The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

which assumed the Nestorianizing views of New England as orthodox,
and which the Orthodox there defended as Scriptural, were consequently
never fairly met. One source of the rapid and deadly triumphs of
Socinianism in New England was the unscriptural and lax views which the
system claiming to be orthodox held of the person of Christ.
The Person of Christ; a great misapprehension corrected.
From the views which have been presented of the Lutheran doctrine
of Christ's person, our readers will understand with what reservation they
must accept Dr. Gerhart's statement, which follows the one on which we
have dwelt. He says that the Lutheran doctrine “involved the
communicating of divine attributes to the human nature of Christ, in virtue
of which His human nature was not limited to heaven, nor to any place at a
time, but, like the divine nature, was present in all places at the same time
where the Sacrament of the Altar was instituted and administered." For
evidence of the correctness of this proposition, the reader is referred to
"Herzog's Encyclopaedia, by Dr. Bomberger." We would protest against
the authority of Herzog's Encyclopaedia on any question involving a
distinctive doctrine of Lutheranism. Great as are the merits of that almost
indispensable work, it is yet an unsafe guide on any question which
involves in any way the so-called Evangelical Union. The article on the
Communicatio Idiomatum is written by Dr. Schenkel, who is one of the
last men to be selected for such a work. In its whole texture it is Unionistic,
and in some of its statements, demonstrably incorrect. The article has been
very admirably translated by Rev. Dr. Krotel, for the Abridgment of
Herzog, edited by Dr. Bomberger. We do not find, however, in the part of
the article cited by Dr. Gerhart, nor indeed in any part of it, a voucher for
his definition, especially for the statement that our Church holds that the
human nature of Christ is present "like the divine nature." Dr. Schenkel,
however anxious he might be to make out a case against our doctrine,
could not have ventured on a statement which is not only inconsistent with
the whole theory of our Church, but is contradicted, in express terms, in
the Formula of Concord. Here we will say, as we said before, if Dr. Gerhart
will show