Genus maiestaticum

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Genus maiestaticum is a special conceptual formation of the old Lutheran Christology: The human nature of Jesus Christ shares in the omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence of God. This was used to check plausibility (but not to justify!) The real presence of human nature in the consecrated elements of the sacrament of the altar and the ensuing oral enjoyment of Christ's true body and blood for all participants in the Lord's Supper. Logically, vice versa, the divine nature of Jesus Christ should have had a share in his human ability to suffer (= genus tapeinoticum ). But the old Lutheran dogmatists did not draw this conclusion because it was incompatible with their understanding of the immutability of God.

The ancient reformed dogmatists rejected the genus maiestaticum because, in their opinion, it obscured the real human nature of Jesus and raised the question of whether the suffering of Christ was then still a real human suffering. Old Lutheran dogmatics tried to avoid this difficulty by teaching that the person Jesus Christ only shared in the divine qualities as gifts. In the late phase of Old Lutheran dogmatics, the doctrine of “de statu Christi duplice” was also developed, following Phil 2.5ff .: status exinanitionis during earthly life, status exaltationis after the resurrection.

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