Early Lutheran Christologies

This chapter outlines the views of Melanchthon and the early Brenz, showing how Lutheran Christology bifurcated into two basic traditions—those accepting bodily omnipresence and those denying it. It demonstrates that Melanchthon quickly abandoned early claims affirming both the omnipresence of Christ’s human nature and its life-giving power, and ended up adopting a view very similar to Zwingli’s. The chapter outlines the first stages in the development of Brenz’s Christology, showing how Brenz, from 1528 or 1529 onwards, came to adopt a view of the hypostatic union according to which the divine person and human nature are the same person but different natures, and according to which human properties are borne by the divine person, and divine properties by the human nature (the so-called genus maiestaticum). By 1561 Brenz has begun to restrict the set of divine attributes that can be borne by the human nature, presumably in response to the Christology of Caspar Schwenckfeld, and the chapter ends with a brief summary of Schwenckfeld’s view.