# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1859_S168
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

168 On the Teaching of the Newest Theology Concerning the Person of Christ, etc.

the Person of Christ in the state of humiliation: "God the Son, when he became man, limited himself, in that he either laid aside a part of his divine attributes or gave up everything except the will. The human nature which he took to himself was subject to the consequences of sin; it was, therefore, burdened with the possibility of sinning—though only an abstract possibility—with mortality and with weakness. The union of the Godhead and manhood in Christ is not to be thought of as that of soul and body in the person of man; rather, the eternal Son of God has entered into the Human in Christ in such a way that he lives, thinks, wills, feels and acts as a mere man, even though as a sinless man equipped with miraculous power; the existence of Christ in Godhead and manhood thus compares rather to the spiritual and natural life of the regenerate man." That, in short, is the newly revived false doctrine.—

It is evident that this doctrine runs altogether counter to the confession of our church, as the same is set forth in particular in the Formula of Concord; and therefore, for us Lutherans, who through God's Word and God's Spirit have become certain that our confession, in all its parts, is nothing further than the statement of the divine truth recognized in faith and laid hold of livingly in Holy Scripture, it is settled from the outset that that view also offends against the clear testimonies of Scripture. In what follows I will adduce some of these testimonies, whereby it will be shown, in its contradiction to the Word of God, to be thoroughly erroneous and perverse.

As to the doctrine of the divine nature in Christ, first of all: according to Holy Scripture it is absolutely impossible that it should in any way, whether in the incarnation or otherwise, have suffered or been capable of suffering an alteration, a limitation, a diminution or a lessening. Psalm 102:28 says: Thou remainest as thou art. James 1:17: With God there is no variableness. It is essentially proper to the Godhead that it is unchangeable. For in it the essence is absolutely identical with the essential attributes. Were these, namely, different from the divine essence, then the divine essence would be the One highest and perfect Good through something other than itself, and not through itself. Were the Godhead, then, to change in any way, through increase or decrease, so that it acquired divine attributes in addition to the old ones, or laid aside the old ones in part, its essence would thereby be altered and abolished; it would become something other than it is; it would cease to be Godhead. It therefore appears, from the concept of God given in Holy Scripture, to be impossible that the Godhead, in the Person of the Son, should, with the incarnation, have laid aside essential attributes—namely omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence—and for a time have possessed them not at all. How can it be reconciled that the humbled Christ possessed absolute power but no omnipotence and no omnipresence, and possessed absolute truth, holiness and love, but no