Philip Schaff · 58 of 132

The Form of Concord. A.D. 1577. · Part 2

Agricola taught with some truth that genuine repentance and remission of sin could only be secured under the gospel by the contemplation of Christ's love. In this Luther (and afterwards Calvin) agreed with him. But he went much further. The law in his opinion was superseded by the gospel, and has nothing to do with repentance and conversion. It works only wrath and death; it leads to unbelief and despair, not to the gospel. He thought the gospel was all-sufficient both for the office of terror and the office of comfort. Luther, on the contrary, maintained, in his disputations, that true repentance consists of two things—knowledge and sorrow of sin, and resolution to lead a better life. The first is produced by the law, the second by the gospel. The law alone would lead to despair and hatred of God; hence the gospel is added to appease and encourage the terrified conscience. The law can not justify, but must nevertheless be taught, that by it the impious may be led to a knowledge of their sin and be humbled, and that the pious may be admonished to crucify their flesh with its sinful lusts, and to guard against security.

The 'Form of Concord' teaches a threefold use of the law: (a) A political or civil use in maintaining outward discipline and order; (b) An elenchtic or pedagogic use in leading men to a knowledge of sin and the need of redemption; (c) A didactic or normative use in regulating the life of the regenerate. The Old and New Testaments are not exclusively related as law and gospel, but the Old contains gospel, and the New is law and gospel complete.

VI. THE CRYPTO-CALVINISTIC OR EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSY (1549–1574).

The eucharistic controversy between Luther and Zwingli, although it alienated the German and Swiss branches of the Reformation, did not destroy all intercourse, nor discourage new attempts at reconciliation. Calvin's theory, which took a middle course, retaining, on the basis of Zwingli's exegesis, the religious substance of Luther's faith, and giving it a more intellectual and spiritual form, triumphed in Switzerland, gained much favor in Germany, and opened a fair prospect for union. But the controversy of Westphal against Calvin, and the subsequent overthrow of Melanchthonianism, completed and consolidated the separation of the two Confessions.

Melanchthon's later view of the Lord's Supper, which essentially agreed with that of Calvin, was for a number of years entertained by the majority of Lutheran divines even at Wittenberg and Leipzig, and at the court of the Elector of Saxony. It was also in various ways officially recognized with the Augsburg Confession of 1540, which was long regarded as an improved rather than an altered edition.

But the Princes and the people held fast to the heroic name of Luther against any rival authority, and when the alternative was presented to choose between him and Melanchthon or Calvin, the issue could not be doubtful. Besides, the old traditional view of the mysterious power and magical efficacy of the sacraments had a firm hold upon the minds and hearts of German Christians, as it has to this day.

Joachim Westphal, a rigid Lutheran minister at Hamburg, renewed, in 1552, the sacramental war in several tracts against the 'Zurich Consensus' (issued 1549), and against Calvin and Peter Martyr; aiming indirectly against the Philippists, and treating all as sacramentarians and heretics who denied the corporeal presence, the oral manducation, and the literal eating of Christ's body even by unbelievers. He made no distinction between Calvin and Zwingli, spoke of their godless perversion of the Scriptures, and even their satanic blasphemies. About the same time John à Lasco, a Polish nobleman and minister of a foreign Reformed congregation in London, and one hundred and seventy-five Protestants, who were driven from England under the bloody Mary (1553), sought and were refused in cold winter a temporary refuge in Denmark, Rostock, Lübeck, and Hamburg (though they found it at last in East Friesland). Westphal denounced them as martyrs of the devil, enraged the people against them, and gloried in this cruelty as an act of faith.

This intolerance roused the Swiss, who had kept silence for some time, to a defense of their doctrine. Calvin took up his sharp and racy pen, indignantly rebuking 'the no less rude and barbarous than sacrilegious insults' to persecuted members of Christ, and triumphantly vindicating, against misrepresentations and objections, his doctrine of the spiritual real presence of Christ, and the sealing communication of the life-giving virtue of his body in heaven to the believer through the power of the Holy Ghost. He claimed to agree with the Augsburg Confession as understood and explained by its author, and appealed to him. Melanchthon, for reasons of prudence and timidity, declined to take an active part in the strife 'on bread-worship,' but never concealed his essential agreement with him. His enemies re-published his former views. His followers were now stigmatized as 'Crypto-Calvinists.'

The controversy gradually spread over all Germany, and was conducted with an incredible amount of bigotry and superstition.

In Bremen, John Timann fought for the real presence, and insisted upon the ubiquity of Christ's body as a settled dogma (1555), while Albert Hardenberg opposed it, and was banished (1560); but a reaction took place afterwards in favor of the Reformed Confession.

In Heidelberg, Tilemann Heshusius, General Superintendent since 1558, attacked the Melanchthonian Klebitz openly at the altar by trying to wrest from him the cup. The Elector Frederick III. dismissed both (1559), ordered the preparation of the Heidelberg Catechism, and introduced the Reformed Confession in the Palatinate (1563).

In Würtemberg the ubiquity doctrine triumphed (at a synod in Stuttgart, 1559), chiefly through the influence of Brentius, who had formerly agreed with Melanchthon, but now feared that 'the devil intended through Calvinism to smuggle heathenism, Talmudism, and Mohammedanism into the Church.' A colloquy at Maulbronn (1564) between the Würtemberg and the Palatinate divines on ubiquity led to no result.

Ducal Saxony, under the lead of the Flacianist Professors of Jena, was violently arrayed against Electoral Saxony with the Crypto-Calvinist faculty at Wittenberg. The Elector Augustus, strongly prejudiced against Flacianism, deceived by the Consensus Dresdensis (1571), and controlled by his physician, Caspar Peucer, the active and influential lay-leader of the Crypto-Calvinists, unwittingly maintained for some time Calvinism under the disguise of sound Lutheranism. When he became Regent of the Thuringian Principalities (1573), he banished Heshusius and Wigand from Jena, and all the Flacianists of that district.

Thus Philippism triumphed in all Saxony, but it was only for a short season.

Elector Augustus was an enthusiastic admirer of Luther, and would not tolerate a drop of Calvinistic blood in his veins. When he found out the deceptive policy of the Crypto-Calvinists, he suppressed them by force, 1574. The leaders were deposed, imprisoned, and exiled, among them four theological Professors at Wittenberg. Peucer was confined in prison for twelve years, while his children were wandering about in misery. Thanks were offered in all the churches of Saxony for the triumph of genuine Lutheranism. A memorial coin exhibits the Elector with the sword in one hand, and a balance in the other: one scale bearing the child Jesus; the other, high up, the four Wittenberg Philippists with the devil, and the title 'reason.'

After the death of Augustus (1586), Calvinism again raised its head under Christian I. and the lead of Chancellor Nicolas Crell, but after another change of ruler (1591) it was finally overthrown: the protesting Professors in Wittenberg and Leipzig were deposed and exiled; the leading ministers at Dresden (Salmuth and Pierius) were imprisoned; Crell, who had offended the nobility, after suffering for ten years in prison, was, without an investigation, beheaded as a traitor to his country (Oct. 9, 1601), solemnly protesting his innocence, but forgiving his enemies. Since that time the name of a Calvinist became more hateful in Saxony than that of a Jew or a Mohammedan.

It is characteristic of the spirit of the age and the doctrine of consubstantiation that they gave rise to all sorts of idle, curious, and unwittingly irreverent speculations about the possible effect of the consecrated elements upon things for which they never were intended. The schoolmen of the Middle Ages, in the interest of transubstantiation, seriously disputed the question whether the eating of the eucharistic bread would kill or sanctify a mouse, or (as the wisest thought) have no effect at all, since the mouse did not receive it sacramentaliter, but only accidentaliter. Orthodox Lutherans of the sixteenth century went even further. Brentius decidedly favored the opinion that the consecrated bread, if eaten by a mouse, was fully as much the body of Christ as Christ was the Son of God in the mother's womb and on the back of an ass. The sacrament, he admitted, was not intended for animals, but neither was it intended for unbelievers, who nevertheless received the very body and blood of Christ. An eccentric minister in Rostock required the communicants to be shaved to prevent profanation. Licking the blood of Christ from the beard was supposed to be punished with instant death or a monstrous growth of the beard. Sarcerius caused the earth on which a drop of Christ's blood fell, instantly to be dug up and burned. At Hildesheim it was customary to cut off the beard or the piece of a garment which was profaned by a drop of wine; and the Superintendent, Kongius, was expelled from the city, simply because he had taken up from the earth a wafer and given it to a communicant, without first kneeling before it, kissing, and reconsecrating it, as his colleagues thought he should have done. The Lutherans in Ansbach disputed about the question whether the body of Christ were actually swallowed, like other food, and digested in the stomach. When the Rev. John Musculus, in Frankfort-on-the-Oder, inadvertently spilled a little wine at the communion, he was summoned before a Synod, and Elector John Joachim of Brandenburg declared that deposition, prison, and exile were too mild a punishment for such a crime, and that the offender, who had not spared the blood of Christ, must suffer bloody punishment, and have two or three fingers cut off.

There was also a considerable dispute among Lutheran divines about the precise time and duration of the corporeal presence. John Saliger (Beatus) of Lübeck and his friend Fredeland (followers of Flacius, and of his doctrine on original sin) maintained that the bread becomes the body of Christ immediately after the consecration and before the use (ante usum), and called those who denied it sacramentarians; while they in turn were charged with the Romish error of transubstantiation. Deposed at Lübeck, Saliger renewed the controversy from the pulpit at Rostock (1568). Chytræus decided that this was a question of idle curiosity rather than piety, and that it was sufficient to attach the blessing of the sacrament to the transaction, without time-splitting distinctions (1569). The usual Lutheran doctrine confines the union of the bread with the body to the time of the use, and hence the term consubstantiation was rejected, if thereby be understood a durabilis inclusio, or permanent conjunction of the sacramental bread and body of Christ.

VII. THE CHRISTOLOGICAL OR UBIQUITARIAN CONTROVERSY.

The Lutheran view of the Lord's Supper implies the ubiquity, i.e., the illocal omnipresence, or at all events the multipresence of Christ's body. And this again requires for its support the theory of the communicatio idiomatum, or the communication of the attributes of the two natures of Christ, whereby his human nature becomes a partaker of the omnipresence of his divine nature. A considerable amount of interesting speculation was spent on this subject in the sixteenth century.

All Christians believe in the real and abiding omnipresence of Christ's divine nature, and of Christ's person (which resides in the divine nature or the pre-existing Logos), according to Matt. xxviii. 20; xviii. 20. But the omnipresence of his human nature was no article of any creed before the Reformation, and was only held by a few fathers and schoolmen of questionable orthodoxy, as a speculative opinion. The prevailing doctrine was that Christ's glorified body, though no more grossly material and sensuous, and not exactly definable in its nature, was still a body, seated on a throne of majesty in heaven, to which it visibly ascended, and from which it will in like manner return to judge the quick and the dead. This was the view even of Gregory Nazianzen and John of Damascus, who otherwise approach very nearly the Lutheran dogma of the communicatio idiomatum (the genus majestaticum). The mediæval scholastics ascribed omnipresence only to the divine nature and the person of Christ, unipresence to his human nature in heaven, multipresence to his body in the sacrament; but they derived the eucharistic multipresence from the miracle of transubstantiation, and not from an inherent specific quality of the body. Even William Occam (who was inclined to consubstantiation rather than transubstantiation, and had considerable influence upon Luther) ventured only upon the paradox of the hypothetical possibility of an absolute ubiquity.

Luther first clearly taught the absolute ubiquity of Christ's body, as a dogmatic support of the real presence in the eucharist. He based it exegetically on Eph. i. 23 ('which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all') and John iii. 13 ('the Son of man who is in heaven'), and derived it directly from the personal union of the divine and human natures in Christ (not, as his followers, from the communication of the attributes). He adopted the scholastic distinction of three kinds of presence: 1. Local or circumscriptive (material and confined—as water is in the cup); 2. Definitive (local, without local inclusion or measurable quantity—as the soul is in the body, Christ's body in the bread, or when it passed through the closed door); 3. Repletive (supernatural, divine omnipresence). He ascribed all these to Christ as man, so that in one and the same moment, when he instituted the holy communion, he was circumscriptive at the table, definitive in the bread and wine, and repletive in heaven, i.e., every where. Where God is, there is Christ's humanity, and where Christ's humanity is, there is inseparably joined to it the whole Deity. In connection with this, Luther consistently denied the literal meaning of Christ's ascension to heaven, and understood the right hand of God, at which he sits, to be only a figurative term for the omnipresent power of God (Matt. xxviii. 18). Here he resorted to a mode of interpretation which he so strongly condemned in Zwingli when applied to the word is.

It is very plain that such an absolute omnipresence of the body proves much more than Luther intended or needed for his eucharistic theory; hence he made no further use of it in his later writings, and rested the real presence at last, as he did at first, exclusively on the literal (or rather synecdochical) interpretation of the words, 'This is my body.' His earlier Christology was much more natural, and left room for a real development of Christ's humanity.

Melanchthon, in his later period, decidedly opposed the ubiquity of Christ's body, and the introduction of 'scholastic disputations' on this subject into the doctrine of the eucharist. He wished to know only of a personal presence of Christ, which does not necessarily involve bodily presence. He also rejected the theory of the communicatio idiomatum in a real or physical sense, because it leads to a confusion of natures, and admitted with Calvin only a dialectic or verbal communication. Luther's Christology leaned to the Eutychian confusion, Melanchthon's to the Nestorian separation of the two natures.

The renewal of the eucharistic controversy by Westphal led to a fuller discussion of ubiquity. The orthodox Lutherans insisted upon ubiquity as a necessary result of the real communication of the properties of the two natures in Christ; while the Philippists and Calvinists rejected it as inconsistent with the nature of a body, with the realness of Christ's ascension, and with the general principle that the infinite can not be comprehended or shut up in the finite.

The Colloquy at Maulbronn.—These conflicting Christologies met face to face at a Colloquy in the cloister of Maulbronn, in the Duchy of Würtemberg, April 10–15, 1564. It was arranged by Duke Christopher of Würtemberg and Elector Frederick III. of the Palatinate. Olevianus, Ursinus (the authors of the Heidelberg Catechism), and Boquin defended the Reformed, the Swabian divines, Andreæ, Brenz, Schnepf, Bidenbach, and Lucas Osiander the Lutheran view. Five days were devoted to the discussion of the subject of ubiquity, and one day to the interpretation of the words, 'This is my body.' The Lutherans regarded ubiquity as the main pillar of their view of the eucharistic presence. Andreæ proposed three points for the debate—the incarnation, the ascension, and the right hand of God.

The Lutheran reasoning was chiefly dogmatic: The incarnation is the assumption of humanity into the possession of the divine fullness with all its attributes, and the right hand of God means his almighty and omnipresent power; from these premises the absolute ubiquity of Christ's body necessarily follows.

The Reformed based their argument chiefly on those Scripture passages which imply Christ's presence in a particular place, and his absence from other places, as when he says, 'I leave the world;' 'I go to prepare a place for you. . . . I will come again;' 'I have not yet ascended to my Father;' or when the angels say, 'He is not here,' 'Jesus is taken up from you into heaven,' etc. (John xiv. 2–4, 28; xvi. 3, 7, 16; xx. 17; Acts i. 11; iii. 21). They urged the difference between the divine and human, and between the state of humiliation and the state of exaltation. In the appeal to the fathers and the Creed of Chalcedon they had also decidedly the advantage. Nevertheless, the Colloquy had no other effect than to confirm the two parties in their opinions.

The Consensus Dresdensis.—The Wittenberg and Leipzig Professors and other Philippists in Saxony openly rejected ubiquity in the Consensus Dresdensis (October, 1571), which satisfied even the Elector Augustus. This document teaches that the human nature of Christ was after the resurrection glorified and transfigured, but not deified, and still remains human nature with its essential properties, flesh of our flesh; that the ascension of Christ must be understood literally, and not as a mere spectacle; that Christ's sitting at the right hand means the elevation of both natures to the priestly and kingly office; that the sacramental presence of the body of Christ must be something special and altogether distinct from omnipresence.

Absolute and Relative Ubiquity. Brenz and Chemnitz.—There was a very material difference among the advocates of ubiquity themselves as to its nature and extent, viz.: whether it were absolute, or relative, that is to say, an omnipresence in the strict sense of the term, or merely a multipresence depending on the will of Christ (hence also called volipræsentia, or, by combination, multivolipræsentia). The Swabians, under the lead of Brenz and Andreæ, held the former; the Saxon divines, under the lead of Chemnitz, the latter view.

John Brenz, or Brentius (1499–1570), the Reformer of the Duchy of Würtemberg, and after Melanchthon's death the most prominent German divine, developed, since 1559, with considerable speculative talent, a peculiar Christology. It rests on the Chalcedonian distinction between two natures and one person, but implies at the same time, as he felt himself, a considerable departure from it, since he carried the theanthropic perfection of the exalted Saviour to the very beginning of his earthly life. He took up Luther's idea of ubiquity, and developed it to its legitimate consequences in the interest of the eucharistic presence. According to his system, the incarnation is not only a condescension of the eternal Logos to a personal union with human nature, but at the same time a deification of human nature, or an infusion of the divine substance and fullness into the humanity of Christ at the first moment of its existence. Consequently the man Jesus of Nazareth was omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent in the Virgin's womb, in the manger, and on the cross, as well as he is now in the state of glory. The only difference is, that these divine attributes were concealed during his earthly life, and were publicly revealed to his disciples at the ascension to the right hand of God, i.e., to the omnipotent and omnipresent power of God. The states of humiliation and exaltation are not successive states, but co-existed during the earthly life of Christ. While Christ's humanity was poor, weak, suffering, and dying on earth, it was simultaneously almighty and omnipresent in heaven. He ascended in his humanity invisibly to heaven even at his incarnation, and remained there (John iii. 13). The visible ascension from Mount Olivet would have been impossible without the preceding invisible exaltation. Heaven is no particular place, but a state of entire freedom from space, or absolute existence in God. Space and time, with their limitations, belong only to the earthly mode of existence. Wherever the divinity is, there is also Christ's humanity, i.e., every where, not, indeed, in the way of local extension and diffusion, but in a celestial, supernatural manner, by virtue of the hypostatic union and the real communication of the properties of the divine nature to the human.

This is the most consistent, though also the most objectionable form of the ubiquity dogma. It virtually resolves the earthly life of Christ into a Gnostic delusion, or establishes a double humanity of Christ—one visible and real, and the other invisible and fantastic.

Martin Chemnitz (1522–1586), the chief author of the 'Formula of Concord,' next to Andreæ, less original and speculative than Brenz, but superior in patristic learning and sound judgment, elaborated a Christology which mediates between Luther and Melanchthon, and taught only a relative or restricted ubiquity, i.e., a multipresence, which depends upon the will of Christ. He was followed by Selnecker, Chytræus, and most of the Saxon divines. He opposes the Swabian doctrine of a physical, natural communication and transfusion of idiomata, and of the capacity of the finite for the infinite, except in the sense that God may dwell and reveal himself in man. He calls the absolute ubiquity a monstrosity (monstrum, portentum), as Selnecker called it a Satanic fiction (figmentum Satanæ). Christ is an incarnate God, not a deified man. But the Logos may temporarily communicate a divine attribute to the human nature in a supernatural manner as a donum superadditum, without thereby setting aside the abiding limitations of humanity; just as fire may give heat and brightness to iron without turning the iron into fire. Chemnitz agrees with the Reformed, as he expressly says, in adopting the 'simple, literal, and natural signification' of the ascension of Christ as related by the Evangelists, i.e., that 'he was, by a visible motion, lifted up on high in a circumscribed form and location of the body, and departed further and further from the presence of the Apostles,' and is, consequently, in this sense withdrawn from us who are on earth, until he shall in like manner 'descend from heaven in glory in a visible and circumscribed form.' Even in glory Christ's body is finite and somewhere (alicubi). Nevertheless, while seated at the right hand of God, he may be present where he chooses to be, and he is present where his Word expressly indicates such presence; as in the eucharist (according to the literal interpretation of the words of institution), or when he appeared to dying Stephen, or to Paul on the way to Damascus.

Chemnitz escaped some difficulties of the Swabian theory, but by endeavoring to mediate between it and the Melanchthonian and Swiss theory, he incurred the objections to both. Christ's glorified body is indeed not confined to any locality, and may be conceived to move with lightning speed from place to place, but its simultaneous presence in many places, wherever the eucharist is celebrated, involves the chief difficulty of an omnipresence, and is just as inconsistent with the nature of a body.

Of subordinate interest was the incidental question, disputed mainly between Wigand and Heshusius, whether the flesh of Christ were almighty and adorable only in concreto, or also in abstracto (extra, personam). Chemnitz declared this to be a mere logomachy, and advised the combatants to stop it, but in vain.

The first creed which adopted the ubiquity dogma was the Würtemberg Confession drawn up by Brenz, and adopted by a Synod at Stuttgart, Dec. 19, 1559.

The Formula Concordiæ on this subject is a compromise between the Swabian absolute ubiquitarianism represented by Andreæ and expressed in the Epitome, and the Saxon hypothetical ubiquitarianism represented by Chemnitz and expressed in the Solida Declaratio. The compromise satisfied neither party. The Helmstädt divines—Tilemann Heshusius, Daniel Hoffmann, and Basilius Sattler—who had signed the written Formula in 1577, refused to sign the printed copy in 1580, because it contained unauthorized concessions to the Swabian view. A colloquy was held in Quedlinburg, 1583, at which the ubiquity question was discussed for several days without result. Chemnitz was in a difficult position, as he nearly agreed with the Helmstädtians, and conceded that certain expressions had been wrested from him, but he signed the Formula for the sake of peace, with the reservation that he understood it in the sense of a hypothetical or limited ubiquity.

The Giessen and Tübingen Controversy about the Kenosis and Krypsis.—The ubiquity question was revived under a new shape, on the common basis of the 'Formula of Concord' and the dogma of the communicatio idiomatum, in the controversy between the Kenoticism, of the theologians of Giessen, which followed in the track of Chemnitz, and the Krypticism of the theologians of Tübingen, which was based upon the theory of Brenz and Andreæ. The controversy forms the last phase in the development of the orthodox Lutheran Christology; it continued from 1616–1625, and was lost in the Thirty-Years' War.

Both parties agreed that the human nature of Christ from the moment of the incarnation, even in the mother's womb and on the cross, was in full possession (κτῆσις) of the divine attributes of omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, etc.; but they differed as to their use (χρῆσις). The Giessen divines—Balthazar Mentzer (d. 1627), his son-in-law, Justus Feuerborn (d. 1656), and John Winckelmann—taught a real self-renunciation (κένωσις, evacuatio, exinanitio), i.e., that Christ voluntarily laid aside the actual use of the divine attributes and functions, except in the working of miracles; while the Tübingen divines—Lucas Osiander II. (d. 1638), Theodor Thumm, or Thummius (d. 1630), and Melchior Nicolai (d. 1659)—taught that he made a secret use of them (κρύψις, occulta usurpatio).

The Giessen divines, wishing chiefly to avoid the reproach of a portentosa ubiquitas, represented the omnipresence of Christ's humanity, not as an all-pervading existence, but as an all-controlling power, or as an element of omnipotence. The Tübingen school taught, in consequence of the unio hypostatica, an absolute omnipresence of Christ's humanity, as a quiescent quality, which consists in filling all the spaces of the universe, even from the conception to the death on the cross.

A theological commission at Dresden, with Hoe von Hoenegg at the head, decided substantially in favor of the Giessen theory (1525), and against the Tübingen doceticism, without, however, advancing the solution of the problem or feeling its real difficulty.

The Giessen theory is more consistent with the realness of Christ's human life, but less consistent with itself, since it admits an occasional interruption of it by the use of the inherent powers of the divinity; the Tübingen theory, on the other hand, virtually destroys the distinction between the state of humiliation and the state of exaltation, and resolves the life of Christ into a magical illusion.

The modern Tübingen school of Baur and Strauss forms a strange parallel and contrast to that of the seventeenth century: it starts from the same principle that 'the finite is capable of the infinite,' but extends it pantheistically to humanity at large, and denies its applicability to Christ, on the ground that the divine fullness can not be emptied into a single individual. Therefore, while the old Tübingen school in effect, though not in intention, destroys the real humanity of Christ, the modern Tübingen school consistently denies his divinity, and resolves all the supernatural and miraculous elements of the gospel history into a mythic poem or fiction.

In the modern revival of orthodox Lutheranism, the ubiquity of the body of Christ is either avoided, or advocated only in the hypothetical form, and mostly with a leaning towards a more literal acceptation of the κένωσις (Phil. ii. 7) than the Giessen divines contended for.

VIII. THE HADES CONTROVERSY.

This controversy, which is discussed in the ninth article of the 'Formula of Concord,' referred to the time, manner, extent, and aim of Christ's mysterious descent into the world of departed spirits. It implied the questions whether the descent took place before or after the death on the cross; whether it were confined to the divine nature, or to the soul, or extended to the body; whether it belonged to the state of humiliation, or to the state of exaltation; whether it were a continuation of suffering and a tasting of the second death, or a triumph over hell. The answer to these questions depended in part on the different views of the communication of idiomata and the ubiquity of the body, as also on Hades, or Sheol, itself, which some identified with hell proper (Gehenna), while others more correctly understood it in a wider sense of the whole realm of the dead. Luther himself had at different times very different opinions of the descent, but regarded it chiefly as a victory over the kingdom of Satan.

John Æpinus, a Lutheran minister in Hamburg, started the controversy. He taught, first in 1544 and afterwards more fully, that Christ descended with his spirit into the region of the lost, in order to suffer the pains of hell for men, and thus to complete his humiliation or the work of redemption. So he explained Psalm xvi. 10 (comp. Acts ii. 27, 31). Luther himself had at one time (1524) given a similar exposition of this passage. Flacius sided with Æpinus. But this theory was more Reformed than Lutheran, and was opposed by his colleagues, who carried the dispute into the pulpit and excited the people. Matsberger in Augsburg represented the descent, according to the usual view, as a local change, but had to suffer three years' imprisonment for it. Brenz condemned such locomotion as inconsistent with the dignity and ubiquity of Christ, and denied the locality of hell as well as of heaven. This accords with his view of the ascension. Melanchthon, being appealed to by the magistrate of Hamburg, answered with caution, and warned against preaching on subjects not clearly revealed. He referred to a sermon of Luther, preached at Torgau, 1533, in which he graphically describes the descent as a triumphant march of Christ through the dismayed infernal hosts, so that no believer need hereafter be afraid of the devil and damnation. Melanchthon thought this view was more probable than that of Æpinus; at all events, Christ manifested himself as a conqueror in hell, destroyed the power of the devil, raised many dead to life (Matt. xxvii. 53), and proclaimed to them the true doctrine of the Messiah; to ask more is unnecessary. He advised the magistrate to exclude the controversy from the pulpit. Several of the most violent opponents of Æpinus were deposed and expelled. The dispute was lost in more serious controversies. It was almost confined to Hamburg.