“[...] naturam [...] divinam seu verum Deum [...] passum esse et mortuum”

Abstract

Summary The paper discusses the question to what extent one can speak of a genus tapeinoticum in Luther, or of a communication of the properties of nature to nature that is both direct and symmetrical. The thesis is that in the 1540 s Luther significantly modifies his earlier rejection of the idea of a passibility of divine nature as such by means of the distinctions between ‘concretum’ and ‘abstractum’ as well as between ‘relativum’ and ‘absolutum’. The boundary between passibility and impassibility does not run between the Son on the one hand and the Father and the Spirit on the other, but between the deus relativus and what might be called the ‘absolute-relative’ God.