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4 - Jesus Christ

from Part I: - Evangelicals and Christian doctrine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2007

Timothy Larsen
Affiliation:
Wheaton College, Illinois
Daniel J. Treier
Affiliation:
Wheaton College, Illinois
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Summary

Along with the Scripture principle, the axiom of solus Christus has been a hallmark of theologies in the Reformation tradition. The first indicates the priority of divine revelation over tradition, speculation, or immediate experience; the second acknowledges the sovereignty of divine grace in incarnation and redemption over against apparently synergistic conceptions of its mediation through church, sacrament, or the moral acts of Christian existence. The perfection of Christ - the integrity and completeness of his person as the God-man, and the non-transferability of his offices - is Christologically and soteriologically fundamental. For much of Protestant theological history, the incarnational and Trinitarian metaphysics underpinning these commitments were taken for granted as non-controversial. In the post-Reformation confessional period, disagreements emerged between Lutheran and Reformed over the relation of the divine and human natures of the incarnate one, partly in relation to eucharistic controversies over the ubiquity of Christ's humanity. Lutherans emphasized that the humanity of the ascended Christ shares the divine property of omnipresence, and so is present in the eucharistic elements, whereas the Reformed stressed that his humanity is localized in heaven, not in the sacrament, and that his finite human nature is incapable of containing the infinite divine Word. But both confessions remained firmly attached to the Christological orthodoxy articulated at the Council of Chalcedon: in the one person Jesus Christ fullness of deity and fullness of humanity are united, the union of the natures being such that they can neither be divided nor confused.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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  • Jesus Christ
  • Edited by Timothy Larsen, Wheaton College, Illinois, Daniel J. Treier, Wheaton College, Illinois
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology
  • Online publication: 28 September 2007
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521846986.004
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  • Jesus Christ
  • Edited by Timothy Larsen, Wheaton College, Illinois, Daniel J. Treier, Wheaton College, Illinois
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology
  • Online publication: 28 September 2007
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521846986.004
Available formats
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  • Jesus Christ
  • Edited by Timothy Larsen, Wheaton College, Illinois, Daniel J. Treier, Wheaton College, Illinois
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology
  • Online publication: 28 September 2007
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521846986.004
Available formats
×