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History of the development of the doctrine of the person of Christ
History of the development of the doctrine of the person of Christ Author:Isaak August Dorner Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SECTION III. CHRISTOLOGICAL MOVEMENTS, OF THE TYPE OF THE PERIOD OF THE REFORMATION, OUTSIDE OF THE CHURCH. Nothing can more clearly show what was, and mus... more »t be, the essential aim of the reformatory movement during the sixteenth century in relation to Christology, than the character of the parties outside the pale of the Church. Only by assuming that the Christian " Sensus Communis" of that age had universally pronounced judgment (and that independently of external historical connection) on the defects of the traditional doctrine, can we satisfactorily account for the fact, that all the parties which cried out for Reform, whatever might be the differences in their reformatory power, and whether the view they took of Christianity was predominantly religious or predominantly religio-ethical, or predominantly intellectual and moral, aimed, on the one hand, at the union of the natures instead of the prevailing Sforo/iT/crt?, and on the other hand, at raising the humanity of Christ to its true significance. The Reformed Church alone limited its efforts to the latter point; in relation to the former, on the contrary, concerning which we cannot sny that the period of the Reformation offered sufficient premises for a satisfactory conclusion, like the Romish Church, it worked as a wholesomely retarding factor. The delineation of these parties will be no less adapted to explain, nay more, to reconcile us to, the circumstance that the reformatory principle itself did not more completely transform the old Christology, and that, on the contrary, as we shall find, the Lutheran Church aimed more and more fully at clothing its view of the Person of Christ in the old forms, and so rigidly preserved the continuity of the development, that the doctrine which it received as authoritative was ...« less