Let me conclude by dwelling on the deepest underlying disagreement that undergirds this controversy about the Lord’s Supper. It’s the deepest underlying disagreement because it’s about Christ, and there’s nothing deeper in the Christian faith than what you think about Christ. (No, Controversy is special and deep not because it is about Jesus but because it challenges human rationality on both sides of the debate, both parties need to surrender their rationality in keeping with the advice of a Kiekgaard.) Remember how I mentioned this a few minutes ago ­for Calvin, Christ’s body is up in heaven. It’s not located in the bread; the bodily presence is not in the bread, it’s in heaven at God’s right hand. The spiritual presence might be in the bread, but his bodily presence is at God’s right hand up in heaven. So, the Reformed would argue against Luther, and this is already back in Zwingli; Zwingli makes this argument: ‘How can Christ’s body be literally present in the bread if it’s up in heaven?’

Luther’s answer is this: ‘What do you think God’s right hand is? Christ is at God’s right hand in heaven. Where’s that?’ Luther says, “That’s everywhere. You don’t think that Christ’s body is up in the planet Mars? Where did it go, up into outer space? Up in the moon, up in one of the stars? No, he’s at God’s right hand, and God’s hand is omnipresent. It’s everywhere,’ so the name for this distinctively Lutheran doctrine about the omnipresence of Christ’s body is called ubiquity, which is Latin for ‘everywhere,’ but notice how distinctive and constrained this doctrine is. Where is the human body of Christ located, according to Luther? Everywhere, not just Christ’s divinity. Of course, God is everywhere; every Christian believes that, but Christ’s human body is present everywhere, at least potentially and maybe actually. (A human body with omnipresence, go figure!)

And why? How in the world can a human body be present everywhere? ‘It’s at Gods right hand, just like the creed says,’ Luther says, and also, ‘Think about the nature of Christ’s body. It is the body of God. Christ’s body is the flesh of God and, therefore, like God, it is everywhere.’ In contrast, the Calvinists will say: ‘No, Christ’s body is a human body, and therefore it’s in one place, like all human bodies. It wouldn’t be a human body if it wasn’t in one place, and that means that Christ as the second person of the trinity, Christ as the divine Son of God, is present everywhere, while his body is present only in one place.’ So, Christ as God is present outside the flesh of the human being Jesus, because Christ as God is present everywhere, and the human Jesus is not.  (The hybrid of Jesus is some sort of amalgam of omni-present or infinite being with the finite fleshy human existence; what a mystery and what stubborn insistence of Trinitarians to hold onto these views!)

This presence outside Christ’s body is called the extra Calvinisticum; that’s the label that later Lutheran theologians gave it, extra meaning ‘outside,’ Calvinisticum meaning ‘those dirty rotten Calvinists said that you can find the eternal second person of the trinity, the Son of God, apart from the flesh of Christ, as if he existed outside the flesh of Christ, as if there was any God outside the flesh of Christ.’ The Lutherans want to say you’ll never find God apart from the human body of the incarnate God. What they’re doing is they’re insisting very strongly on the unity of Christ’s person. Christ is one person; he has a divine nature and a human nature, two natures but one person, and therefore the characteristics of one nature will kind of spill over to another nature-so, Christ has a divine nature, which is omnipresent, and that omnipresence spills over into his human nature, making it also omnipresent, ubiquitous, so that Christ’s human body, being the body of God, is present everywhere.   (Again, the hybrid of Jesus is some sort of amalgam of omni-present or infinite being with the finite fleshy human existence; what a mystery and what stubborn insistence of Trinitarians to hold onto these views!)

This spilling over is called communicatio idiomatum, in Latin and Greek. It’s actually a Latinized Greek phrase that literally means ‘the sharing of properties.’ The divine property of omnipresence is shared with the human property of the human nature of Christ. The divine property of omnipresence is shared with the human nature, so that the body of Christ is literally everywhere. The Calvinists say there is a communicatio idiomatum, but it doesn’t go so far. Don’t be so literal about this. The Calvinists will emphasize not so much the oneness of the person as the distinction of the natures. There are two natures of Christ; they say two natures. The divine nature is not the human nature, so the human nature of Christ remains truly human, which means it has to be in one place, just like all human bodies have to be in one place.

If you take the human body of Jesus and make it everywhere, then you’re de-naturing the human body of Jesus. It’s no longer a human body; it’s some kind of magical, strange amalgam. It’s not a human body anymore, so the Calvinists want to maintain the distinction between these two natures. The Lutherans insist on the unity of the one person. And, of course, all Orthodox Christians agree there’s one person, two natures, and there’s always this kind of disagreement about which to emphasize more. The Lutherans emphasize the one person, the Calvinists emphasize the (Are the words the ‘distinction between the’ missing here?) two natures, and that’s a deep disagreement about the nature of Christ. You can’t get a deeper disagreement in Christianity than about the nature of Christ.[1][2]

Hypostatic union

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Look up hypostasis in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Hypostatic union (from the Greek: ὑπόστασις, {“[h]upostasis”}, “hypostasis”, sediment, foundation, substance, or subsistence) is a technical term in Christian theology employed in mainstream Christology to describe the union of Christ’s humanity and divinity in one hypostasis.^[1]

The First Council of Ephesus recognised this doctrine and affirmed its importance, stating that the humanity and divinity of Christ are made one according to nature and hypostasis in the Logos.

Contents [hide] 1 The use of hypostasis 2 Through history 3 See also 4 References

The use of hypostasis

A series of articles on Christology

Christ Pre-existence of Christ Logos (The Word) Incarnation • Nativity Person of Christ Hypostatic union Knowledge of Christ Perfection of Christ Threefold office

Main article: Hypostasis (philosophy) Hypostasis had come into use as a technical term prior to the Christological debates of the late fourth and fifth centuries. Before there were Christians, the word was used in Greek philosophy, primarily in Stoicism.[2][3] Hypostasis had some use in the New Testament that reflect the later, technical understanding of the word; especially Hebrews 1:3. Although it can be rendered literally as “substance” this has been a cause of some confusion[4] so it is now often translated “subsistence”. It denotes an actual, concrete existence, in contrast with abstract categories such as Platonic ideals. The First Council of Nicaea declared that the Father and the Son are of the same substance and are co-eternal. This belief was expressed in the Nicene Creed. Through history Apollinaris of Laodicea was the first to use the term hypostasis in trying to understand the Incarnation.[5] Apollinaris described the union of the divine and human in Christ as being of a single nature and having a single essence – a single hypostasis. The Nestorian Theodore of Mopsuestia went in the other direction, arguing that in Christ there were two natures (dyophysite) (human and divine) and two hypostases (in the sense of “essence” or “person”) that co-existed.[6] The Chalcedonian Creed agreed with Theodore that there were two natures in the Incarnation. However, the Council of Chalcedon also insisted that hypostasis be used as it was in the Trinitarian definition: to indicate the person and not the nature as with Apollinarius. Thus, the Council declared that in Christ there are two natures; each retaining its own properties, and together united in one subsistence and in one single person (εἰς ἓν πρόσωπον καὶ μίαν ὑπόστασιν, eis hen prosopon kai mian hupostasin).[7] As the precise nature of this union is held to defy finite human comprehension, the hypostatic union is also referred to by the alternative term “mystical union.” The Oriental Orthodox Churches, having rejected the Chalcedonian Creed, were known as Monophysites because they would only accept a definition that characterized the incarnate Son as having one nature. The Chalcedonian “in two natures” formula was seen as derived from and akin to a Nestorian Christology.[8] Contrariwise, the Chalcedonians saw the Oriental Orthodox as tending towards Eutychian Monophysitism. However, the Oriental Orthodox have in modern ecumenical dialogue specified that they have never believed in the doctrines of Eutyches, that they have always affirmed that Christ’s humanity is consubstantial with our own, and they thus prefer the term Miaphysite to refer to themselves (a reference to Cyrillian Christology, which used the phrase “mia physis tou theou logou sesarkomene”). In recent times, leaders from the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches have signed joint statements in an attempt to work towards reunification. See also Christianity portal God-man (mystic References ^ Systematic Theology by Lewis Sperry Chafer 1993 ISBN 0825423406 pages 382-384 [1] ^ R. Norris, “Hypostasis,” in The Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, ed. E. Ferguson. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997 ^ Aristotle, “Mund.”, IV, 21. ^ Placher, William (1983). A History of Christian Theology: An Introduction. Philadelphia: Westminster Press. pp. 78–79. ISBN 0-664-244963. ^ Gregory of Nyssa, Antirrheticus adversus Apollinarem. ^ “Theodore” in The Westminster Dictionary of Christian History, ed. J. Brauer. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1971. ^ Denzinger, ed. Bannwart, 148 ^ Britishorthodox.org  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company.