Nicolaus Selnecker Against the Secret Calvinists

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Against the Secret Calvinists presents the first English translation of Nicolaus Selnecker's Exegema and his 1571 letter to Daniel Greser, two remarkable documents from the struggle for Lutheran orthodoxy in the generation before the Formula of Concord. In July 1570, Selnecker and Martin Chemnitz confronted the Wittenberg theologians over Christology and the Lord's Supper. Selnecker's Exegema Collationis arose from that controversy, setting forth the Lutheran doctrine of Christ's Person, the communication of attributes, the majesty of Christ according to His human nature, and the true presence of His body and blood in the Supper. Drawing on Chalcedon, Cyril, Justinian, Luther, Basil, Bernard, Leo, and the public confession of the Lutheran churches, Selnecker showed that the doctrine of the Supper rests upon the doctrine of Christ Himself. The accompanying letter to Daniel Greser reveals the personal and ecclesiastical cost of that confession. After Wittenberg theologians prepared and circulated a censura against his Exegema, Selnecker wrote with grief, anger, and doctrinal clarity. He accused the "secret Calvinists" of hiding Sacramentarian doctrine beneath ambiguous language, and insisted that Christ's own words in the Supper must stand above speculation concerning the ordinary properties of a body. Together, these texts illuminate the road to the Formula of Concord and recover a powerful witness to classical Lutheran Christology and sacramental doctrine. They are demanding, polemical, and deeply pastoral-texts born not from academic detachment, but from the struggle to confess Christ faithfully when the cost was real.

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