Love-self-surrender-this is the link or point of connection between Deity and manhood, the Divine ever enlarging its self-communication according to the measure of human receptivity. In Christ the love of God towards man first attained its absolute goal; the manhood assumed by the Son of God is that which makes a perfect response to Divine love.

Accordingly Luther found no difficulty in the received doctrine of the Church. The inseparable union of the Divine with the human nature, and the consequences that seemed necessarily to flow therefrom: the communicatio idiomatum, the ascription to God of human experiences, birth, suffering, and death-these are characteristic theses with Luther. He laid equal stress on the reality of man's exaltation in Christ. The exalted Christ in heaven, uniting in His own person Deity and glorified humanity, was "the sun of the world," the central object of religious contemplation and devotion.2 Indeed it seems to have been his habit of thought in regard to Christ's humanity which determined the nature of the controversy which agitated his successors-the dispute as to the mode and degree in which the exalted Christ exercised the Divine attributes. He regarded the Eucharist, for instance, as the occasion of a presence -the presence of the exalted and glorified Christ, bringing in His train and imparting along with Himself all the blessings earned for man by His earthly life and work. He insisted that in the sacrament there is an actual reception of the glorified body and blood of Christ, present in the elements, and was thus led

which I have learnt, or would wish to learn, more of what God, Christ, man, and all things are" (Hagenbach, § 153, note 9).

1 See some quotations in Hagenbach, § 266, note 1.

2 Cp. Dorner, div. ii. vol. ii. p. 88.

Ibid. p. 121; see also Hagenbach, § 259.

to insist upon the ubiquitarian theory which to the Reformed Churches became a matter of such sharp controversy.

In this dispute we may for convenience' sake distinguish two stages. (1) The question of the blessed Sacrament naturally arose first; it was inevitable that the central act of Christian worship, around which so many abuses had actually gathered, should attract the early attention of the Reformers. It disclosed a deeply-rooted difference between the followers of Luther and Calvin in regard to the relation of the two natures in Christ. Luther clung to the doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum,-the inseparable cohesion of the two natures in Christ, the "permeation" of the human by the Divine; and from this mode of thought seemed to follow the doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ's human body. "Wherever God is," said Luther in effect," there must needs be present the humanity of Christ." Brenz and Melancthon followed Luther in teaching that the human nature of Christ was unconditionally capable of being omnipresent, and therefore present in the Sacrament. The Lutheran Formula Concordia (1577) says: Christus revera omnia implet et ubique non tantum ut deus verum etiam ut homo præsens dominatur et regnat a mari ad mare, etc. . . . Ex hac communicata sibi divina virtute homo Christus, juxta verba Testamenti sui, corpore et sanguine suo in sacra cœna, ad quam nos verbo suo ablegat, præsens esse potest, et revera est.1 Here the power of Christ is made a determining factor; the Divine nature in virtue of the communicatio idiomatum imparts its attributes to the human nature, but the exercise of these is dependent on the Divine will of the Son. On the other hand, Zwingli

1 ap. Winer, Comparative View, etc., p. 119. The Lutherans referred specially to S. Jo. vi. 53 f.; cp. i. 14, v. 27; S. Mt. xxviii. 18; Phil. ii. 9, 10; Col. ii. 9.

and Calvin, while adhering to the doctrine of the two natures, insisted that such "communication" of Divine attributes was impossible in so far as it contradicted the necessary limitations of a true human nature. By its glorification the nature of Christ's human body was not abolished; at the ascension it was made illustrious, glorious, immortal, but it still remained subject to the limitations of humanity. The human body of the Saviour could no longer be present corporeally on earth; it could not be omnipresent; it remains locally present in heaven alone.1 The Lutherans appeared to the Reformed to teach a Eutychian confusion of natures. "Our adversaries," says one document," in attributing some Divine properties to man and some human properties to God, confound the natures; and in their withdrawal of some properties they dissolve the unity of Christ's person." 2 In Zwingli's view, the communicatio was only nominal; the scriptural passages on which the Lutherans relied were merely figurative. For instance, the words My flesh is meat indeed are to be explained to mean, My Divine nature is the food of the soul; the word "flesh" being used per commutationem to denote the Deity in Christ. The divergence between these two types of thought is interesting if we regard it as a modern reappearance of the old controversy between the schools of Antioch and Alexandria. The Lutheran view is akin to that of Cyril and his successors; the Reformed insist, after the manner of the Antiochenes, on the fundamental contrast between Divine and human nature. They hold that the attri

1 See passages from Reformed confessions in Winer, pp. 121 ff. 2 Winer, p. 122.

3 Zwingli uses the term ¿oíwois (an expression borrowed from rhetoric) as conveying the idea that the interchange of attributes is only figurative and nominal. He explains it thus: "desultus vel transitus ille, aut si mavis permutatio qua de altera in Christo natura loquentes alterius vocibus utimur." (Winer, p. 123.)

butes of Deity can only be so far imparted to humanity as the limits of its finitude allow. To them the Incarnation is an exinanition of Deity-a Divine Being emptying Himself," and submitting to the limitations of creaturely life; to the Lutherans it is the exaltation of human nature, in the person of the Logos, into the conditions of the Divine life. In their view the Incarnation implies a real self-communication of Deity to a nature ethically capable of receiving it.1 The practical consequences which resulted from these distinct types of Christology, in regard to the nature of the Eucharistic presence, do not concern us; but some idea will have been given of the state of the controversy when Hooker devoted his attention to it.2

(2) The later stage of the Christological controversies which divided the Reformed Churches began early in the seventeenth century, when the question of the status exinanitionis came to the front. The point in dispute was analogous to that involved in the sacramental controversy, and divided into two opposed schools the theologians of Giessen (Menzer and Feuerborn), and those of Tübingen (Osiander and Thummius). Both sides agreed in acknowledging the reality of the communicatio idiomatum; they differed in regard to the conditions under which the Divine attributes were exercised by Christ in His manhood. Did He voluntarily lay aside those attributes, or use them only in certain cases? or did He always possess, but conceal them? The Giessen theologians, who accepted the former of these possible alternatives, were known as Kenotiker (Kévwois); the

"Ad recte declarandam majestatem Christi vocabula (de reali communicatione) usurpavimus ut significaremus communicationem illam vere et reipsa, sine omni tamen naturarum et proprietatum essentialium confusione, factam esse." Form. Conc. p. 778, ap. Winer, p. 120.

2 The fifth book of the Ecclesiastical Polity was published in 1597; Hooker's life extended from 1554-1600.

Tübingen divines, who held the latter view, were styled Kryptiker (pubis).1

Both schools of thought approach the question on the basis of the Formula of Concord between the Suabian and Saxon Churches, composed in 1577. The most salient Christological feature of this document was its insistance on the communicatio naturarum, in virtue of which the Divine nature appropriates the human with its incidental weaknesses, and the Divine attributes communicate themselves to the human nature; by the very fact of the hypostatic union, the "majesty of God" becomes the possession of the humanity, and the person of the Logos supplies personality to the manhood. The Formula waives the difficulties which had been raised by those Reformed theologians who urged the essential limitations of the finite nature, and simply declares that human nature in Christ was "capable" of receiving the Divine attributes (proprietates). The relation of the natures is illustrated by the ancient simile of heated iron.

The merits or demerits of this document, regarded as a compromise, need not detain us. In the main it favoured the view that the humanity of Christ, from the first moment of its existence, entered into possession of the Divine attributes, omnipresence and omniscience. The point to be observed is that the document makes dogmatic statements as to the effect of the union, which inevitably provoked further controversy, and indeed seem virtually to dissolve the distinction of natures in Christ's person. The fundamental assumption is made that in the moment of the union a plenary communication took place of the Divine attributes; a kind of deification or conversion of manhood into Deity, which robbed the former of its characteristic elements

A list of works on either side is given by Dorner, div. ii. vol. ii. note 38 (p. 422).