1536–1566

Calvin: the distinction of natures, the "extra calvinisticum" and the threefold office

Calvin follows orthodoxy – two natures in one person, "not by a mixture of substances but by unity of person" – but controversy sharpened his christology. Against Osiander he rejected as idle speculation the idea that the incarnation would have taken place even without the fall: Scripture knows only an incarnation for the sake of redemption; against Menno and other Anabaptists, who taught the heavenly flesh of Christ, he insisted on his physical descent from Adam; against Servetus he stressed the distinction of the natures. Together with Zwingli and against Luther he did not accept the argument from the communicatio idiomatum to the ubiquity of the risen body: the divinity of the Second Person was fully present in Jesus but was not confined by his humanity – later this was called the "extra calvinisticum". Calvin described the work of Christ through the threefold office – prophet, king and priest – and this scheme became common in Reformed theology.