J_Edwards said: Well your personal opinion proves nothing you have stated. Thus take one of the topics--let us say "In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" and exegete what is meant by it and where the whole Reformed Church errs in their interpretation. Please exegete the Scripture. And don't worry about it being off topic as it can be moved to a different thread if needed.
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Of the Lord's Supper, Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter XXIX. VII. Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements, in this sacrament,[13] do then also, inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally but spiritually, receive and feed upon, Christ crucified, and all benefits of His death: the body and blood of Christ being then, not corporally or carnally, in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet, as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, as the elements themselves are to their outward senses.[14]VIII. Although ignorant and wicked men receive the outward elements in this sacrament; yet, they receive not the thing signified thereby; but, by their unworthy coming thereunto, are guilty of the body and blood of the Lord, to their own damnation.
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"Of the Person of Christ: A Sermon Study on Colossians 2:8-10", Joel Gerlach "From the controversy concerning the Holy Supper a disagreement has arisen…concerning the person of Christ and the two natures in Christ and their properties" (Formula of Concord, Epitome, VIII, para.1). Zwingli, Calvin, and their Crypto-Calvinistic sympathizers at Wittenberg subjected not only the Sacrament to their rationalistic methodology. They subjected the doctrine of the person of Christ to it as well. In that respect at least they were consistent. . . Calvin was insistent that Jesus was the God-man. But he was equally insistent that finitum non est capax infiniti. He therefore denied the communication of the divine attributes to the Savior's human nature. Thus according to Calvin, Jesus possesses divine attributes only in accord with His divine nature. The Christological propositions, "God is man" and "This man is God," are therefore invalid. (See Formula of Concord, Epitome VIII, para. 25, antithesis 6.) And the ascended Lord is limited by His human nature to a specific place at God's right hand. (See Formula of Concord, Epitome, VIII, para. 30, antithesis 11.) That kind of theologizing incensed Luther. Jesus does not make promises, Luther insisted, to be with us literally always and everywhere, and then not keep His promises. The almighty God who has assumed our human nature in the person of Christ has no problem whatsoever transcending the dimension and the limitations of time, space, and movement. So when the One who is sitting everywhere at the right hand of God's power says that He is giving us His real body and blood in the holy supper, that is precisely what He is doing. . .
Verse 9
What is it that makes Paul's pronouncement valid regarding the emptiness of the theosophists' philosophy? Two things. Because in Christ dwells bodily (swmatikw~v, corporeally) all the fulness of the Deity (qeo&thtov, abstract for qeo&v), and because (repeat the o#ti) in Him you have been made complete. And He, remember, is the One "who is the head of all rule and authority" (a)rxh=v kai\ e0cousi/av). So why look for something more? Why let anyone try to add to what the Savior offers when you are already complete in Him? "All the fulness of the Godhead" means exactly what it says. Fulness (to_ plh/rwma) includes all of God's attributes without exception. They all dwell bodily in Jesus Christ, not only in the Son of God (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, para. 57), but also in the Son of Man. Paul is asserting the divine mystery that the divine attributes katoikei= in Jesus because of and in connection with His human nature. The indwelling of the attributes is corporeal (Luther, leibhaftig), not merely spiritual, "not in the spirit of Christ alone, but in his whole human nature" (Lenski). In Christology this verse is one of the primary passages which offers evidence for the doctrine of the communication of the attributes. Our particular concern is with the genus maiestaticum, especially with the communication of the divine omnipresence to the human nature of Jesus Christ. The Nestorian/Zwinglian error separated the Deity of Christ (together with all the divine attributes) from the human nature (the sw~ma) of Christ Jesus. Thus according to the Zwinglians, Jesus could not be present everywhere except in a spiritual sense to faith. That error obscures the truth that the body Jesus gave for us and the blood He shed for us on the cross redeemed us because all the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in that body and blood. His blood was "holy, precious blood" because it was divine blood (cf. Formula of Concord, Epitome, para. 14 also Luther in the Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, para. 44). The denial of the communicated omnipresence was at the bottom of the Reformed/Philippist denial of the real presence. That made Article VII (Formula of Concord) a necessity. That same denial also made Article VIII with its thorough treatment of the hypostatic union a necessity in the Formula.
