Person and Work of Christ: Reformation Christology

Luther argued that the unity of Jesus’ two natures, divine and human, meant that every statement about Jesus applied to both of his natures at once. Thus, God suffered and died on the cross, and the humanity of Jesus was omnipresent. Luther insisted that Jesus’ bodily omnipresence entailed his real bodily presence in the elements of the offering (see transubstantiation). Calvin, in contrast, held that Jesus’ human nature had died on the cross and that Jesus was now at the right hand of the Father. The Holy Spirit brought about Jesus’ spiritual but not bodily presence in the communion ceremon

Person and Work of Christ: Reformation Christology

Calvin Reformers Christology of atonement

 Calvin’s doctrine of the atonement conveys the coherence of Protestant teaching that Lutheran pastors should also 
recognize as familiar to their own confession: 1) The starting point of the atonement is the freeove
 of God in Jesus Christ; 2) The prerequisite of the atonement is the incarnation; 3) Christ hasa threefold office 
of Prophet, King, and Priest; 4) Christ the obedient Second Adam; 5) Christ theVictor; 6) Christ our 
legal substitute; 7) Christ our sacrifice; 8) Christ our merit; and finally9) Christ our example
 (specifically, the supreme example of faith in God in the midst of human suffering).11All these are vital
 themes of the atonement also in Lutheran theology.12 In fact, eventhe one issue that has come to characterize the 
difference between Lutheran and Reformed theology regarding the atonement—namely the extent of its 
significance—is a development oflater Reformed theology and is not worked out in the theology of Zwingli 
or Calvin,13althoughin important ways the doctrine of predestination in these two Reformed theologians 
perhaps leddirectly to this development. Nevertheless, both Zwingli and Calvin, like Luther, taught that the
atonement of the death of Christ was a universal and not a limited atonement. 


 more