Systematic Theology, by Louis Berkhof - New Leaven

2. OBJECTIONS TO THIS LUTHERAN DOCTRINE. There are serious objections to the
Lutheran doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum.
a. It has no Scriptural foundation. If it is inferred from such a statement as that in
John 3:13, then, in consistency, it ought also to be concluded from I Cor. 2:8 that the
ability to suffer was communicated to the divine nature. Yet the Lutherans shrink back
from that conclusion.
b. It implies a fusion of the divine and the human natures in Christ. Lutherans speak
as if the attributes can be abstracted from the nature, and can be communicated while
the natures remain separate, but substance and attributes cannot be so separated. By a
communication of divine attributes to the human nature that nature as such ceases to
exist. Omnipresence and omniscience are not compatible with humanity. Such a
communication results in a mixture of the divine and the human, which the Bible keeps
strictly separate.
c. In the form in which the doctrine is now generally accepted by the Lutherans, the
doctrine suffers from inconsistency. If the divine attributes are communicated to the
human nature, the human must also be communicated to the divine. And if some
attributes are communicated, they must all be communicated. But the Lutherans
evidently do not dare to go the full length, and therefore stop half way.
d. It is inconsistent with the picture of the incarnate Christ during the time of His
humiliation, as we find it in the Gospels. This is not the picture of a man who is
omnipresent and omniscient. The Lutheran explanations of this inconsistency failed to
commend themselves to the mind of the Church in general, and even to some of the
followers of Luther.
e. It virtually destroys the incarnation. Lutherans distinguish between the incarnatio
and the exinanitio. The Logos is the subject only of the former. He makes the human
nature receptive for the inhabitation of the fulness of the Godhead and communicates to
it some of the divine attributes. But by doing this He virtually abrogates the human
nature by assimilating it to the divine. Thus only the divine remains.
f. It also practically obliterates the distinction between the state of humiliation and
the state of exaltation. Brenz even says that these were not successive states, but states
that co-existed during the earthly life of Christ. To escape the difficulty here, the
Lutherans brought in the doctrine of the exinanitio, of which not the Logos but the God-
man is the subject, to the effect that He practically emptied Himself, or laid aside the
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