Ad Dextram Patris

Abstract

This chapter describes arguments against Christ's corporeal presence developed by Hussite theologians in the fifteenth century that became prominent at the beginning of the eucharistic controversy. Taborite theologians adapted some of John Wyclif's arguments against Christ's corporeal presence; these were divorced from their scholastic underpinnings and spread to western Europe chiefly as scriptural proof texts against adoration of the host. In the early sixteenth century the Bohemian Brethren developed more sophisticated arguments that upheld Christ's spiritual presence but rejected his corporeal presence and the adoration of the host. The earlier, more popular arguments were incorporated into the eucharistic treatises of Cornelis Hoen and Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt, while the more sophisticated arguments of the Bohemian Brethren were first used by Johann Oecolampadius in the summer of 1525 and by Ulrich Zwingli in early 1526, and they became a standard element of the Reformed understanding of the Lord's Supper and of Reformed Christology.