philosophia concedat, esse Deum, esse omnipotentem, tamen eum posse fieri hominem, ex philosophia nullo modo concedi potest, quia ipse est infinitus. Si enim est infinitae potentiae, ergo non potest homo fieri finitus, quia homo est aliquid finiti.” WA 39/2:8.19-9.4; LW 38:245. 100 “. . . non sequitur, quod philosophia credat de incarnatione et quomodo aeternitas possit fieri temporalitas, quae in infinitum sumitur . . . nec hoc, quod infinitus possit fieri finitus ut homo.” WA 39/2:15.1, 6-7; LW 38:249.

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“Extra Christum non est Deus alius”: the new language of theology

Luther’s constructive response to the Sorbonne is that “a philosophical word becomes new in theology.”101 The temptation is to think that Luther’s later theology comes down to a simple matter of semantic theory.102 And even if Luther is deeply concerned about language- use—which, of course, he is—this is not because his theology is determined by nominalist linguistic theory, but because he is seeking the proper way of bearing faithful witness to the reality of God in the flesh. Toward this end, Luther puts forward two key theses in the body of the disputation. The first thesis is: Deus est homo.103 In argument 9, Luther is apparently responding to the first thesis in the Oxford condemnation of 1277, viz. that contraries cannot be simultaneously true in a particular subject-matter. As a rebuttal of this claim, Luther responds in version A: “God is man. In philosophy it is false to say that he is God and man. For this reason we separate these spheres in creation to the furthest extent.”104 In the C version of this argument, we read: “God is man, which is a simple proposition, not twofold as the Sorbonne has made it.

We condemn the latter.”105 Luther contrasts the proposition “God is man” with the proposition

“every man is a creature”: the first is true simpliciter in theology, he says, but false in

101 “. . . vox philosophica in theologia plane fit nova . . .” WA 39/2:19.7; LW 38:253. 102 This is the approach taken by Graham White, which is what allows him to turn Luther into a thoroughgoing late-medieval nominalist. He focuses on Luther’s semantic theory and interprets his christology in light of his use of christological language. Because Luther’s linguistic tools are essentially Ockhamist in nature, White’s conclusion is that Luther’s christology is also Ockhamist—despite the many passages where Luther explicitly distances himself from the christology of his nominalist teachers. White seems to think that such passages are merely window- dressing, or instances of a misunderstanding on Luther’s part. One gets the strong impression from reading White that once you know Ockhamist nominalism—i.e., once you learn Luther’s sources and systematize his methodology—you suddenly have a “key” for unlocking Luther’s actual thinking. White seems to disregard the notion, despite the massive evidence to the contrary, that it is actually biblical exegesis, not nominalism, which controls Luther’s thought. For instances where White addresses the notion that Luther’s christology appears to conflict with Ockhamist christology, see White, Luther as Nominalist, 287-98, 392-96. 103 The statement first appears in the disputation in thesis 3: “The declaration, ‘God is man,’ is not less but even more contradictory than if you would say, ‘Man is an ass’” (Nec minus, imo magis disparata est praedicatio: Deus est homo, quam si dicas: Homo est asinus). WA 39/2:3.5-6; LW 38:239. 104 “Deus est homo. In philosophia est falsa, quod sit Deus et homo. Ideo in creatura ita longissime separamus has sphaeras.” WA 39/2:16.12-14; LW 38:250. 105 “Deus est homo, quod sit simplex propositio, non duplex, ut Sorbona fecit. Nos damnamus eam.” WA 39/2:17.28-29; LW 38:273.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 36 philosophy; the latter is true simpliciter in philosophy, but false in theology. Luther goes on to reject the notion that we can equivocate on the word “homo” in order to philosophically accommodate the proposition. God simply is a human being, according to theology.

On what basis can Luther make such an outrageously provocative statement? For this we turn to his second and most crucial thesis: extra Christum non est Deus alius (“outside Christ there is no other God”).106 For Luther, theology does not merely claim that God has become human; it claims, in fact, that there is no other God than the human God, no other divinity than the one completely united with humanity in Jesus. The incarnate Christ is the definitive self- revelation of God: “Luther wants to emphasize that God has revealed himself in Christ, and only in Christ, so that all other ways to the knowledge of God are radically rejected, because they do not lead to the true God.”107 The problem with philosophy—and here the critique extends even to

Luther’s ancient theological kin, such as Cyril and Maximus—is that it presumes to have conceptions of divinity and humanity present-at-hand, such that the notion of Christ as the Word- made-flesh is then a problem that has to be explained (viz. by equivocation). Luther argues that just the opposite is the case for theology: the reality of the Word-made-flesh is our sole starting- point, which defines for us what it means to be divine and human. The only deity is therefore a deity-with-humanity, a deity that lives, suffers, and dies in the flesh. Luther objects to speaking theologically about humanity or divinity in-itself, i.e., in the abstract. There is no “separated human being” or “separated God” in theology—a view that he elsewhere ascribes to

Nestorius.108 The perennial problem with metaphysics is that it attempts to abstract from the

106 WA 39/2:25.18; LW 38:258. Luther makes almost the same statement in German in his 1528 Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper in the context of the genus maiestaticum: “ausser diesem menschen kein Gott ist” (“apart from this human being there is no God”). See WA 26:332.19-20; LW 37:218. 107 Schmidt, Die Christologie in Martin Luthers späten Disputationen, 252. 108 In his response to Luther in On the Councils and the Church, Luther rejects the notion of the detached or separated God (der abgesonderte Gott), since such a God is not united with humanity, and therefore cannot suffer and die in Christ—and thus is not the God who saves sinners. See WA 50:589; LW 41:103. Later, in his 1543

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 37 concrete particularity of an object in order to speak about it in a detached and universal way. In christology, this leads to an emphasis on the two natures over the one concrete person, hence the qualification “according to the human nature.” Luther’s rejection of the Arbor Porphyriana and the Aristotelian system of ontology is, in fact, a rejection of this syllogistic movement from the general to the particular, from genus to species. Theology speaks instead on the basis of the particular and concrete, and this gives its words a new meaning in distinction from philosophy.

Norman Nagel summarizes the matter well:

The form of the syllogism may be the same in philosophy and theology, but the conclusions do not have equal standing. In philosophy man is persona subsistens, in theology the term used of Christ includes also his divinity. The words used by philosophy take on then a new meaning. . . . The traditional phrases ‘according to his human nature’ and ‘according to his divine nature’ Luther uses so that the distinction of the natures is not lost; but his usage of them has come free of the dualism which sees divine and human, heavenly and earthly, infinite and finite, impassible and passible, as opposites unreconcilable. They are if you look at God separately, and if you look at man separately, but in Christ this separation is gone. In Christ they have a new meaning; the old meaning applies only to them when separated. In speaking of him we may not speak of the divinity separated from the humanity, or of the humanity separated from the divinity. By such separation our Savior and salvation are undone. Extra Christum non est Deus alius.109

When theology makes this axiom the ground of its God-talk, it leaves philosophy “in its own sphere” and learns instead “to speak a new language in the realm [regno] of faith.”110

While Luther’s 1539 disputation does not advance his position on the communicatio idiomatum in any significant way—and even when he does mention it, it comes off almost as

treatise, The Last Words of David (Von den letzten worten Davids), Luther criticizes Nestorius more directly along these same lines. According to Luther, Nestorius speaks of Christ’s divinity and humanity in such a way that God does not actually become human but remains “a person separated from the humanity,” while the human Jesus likewise remains “a person separated from God” (“. . . Gott bleibe fur sich selbst ein abgesonderte Person von dem Menschen, Und der Mensch fur sich selbs [sic] ein abgesonderte Person von Gott”). WA 54:90.27-28. Regarding the problem of treating humanity in the abstract (i.e., apart from God), thesis 32 of Luther’s Disputatio de homine states that “Paulus . . . breviter hominis definitionem colligit, dicens, Hominem iustificari fide” (“Paul briefly summarizes the definition of humanity, saying, To be human is to be justified by faith”). WA 39/1:176.32-33. 109 Nagel, “Heresy, Doctor Luther,” 47. 110 “Rectius ergo fecerimus, si dialectica seu philosophia in sua sphaera relictis discamus loqui novis linguis in regno fidei extra omnem sphaeram.” WA 39/2:5.35-36; LW 38:242.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 38 conservative111—the “value of the disputation lies in the fact that it does not allow us to argue on the basis of philosophical reasons in the mysterious articles of faith, but we must adhere strictly to the word and truth of the Bible.”112 Formally speaking, the words of the Bible are the same ones employed by philosophy. The difference is not in the letter but in the spirit, not in the what

(Was) but the how (Wie). Luther concludes his disputation by stating that reason must “submit itself in obedience to Christ,” and in doing so the old words become nova vocabula—new words controlled by the Spirit in accordance with Christ’s concrete self-giving in faith.113 Language is obedient to Christ when the subject-matter is not determined in advance and in the abstract by conceptualities alien to the scriptural witness. Instead, it lets the crucified Christ determine what may be said truthfully of God, and so also of humanity. To borrow from Luther’s famous 1520 treatise on The Freedom of a Christian, theology that is obedient to Christ is both a “free lord of all,” subject to no external logics, and a “dutiful servant of all,” freely appropriating and engaging philosophical discourses.114 Or as he puts it in his 1539 disputation, “Faith is not bound by, or subject to, the rules or words of philosophy, but it is on that account free.”115 It is within the christic-pneumatic freedom of faith that Luther then expounds the genus tapeinoticon in his

1540 Disputatio de divinitate et humanitate Christi.

111 For the A version, see WA 39/2:20.15-21.11; LW 38:254. There’s also a very short C version: WA 39/2:20.31-35; LW 38:274. In the A version, despite making a very traditional distinction between the natures, Luther nevertheless still goes beyond most theologians in the Chalcedonian tradition when he affirms that “Christ as true God and true man suffered for us, and the whole person is said to have died for us.” Furthermore, “these two natures in Christ ought not to be separated but unified as much as possible because the Son of God is God who suffered, was crucified, was dead, and rose again.” 112 “Hic est usus huius disputationis, quod non liceat in articulis fidei mysticis pugnare rationibus philosophicis, sed nude adhaerendum sit verbo et veritati bibliae.” WA 39/2:30.15-17 (C version); LW 38:277. In the preface to the A version, Luther states: “This, therefore, is the reason for this disputation and the cardinal point, namely, that God is not subject to reason and syllogisms but to the word of God and faith” (“Haec igitur causa est disputationis huius et summa, quod Deus non sit subiectus rationi et syllogismis, sed verbo Dei et fidei”). WA 39/2:8.4-5; LW 38:244. 113 WA 39/2:30.18-19; LW 38:277. In argument 15 of Die Promotionsdisputation von Palladius und Tilemann (1537), Luther states: “Omnia vocabula fiunt nova, quando transferuntur ex philosophia in theologiam” (“All words become new when transferred from philosophy to theology”). WA 39/1:231.1-3 (B version). 114 See WA 7:21.1-4; LW 31:344. 115 “Fides non est regulis seu verbis philosophiae adstricta aut subiecta, sed est inde libera.” WA 39/2:7.36-37; LW 38:270.

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“Deus est passibilis”: the genus tapeinoticon in Luther’s 1540 disputation

Luther’s Disputation Concerning the Divinity and Humanity of Christ, debated on

February 28, 1540, represents the high-point of his christological thinking, especially with regard to the communicatio idiomatum. In it we find the full maturation of what I am calling Luther’s postmetaphysical neo-Chalcedonianism. Whereas his disputation on “the Word was made flesh” was a response to the philosophical theology of the Sorbonne, here the target of Luther’s polemic is the docetic christology of Schwenckfeld. In this disputation he manages to further radicalize his neo-Chalcedonian emphasis on Christ as a single personal subject, while at the same time identifying this subject with the concrete, fully human, suffering Jesus. Luther thus historicizes the neo-Chalcedonian christology that he inherited. Recognizing that Luther does not have a systematically-differentiated doctrine of the communicatio, we can nevertheless identify in this disputation the affirmation of what later theologians would call the genus tapeinoticon.

Between Eutyches and Nestorius again: Luther against Schwenckfeld and nominalism

The 1540 disputation is set against the backdrop of an ongoing controversy in Germany regarding the views of Caspar Schwenckfeld von Ossig, whose views were criticized in Luther’s time as a modern form of Eutychianism.116 The opposite problem of Nestorianism is not a central concern of the text, but it does appear in the mild form of the nominalist suppositional christology represented by William of Ockham. In opposing each position, Luther maintains that

Christ is a concrete historical creature, while simultaneously identifying this creature with the divine Son of God in the context of his particularity as a single incarnate subject.

116 Luther himself identifies Schwenckfeld as a Eutychian in thesis 31 of this disputation: “There is a secret Eutyches dwelling in all those heretics who have at any time contrived to deny that the Word became flesh.” WA 39/2:95.1-2; DDHC, 154.

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1. Schwenckfeld became a convert to the cause of reform in 1518 and is considered the

“author of the Silesian Reformation.”117 While shaped largely by Luther’s early theology, he interpreted the Reformer’s thinking in a strongly spiritual and mystical direction.118 He was a remarkably idiosyncratic thinker: his position on the Lord’s Supper resembled that of Calvin, his position on baptism that of Zwingli, his position on church polity and predestination that of the

Anabaptists. But it was his christology that received universal condemnation. His position, first formulated in 1538,119 was that Christ is not a creature, not even with respect to his humanity:

“The Savior’s humanity is in the strictest and most absolute sense divine.”120 Schwenckfeld applied the creedal formula, “begotten not made,” to the incarnate Christ, according to both natures.121 The flesh of Jesus is deified through the Spirit; but whereas the ancient doctors of the church spoke of this deification as a momentary occurrence in the assumptio carnis,

Schwenckfeld argues that there is a progressive deification of Christ throughout the course of his life, beginning with the Spirit’s implantation of the divine principle in Mary and culminating in

Christ’s complete glorification in the resurrection and ascension when he is a fully divine person.122

117 Selina Gerhard Schultz, Caspar Schwenckfeld von Ossig (1489-1561), 4th ed. (Pennsburg, PA: Board of Publication of the Schwenkfelder Church, 1977), 8. 118 In certain respects he even seems to anticipate the Finnish reading of Luther, especially in the strong emphasis on deification and in the notion that “faith is a communication of the very nature or essence of God to men.” Charles Beatty Alexander, Kaspar von Schwenkfeld: His Life, Christology and Theology (New York: The Evening Post Job Printing Office, 1926), 26. 119 The work in question is a pamphlet that he wrote for some of his friends, Summarium ettlicher Argument Das Christus nach der Menschheyt heut kein Creatur. 120 Alexander, Kaspar von Schwenkfeld, 22. Alexander then quotes Schwenckfeld stating: “When I say that Christ’s flesh is deified, that his flesh has become God, I mean nothing else than that the human nature of Christ has become altogether similar to the divine nature in glory.” 121 See the statement of Schwenckfeld, quoted in Schultz, Caspar Schwenckfeld von Ossig, 259: “Christ, who was that by nature which the regenerated are by grace, was begotten of God as to his humanity; hence Christ is not a creature even as to his humanity.” 122 See Caspar Schwenckfeld, Caspar Schwenckfeld: Eight Writings on Christian Beliefs, ed. H. H. Drake Williams (Kitchener, Ont.: Pandora, 2006), 47-48: “Therefore, one can be taught initially from the milk, the holy Incarnation of Christ, indeed, about the crucified Lord Christ from Paul, and the favor of his suffering—through to his complete divinity, to the glorified, reigning Christ (which is the solid food), and may gain the same.” Cf. Caspar Schwenckfeld, Commentary on the Augsburg Confession, trans. Fred A. Grater (Pennsburg, PA: Schwenkfelder

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Schwenckfeld’s various arguments on the noncreatureliness of Christ make it abundantly clear that he sees God and humanity, creator and creature, standing in a competitive relation to each another. He thus remains fully within the metaphysical thinking of the classical tradition.

But because he insists, like Luther, on a single-subject christology, he opts for divinizing Christ’s flesh—by means of a supercharged genus maiestaticum—instead of humanizing his deity.

Schwenckfeld is entirely incapable of thinking dialectically or paradoxically. The notion that the

Creator could become a creature is incomprehensible to him. The only way to affirm the creatureliness of Christ, he thinks, is to be a thoroughgoing Nestorian.123 Not only does he come within a hair’s breadth of denying the consubstantiality of Christ with humankind, but he also ends up equivocating on the word “flesh” in order to maintain the biblical affirmation of Christ as the “Word made flesh,” precisely what Luther had condemned in 1539. Against

Schwenckfeld, Luther insists that Christ is the divine Son of God precisely as a human creature, not in spite of being human. Whereas Schwenckfeld represents a quasi-Eutychian docetism,

Luther stresses the paradoxical and postmetaphysical unity of God with creaturely reality.124

Library, 1982), 52: “The Lord Jesus Christ desires not only to be recognized and known by us according to the flesh and in a historical manner . . . . Rather, He desires to be learned about and meditated upon more according to the Spirit and His own new, glorified, completely heavenly existence as the ruling Lord and King of heaven and earth.” 123 Christopher Schultz, A Vindication of Caspar Schwenckfeld von Ossig: An Elucidation of His Doctrine and the Vicissitudes of His Followers, trans. Elmer Schultz Gerhard (Allentown, PA: E. Schlechter, 1942), 267. 124 Interestingly, in his defense of Schwenckfeld against the widespread charge of Eutychianism, Christopher Schultz cites Luther’s treatise On the Councils and the Church, which we noted has a rather unusual and confusing treatment of Eutyches. As Schultz reads Luther, the problem with Eutyches is that “he refused to concede [the attributes of the Godhead] to his human nature.” Since the error of Eutyches appears then to be the lack of a genus maiestaticum and the failure to share the divinity with the humanity, Schultz then naturally concludes that “the entire mass of doctrine opposing Schwenckfeld in the article on the glory of Christ is wholly Eutychian.” See ibid., 271. This, of course, is only true if (a) Luther’s reading of Eutyches is accurate and (b) Schultz’s reading of Luther is also accurate. Both are quite debatable. My judgment on the matter is this: if Schultz’s reading of Luther is correct, then Luther’s reading of Eutyches is incorrect. However, another reading of Luther, and so of Eutyches, is possible, namely, that the error of Eutyches is in locating Christ’s personal identity in the divine nature alone, such that the human nature has to be subsumed into the divinity in order for Christ to be both divine and human in one person. These two interpretations of Luther trade on two different understandings of the genus maiestaticum: the interpretation of Schultz is that the communication of majesty involves the ontological deification of Christ’s flesh, whereas the interpretation put forward here (following Paul Hinlicky et al.) is that this communication rather involves the gracious inclusion of an ontologically distinct humanity within the single subjectivity of God the Son. That is to say, the properties of the divinity are shared with the humanity not for the sake of divinization but rather in

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2. Standing in stark contrast to the docetism of Schwenckfeld is the “suppositional christology” of the nominalists, William of Ockham, Gabriel Biel, and Pierre d’Ailly. The nominalists follow Duns Scotus in seeking “to safeguard the real humanity of Christ,” even

“maintaining a certain degree of independence of the human nature from the Logos.”125 Their axiom is nulla est proportio finiti ad infinitum, “there is no relationship between the finite and the infinite.”126 The nominalist theologians are often charged with Nestorianism because of

Ockham’s so-called asinus-christology, i.e., the notion that God de potentia absoluta could have assumed an irrational being (such as an ass) into union with the Logos, even though de potentia ordinata God choose human nature. Heiko Oberman attempts to acquit the nominalists of this charge, but the basic problem remains: by positing the speculative possibility of an incarnation in some other object, the nominalists violate Luther’s rule that “outside of Christ there is no other

God.” This further manifests itself in the nominalist notion that the human nature is carried or sustained (sustentificatur) by the divine person, often represented by the analogy of the soul

“carrying” the body. This is often referred to as a suppositional christology, since the hypostatic union is reduced here to a suppositale union; the divine person supports the human nature as its suppositum.127 Even if we acknowledge an orthodox interpretation of this notion—many of the

order to affirm that God is sovereignly active and graciously present “in, with, and under” the tangible medium of creaturely flesh. If we take Luther’s analysis as our starting-point, however, Schwenckfeld is actually guilty of Nestorianism, despite all appearances to the contrary. See n. 129 below. 125 Heiko Augustinus Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), 253. 126 Cf. Dennis Ngien, “Trinity and Divine Passibility in Martin Luther's ‘Theologia crucis’,” Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 19, no. 1 (2001): 49; Dennis Ngien, “Chalcedonian Christology and Beyond: Luther’s Understanding of the Communicatio Idiomatum,” Heythrop Journal 45, no. 1 (2004): 63-64. The use of this phrase by the nominalists has its origin in Scotus, but it is found through medieval scholasticism, including Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure. As Hans Urs von Balthasar notes, however, it was used by these earlier figures as just one aspect of the analogia entis, to be complemented by the notion of a likeness or relation between God and humanity. The nominalists, in opposing Thomistic christology, emphasize the distinction in a stronger way than their predecessors. Cf. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, trans. Graham Harrison, 5 vols. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988-98), 3:222-23. 127 Cf. Lienhard, Luther, 328-29: “At the basis of Occamist christology, as of that developed by Luther, lies the traditional concept that in the hypostatic union, the person of the Son does not assume a human person at the

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 43 ancient doctors, including Cyril, often speak in similar ways about Christ—it still stands in contrast to the rigorous elaboration of a single divine-human subject that Luther believes one must affirm if we take the incarnate Christ as our theological starting-point. Luther does not reject the Moderni (i.e., the scholastic theologians of the via moderna) as heretical, but he does refer to their position as especially insulsius (tasteless, insipid) and portentose (awkward, bizarre, monstrous) in theses 46-48.128

Though the charges of Nestorianism and Eutychianism may not quite hold for the nominalists and Schwenckfeld, respectively, the positions of suppositional christology and noncreaturely (or docetic-divinized) christology are helpful foils for Luther’s project. Each represents an attempt to reflect on the person of Christ within the bounds of a metaphysical conception of divinity and humanity. That is to say, each presupposes that divinity is, by definition, in conflict or competition with finite, creaturely humanity. Each then follows a different path in order to maintain the orthodox teaching that Christ is “one person in two natures.” The nominalists, carrying on the “Antiochene” concern for the distinction between the two natures, turn the hypostatic union into a suppositional union; Schwenckfeld, as an extreme representative of the “Alexandrian” accent on the one person of the Word, divinizes the flesh and so supplants incarnation with heavenly glorification. Either way, the one notion both sides reject is the possibility of a human God, that is, the possibility of a genus tapeinoticon. Neither can

incarnation, but a human nature. The problem is to know how the human nature is united to the divine person. Occam rejected the idea that the human nature is in some way melted with the Christ into one sole person, so that the human nature also becomes persona Christi. Rather than admit such an idea, Occam thought that one could as readily conceive of the human nature becoming an ass! Occam and his disciples . . . understood the hypostatic union quite differently. The human nature does not become . . . persona Christi, but is carried and elevated (sustentificatur) by the persona divina. According to Biel . . . the persona divina constitutes for the human nature what he calls a suppositum, that means it allows it to live as an individual existence. . . . The hypostatic union thus conceived as suppositale union is distinguished from personal union in that the human nature does not become a person.” Hinlicky notes, following the work of Jörg Baur, that Melanchthon seems to have made use of suppositional christology in his 1555 Loci. See Hinlicky, “Luther’s Anti-Docetism,” 170n53, 174n61. 128 WA 39/2:95.32-37; DDHC, 155. Cf. Hinlicky, “Luther’s Anti-Docetism,” 174.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 44 countenance the idea of God suffering and dying in the flesh of Jesus.129

Nova lingua: the grammar of the Spirit and the suffering of God

Luther’s Disputatio de divinitate et humanitate Christi rejects Schwenckfeld and nominalism for the purpose of developing a new postmetaphysical theological language. The nova lingua—concretely revealed in Christ and made possible through what Luther calls “the grammar of the Spirit”—moves beyond the philosophical limitations of the Chalcedonian tradition in order to affirm a real unity of divinity and humanity in Christ. The result of Luther’s new christocentric God-talk is the implicit affirmation of the genus tapeinoticon: God experiences and does what the man Jesus experiences and does in the flesh. After the incarnation, according to Luther, God is passible. And since “outside of Christ there is no other

God,” the only God faith knows is the God who suffers and dies.

Luther lays the initial groundwork for his revision of Chalcedonian metaphysics in the first five theses:

1. This is the fides catholica: we confess one Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true human being.

129 As implausible as it may initially seem, if we take Luther’s analysis of Nestorius and Eutyches as the basis for evaluation, it’s possible to reverse the usual charges: Schwenckfeld is actually guilty of Nestorianism, and the suppositional nominalists are guilty of Eutychianism! Just as Nestorius’s real error was his concern for protecting the impassibility of God, the real problem with Schwenckfeld is that he is loathe to admit any communication of tangible, fleshly, creaturely properties and experiences to the divine being. His gnostic-inflected docetism thus goes hand-in-hand with his unwillingness to accept a communicatio idiomatum from the humanity to the divinity. Likewise, the nominalists reveal themselves to be guilty of a kind of Eutychianism, at least as interpreted by Luther. I noted above that, according to Luther, the problem with Eutyches is his location of Christ’s personal identity in the divine nature, and not in the divine-human hypostasis, with its attendant sharing of the divine agency and glory with the humanity. Something along these lines seems to be the case in suppositional christology. The notion that the human Jesus is an interchangeable accident in the incarnation—replaceable by ass or stone, tree or dog—and is sustained like a garment by the divine person, strongly indicates that the location of the personal identity is in the divine nature alone. According to Vance, “Biel . . . seems to have described the real self of Christ as above the world and infinitely different from the human being Christ supported in this world” (Vance, “Martin Luther’s Incarnational Theology,” 60; emphasis added). The human nature has a measure of independence, and thus remains in a way alien to the true identity of Christ. The suppositionalists do not permit the humanity to personally participate in the majesty of the divine person—in which case Christ would be irreducibly a divine-human person—but neither do they permit the divinity to personally participate in the sufferings of the human nature. In short, on Luther’s terms, they are guilty of both errors regarding the communicatio idiomatum.

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2. From this truth of the twofold substance and the unity of the person there follows what is called the communicatio idiomatum. 3. So that those things which are attributed to the human being are rightly said of God; and, on the other hand, those things attributed to God are said of the human being. 4. It is true to say: this human being created the world and this God suffered, died, was buried, etc. 5. However, these things are not correct in the abstract (as it is said) of human nature.130

Luther’s essential concern in the disputation is here made clear: on the one hand, he argues for the radically indivisible unity of divinity and humanity in Christ, and yet, on the other hand, theology must make a clear distinction between speaking in abstracto and in concreto.131 Just because Christ is a servant does not mean that Christ is servitude; and just because God is human in Christ does not mean divinity in abstracto is humanity in abstracto or vice versa. And yet within the concrete particularity of Jesus Christ, it is true that this man is the Creator and that

God has suffered and died. The rest of the theses go on to critically examine this confusion of abstract and concrete in various theologians. Schwenckfeld is guilty, according to Luther, for intentionally, or at least ignorantly, failing to make this necessary differentiation (theses 25-27).

Others, such as Athanasius (theses 44-45), the nominalists (theses 46-48), and the poet Sedulius

(theses 36-38), are unintentionally careless with their language. By contrast, the grammarians, as

Luther calls them in thesis 51, are extremely anxious about words, but they make the mistake of thinking that a slight difference in the words always indicates a different meaning. They thus fail to distinguish between a change in words (in verbis) and a change in sense (in sensu).

Luther’s polemic in this disputation extends the critical assessment of theological speech beyond the 1539 disputation. The earlier work looked at the relation between the two spheres of

130 “1. Fides catholica haec est, ut unum dominum Christum confiteamur verum Deum et hominem. 2. Ex hac veritate geminae substantiae et unitate personae sequitur illa, quae dicitur, communicatio idiomatum. 3. Ut ea, quae sunt hominis, recte de Deo et e contra, quae Dei sunt, de homine dicantur. 4. Vere dicitur: Iste homo creavit mundum et Deus iste est passus, mortuus, sepultus etc. 5. Non tamen haec rata sunt in abstractis (ut dicitur) humanae naturae.” WA 39/2:93.2-10; DDHC, 152-53. My translation. 131 Cf. Ngien, “Chalcedonian Christology and Beyond,” 62-64.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 46 philosophy and theology; now the focus is on intra-theological disputes in which we find the unwarranted imposition of philosophical logic. Whereas the philosophical theology of the

Sorbonne determined the meanings of various theological words in the abstract through the a priori adoption of a conceptual system and so prevented theology from honestly articulating its subject-matter, here Luther is addressing the way various theologians have confused the relation between abstract and concrete and thus speak either improperly (at best) or deceptively (at worst). If, in 1539, the concern was the freedom of theology to speak of God, in 1540 the issue is precision and accuracy in our speech. Usually, when theologians seek to gain greater precision, this involves using qualifiers like “according to the human nature” so as to carefully maintain certain metaphysical distinctions. For Luther, by contrast, such precision takes the form of freely following the logic of the communicatio idiomatum to its end. His key example of improper speech is the use of qualifiers to avoid the statement that God has suffered and died in Christ.

As in the 1539 disputation, Luther’s polemic serves the constructive purpose of articulating a “new use of language” (novae linguae usu).132 The new language of faith not only takes Jesus Christ as its revealed starting-point—as the one outside of whom theology would be impossible and nonsensical—but now it also reflects upon the fact that, in Christ, divinity and humanity are “personally conjoined in the unity of the person.”133 Luther calls this new language a “new way of speaking [nova locutio] which has never before been heard in the world.”134

Again, it is not the words themselves that are new, but the manner of their use. In thesis 24, he makes this point explicit, which was only implicit in 1539: “It is not a new or different thing, but

132 WA 39/2:94.21 (thesis 22). 133 “Sunt illae naturae coniunctae personaliter in unitate personae.” WA 39/2:98.6-7 (preface); DDHC, 158. Translation revised. 134 “Est nova locutio, quae non est antea audita in mundo.” WA 39/2:103.5; DDHC, 162.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 47 it signifies in a new and different way.”135 In other words, the concern is not what is said, but how it is to be understood. Luther’s interest is not so much grammatical as it is hermeneutical.

How do we rightly interpret the creedal confession that Christ is two natures in one person?

Luther rejects going the way of the philosophers, in which the natures are defined apart from the person. Instead, the nova lingua takes the historical event of the person as the basis for determining what can be said of the natures.

The consequence—as demonstrated in arguments 2, 5, 11, and 33—is a thoroughgoing affirmation of the genus tapeinoticon. The second argument, in particular, is paradigmatic. There are two parts, corresponding to the two parts of thesis 4. In the first, Luther defends the statement that “this human being created the world” (iste homo creavit mundum). His response is that

“there is the communicatio idiomatum,” and the argument that Christ as a creature could not be the creator is a “philosophical argument.”136 He ends this response by declaring, “Therefore, that which I state concerning Christ the human being, I also rightly state concerning God, that God suffered, was crucified.”137 If Luther stopped here, one could justifiably confine his position to the genus idiomaticum: the attributes of both natures are ascribed to the one person, but they are not shared between the natures. As if to rule out precisely such an interpretation, we read:

Objection: But God cannot be crucified or suffer. Response: I know, [that is true] so long as God has not become a human being. From eternity God is impassible, but as soon as God has been made a human being, God is passible. From eternity God was not a human being, but now, of course, conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin, God and a human being become one person and the same things are predicated of both God and the human being. A personal union has been established here. There—in this person—humanity and divinity go into one another [gehets ineinander]. The unity, that holds them together [die helts]. I confess two natures, but they cannot be separated. This makes a unity that is a greater and firmer conjunction than that of soul and body, because these can be separated, but the natures can never be

135 “Non quod novam seu aliam rem, sed nove et aliter significet.” WA 39/2:94.25; DDHC, 154. 136 “Est communicatio idiomatum, et iterum philosophicum argumentum.” WA 39/2:101.4-5; DDHC, 160. 137 “Ergo recte quod dico de homine Christo, dico etiam de Deo, quod sit passus, crucifixus.” WA 39/2:101.22- 23; DDHC, 160. Translation revised.

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separated—immortal divine nature and mortal human nature, but united in one person. This one is called Christ, the impassible Son of God, God and a human being crucified under Pontius Pilate. Another objection: The immortal is not able to become mortal. God is immortal. Therefore God is not able to become mortal. Response: In philosophy that is true.138

Luther leaves no doubt: after the incarnation, God is indeed passible and mortal, and not merely

“according to the human nature,” as if the divinity could somehow remain preserved from these creaturely actions and experiences.139 Luther can even say, in a letter to Martin Gilbert in 1544, that “the Son of God—nay, God himself—truly suffered, because God is truly a human being, and the human being is truly God in one person.”140 Commenting on this passage, Reinhard

Schwarz makes the crucial observation that Luther does not reduce the statement “Ipse Deus verus est passus” to the more innocuous “Deus secundum humanitatem assumptam est passus”

(“God suffered according to the assumed humanity”). The divine nature, Schwarz notes,

“participates in the dying that is specific to the human nature.” In fact, “the divine nature shares in all the peculiarities of the human nature.”141 There is no holding back from all the scandalous implications of the genus tapeinoticon. Luther does not shrink from the logic of the gospel:

138 “Obiectio: At Deus non potest crucifigi aut pati. R. Scio, cum nondum esset homo. Ab aeterno non est passus, sed cum factus est homo, est passibilis. Ab aeterno non erat homo, sed iam conceptus ex Spiritu sancto scilicet, natus ex virgine fit Deus et homo una persona et sunt eadem praedicata Dei et hominis. Hic facta est unio personae. Da gehets ineinander humanitas et divinitas. Die unitas, die helts. Duas fateor naturas, sed non separari possunt. Hoc facit unitas, quae est maior et firmior coniunctio quam animae et corporis, quia haec separantur, illa nunquam, immortalis natura divina et mortalis natura humana, sed unita in una persona. Da heists Christus, filius Dei impassibilis, Deus et homo crucifigitur sub Pontio Pilato. Aliud: Immortale non potest fieri mortale. Deus est immortalis. Ergo non potest fieri mortalis. R. In philosophia est verum.” WA 39/2:101.24-102.8; DDHC, 161. My translation. 139 In this, the 1540 disputation is the full maturation of Luther’s earlier work. Already in article 3 of his 1529 Schwabach Articles, he declares that “one should neither believe nor teach that Jesus Christ has suffered for us as a human being or as humanity [als der mennsch oder die mennscheit]; but rather because here God and humanity [got unnd mennsch] are not two persons but one undivided person [ein unzutrennliche person], one should hold and teach that God and humanity or God’s Son has truly suffered for us.” WA 30/3:87.16-20; my translation. Cf. Ngien, “Chalcedonian Christology and Beyond,” 56. 140 “Filius Dei, imo ipse Deus verus est passus, quia Deus vere est homo, et homo vere est Deus in una persona.” Martin Luther, Briefwechsel, 18 vols. (Weimar: H. Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1930), 10:581.14-16. Hereafter cited as WAB. 141 Reinhard Schwarz, “Gott ist Mensch: Zur Lehre von der Person Christi bei den Ockhamisten und bei Luther,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 63, no. 3 (1966): 312-13.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 49 because Christ, in whom divinity and humanity are completely united, has died, therefore God has died.142

Luther reinforces the genus tapeinoticon throughout the 1540 disputation. The unity of the two natures is so great (maxima), Luther says in argument 17, that “they are equal in predication, and they communicate their attributes to each other as if he were only God or only a human being.”143 In argument 5, he applies the divine-human unity of agency and experience to the cry of abandonment: “insofar as the human being cries out, God also cries out.” And because of the unity of the person, the attribute “to be crucified” is “attributed even to the divinity.”144

Arguments 11b, 33, and 33a restate Luther’s rebuttal to the philosophical claim that divinity is by nature impassible and immortal. In 11b, the objection is that whatever is subject to death is not God, and since Christ is subject to death, he cannot be God. Luther replies: “There is the communicatio idiomatum. That which is proper to the human nature is common to the divine nature.”145 Instead of threatening the consubstantiality of Christ with God, argument 33 threatens the unity of the natures by asserting the impassibility of the divine nature. Again, Luther responds by declaring the fact of the communicatio idiomatum, with the result that “those things which Christ suffered are attributed to God as well, because they are one.”146 Luther repeatedly refuses to follow the Chalcedonian tradition in neatly compartmentalizing the experience of

142 Cf. WA 48:648.8-9: “Sed tamen ait ipsum Christum mortuum esse, qui est verus Deus et verus homo. Igitur Deus et homo mortuus est.” Cf. Schwarz, “Gott ist Mensch,” 313. According to Steiger, “This is the outrageous thing about genuine Reformation theology, which is a God-is-dead theology of unsuspected explosiveness.” Steiger, “Communicatio Idiomatum,” 127. 143 “Sed maxima est illa unitas duarum naturarum in una persona, ut pares sint in praedicatione, communicant sibi idiomata, quasi vel solum esset Deus vel solum homo.” WA 39/2:111.14-16; DDHC, 168. 144 “Est vera, quia quod clamat homo, clamat etiam Deus, et crucifigi dominum gloriae est impossibile secundum divinitatem, est autem possibile secundum humanitatem, sed quia est unitas personae, illud crucifigi tribuitur etiam divinitati.” WA 39/2:103.24-31; DDHC, 162. 145 “Est communicatio idiomatum. Hoc quod proprium est humanae naturae, est commune divinae.” WA 39/2:108.8-9; DDHC, 165. The same objection is repeated almost word-for-word in 33a, with a similar response. See WA 39/2:121.6-11; DDHC, 175. 146 “Est communicatio idiomatum. Illa, que Christus passus est, tribuuntur etiam Deo, quia sunt unum.” WA 39/2: 121.1-2; DDHC, 174-75.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 50 suffering and death within the human nature in order to protect the impassibility of God.

The genus tapeinoticon lies at the heart of Luther’s later theology, with his pursuit of a new approach to speech about God. In contrast to philosophy, Luther asserts a nova lingua, a new theological language; and in contrast to the grammarians, Luther asserts a new grammar:

“The Holy Spirit has its own grammar.”147 This does not mean, of course, that theology follows different linguistic rules from ordinary human speech. The nova grammatica, like the nova lingua, is not a new form of language alongside other forms of language already in existence.

Theology is not one discourse or science among others. The new language and grammar of the

Spirit is Luther’s way of saying that theology does not need to qualify or apologize for the seemingly impossible and scandalous things it declares on the basis of the biblical witness. The subject-matter is “ineffable and incomprehensible” outside of faith.148 But in the illuminating freedom of Christ’s Spirit, the theologian can state that “creator and creature is [est] one and the same.”149 The est here is the key. In the debates over eucharistic presence and ubiquity, the est in

“this is my body” was the point of contention. Here, however, we go behind the relation between

Christ and the eucharistic elements to a more primal est, one determined by the historical unity of God and humanity: Deus est passibilis, Deus est homo, creator est creatura.

In a June 1541 letter on the eucharist and christology, Luther states this identity of God and humanity in a way that complements the 1539 and 1540 disputations:

They150 have also made use of false philosophy in the article on the incarnation. So I say: this human being is God, this child of Mary is the creator of the world . . . . They cannot

147 “Spiritus sanctus habet suam grammaticam.” WA 39/2:104.24 (arg. 7); DDHC, 163. 148 WA 39/2:105.4 (arg. 7); DDHC, 163. 149 “Ibi creator et creatura unus et idem est.” WA 39/2:105.6-7 (arg. 7); DDHC, 163. 150 There is some debate over who the opponent is in this letter. Most are agreed that Luther is writing against the nominalists, because he explicitly criticizes his opponent for holding to the notion that the Son of God “sustentans humanam naturam.” Reinhard Schwarz argues this case most cogently in Schwarz, “Gott ist Mensch,” 339-42. White strongly opposes Schwarz in defense of Biel, and suggests that Luther’s concern is “mainly semantic”; see White, Luther as Nominalist, 392-96. Vance, however, agrees (rightly, in my view) with Schwarz over against White. Cf. Vance, “Martin Luther’s Incarnational Theology,” 141-46.

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say such things: that God and a human being are one thing, or that Mary’s child and the creator are one thing . . . . The human being is God, humanity and God is one thing.151

The nova lingua sive grammatica of the Holy Spirit is able to say Deus est homo and homo est

Deus—what is proper to God is shared with humanity, and what is proper to humanity is shared with God.152 But this is not a merely semantic est; the identification of this human child with the divine creator has crucial ontological implications. The very being of God is at stake. It is precisely this est that constitutes Luther’s advance beyond Chalcedonian metaphysics: “The gulf between Creator and creature is joined in Christ, and this can never be denied. That he is God may not be separated from his being man, and one dare not speak of his being man apart from his being God. Luther pushes further than the prepositions, Cyril’s ἐκ and Chalcedon’s ἐν, to an est.”153

Recognizing the inherent limitations of all pictorial representations of christology, how might we diagram Luther’s account of the two natures? The difficulty in depicting Luther’s theology comes from the fact that he distinguishes between person, nature, and property even less clearly than someone like Cyril. Nevertheless, it is evident from our analysis that the differentiations between nature and property, and between inseparable and separable properties, simply do not hold. If we adapt figure 1 to suit Luther’s writings, we come up with something like the following:

151 “Also haben sie auch solche falsche philosophia gebraucht ynn dem artikel incarnationis, Als, wenn ich spreche: Dieser mensch ist Gott, dis kind Marie ist schepffer der welt, . . . Solche rede lassen sie nicht bleiben, das Gott vnd Mensch ein ding, oder Marie kind vnd schepffer ein ding sey . . . Homo est deus, Mensch und Got [sic] ist ein ding.” WAB 9:444.51-55, 445.73. 152 Cf. Luther’s Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper, where he emphasizes this reciprocal identity: “Wir sagen nicht, das Gottheit sey menscheit odder Gottliche natur sey menschliche natur, welches were die natur ynn ein wesen gemenget, Sondern wir mengen die zwo unterschiedliche natur ynn ein einige person und sagen: Gott ist mensch und mensch ist Gott” (“We do not say that divinity is humanity, or that the divine nature is the human nature, which would be confusing the natures into one essence. Rather, we merge the two distinct natures into one single person, and say: God is a human being and a human being is God”). WA 26:324.20-23; LW 37:212. Translation slightly revised. 153 Nagel, “Heresy, Doctor Luther,” 46.

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SINGLE DIVINE-HUMAN SUBJECT

the the INDIVIDUAL INDIVIDUAL NATURE NATURE of the Word of the flesh

Fig. 3

The two main differences between this diagram and Loon’s diagram for Cyril are (a) the use of dotted lines around each nature and (b) the removal of the separated properties that are “attached to or lie round” the natures, which indicates in Cyril that the attributes are shared in a merely linguistic manner without any communication between the natures themselves. The result is not wholly satisfactory, however, insofar as there remains an apparent distinction between the subject and the two natures, as if the acting person is a tertium quid beyond the conjunction of the two natures. It would perhaps be more accurate, in light of Luther’s axiom that Deus est homo, to identify the subject as the unity of the two natures.

SINGLE DIVINE-HUMAN SUBJECT

(divine – solid, human – dashed)

Fig. 4

The advantage of figure 4 is that it visualizes the neo-Chalcedonian alignment between Luther

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 53 and Maximus regarding the fact that Christ is not merely from two natures or in two natures, but simply is two natures. The single subject is primarily the divine Logos, hence the solid, outer line representing the divine nature. But the Logos has no independent identity outside of the flesh— no extra Calvinisticum, nor even an abstract logos asarkos. For this reason, the human nature is depicted by a dashed line to indicate the perichoretic communio naturarum that results in both the genus maiestaticum and genus tapeinoticon. It is important to note that one cannot identify the acting subject with the divine nature in distinction from the assumed humanity, since that would result in the suppositional christology of the nominalists that Luther rejects. One cannot abstract the divine subject from the humanity and retain the same subject; the result is an empty conceptual shell that is useless for theology.

The danger of this diagram is that the dashed line might give the impression that the humanity has been dissolved or melded into the divinity. Certainly, many have charged Luther with precisely this error of monophysitism. But the thoroughgoing rejection of Schwenckfeld’s docetism—which is a true blending of the natures—reveals such a charge to be wide of the mark, as Hinlicky has argued.154 Luther’s christology is, on the contrary, the far more radical identification of God with the historical career of this man Jesus. Luther is best understood not in terms of the genus maiestaticum, which often does seem to lean in a problematic monophysite direction because of the overtones of divinization; instead, he is more accurately interpreted in light of the genus tapeinoticon, where the divinity is humanized and historicized in correspondence to the biblical witness to Jesus of Nazareth. The suffering, crucified Jesus—not the ubiquitous Christ—is the key to understanding Luther’s theology. In this way, he is a faithful, albeit extreme, representative of the neo-Chalcedonian tradition, as best articulated by Maximus the Confessor in his reflections on Christ in Gethsemane.

154 Hinlicky, “Luther’s Anti-Docetism,” 166-69, 180-81.

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The infinite suffers the finite: Luther’s evangelical insight

In conclusion, what makes Luther’s theology so profoundly unsettling for every orthodoxy is his willingness to dispense with all prior conceptions of God. Nowhere is this more provocative than in Luther’s identification of majesty and humility, of divinity and humanity.

Apart from the Gospel Luther had no concept of God into which he could have fitted the revelation in Christ as a significant modification of our knowledge of God. Rather he starts by knowing nothing of God; then he stands before Christ’s cross; and afterwards he seizes upon the words and expression that he has been able to find in the Gospel to state the fact that here, in this humiliation, God dwells. He does not first of all construct a theory about God’s honour and majesty and then set the meanness of the cross over against God’s honour. Rather he begins with the cross and finds majesty there.155

To put this another way, Luther begins with a particular homo and finds Deus there. As I have argued throughout this paper, such is the real intention behind Luther’s use of the communicatio idiomatum. It is not merely a way of providing a linguistic-grammatical reconciliation between the biblical narratives and the creedal confession that this human being is God incarnate. Cyril and the Chalcedonian tradition never advanced beyond this semantic accommodation. Luther, on the other hand, employs the communicatio idiomatum for a much more ambitious purpose: to actually redefine, with all its ontological implications, what we mean by the word “God.”

The Lutherans and the Reformed, in their debates over the Lord’s Supper, differed with regard to whether the finite is capable of the infinite. The Lutherans asserted that finitum capax infiniti est, whereas the Reformed responded with the counter-assertion, finitum non capax infiniti est. However, the later Luther presents the basis for a third axiom in contrast to both of these: infinitas capax finiti est—the infinite is capable of the finite. In this way, the old

155 Gustaf Wingren, The Living Word: A Theological Study of Preaching and the Church, trans. Victor C. Pogue (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1960), 205. Wingren goes on to say: “For Luther, it is just majesty that is humble. Majesty lies in the manger and hangs on the cross, for there, in poverty, is the true Conqueror of Satan” (ibid., 206).

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Reformational dispute gives way to a “genuine evangelical insight.”156 The metaphysical bifurcations between infinite and finite, immortal and mortal, impassible and passible—all of these have been sublated in the singular divine-human subject of Jesus Christ. In Christ, the old philosophical distinctions become christological unities, even paradoxical identities. In contrast to the rule of scholastic nominalism, nulla est proportio finiti ad infinitum, Luther asserts all the more emphatically: “we make not only a proportion but a unity of finite and infinite.”157

GOTT SELBST IST TOT: THE GENUS TAPEINOTICON AFTER LUTHER

“‘God himself is dead,’ it says in a Lutheran hymn.” Hegel makes this observation in his

1827 Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, as part of his argument that “the negative” is “a moment of the divine nature itself.”158 Though the line is from Johannes Rist, it accurately reflects Luther’s own truest insights. Its use in Hegel is indicative of a new era of

156 Hinlicky, Luther and the Beloved Community, 49. Vítor Westhelle affirms a similar formula, along with the genus tapeinoticon, in his brief discussion of the communicatio idiomatum in the Foreword to Neal Anthony’s new book: “One is the genus majestaticum (the impartation of the majestic attributes of God to created things, e.g., ‘Jesus of Nazareth is the creator of the world’). The other mirrors the former and is known as the genus tapeinoticum (the impartation of the humble attributes of created realities to the divine nature, e.g., ‘God died’). They are, in fact, not two different genres, but only the mutual sides of the same communication between the natures. . . . While maintaining the communication between the natures in the person, the Reformer insisted that the communication is not only about ascribing attributes and operations of either of the natures to the person but also that it is a true communication. For it to be a true communication there needs to be a communication from the person, in whom the natures abide, to the natures, or more precisely, it needs to be a communication between the natures in the person, which for Luther, is indeed the case, for the natures, though unconfused, cannot be divided. By this mode of communication both the divine attributes can be ascribed to created reality (finitum capax infiniti—the finite is capable of the infinite) as much as attributes of creation can also be ascribed to the divine reality (infinitus ferat finem—the infinite suffers the finite).” Vítor Westhelle, “Foreword,” in Anthony, Cross Narratives, x. 157 “Nos tamen non tantum facimus proportionem, sed unitatem finiti et infiniti.” WA 39/2:112.17-19 (arg. 20); DDHC, 168. Cf. Hinlicky, “Luther’s Anti-Docetism,” 176: “the Christ presented and confessed in the gospel unites the finite and the infinite, a contradiction in terms that good philosophy can never allow on its own immanent basis, but which really transpires with the shift to the new theological discourse.” 158 G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Vol. III: The Consummate Religion, ed. Peter C. Hodgson, trans. R. F. Brown, P. C. Hodgson, and J. M. Stewart (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 326. Eberhard Jüngel notes that “[t]his ‘Lutheran hymn’ is not, incidentally, a ‘hymn by Luther,’ as often incorrectly asserted. Rather it is the second verse, written by Johannes Rist around 1641, for a chorale by a Catholic poet documented in Würzburg in 1628 and entitled ‘O Traurigkeit, O Herzeleid’ (‘O Sorrow, O Suffering’). . . . The sentence ‘God himself lies dead’ was known and debated as a pronounced expression of Lutheran theology; it was so controversial that, for example, the Dortmund hymnbook replaced it with the less objectionable ‘The Lord is dead.’” See Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism, trans. Darrell L. Guder (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983), 64.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 56 postmetaphysical philosophy and theology, in which old ontological categories were subjected to radical critique and revision in light of a growing historical consciousness. With the revolution taking place in the academy, it is no mere coincidence that the nineteenth century saw the rise of the genus tapeinoticon in Lutheran theology as part of the second round of debates regarding kenosis—this time featuring Gottfried Thomasius and Wolfgang Friedrich Gess. It also appears in Alois Biedermann’s Christliche Dogmatik (1869; 2nd ed. 1884-85), a work deeply influenced by Hegel and Schleiermacher. According to Biedermann, “In order to guard the unity of the person and at the same time to make possible a truly human life of Jesus . . . the Lutheran kenosis doctrine must be quite fully completed on the old foundation, and to its communicatio idiomatum must be added the missing genus ταπεινοτικὸν.”159

As important as these modern developments are, there is still a residue of the old metaphysics in these kenotic writings. The problem is that an element of competitiveness remains in the relation between divinity and humanity. Whereas the old orthodoxy made divinity and humanity competitive in favor of the divinity, the modern kenoticists favor the historical humanity. They speak of the self-divestment (Entäusserung) of the divine Logos in becoming human. It remains a kenosis by subtraction. The promise of Luther’s later christology, with his articulation of the Holy Spirit’s new grammar, is the possibility of a kenosis by addition.160 In becoming human, God positively takes on the historical existence of Jesus. God appropriates the properties of humanity, including finitude, passibility, and mortality. The nova lingua of the gospel makes such statements possible; it affirms the unity, even identity, of this God and this

159 Alois Emanuel Biedermann, Christliche Dogmatik, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1884-85), §404. Translated in Gottfried Thomasius, Isaak A. Dorner, and Alois Emanuel Biedermann, God and Incarnation in Mid- Nineteenth Century German Theology, ed. Claude Welch (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 295. 160 For a Reformed example of kenosis by addition, in conversation with Barth, see Bruce McCormack, “Karl Barth’s Christology as a Resource for a Reformed Version of Kenoticism,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 8, no. 3 (2006): 243-51.

Do not cite without express permission of the author Congdon 57 human being within the perspective of faith. The nova lingua confesses that “God is dead” in

Christ, while the grammar of the Spirit, the new hermeneutics of faith, recognizes that this confession does not compete with God’s livingness but is rather a positive articulation of God’s eternally concrete reality in Word and Spirit.

Benjamin Gleede is certainly correct in stating that, “with his intensification of the christological fides catholica on the communicatio idiomatum—especially in comparison to late scholastic christology—Luther has taken a great step back to the church’s roots.”161 Our examination of Cyril and the neo-Chalcedonian tradition demonstrates this to be the case. In ways even unknown to himself, Luther retrieved insights from the ancient Greek theologians regarding a single-subject christology. But at the same time he did so without the metaphysical restrictions regarding what is natural and inherent to the natures in the abstract. I therefore concur, for the most part, with Steiger:

Thus, the secret of Luther’s theology lies in the fact that he was able to conceptualize in God himself the exchange between the unchangeable, divine essence and the changeable accidents in all spheres of doctrine . . . . Luther thus held on to Greek metaphysics and to the Christological dogma grounded in it, but at the same time, by working out the doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum in detail, he helped to historicize this metaphysics. In this way the metaphysical conceptuality is biblicized and taken into the process of the renewal of language.162

In my judgment, Steiger does not state things strongly enough. Luther’s hold on Greek metaphysics is loose at best; in the later writings I have examined, whatever remains of the old philosophical conceptualities has been rendered impotent and virtually nonexistent. But Steiger is right to say that Luther retains the christological dogma. In order to understand Luther, however, it is necessary to distinguish between the dogmatic formulae of the ecumenical

161 Benjamin Gleede, “Vermischt, ausgetauscht und kreuzweis zugesprochen: Zur wechselvollen Geschichte der Idiome Christi in der alten Kirche,” in Creator est Creatura, ed. Oswald Bayer and Benjamin Gleede (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), 93-94. 162 Steiger, “Communicatio Idiomatum,” 147-48.

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Luther retains the former in distinction from the latter. Chalcedon provides him with a kind of semantic framework for the exploration of the communicatio idiomatum, which he then explores in directions that the ancient theologians could not have envisioned—and which remains provocative even today. In his relentless articulation of the communicatio idiomatum—and specifically the genus tapeinoticon—Luther thus stands at one and the same time with the doctors of the church and with the postmetaphysical thinkers of modernity. It is in this double vision of past and future that Luther’s theology remains a rich and promising resource for contemporary theology.

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