On the general basis of the Chalcedonian christology and following the indications of the Scriptures as the only rule of faith, the Protestant (especially the Lutheran) scholastics at the close of the sixteenth and during the seventeenth century built some additional features and developed new aspects of Christ's person.
The first was the production of the Lutheran Church, and was never adopted, but partly rejected, by the Reformed; the second and third were the joint doctrines of both, but with a very material difference in the understanding of the second.
Lutheran theologians distinguish three kinds or genera:[1] The Reformed divines adopted the communicatio idiomatum while disagreeing with the Lutheran formulation, especially regarding the genus maiestaticum[2] (although they might approve the first two kinds, at least by way of what Zwingli termed allaiosis, or a rhetorical exchange of one part for another); and they decidedly rejected the third kind, because omnipresence, whether absolute or relative, is inconsistent with the necessary limitation of a human body, as well as with the Scripture facts of Christ's ascension to heaven, and promised return (see Black Rubric).
Secondly, the Lutheran Confessions of the Book of Concord refer the two states only to the human nature of Christ, regarding the divine as not susceptible of any humiliation or exaltation.
[3] Finally, the Scholastic Lutherans regard the humiliation only as a partial concealment of the actual use (Gk.
The theologians who followed Luther and Melanchthon down to the middle of the seventeenth century treat Christ's saving work under the two heads of king and priest.