Here’s a question that sounds easy. Where’s the body of Jesus right now? In heaven? On the table of every church that shares the Lord’s Supper this Sunday? Everywhere at once?
In October 1529, 2 great Reformers met in a castle in Marburg, Germany. Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli agreed on 14 out of 15 points of faith. Then they reached the Lord’s Supper. Luther took a piece of chalk and wrote four Latin words on the table: Hoc est corpus meum—‘This is my body.’ The Protestant churches split that day, and the split has never healed.
But underneath the bread was a bigger question about Jesus Himself. How can one person be both God and man? Does His divine nature share its powers with His human nature? The study of these questions is called Christology.
In this article, we compare the Lutheran answer with the answer of John Calvin and the Heidelberg Catechism. We shall see why Scripture, the early church and plain good sense all point to Calvin’s view.
KEY WORDS MADE SIMPLE
- Christology: the study of who Jesus Christ is.
- Nature: what kind of being something is. Christ has a divine nature (fully God) and a human nature (fully man).
- Person: the ‘who’. Christ is one person—the eternal Son of God.
- Attributes: the qualities a nature has. God is everywhere. A human body is in one place.
- Incarnation: the Son of God becoming a man (John 1:14).
Where Both Sides Agree
Lutherans and Calvin’s followers both accept the Nicene Creed and the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451). Chalcedon said Christ is one person in two natures, ‘without confusion, without change, without division, without separation’.
| SHARED BELIEF | WHAT IT MEANS | WHERE WE SEE IT |
|---|---|---|
| Jesus is fully God | He has every quality that God has | John 1:1; Hebrews 1:3 |
| Jesus is fully man | He has a real human body and soul | Hebrews 2:17 |
| Jesus is one person | He is not two people sharing one body | John 1:14 |
| The natures are not mixed | God does not turn into man, and man does not turn into God | Council of Chalcedon |
| What is true of either nature is true of the person | We can say God bought the church with His own blood | Acts 20:28; 1 Corinthians 2:8 |
Lutherans and the followers of Calvin both believe every row of this table.
That last row matters. Paul speaks of ‘the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood’ (Acts 20:28). God, as God, has no blood. But the person who is God also has a human body, so we can rightly say God shed His blood. The fight begins with the next question: can the divine nature pass its own powers to the human nature?
How the Split Happened: A Short Timeline
- 1529: At Marburg, Luther and Zwingli disagree on the Lord’s Supper.
- 1559: The Lutheran Johannes Brenz teaches that Christ’s body is everywhere. This is called ubiquity (from the Latin for ‘everywhere’).
- 1563: The Heidelberg Catechism, written mainly by Zacharias Ursinus, answers the question in Questions 47–48.
- 1570: Martin Chemnitz writes The Two Natures in Christ, the most careful Lutheran statement.
- 1577: The Formula of Concord (Article VIII) makes the Lutheran view official.
- 1586: At Montbéliard, Theodore Beza, Calvin’s successor, debates the Lutheran Jakob Andreae. No agreement.
- 1973 and 1997: Some mainline churches on both sides declare fellowship. Confessional churches remain apart.
The 4 Big Differences at a Glance
Here’s the whole debate in one table.
| THE QUESTION | THE LUTHERAN ANSWER | OUR ANSWER |
|---|---|---|
| Can Christ’s human nature receive God’s powers? | Yes. His human nature shares God’s majesty, power and knowledge. | No. Both natures meet in the one person, but each keeps its own qualities. |
| Is the Son of God also ‘outside’ His human body? | No. Wherever the Son is, His human nature is too. | Yes. The Son is fully joined to His body but never shut inside it. |
| Where is Christ’s body now? | It can be wherever Christ wishes—even in many places at once. | In heaven, at the Father’s right hand, until He returns. |
| How is Christ present in the Lord’s Supper? | His body is ‘in, with and under’ the bread and eaten with the mouth—even by unbelievers. | Believers truly feed on Christ by faith, through the Holy Spirit. |
Lutheran answers: Formula of Concord (1577). Our answers: Calvin, the Heidelberg Catechism (1563) and the Westminster Confession (1646).
Difference 1: Do Christ’s Two Natures Swap Powers?
Theologians use a Latin phrase here: communicatio idiomatum, ‘the sharing of qualities’. Chemnitz described three kinds:
- The first kind: the qualities of each nature belong to the one person. So we can say ‘God died’. Both sides agree.
- The second kind: in His saving work, Christ acts through both natures together. Both sides broadly agree.
- The third kind: the divine nature gives its majesty—power, knowledge and presence everywhere—to the human nature. Lutherans call this the genus maiestaticum, ‘the majesty kind’. Here we part ways.
Lutherans often use a picture from the blacksmith’s shop. Put iron into a fire, and it glows red and burns like the fire. In the same way, they say, God’s power enters Christ’s human nature.
It is a lovely picture. But glowing iron is still iron. It does not become fire or spread everywhere the fire reaches. The qualities of both natures meet in the one person. They do not move from one nature into the other.
Difference 2: Is the Son Bigger Than His Body?
This brings us to a strange term: the extra Calvinisticum. Lutherans made it up as a nickname. It means ‘the Calvinist outside’. The idea is simple. The eternal Son is fully joined to His human nature, but He is not trapped inside it. As God, He still fills heaven and earth. Calvin wrote:
The Son of God descended miraculously from heaven, yet without abandoning heaven; was pleased to be conceived miraculously in the Virgin’s womb, to live on the earth, and hang upon the cross, and yet always filled the world as from the beginning.
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.13.4
While baby Jesus lay in the manger, the Son was also holding the universe together. He ‘upholds the universe by the word of his power’ (Hebrews 1:3). A baby’s hands cannot hold up the stars. But the Son who took those hands could—and did.
Lutherans say this tears the two natures apart. The Heidelberg Catechism answers:
Not at all; for since the Godhead is incomprehensible and everywhere present, it must follow that it is indeed beyond the bounds of the manhood which it has assumed, but is yet none the less ever in the same also, and remains personally united to it.
Heidelberg Catechism, Answer 48
The Son is never separated from His body—He is simply bigger than it. This was not Calvin’s new idea. Athanasius of Alexandria taught it in the fourth century (On the Incarnation, 17). Scholars such as Heiko Oberman have said it should really be called the extra catholicum—‘the universal outside’—because the whole early church believed it.
Difference 3: Where Is Jesus’ Body Now?
If Christ’s human nature shares God’s majesty, it must also share God’s presence everywhere. Brenz said exactly that. Chemnitz was more careful: Christ’s body can be wherever Christ wills, even in many places at once.
Our answer is simpler. Christ’s body rose, went up into heaven and stays there until He returns. He is the one ‘whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things’ (Acts 3:21). Has He left us alone? Not at all:
According to His human nature, He is now not upon earth; but according to His Godhead, majesty, grace and Spirit, He is at no time absent from us.
Heidelberg Catechism, Answer 47
Difference 4: What Happens at the Lord’s Supper?
Lutherans teach that Christ’s body and blood are present ‘in, with and under’ the bread and wine. Everyone who eats takes Christ’s body into their mouth—believers for blessing, unbelievers for judgement.
Our view is not that the Supper is only a memory. The Westminster Confession says believers ‘really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally but spiritually, receive and feed upon Christ crucified’ (29.7). So both sides say Christ is really present. The question is how. Lutherans bring Christ’s body down to the bread. Calvin taught that the Holy Spirit lifts our hearts up to Christ in heaven. He admitted this is a mystery:
Though it seems an incredible thing that the flesh of Christ, while at such a distance from us in respect of place, should be food to us, let us remember how far the secret virtue of the Holy Spirit surpasses all our conceptions.
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.17.10
Why We Believe Scripture Stands With Us
Now let us test the two views. Here are seven reasons we believe Calvin’s view is the biblical one.
- It passes the Chalcedon test. Chalcedon said ‘the property of each nature’ is ‘preserved’. Pope Leo the Great put it plainly in 449: ‘each form does the acts which belong to it, in communion with the other’. A human body that is everywhere has not kept its own property. It has taken God’s.
- It avoids the ‘pick and choose’ problem. Lutherans say Christ’s human nature receives God’s power, knowledge and presence—but not His eternity. Why not? God’s qualities are not bricks handed over one by one. Each quality is God Himself. This is called divine simplicity. Francis Turretin of Geneva pressed the point: give the human nature one divine quality, and you must give it all—and then it is no longer human.
- It takes Jesus’ humanity seriously. Jesus ‘had to be made like his brothers in every respect’ (Hebrews 2:17). He ‘increased in wisdom and in stature’ (Luke 2:52). About the day of His return, He said, ‘no one knows… nor the Son’ (Mark 13:32). Not knowing is different from choosing not to use what you know. As Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield of Princeton wrote, ‘It belongs to the truth of our Lord’s humanity, that He was subject to all sinless human emotions.’
- It keeps God’s promise about our bodies. See the box below—perhaps the strongest argument of all.
- It fits the ascension. ‘This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way’ (Acts 1:11). Jesus said, ‘you do not always have me’ (Matthew 26:11), and ‘it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you’ (John 16:7). If His body were already everywhere, why would His leaving matter?
- It honours the Spirit’s work in Jesus. God ‘anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power’ (Acts 10:38). Jesus did His miracles as a man by the Spirit, not because His body had become all-powerful. The Puritan John Owen wrote, ‘The only singular immediate act of the person of the Son on the human nature was the assumption of it into subsistence with himself.’ The Son took our nature; the Spirit filled it with grace and power.
- It’s the faith of the early church. Augustine of Hippo taught that Christ as God is everywhere, but as man is in heaven. He warned against praising Christ’s divinity in a way that takes away the reality of His body (Letter 187).
THE ARGUMENT LUTHERANS FIND HARDEST TO ANSWER
Christ ‘will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body’ (Philippians 3:21). His risen body is the pattern for ours, and it still has ‘flesh and bones’ (Luke 24:39). So think it through:
- If His glorious body is everywhere, then ours will be everywhere too. No one believes that.
- If our bodies will not be everywhere, then His body is not the pattern for ours. That breaks Paul’s promise.
Only one answer keeps both truths. His body, like ours will be, is glorious, real and in one place.
What About the Lutheran Proof Texts?
| BIBLE VERSE | HOW LUTHERANS READ IT | HOW WE READ IT |
|---|---|---|
| ‘This is my body’ (Matthew 26:26) | Christ’s body is literally in the bread. | This is sign language, like ‘the Rock was Christ’ (1 Corinthians 10:4). The cup ‘is the new covenant’ (Luke 22:20), yet a cup is not literally a covenant. |
| ‘I am with you always’ (Matthew 28:20) | Christ is with us in His body too. | He is with us by His divine nature and His Spirit. |
| ‘In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily’ (Colossians 2:9) | Christ’s body shares God’s fullness. | ‘Bodily’ means truly and personally. It does not say His body fills all things. |
| ‘That he might fill all things’ (Ephesians 4:10) | Christ’s body fills the universe. | He fills all things as King and Giver of gifts (Ephesians 1:22–23; 4:11–12). |
| ‘The bread… is my flesh’ (John 6:51) | We eat Christ’s flesh with our mouths. | We feed on Christ by faith: ‘It is the Spirit who gives life’ (John 6:63). |
None of these verses says Christ’s human body is in more than one place.
Being Fair to Our Lutheran Friends
- Lutherans do not mean to mix the natures. They confess Chalcedon. Our claim is that their teaching leads towards mixing, not that they want it.
- ‘The finite cannot hold the infinite’ is mostly a label Lutherans gave us. We do not deny that the infinite Son is truly joined to a finite nature. We deny that the finite nature becomes infinite.
- Calvin’s view is not Zwingli’s. Calvin taught that believers truly feed on Christ by the Spirit.
- The ‘majesty’ idea may not be Luther’s. Richard Cross has argued it came more from Brenz.
- We share the gospel. Lutherans believe in justification by faith alone. That matters far more than our differences.
Why This Matters for Ordinary Christians
- A Saviour who truly feels with you. ‘We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses’ (Hebrews 4:15).
- A sure hope for your body. One day your body will be raised and made glorious like His—still a real human body.
- Somewhere for your heart to go. ‘Seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God’ (Colossians 3:1).
- Christ close to you now. By His Spirit, He lives in you and meets you at His table.
Conclusion: Lift Up Your Hearts
So where is the body of Jesus right now? He’s in heaven, at the Father’s right hand, in the same real body that walked in Galilee and rose from the tomb. Yet as God He fills all things, and by His Spirit He lives in His people.
You have a Saviour who is truly God, able to save completely, and truly man—still wearing our flesh, still feeling our weakness. Calvin’s way keeps both natures whole, just as Chalcedon said and Scripture teaches.
The ancient church began the Supper with the words, ‘Lift up your hearts!’ Christ will not come down into the bread. By His Spirit, He will lift you up to Himself.
Tough Questions, Honest Answers
Do Lutherans believe in consubstantiation?
No—at least, they reject the word. ‘Consubstantiation’ suggests that Christ’s body and the bread mix into one new substance, and Lutherans deny this. They prefer the term ‘sacramental union’: the bread stays bread, but Christ’s body is truly present ‘in, with and under’ it. This is also different from the Roman Catholic idea of transubstantiation, which says the bread stops being bread. We disagree with both views. We believe the bread stays bread, and believers feed on Christ spiritually, by faith, through the Holy Spirit.
Did Martin Luther and John Calvin ever meet?
No, they never met. Calvin was 26 years younger than Luther, and he deeply respected him. In 1544, he told his friend Heinrich Bullinger that even if Luther called him a devil, he would still honour him as a great servant of God. In 1545, Calvin wrote Luther a warm letter, but Philip Melanchthon never delivered it because he feared Luther’s temper. Luther died the next year. Their story reminds us that true Christians can disagree deeply and still respect one another.
Can Lutherans and Presbyterians take communion together?
It depends on the church. Many confessional Lutheran churches, such as the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, practise ‘close communion’. This means they usually invite only those who share their confession, because they see the Supper as a sign of full agreement in faith. Most Presbyterian churches welcome baptised believers who belong to a gospel-believing church, so a Lutheran visitor would usually be invited. Some mainline Lutheran and Presbyterian churches in the USA share full communion. If you visit another church, it is always kind to speak to the pastor first.
What is the hypostatic union?
‘Hypostatic union’ is the name for the joining of God and man in the one person of Jesus Christ. ‘Hypostasis’ is a Greek word that means ‘person’. So the phrase simply means ‘the union in one person’. When the Son of God became man, He did not join Himself to a human person who already existed. He took a human nature and made it His own. The result is one Christ who is fully God and fully man, forever.
Did Jesus give up His divine powers when He became a man?
No. In the 1800s, some German teachers, such as Gottfried Thomasius, taught what is called the ‘kenotic theory’. They said the Son laid aside powers like being everywhere and knowing everything. They took the idea from Philippians 2:7, which says Christ ‘emptied himself’. But read the verse to the end: He emptied himself ‘by taking the form of a servant’. He did not lose anything—He added our humanity and veiled His glory. God cannot stop being God, because ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever’ (Hebrews 13:8).
Is Jesus still human today?
Yes. The incarnation did not end when Jesus went back to heaven. He rose with a real body and went up into heaven in that same body. Paul, writing years after the ascension, still calls Him ‘the man Christ Jesus’ (1 Timothy 2:5). Right now, a real Man sits on heaven’s throne and ‘always lives to make intercession’ for His people (Hebrews 7:25). He will return in that same body, and He will be our elder brother forever.
What else do Lutherans and Calvinists disagree about?
Christology is only one of several differences. On predestination, Lutherans teach that God chose some to be saved but did not pass over others; we believe Scripture teaches both. On perseverance, Lutherans believe a true believer can fall away and be lost, while we believe God keeps His people to the end (John 10:28–29). On baptism, Lutherans teach that baptism itself gives new birth; we see it as a sign and seal of God’s promise. In worship, Lutherans allow whatever Scripture does not forbid, while many in Calvin’s tradition worship only as Scripture commands. Still, we stand together on the great truth of justification by faith alone.
Related Reads
- Catholic vs Protestant Salvation: What’s Wrong With Rome’s Gospel?
- Does the Bible Clearly Teach the Deity of Christ?
- The Kenosis: What Does It Mean that Jesus Emptied Himself?
- High and Lifted Up: Why the Ascension Truly Matters
- Baptism and the Lord’s Supper: Why the Sacraments Truly Matter
- Fencing the Lord’s Table: Why Scripture Supports Careful Communion
- Meeting Jesus in Glory: Will He Have a Physical Body?
- Luther’s 95 Theses: What They Said and Why They Matter
- How Does the HANDS Acronym Help Explain Jesus Is God?
- Jesus as Son of God and Son of Man: How are the Titles Different?
