Communicatio Idiomatum and the Lutheran Quest for Christological Agency

Abstract This article compares Luther’s understanding of the unity of Christ’s person with that of his theological successors, focusing on Martin Chemnitz and Johann Gerhard. It argues that Luther’s more apophatic approach to the communicatio idiomatum and his heirs’ elaborate doctrine of the three genera of the communication do not stand in a straightforward relationship of continuity. To be sure, both are historically found in the context of Eucharistic polemics. Yet Luther’s perspective on the communicatio is driven by a desire to give expression to Christ-for-me specifically as the subject and agent of his promise; it has its driving force in the ontology of the promise as the essence of the gospel. By contrast, Luther’s successors are preoccupied with the ability of Christ’s assumed human nature to receive divine properties in the hope of shoring up the presence of Christ’s body in the Lord’s Supper. In the end, it is Luther who succeeds in presenting a more successful account of a co-extensive and internally congruent understanding of Christ’s divine and human agency, whereas his successors’ account of the unity of Christ remains undermined by intractable and ever-threatening divergence.