# Lutherans and the "right hand of God"



## saintandsinner77 (Oct 18, 2011)

In discussing the Lord's Supper with Lutherans, their comeback quite often is, "the right hand of God is everywhere," so Christ, in His humanity can be everywhere, including in the Supper. Now, in my understanding, the right hand of God is a place of power and rule in His eternal kingdom in the heavenly realm (though He rules over everything) which is where Christ's glorified body is now. Have other reformed theologians addressed the issue of the right hand of God being everywhere?


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## Philip (Oct 18, 2011)

My first inclination would be to point out that this view of the two natures of Christ comes dangerously close to Monophysite teaching.


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## saintandsinner77 (Oct 18, 2011)

Oh yes, I agree, but their retort is that we are Nestorians for "dividing" the natures by limiting Christ's body to heaven, while accepting that His Deity is everywhere. We don't have to believe God the Father has a physical right hand, yet believe Christ is co-ruling with the Father over all in the third heaven.


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## Philip (Oct 18, 2011)

I would qualify the statement that "His deity is everywhere" by saying that this is so by the Spirit. That is to say, where the Spirit is, there Christ is. I would say that if we say anything other than this, the charge of Nestorianism is apt---and, indeed, we would be opening ourselves to a charge of tritheism as well.

The difference between the Lutheran and the Reformed view is this: the Lutherans see Christ coming to us in the LS. We, on the other hand, believe that in the LS, we are brought into the presence of Christ, by the Spirit. I would say that the latter view is, in fact, the higher one, and that reformed practice needs to reflect it.


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## DMcFadden (Oct 18, 2011)

Lutherans struggle to rationalize the mystery of the two natures in terms of the "communicatio idiomatum," with an interpenetration of the attributes of deity and humanity. The body of Christ now has the quality of ubiquity. Many Reformed handle the mystery by recourse to the "extra Calvinisticum" with God being "fully" in Christ and still governing the universe.


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## Philip (Oct 18, 2011)

DMcFadden said:


> Lutherans struggle to rationalize the mystery of the two natures in terms of the "communicatio idiomatum," with an interpenetration of the attributes of deity and humanity. The body of Christ now has the quality of ubiquity. Many Reformed handle the mystery by recourse to the "extra Calvinisticum" with God being "fully" in Christ and still governing the universe.



I thought that _communicatio idiomatum_ is a view more associated with Reformed thought. Lutherans hold to the Cyrillian view of the dual nature where the Divine nature bleeds over into the human nature. Calvinists, historically, have been more content with vagueness as to the precise way in which the two natures are united, though maintaining the distinction between natures. Also, the reformed understanding makes use of _filioque_ in order to make real presence possible, whereas the Lutherans would not. Extra Calvinisticum seems to be a more or less logical extension of trinitarian thought.

The Lutheran-Calvinist debate more or less resembles the Alexandrian-Antiochene debates of the 4th century.


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## DMcFadden (Oct 18, 2011)

P. F. Pugh said:


> I thought that _communicatio idiomatum_ is a view more associated with Reformed thought.



Philip, no. The communicatio idiomatum is what gives the Lutheran view of the Lord's Supper it's unique transubstantial character. It is a fixture of scholastic Lutheran Christology and was rejected "decidedly" by most Reformed thinkers (at least in its Lutheran formulation), because . . . 



> they decidedly rejected the third kind, because omnipresence, whether absolute or relative, is inconsistent with the necessary limitation of a human body, as well as with the Scripture facts of Christ's ascension to heaven, and promised return. The third genus can never be fully carried out, unless the humanity of Christ is also eternalized. The attributes, moreover, are not an outside appendix, but inherent qualities of the substance to which they belong, and inseparable from it. Hence a communication of attributes would imply a communication or mixture of natures. The divine and human natures can indeed hold free and intimate intercourse with each other; but the divine nature can never be transformed into the human, nor the human nature into the divine. Christ possessed all the attributes of both natures; but the natures, nevertheless, remain separate and distinct. New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge.



A more recent treatment can be found in the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology.



> COMMUNICATION OF ATTRIBUTES
> 
> In several respects Lutheran and Reformed theologians have disagreed about the communication of attributes since the Reformation. *Because this doctrine is more characteristic of Lutheran than Reformed theology,* it will be presented here in the categories common among Lutherans. Some Reformed disagreements will be noted.
> 
> ...



Muller has a very learned (and lengthy) discussion of this in his Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms. The Reformed held to a modified view of the communication of attributes but charged the Lutherans with a Eutychean or Monophysite tendency. Lutherans, for their part, "attempt to move beyond the dichotomy between Antioch and Alexandria." Most Reformed do not believe them to have been successful in this.


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## MW (Oct 18, 2011)

The Reformed communicatio idiomatum is of nature to person; the Lutheran is of nature to nature.


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## Philip (Oct 19, 2011)

armourbearer said:


> The Reformed communicatio idiomatum is of nature to person; the Lutheran is of nature to nature.



This was my understanding as well.


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