The Genus Maiestaticum (2)

Abstract

Abstract This chapter begins with a brief account of the objections to the genus maiestaticum offered by two Catholic (Francisco Suárez and Gregorio de Valencia). It then goes on to consider some more irenic approaches: first of all, those of two Anglican theologians (Richard Hooker and Joseph Hall), both of whom try to find moderate formulations that might be acceptable to both sides in the debate; and, secondly, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Leibniz twice engages in Christological discussion of a broadly ecumenical kind. In the first, in the early 1680s, he rejects the genus maiestaticum, and formulates a loosely Thomistic Christology on the basis of Robert Bellarmine’s De controversiis. In the second, an attempt at reconciliation between Lutheran Hanover and Reformed Brandenberg, Leibniz tries to show, on the basis of a formulation in the Colloquy of Kassel (1661), that Martin Chemnitz should not be understood as affirming that divine attributes can be predicated of the human nature, but merely that the human nature is united to them such that it can be said to have them, or to be them merely by an extrinsic denomination.