← Back to the beginning of Chapter V. The Reformation Doctrine of Reconciliation Contrasted in Its Principles with That of the Middle Ages and with Osiander's Doctrine of Justification

Since thus the two thoughts of the freedom of God’s will from all rule, and of its necessary restriction by eternal law, are brought forward by Luther in connexion with two quite distinct practical problems, and in these have absolutely nothing to do with one another, it is plain that he has not even succeeded in apprehending the highest problem of theology as such, much less has he succeeded in solving it. For this reason he is not even aware that the form taken by his utterances respecting the justice in virtue of which God punishes sinners, and cannot exercise His grace towards them until Christ has borne the punishment they deserved and endured the wrath of God,7 is such that they can be understood only as implying a natural necessity. It is admitted that Luther at the same time surpassed all previous theology when he brought love into prominence as the character which exhaustively expresses the Christian idea of God; and in this fundamental conception of God he recognises also the ultimate determining motive for the redemption and reconciliation of the sinner that were wrought by Christ. However strongly he may insist upon God’s wrath against sinners, however emphatically he may proclaim Christ’s vicarious punishment as the means of appeasing it, his meaning is never that God’s relation to sinful man had previously resolved itself wholly into one of wrath; that in that wrath His love had ceased, and could be reawakened only by the merits of Christ. In his bold manner of statement he so decisively brings the love into prominence over the wrath, that in occasional expressions he weakens the wrath of God (the reality of which is proved clearly enough by reference to the passion of Christ) into an unreal reflex of the sinner’s bad conscience.8 His true opinion, however, is essentially that God’s love as the ultimate motive of the sinner’s redemption is the superior determination of His will, while penal justice or wrath—regarded as “not the proper” work of God—is considered as the subordinate motive of His action in carrying out the work of redemption. This ranking of the ideas is also implied when Luther in various connexions describes wrath as a modification of love. At the same time, it is only in occasional moments of logical consistency that Luther refers the wrath of God to sin only, but not to the sinner; or in the expressions of wrath would have us discern proofs of love. On the whole, he makes love and wrath in God, notwithstanding his subordination of the latter to the former, to appear as co-ordinate, and therefore as opposed and even (in certain circumstances) contradictory forces, for the harmonizing of which in God Himself, endurance of punishment by the Mediator is necessary. Melanchthon cuts the knot in a much directer way, for he makes God’s forensic punishment-demanding justice to be the fundamental conception—justice which can be turned into grace only by means of the sacrifice of Christ.9 He therefore is the true author of the subsequent orthodox doctrine. Now it is worth noticing that he never carries up this explanation of Christ’s penal satisfaction into the thought of justification, but only into an indefinite assertion of the grace of God. So far was he from possessing a systematic genius. In Luther, on the other hand, there is brought into prominence the thoroughly Scriptural idea that God has pity on us, justifies us, bestows righteousness upon us, precisely in His character as the Just Being.10 This thought indeed is not even brought into contact, much less into harmony, with the juristic presupposition that the punishment of the sinner is for God an essential thing. No one entered on the inheritance of this exegetical gain made by Luther except Faustus Socinus; and he sought to make use of the opposition between the religious and the legal conception of righteousness in order to destroy the doctrine of reconciliation handed down by Luther and Melanchthon. For the rest, Luther’s fancy expatiates in the thought, suggested by the oldest Church-fathers, and particularly frequent in Augustine, that Christ by His passion and death, and still more by His descent into hell and by His resurrection, vanquished sin, the law, the devil, death, and hell.11 As assaults upon Christ proceeded from these powers, He, by His perseverance in fidelity towards God, overcame them for Himself and made them ineffectual. And, as Luther identifies men with Christ, he maintains the immediate result of this victory to have been the same for men, and describes it in a dramatic way. As, however, this result could only be understood by reference to the regeneration of individuals, those expressions have, properly speaking, no theological features.

  1. Zwingli’s affirmation, in agreement with both Luther and Melanchthon, that it was necessary that Christ by His satisfaction should meet the claims of God’s justice, which had been offended by man’s crime, before mercy could accomplish redemption, is, in his line of thought, based in a systematic way on two propositions which are laid down in the tract De providentia. In substance they are, that God’s providence has its climax in the redemption by His Son of the Church that had been chosen from all eternity, and in the fellowship of that Church with God based upon redemption; and that the law expresses God’s spirit and intention, in other words, denotes His eternal will. So that His goodness (or, which is the same thing, His love) and His righteousness reciprocally condition one another, as is shown at length in the Expositio fidei (iv. p. 47); and so operate that the former achieves the redeeming work of Christ, the latter accepts it for the expiation of all sins. I might have contented myself with this notice, if Zeller and Sigwart had not been at pains to detect in Zwingli divergencies from the “prevailing type of doctrine,” as Zeller expresses himself (p. 71). These divergencies, according to Zeller, resolve themselves into this,—that Zwingli regards as the result that had to be gained by the life and death of Christ the subjective authentication of reconciliation to men rather than the objective propitiation of God Himself; while, according to Sigwart (p. 133), Zwingli does not base the necessity of satisfaction on the objective inflexibility of Divine justice, but, properly speaking, makes its end to be that, even in the bestowal of redeeming grace upon men, a right sense of the enduring reality of Divine justice might be elicited. Were this so, it would commend Zwingli to the taste of those who relegate the idea of reconciliation exclusively to the region of the subjective reflection of the penitent individual, in the same measure as it would give support to the prejudiced dislike shown to the Swiss Reformer by the “genuine” Lutherans. And yet the “prevailing type of doctrine,” which guides the prejudice of this party and the prejudice of both of these impartial historians in their judgment of Zwingli, is simply the latest form of the Lutheran doctrinal tradition which in effect represents the satisfaction wrought by Christ towards God as direct and primary, and the conciliatory work of Christ towards men as merely indirect and secondary, being conditioned by faith. The Reformers, however, did not carry out this explication of their thoughts which is regarded by both these historians as the prevailing type of doctrine. All of them, with the single above-mentioned exception of Melanchthon, gave no independence to the objective thought of reconciliation as against the previous religious certainty of justification in Christ. The expressions of Zwingli accordingly, in which Sigwart and Zeller would fain detect a distortion of the objective determination of the idea of reconciliation towards the subjective sphere, only prove that Zwingli’s doctrine of the reconciliation accomplished by Christ is dominated by the religious consciousness of its being directly designed for us, just as much as is the case with the other Reformers. In order to be convinced of this, it is of course necessary to renounce a dogmatic theology that has been learned merely by rote, and to substitute an understanding of the believing consciousness of the reformation for blind faith in an imaginary “prevailing type of doctrine.”

Both these critics of the theology of Zwingli appeal to the fact that in one passage of the Commentarius de vera ac falsa religione he has directly denied the objective Godward necessity of Christ’s death, because God has power to restore sinful men to purity without any such condition; thus attributing to the example of His penal justice shown in the death of Christ merely the design of overcoming believers’ sluggishness towards what is good.12 This one expression is to be held as betraying Zwingli’s real opinion, a countless number of assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, and although it is immediately surrounded by distinct statements of an opposite sort. They are to be regarded in this light because, forsooth, from certain statements which are to be found in a letter to John Haner in Nürnberg (vii. pp. 569, 570), Zwingli sees in the death of Christ only improperly speaking the ground of our salvation, which is really to be recognised only in the grace of God—and in Christ, inasmuch as He who in His human nature died is very God. But precisely in this letter, in which Zwingli appeals to the Commentarius, we find a plain declaration that the death of the God-man is necessary in view of the inviolable justice of God. Nothing special occurs in the letter except in so far as twice it is said: Christus ipsum salutis pignus ac veluti satisfactio, and again, Christi humanitas velut instrumentum ac pignus est, cujus contemplatione irata nobis justitia placatur. But this does not mean that Zwingli doubts the objectively necessary relation of Christ’s death to the Divine justice, but that, as in the passage of the Commentarius already quoted, he is afraid to fix a priori the order of the Divine decrees and to assert man’s development of ideas as directly regulative of God’s thought. Moreover, on this point also he observes the already quoted principle (p. 154) of explaining the plan of salvation by reference jointly to the will of God and to the historical work of Christ. In face of this declaration it is also perverse to attribute a constitutive importance for Zwingli’s theology to an opinion which occurs only in an isolated instance, that God does not need the satisfaction of Christ in order to the achievement of the work of redemption, and that Christ’s death is to be regarded only as a penal example deterring from sin. Undoubtedly in this expression of Zwingli, the reference to a penal example, to which subsequently Grotius limited the value of the death of Christ, does receive a secondary place in his theory, but in all other respects Zwingli is in intention far removed from the standpoint of Duns Scotus. Anything, therefore, in the expression above quoted that reminds us of Scotus’s way of handling the idea of atonement ought to be judged of just as we judge of those echoes of a doctrine of divine arbitrariness, aimless and lawless, in the predestination of individuals, which, in his anamnema de providentia, occasionally interrupt a quite differently framed teleological development of the Divine providence, and a teleological judgment of sin in general and of reprobation in particular.13 They who refuse to make an allowance for the fact that in this class of expressions Zwingli has for once wandered from his own proper views in accordance with a tendency that in his time was very prevalent, ought, in like manner, to reject as really worthless Luther’s doctrine of the propitiation of God’s wrath through Christ, because he sometimes represents the wrath of God as the reflex of the sinner’s evil conscience, and denies its actual existence in God.

  1. The Reformation thought that Christ’s death had the value of a vicarious punishment, and had reference to the propitiation of the wrath of God, found a suitable form of expression already laid to its hand in the current phrase satisfactio. That the Reformers borrowed the expression from no other than Anselm, is an unwarranted assumption, which only tends to encourage the very prevalent mistake of supposing that the doctrines of Anselm and the Reformers, as they are alike in name, are also in essential harmony with each other. Just as little does the use made of the idea meritum by the Reformers imply their intention of concurring in the doctrine of Duns Scotus on that topic. The circumstance that they treat satisfactio and meritum as synonyms, shows on the contrary that, in stating their own doctrine, it never occurred to them to explain themselves as to the relation in which it stood to the similar yet divergent theories of their predecessors. The last edition of Calvin’s Institutio presents a characteristic illustration of this. With that dogmatic precision which is peculiar to him, he originally explained the propitiation of Divine justice by the penal death of Christ only by means of the conception of satisfaction (lib. ii. cap. 16).14 In his exposition of this doctrine he carries out unhesitatingly the principle that the law is the expression of the essential will of God. That he does so in this connexion does not affect the position of his doctrine of predestination, in which God’s dealing with individual men is, in Luther’s style, regarded as independent of every law (lib. iii. cap. 21-24), although Calvin at the same time exerts himself to avoid the idea that God is exlex.15 The antecedent necessity of a satisfaction to God’s justice is not lessened by the statement (ii. 12. 1) that Christ’s incarnation was not simply and unconditionally necessary, but only in virtue of God’s active saving purpose. Certain external circumstances, however, led Calvin, in the edition of 1559, to append to his doctrine of the satisfaction of Christ a special chapter (the seventeenth) upon the theme Recte et proprie dici, Christum nobis promeritum esse gratiam et salutem. For in the year 1545 Camillus Renatus, in the church at Chiavenna, and in 1555 Lælius Socinus, in epistolary correspondence with Calvin, had come forward with the deduction, which naturally flows from the Scotist sphere of thought, that if the will of God works in an absolutely unconditioned manner, the bestowal of grace is to be attributed to God only, and not to the merit of Christ.16 These Italians, who had abandoned the equilibrium of Church tradition, approached their scholastic criticism upon Christian doctrine entirely from the traditions of the school of Scotus,17 and therefore also they know of no other form of Christ’s saving work than that of merit, and thus direct their attack precisely to this view of the idea of atonement.

Calvin, then, finding himself impelled to vindicate against them the thought of Christ’s merit, thus expresses the counterposition of his opponents,—that the assertion of Christ’s merit throws the grace of God into the shade; and that, therefore, Christ must be regarded as the instrument and servant of grace, not as its author. Now, Calvin concedes that the conception of merit would be inadmissible if one meant thereby to set up Christ simply and by Himself over against the Divine judgment. But in the affirmation of Christ’s merit there is not assumed a primary principle (a power that works independently of God); the merit of Christ is subordinated to the ordination of God, who is the ultimate first cause. In this logical relation there exists no contradiction; and it is no inconsistency to assert that in the unconditioned operation of the mercy of God towards the justification of men the merit of Christ intervenes. Against the claims of human works, the free grace of God and the obedience of Christ militate alike. For “only by the good pleasure of God could Christ merit anything,” and “thus, since Christ’s merit depends upon God’s grace alone, it is not less fitted than the latter to confute man’s claims to a righteousness of his own.” From the subsequent portion of the chapter, it appears that Calvin regards as meritorious the doing and suffering of Christ, which he had previously represented to be satisfactory; in this he plainly has not the purpose and meaning to say anything formally divergent from his previous doctrine. And to show that this is the case is my primary object. With Calvin himself this double representation of Christ’s work as satisfaction and as merit has no other significance than it has when the others use these expressions convertibly as synonyms. For the historian, however, it is worthy of notice that Calvin’s two lines of thought do not coincide. Just because Calvin’s expression is true in the sense of Duns Scotus—Christus nonnisi ex Dei beneplacito quidquam mereri potuit, it becomes all the clearer that in this proposition is implied a different conception of God from that which lies at the foundation of the doctrine of satisfaction. And if ex sola gratia dependet meritum Christi, this at the same time indirectly says to the expert in the subject that it has no reference to the justice of God, which dominates the idea of satisfaction. The fact is that Calvin, by his vindication of the idea of Christ’s merit, has made a divergence into that Scotism which, in so far as it bears on the point in question, is otherwise utterly diverse from his own way of thinking, as well as from that of the other Reformers. For the doctrine of Christ’s satisfaction rests upon the craving for harmony between God’s mercy and God’s justice; and it presupposes the Divine providence—that Will which in conformity with a purpose organizes and directs nature and history, with special care over the Church of the elect. In this field of knowledge Calvin leaves no room for any action of the Divine good pleasure, private arbitrariness, and reasonableness; and that he deduces the doctrine of predestination from the Scotist doctrine of the absolute power of God over the creatures, leaves that department of God’s providence quite untouched.18 The chapter upon Christ’s merit in the 1559 edition of the Institutes, has not the effect of giving to the conception of God as embodied in the doctrine of predestination preponderance over the doctrine of providence; for no line of connexion is drawn between those two thoughts. That chapter, therefore, is only a casual appendage to Calvin’s system of doctrine, and, so far as he himself is concerned, has no positive or characteristic meaning.

  1. When Luther laid the conception of God’s love, and Zwingli and Calvin the conception of God’s goodness, and the plan of His providence culminating in the Church of the redeemed, at the foundation of the doctrine of reconciliation; when at the same time they estimated the atoning work of Christ by reference to that justice of God which finds its expression in the eternal moral law, the Reformers opened up a field of vision that disclosed a view far beyond the unregulated and casual arbitrariness which, as implied in the idea of God of which Thomas and Duns display only different grades, dominated the mediæval view of the doctrine of reconciliation. It implies a more worthy conception of God to think of Him as the moral power which satisfies the highest human interests with an orderly system of ends, and with an order of public law that is in harmony with His very being, than to think of Him as the highest subject of private law and of private morality, and to regard that method of reconciliation which Christian tradition presents to us only as having been in God’s judgment the most suitable, without confirming this assumption by a comparison with other possible modes of procedure. This advance in theology made by the Reformers bears witness at the same time also to a religious and moral elevation above the level of the Christianity that had been at work in the middle ages,—an elevation the importance and influence of which is shown even independently of the dialectical treatment which the doctrine of reconciliation received at the hands of the Reformers, and of their immediate theological successors. To the number of those fundamental views to which I would apply this remark, belongs the view which regards Christ’s doing as having laid the foundation of the reconciliation He effected between God and sinful men, along with or even more than His suffering. If there is anything that is fitted to destroy all appearance of agreement between the Reformers and Anselm, it is this point. Anselm bases the atonement upon the death of Christ, regarding that as an opus supererogatorium in contrast with the moral life of Christ, which was but His duty (p. 32). The employment of the idea of merit had enabled Thomas and Duns to find the atoning value of Christ’s passion in the whole duration of His life, inclusive of His death (pp. 57, 61). Anselm’s modern admirers might indeed have discovered in Abelard (p. 37) that anticipation which is wanting in Anselm, of so important a characteristic feature of the Reformation doctrine, if only he had not been so badly recommended by his reputation for rationalism. I do not mean to say by this that the Reformers had taken the hint from Abelard;19 I only wish to show that Abelard’s agreement with the Reformers in this point betokens in him a religious depth of view which puts to shame all talk of his rationalism; and that in seeking historical lines of connexion we ought to have a regard to completeness, and not be guided by the caprice of party likings and dislikings.

The style in which Luther, in an Epistle-sermon in his Kirchen-postille (Walch, xii. pp. 312-317), estimates Christ’s active fulfilment of the law is not yet in accordance with the doctrinal treatment that afterwards became customary, which co-ordinates the active and passive obedience of Christ, and attributes to the former as well as to the latter a vicarious value for men to the end of their justification. Luther rather regards Christ’s obedience to the law as the genus under which is included as a species His vicarious endurance of the curse of the law. As thus the passion of the guiltless One directly serves the end of delivering believers from the curse of the law, the positive fulfilment of the law is the conditio sine qua non of the accomplishment of this end; particularly because in the former is necessarily implied, so far as Christ is concerned, self-renunciation—that is, suffering. The endurance of the curse of the law has its value only in universal obedience to the law; and the active fulfilment of the law already implies for Christ, who essentially is the Lord superior to all law, that suffering which is finished only in death. In Luther’s view, Christ is regarded as Lord over the law, not merely on account of His divine nature; for in this line of thought it is far from being taken for granted that the Divine nature itself is exempt from the law as a rule. Here, in fact, there comes in a modification of the idea of the law, which is characteristic of Luther’s view of the Christian life, although it has come to be the occasion of doubtful subtleties. For here he understands by the law, not the moral law, which is the concrete correlative of moral freedom, but that rule of life, accompanied with threatening and promise, which counts upon fulfilment from selfish motives, and which one must transcend in order to attain to full reasonable freedom. Law, then, in Luther’s view, signifies the moral law in the form of legal injunction. Christ now is above law in that sense, and is not bound thereby, because He always with His unselfish disposition goes beyond its sphere; but this disposition He has as the Man who at the same time possesses Divine nature. Now, indeed, it seems to be imperative to conclude that Christ, as one whose disposition is in perfect conformity with the pure moral law, could not become subject to law in its legal form, that His moral obedience towards the law, as accompanied with threatening and promise, is a contradiction in itself, and that if He willingly fulfilled that law which appeals to the personal advantage of him who fulfils it, He fulfilled it only apparently. These deductions Luther conceals from himself by means of the paradoxical antithesis: ” He did it voluntarily; and neither feared nor sought anything for Himself therein. But in respect of His outward works He was like all others who did it unwillingly and of constraint, so that His freedom and willingness were hidden from the eyes of men (?) just as their constraint and unwillingness were also concealed, and thus therefore He submits Himself to the law, and at the same time is not under the law. He does as they do who are under it, and yet is not on that account under it; with His will He is free, and therefore not under it; by the works which He willingly does He is under it. But we as sinners are in will and in works subject to it; for we with constrained will do the works of the law.” This mode of apprehending the problem is connected with the question under what practical point of view it is that Luther estimates Christ’s obedience to the law considered as a legal code. With him the point is by no means, as in the case of his successors, that a condition of our justification founded upon the righteousness of God is fulfilled by Christ’s active obedience to the law; but that a pattern is set up for the life of justified persons, inasmuch as they in the Spirit of Christ voluntarily fulfil the moral law, and thereby are freed from that juristic view of it which counts upon selfish observance. Since in our state of sin we could not shake ourselves free from the latter form of it, the independence of the state of grace in relation thereto is secured, by the fact that Christ’s voluntary submission to the compulsion of the law has invalidated that constraint for all those that are Christ’s.

This reference of Christ’s active obedience does not influence the doctrine of reconciliation. In view of that doctrine the following has to be considered. When Luther defines the law to which Christ voluntarily submitted Himself, and when he exemplifies it in Christ’s submission to His parents and in His circumcision, he brings into prominence, in connexion with the legal compulsion of the law, the obvious narrowness of the sphere of life to which it refers, and to which Christ was superior in virtue of that destiny of which He was conscious. His obedience to the law thus shows itself, like His endurance of the curse of the law, in the light of endurance of the restraints of life—as suffering—and therefore Luther places both these elements in such close continuity that he takes into account only the suffering of Christ which extended throughout His whole life, and not in connexion therewith His doing as a condition of justification. If, now, it might appear as if this view did not distinguish itself much from the mediæval view of Christ’s merit, this would result from under-estimation of the difference which is implied in the application of the idea of the law to an understanding of Christ’s work. But yet it is clear that Luther, with his paradoxical statements respecting Christ’s obedience to the law, of the meaning of which he has himself no clear understanding, postulates rather than shows the existence of a connexion between the doing and suffering of Christ. If Luther, on other occasions,20 appreciates the value towards our salvation of Christ’s obedience, of his fulfilling of the law which is the will of God, he does so in the sense that His doing and suffering had for their motive the love which is prescribed by the law as all-comprehensive obedience. If, now, this serves to bring it about that our standing with God is no longer determined by regard to the law, provided that we believe in Christ, then in this connexion it is no more the artificial conception of the law which we find in the Epistle-sermon that is maintained; rather is the view opened up which the formula concordiæ presents upon this point of doctrine. For its elaboration, however, still other influences were at work.

How slight was the emphasis that, in the first theological period of the German Reformation, was laid upon the satisfactory character of the active obedience of Christ may be inferred from the fact that Melanchthon in his published writings regards only His penal suffering as the part of Christ’s obedience which availed towards our justification.21 Zwingli also definitely distinguishes the two only in the tract von göttlicher und menschlicher Gerechtigkeit (i. p. 433): God has given His Son for us as fulfiller of His will, who has been able to comply with His entire command, and pay the debt of all our sins, and is the sure pledge by which we come to God. Calvin’s view, on the other hand, running through all editions of the Institutio (3 ed., Lib. ii. 16, 5), reverts to the same connexion between active and passive obedience in the doctrine of reconciliation, as is to be traced in Luther’s Epistle-sermon. His achievement of righteousness for us rests upon the whole course of His obedience; the ground of the forgiveness which frees us from the curse of the law is spread over the entire life of Christ; as soon as He assumed the form of a servant, He began to pay the price of our liberation. Death is merely the close of this series of prestations. For as the sacrifice in its death must be voluntarily offered (for its value is rooted in love as the motive) it is only His general active obedience that guarantees the significance and efficacy of His suffering unto death. On the other hand, Calvin brings into prominence, in connexion with the obedience of His life as a whole, only the instances in which He submitted Himself to that which ran counter to His own proper destiny in life—wherein, therefore, He relatively suffered; as, for example, in being made under the law (Gal. iv. 4), and submitting to the baptism of John (Matt. iii. 15). Calvin is distinguished from Luther only in so far as he does not in general terms refer the active obedience of Christ to the law, but to a less definite aspect of the will of God; and that, therefore, he adduces as a particular proof of obedience His submission to the law as that is expressed by Paul. Finally, it is worthy of remark that public documents originating in Calvin’s sphere of Reformation activity, the Heidelberg Catechism (Qu. 36, 37) and the Confessio Helvetica posterior (cap. 11), are the first that recognise the active obedience of Christ along with, or even before, the passive obedience, as a ground of justification. The meaning of this is, that the two ought to be regarded in the light of one another, the active obedience and the perfect holiness of life as the general ground that gives value to the suffering, the graduated suffering as the constant manifestation of the sinless life.22

  1. If, accordingly, the Reformers have laid down very definite fundamental ideas and suggestions upon the value of Christ’s personal prestations, with a view to the reconstruction of the doctrine of reconciliation, they have neither clearly realized to themselves the scientific task they had in hand, nor set about its solution in connexion with the doctrine of justification. Even Calvin, although he of all those connected with the Reformation movement has accomplished relatively the most finished work in this field, and in this respect far surpasses Melanchthon’s services, has not firmly fixed the links of that chain which constitutes the religious confession of the Reformers and dominates their harmonious theological effort. Such an attempt at exact systematic exhibition of the doctrines of Christ’s satisfaction and of our justification was, however, undertaken by Andreas Osiander, but in a direction, and with instrumentalities and postulates, which show his connexion with the Reformers to be very slight, and which thoroughly justify the explicit repudiation of his doctrine by Melanchthon, Calvin, and the genuine Lutherans. But as his opponents rested satisfied with the rejection of his theory without any exertion on the part of any of them to solve the systematic problem in the line the Reformers had taken, and with the postulates supplied by them, certain elements in Osiander’s doctrine, where he attaches himself to Luther, have exercised an important influence upon the doctrinal principles of Lutheran theology precisely in the view which he himself first originated. Although accordingly his theory, as a whole, must be looked upon as something outside of the genuine Reformation, Osiander, in several respects, has undoubtedly contributed his share toward the development of Lutheran orthodoxy.23

Osiander, who, from the year 1522, laboured at Nürnberg in furtherance of the Reformation of Luther, from the beginning had held that idea of justification as making the sinner really righteous, on account of which he was so vigorously assailed when he developed it in a thorough-going way in the year 1551, during the period of his activity at Königsberg in Prussia.24 But as he coincided with Luther in the principles that works are not the grounds but the consequences of justification, that all religious truth is to be derived from Scripture only and not from tradition, that the influence of the external word of God precedes that of the internal—he was equally persuaded that he was only following Luther when he regarded justification as a real operation of Christ within the believer. Luther undeniably had given to him, as well as Brenz, some occasion for thinking this (p. 176), but it was not Luther’s prevalent and deliberate view that Osiander, in defending himself, laid hold of as exhibiting the proper tendency of that Reformer.25 The following is the line of thought in Osiander’s tract:26—As we are all born children of wrath, we need for our salvation that God should again become gracious unto us, again quicken us from the death of sin, and make us righteous. To the accomplishment of this end we, as sinners, can contribute nothing; therefore God has raised up the Mediator, Jesus Christ. But in the idea of Mediator it is implied that He deal separately with both parties. Therefore He has reconciled God first of all, having borne the punishment of sin in His death, and also fulfilled the law in man’s room and stead. Hereby He has brought it about that God is willing to forgive men their sins, and that He will not impute to them the imperfection of their moral walk if they believe. This done, the Mediator next directs Himself to men, with the announcement of forgiveness of sins and with justification. Both are contained in the gospel, which takes effect upon sinners when the conditions of repentance (which is awakened by the law) and of faith are fulfilled. The gospel is the external word of God which, in the first instance, offers to man the forgiveness of sins that has been obtained from God in virtue of Christ’s passion and fulfilment of the law, and afterwards offers to believers the inner Word, which is Christ, and which makes the believer righteous. The external word, which comes by hearing, is the vehicle of the inner Word, which is able to force its way through the understanding and memory into the heart. For the inner Word—the substance of the gospel—is not merely the eternal gracious decree regarding sinners, but it is the very Word which is with God, and which is God; which as the wisdom of God is the eternal self-knowledge of God in exercise, and which in Jesus Christ has been made man. When then the outwardly preached gospel shows itself as the power of God, it implants in the heart of man that inner Word, which is Christ Himself in His divine nature, which in the believer grounds his actual righteousness before God, and with which the Father also and the Holy Ghost are inseparably associated. Osiander apprehends this goal of Christ’s mediatorship in individual believers in a manner that corresponds to his representation of man in his original state before the fall.27 Pointing to 2 Cor. iv. 4, Col. i. 15, Osiander explains that image of God in which man was created to have been the eternal idea of the God-man, by means of which the various theophanies were made to the patriarchs, and which was realized in the Person of Jesus Christ. God’s determination to make man in His image implies that His personal intercourse and influence with man, which He accomplished by means of His Christ-foreshadowing theophanies, constituted part of Adam’s normal existence. From this intercourse with the Son of God Adam derived His Spirit, and was filled with the knowledge of God and with trust in Him. But the knowledge of God is eternal life (John xvii. 3), and eternal life is the Word, the Son of God (John xiv. 6); the Word, therefore, the Son of God, and consequently also the Father and the Holy Ghost, dwelt in Adam by grace. As Christ by nature is God and man, so Adam by nature is man, but by grace is partaker of the divine nature. Osiander deduces this original condition of man’s being from the consideration that the state of grace in the redeemed man has such high attributes, and that Christ’s mediatorship only restored to man the destiny which had been lost by sin. Hence his explanation of the righteousness that is bestowed on believers through Christ naturally corresponds with this view of the state of grace which belonged to the original destiny of man.

In this train of thought Osiander himself brings prominently forward two divergencies from the view then current among Lutheran theologians. In the first place, he distinguishes decidedly between the ideas redemtio and justificatio, and makes the former only to be the result of the historical work of Christ; while in that religious realization of Christ by faith, which at the time of the Reformation dominated reflection upon this subject, the two words are used as equivalent. Now, when Osiander, starting from a systematic order of ideas, sharply distinguishes the effect of Christ’s work upon God from that upon man, his meaning is, that the former, which had been accomplished more than 1500 years before, might well be called our redemption, but not our justification. For to justification our faith is necessary; and to believe, one must exist. But we were not living then; and therefore we could not be justified by Christ’s twofold fulfilment of the law. But, on the other hand, he regards it as quite conceivable that one might be redeemed and freed previous to being born; as, for example, in the case where our ancestor is freed from slavery. In the second place, he limits, in accordance with this distinction, the idea of justificatio to the daily renewed influence of the Mediator upon individual believers as such, and ranks the idea along with regeneratio, renovatio, and vivificatio. At the same time, he frankly admits that justificare in the Bible is sometimes exactly equivalent to injustum aut reum justum pronunciare, sive ille justus sit, sive non. But, as a rule, he would explain the Pauline usage of the word as meaning aliquem, qui non justus sed impius est, re ipsa et in veritate justum efficere. He decides for the Catholic view in this definition, as also in his reference of justificatio to the end that it justum ad juste agendum movet, et sine quo nec justus esse nec juste agere potest. On the other hand, he abandons the Catholic view in so far as it gives to man’s own works any claim to justification. He will have it regarded as only a metaphorical expression, when occasionally the works and fruits of righteousness are called by the name of righteousness itself. The righteousness which is to be established in man by God is no empirical doing and suffering; it is a state that is raised above the vicissitudes of these, and is not increased by well-doing. In view of the fourth chapter of the epistle to the Romans, he insists that faith, which is imputed as righteousness, means faith in so far as it Dominum Jesum Christum, verum Deum et hominem totum et indivisum apprehendit et in sese includit ut ita Dominus Jesus Christus ipse justitia nostra sit. Only in this way can we avoid the blasphemous error regarding God into which the Lutheran doctrine falls, when it asserts that God declares us to be righteous on account of our faith, as on account of an action which has value in itself, although we are not righteous, and although God does not at all make us righteous, but leaves us just in the same condition as before. Only on the supposition that this (Osiander’s) view is true, does God find real ground for his judgment upon believers.

  1. Amongst the opponents of Osiander,28 Victorinus Strigel rightly perceives that the distinction between justificatio and redemtio depends upon an identification of justificatio and regeneratio. If it be right to make this identification, Osiander is certainly correct in saying that we cannot be justified before our life begins. But if justification should not be connected with the death of Christ, neither should redemption. For the individual (who is always the subject of discussion in these questions) cannot be redeemed until he is made captive; but captivity under sin begins, in the individual, only when he is conceived and born. It was not difficult for Osiander’s opponents to show exegetically the identity of redemption and justification. But Flacius, moreover, brings it into prominence that they are synonymous ideas: forgiveness of sins is not merely the doing away of guilt incurred by violation of the law, it is also the imputation of the fulfilment of the law. This is quite correct if one realizes, in the religious way in which the Reformers did so, what are the operations of Christ upon the believing subject. But as Osiander started the question with regard to the objective systematic arrangement of these steps—an arrangement which Luther and Melanchthon had not discussed—the question with the Lutherans came to be, whether they could, against Osiander, maintain the connexion or identity of those ideas, even when Christ’s historical work was separated from the saving experience of believers, as it takes place from time to time? Is there any other schema besides that which Osiander employed—that Christ by means of his historical prestations has influenced God,—has determined Him to be gracious towards sinners—and that He presently accomplishes the justification of believers, whether that be represented as actus forensis or as actus causativus? Strigel puts forth another schema, asserting that by Christ’s death and resurrection “ eternal redemption and justification were prepared for the whole human race, and the promised treasure won in Christ for the world as a whole,” but that to individual believers this is applied as they come into being. Just as by Adam’s sin the wrath and curse of God came upon the whole human race, but overtake individual persons only when they come into being; so in like manner 1500 years ago by Christ “ was the human race redeemed, sanctified, and justified, though these benefits are applied for the first time to particular individuals when they believe in Christ and are baptized in His name.” This result certainly establishes the identity of redemption and justification and seems fitted to mediate between Melanchthon’s divergent expressions (p. 178), in which it is at one time asserted that the believer is already justified, and, at another time, that justification follows the act of faith. Strigel thus founds the individual’s assurance of faith upon the change wrought by Christ on the attitude of God towards the human race, and carries it back to an arrangement of the whole plan of salvation previously made by Christ. This important result remains unrealized when Osiander separates in point of time Christ’s mediatorial functions and opposes them to each other in point of fact. Or then, when he regards the achievement of propitiatio Dei by Christ, and redemtio hominum by Him as amounting to the same thing, he thereby, in contravention of his own view, and in conformity with the Reformation usage of language, expresses a change not only in God’s disposition, but in his attitude towards men; and he has nothing to answer to Strigel’s remark, that if Christ has redeemed the human race, He in doing so has determined God to regard it no more as sinful, but as righteous, so that thus every individual in his own time may, by means of his faith, experience within himself redemption, or justification by the sentence of God.

The ground of Osiander’s untenable distinction between redemption and justification was that he considered justification to be a real change in the sinner. But that assertion he attempted to support by means of an obvious misunderstanding of the Lutheran view. Osiander’s opponents could with perfect justice repudiate the charge made against them, as if by justification they intended such a judgment passed by God upon the sinner as leaves him inwardly unchanged. Melanchthon,29 Schnepf, Flacius, are at one in affirming that with the declaration that the believer is righteous, is immediately connected the working of the Holy Spirit towards illumination, towards renovation of life, towards new obedience. But this mere assertion of the co-existence in the believer of two things which have reference to quite diverse purposes (p. 172), must at once have presented itself as a weak point of the Reformation-doctrine. The theological defectiveness of this supplementary formula comes all the more clearly into prominence when Flacius, Strigel, and Schnepf try to explain the priority of the thought of justification to that of regeneration, in general only on the ground that an analytical sentence of justification such as Osiander attributes to God, does indeed suit the human measure of justice, but that, notwithstanding this, the synthetic imputation of righteousness to the sinner is befitting in God precisely, because of its contrariness to the human standard. Thus to forego the rationality of one’s own view is at least very rash; but at the same time is an indication of the haughty indifference with which these epigoni of the Reformation held themselves back from all serious effort in theological work. They were satisfied to appeal, against the identification of justification and regeneration, to that religious consciousness by which the Reformation saw itself directed to distinguish between these two ideas. They accordingly vindicate the forensic interpretation of justification by reference to the cravings of the troubled conscience after a ground of righteousness that shall stand firm, independently of the subjective life. and they meet Osiander’s attack with the charge that he by his doctrine gives a false security to man, and that he surely never could have passed through those experiences which had pointed Luther to seek justification through Christ’s merit. Here again Melanchthon, the theologians of the Principality of Saxony, and Flacius are quite agreed.

The religious difference between Osiander’s standpoint and that of the Reformers undoubtedly comes to be clearly seen in this dispute. For although Osiander, following his purpose, again and again declares that the believer bases the consciousness of his acceptance with God, in view of the imperfection of his own works, upon the value of Christ’s obedience,30 he yet declares in one passage of his “Confession” that God regards the believer as righteous on account of his habitual righteousness, on account of “Christ in him;” and that with God the sins of the believer are no more than an impure drop in the purest sea.31 From a later expression, indeed, we may conclude that the discrepancy between the two thoughts was not clear to him, for he allows them to become mixed up with each other.32 But as matter of fact, not merely does it follow as a necessary consequence of his premisses that the believer will overcome the consciousness of his imperfection by reflection upon his habitual righteousness, it fails to follow from his view of Christ’s historical work, that the believer can regard himself as justified by His obedience. For as His work of redemption is not to be understood as also justificatio, the believer gains by reflection upon the value of Christ’s obedience only the assurance that God regards him no longer as unrighteous. But if he desires to be accepted by God as positively righteous, the believer, on Osiander’s principles, can attribute this completion of his consciousness of salvation only to Christ’s righteousness dwelling in him, upon which also, of course, God’s corresponding judgment must proceed.

As Osiander, in his theory, proceeds upon a different religious judgment of self from that which the Reformers follow, so also in speaking of the relation between God and men he is entirely opposed to them in the ethical and metaphysical views which he adopts. When his opponents not only had repudiated the charge that by their view of justification they excluded the supposition of a real change in the sinner, but had even pointed out to Osiander that they also maintained, as a result of God’s sentence of justification, a real union of Christ and the Holy Spirit with the believer, he still continued his opposition against their representation of the manner in which this union is brought about. In his Widerlegung der Antwort Melanchthon’s, he complains that the latter, even while conceding the indwelling of Christ in us, understands it to be effective merely somewhat as the sun exercises influence upon the field, but does not regard it as an actual indwelling of Christ in His completeness, in His two inseparable natures. This complaint, in harmony as it is with his view of man’s original condition (p. 217), brings clearly before us Osiander’s conception of the ethical destiny of man. In like manner he affirms in his Confessio also that the law requires of man that righteousness which is the eternal essence of God Himself. Menius, however, in refuting so exaggerated a demand upon men, omits distinctly to state what in his opinion is the real meaning of the law. But it is obvious that what he holds is, that the righteousness in conformity with the law, which Adam lost and which is restored in regeneration, has not the nature of a habit except in the form of an act of will. But Osiander opposes to this view the following dilemma: Omnis justitia, proprie de justitia loquendo, aut est divina justitia et essentia Dei, aut est humana justitia, et qualitas creata, nullo autem modo actio aut passio. Human righteousness, says he, is produced by instruction, discipline, laws, penalties; but the righteousness which the law of God demands and yet cannot produce is Christ Himself in His Divine nature,—in other words, it is God Himself, the eternal Divine Being, and no other; else would we be glorying in a created righteousness. But the indwelling of Christ, with whom the Father also and the Spirit are united, causes the obedience and well-doing of believers with the same natural necessity wherewith Christ’s own obedience is produced by His Divine nature. Osiander’s theory thus has its ultimate origin in a tendency to withdraw from the conditions of man’s free will, as something supernatural and divine, all religious assurance of salvation, and the corresponding task of moral life; while the theology of the Reformation, on the other hand, assumes without questioning that all religious change of character—all regeneration by God’s Spirit—takes place in the region of the human will. Osiander thinks that by means of the notion of substance he can express a more intimate connexion between man and God than is possible by means of the notion of cause, the application of which to the relation between the Divine Spirit and the regenerate man appears to him too bald. Had this point of controversy been more fully gone into, even Melanchthon would hardly have succeeded in so defending his own views as to avoid that appearance. But unless we suffer ourselves to be imposed upon by the mysticism which attaches to Osiander’s view, it is impossible not to see that the causal view of the problem, while it certainly does not exhaust it, does not, at all events, destroy it. On the other hand, whoever regards the notion of actio as altogether inadmissible here, and treats the notion of righteousness exclusively either as divina essentia or as qualitas creata, leads in his view of justification to a confusion of the Divine with the human essence in the same degree wherein he denies that peculiarity which distinguishes the human will from other created powers, whereby it is capable of receiving into itself the influence of the Divine Spirit.

Osiander, however, shrinks from fully developing the consequences which the abstract metaphysical view of justification might seem to admit or to necessitate. He affirms, indeed, that in nova regeneratione attrahimus essentialem justitiam Christi, quæ est Deus ipse, quemadmodum in prima nativitate peccatricem naturam Adami contraximus. But that the divine-human Being of Christ has become to the regenerate another nature, must not lead us in our judgment of ourselves to assume a deification of the believer. Although the regenerate be partakers of the Divine nature, Osiander reminds us that we are and remain creatures still, however gloriously we may have been renewed. We ought never to allow ourselves to regard as our own God’s righteousness in us. The figurative expressions of Christ’s indwelling in believers, and of the garment with which they are clothed, are to be taken as denoting only a mechanical outward relation of God’s righteousness to human persons. Christ’s righteousness, which thus must be regarded as something foreign when it occurs in the believer, must accordingly be imputed to the believer.33 It is obvious that such practical departures on Osiander’s part from his theoretical principles were forced upon him by the ethical spirit of the Reformation. But with that concession Osiander has invalidated all those arguments in favour of his doctrine, which are based upon the ostensible necessity for finding actual Divine righteousness in the believer. In it especially is prescribed a quite different judgment of self on the part of the believer from that which is involved in the expression quoted above (p. 222), to the effect that God sees nothing but righteousness when Christ’s righteousness dwells in the believer, and that sin disappears like an impure drop in the pure sea of righteousness.

Osiander’s interest thus was plainly divided between two opposite points of view, which so counteracted one another as to wreck his speculative doctrine, which aimed at a thoroughgoing consistency of thought. The Reformation doctrine having left on Osiander the impression that it weakened the motives to well-doing, he sought by means of his assertion of real justification to unite in one thought religious pacification and impulse to moral action. But he had gone too far in the Reformation school of religious judgment of self, not to feel the importance of that imputed righteousness of Christ which meets the believer’s consciousness of sin. But here the oneness of his consciousness of justification which he had striven to attain was broken up. For the immanent righteousness of Christ appeared indeed as the believer’s own power with reference to his good works; but, in so far as it had to be imputed in order to supplement the imperfection of these, it presented itself as a foreign element in the sphere of his own life. While then Osiander was able only in one case to draw from himself the logical conclusion that God sees in the believer nothing but righteousness since Christ essentially dwells in him; and that sins are lost sight of in this habitual righteousness, as the impure drop in the purest sea; we can now understand why it is that involuntarily he has more frequently adopted the Reformation doctrine, that the obedience of the Mediator handed down to us in history is imputed to the believer for the forgiveness of sins.

  1. Osiander follows Luther’s tradition in yet other respects. And as he was the first who brought into consistent shape the doctrine before us, it is easy to understand how he, by his way of setting forth Luther’s thought, should have exercised a leading influence upon the form given to that doctrine by the Lutherans. The distinction between the active and passive obedience of Christ, originally due to Luther (p. 210), was first of all so applied by Osiander that to each of these a separate end was attributed (p. 216). The endurance of the punishment of sins by Christ is the condition under which God in His grace is ready to bestow forgiveness of sins upon men; the fulfilment of the law in man’s place serves the end of supplementing the imperfection of the obedience of believers in such a way that that imperfection can no longer be laid to their charge.34 Properly speaking this distinction of Osiander stands in no relation of subserviency to the deliberate tendency of his doctrine; for the latter tends to indicate that the deficiency of the believer’s obedience finds its supplement in the value of Christ’s substantial righteousness that dwells in him. Flacius and Menius, on the other hand, make use of Osiander’s suggestion on this point for filling out the Lutheran doctrine. Now, it is worthy of notice that these men, and also the compilers of the formula concordiæ following in their footsteps, assert the distinction and co-ordination of the passive and active obedience of Christ as contributing to the two ends of vicarious endurance of punishment and vicarious fulfilling of the law, just as distinctly as they also assert the coincidence of obedience and suffering in the life of Christ as alike conditions of justification or forgiveness of sins.35 Thomasius explains the former distinction between the passive and the active obedience as arising from the design to find a basis for forgiveness of sins, and justification as “the negative and the positive side” of the salutary result that was contemplated (as above, p. 43), but attributes the latter distinction “to the mode of representation peculiar to that time, which was characterized by the tendency to bring into prominence by means of clear co-ordination the concurrent momenta of one and the same thing” (p. 81), so that by looking at the obedience and suffering of Christ together “the two sides” of the thing are again made to appear one. The theologian of Erlangen has not in these observations disclosed the sense of the Lutheran doctrinal idea. It is true that the theologians of the seventeenth century distinguish between the non-imputation of sins and the imputation of righteousness as “the two sides of the same thing;” and, in distinguishing them, refer them back to separate parts of Christ’s obedience. But Flacius, Menius, and the formula concordiae treat the two conceptions as synonymous, as indeed is shown by the allegations of Thomasius himself (pp. 41, 56, 57). But further, the distinction as well as the collocation of the two forms of Christ’s obedience corresponds to certain quite distinct conditions and assumptions of the doctrinal system that received its impulse from Luther, which have not been noticed by Thomasius; and the instinctive acuteness of the former theologians does not deserve the reproach which the latter teacher of dogmatics, of all people in the world, casts upon them as having in accordance with the spirit of their age revelled unduly in dialectics.

For, by Luther’s assumption that the Divine law is the rule which regulates the relation between man and God which holds good from the beginning; and by the assumption that men have incurred guilt towards the law in such a way that they could never by themselves either become free from debt or yet be in a position to offer that obedience to the law on which their acceptance with God depends, it is necessary that not only the debt of guilt towards the law but also the legal obligation of man towards God should be abolished, in order that the new gracious dispensation of justification or forgiveness of sins may take effect. If, now, Christ as our substitute is destined to fulfil the conditions under which God’s justice and the law cease to regulate the relation in which those who are to be redeemed stand to God, it follows that Christ must meet the claims of the law alike when these demand that we should be punished, and when they demand to be fulfilled by us; thus a double obedience to the law is necessary on the part of the Mediator. For, were it seen that only human guilt had been done away by Christ’s passion, then would the demand for fulfilment of the law press upon those who had been redeemed from guilt as heavily as before; the dispensation of redemption would include the dispensation of the law as means towards the end of complete justification. If, on the other hand, the dispensation of grace excludes such a view of the force of the law for justified persons, then must justification be preceded by the vicarious fulfilment of the law in order to the dissolution of the legal relation with God. The distinction between the two forms of Christ’s obedience and the diversity of their reference are thus perfectly rational in relation to the premisses and to the purpose of the doctrine.36 But these things being determined, the problem is not yet exhausted; indeed the thought, which in the original religious apprehension of justification by faith is the dominant one, has not yet found expression in them—the thought that Christ is our righteousness, and that His obedience is imputed to us. This betokens the need of recognising Christ, who gives perfect obedience to the law, as the direct Mediator of positive gracious acceptance; but in so far as His twofold obedience to the law satisfies the Divine justice, He is as yet recognised merely as the indispensable condition in order that grace may take effect. To show Christ’s twofold obedience towards the law serves accordingly only to lay the foundation for the thought that for Christ’s sake the existing legal relation between those who are to be redeemed and God has been abolished; but in this negative result it is not implied that a new relation of another kind is formed through Christ. This end is attained by that assertion of the oneness of Christ’s obedience which is made by the opponents of Osiander and by the formula concordiæ. As obedience to the law, Christ’s twofold work meets the legal demands of God and discharges them; but, on the other hand, as voluntary moral obedience towards God, Christ’s doing and suffering have the effect at once of guaranteeing the operation of God’s grace and of representing the pattern of the contemplated new relation in which those who are to be redeemed are to stand, which, on condition of their faith, is imputed to them as their righteousness, and precludes the measurement of their new obedience by the strict rule of the law. That this profound train of thoughts has not been thus clearly set forth by its authors cannot justly be urged against this interpretation of it; the inadequacy of the representation only shows that with regard to this point the epigoni of Luther, while not yet deserted by that creative play of phantasy which is always the first means of progress in scientific knowledge, do not take their dialectic task sufficiently in earnest. Now, on comparing this train of thought, which the Lutheran doctrine through the formula concordiæ has attained, with Osiander’s analogous view, a certain divergence cannot be overlooked. Osiander’s distinction of the active and passive obedience of Christ is not, in sense, covered by the Lutheran distinction which resembles it in sound. If, according to Osiander, the active obedience of Christ, while it satisfies the law at the same time, lays the foundation for the completion of the believer’s ever-defective new obedience, he has taken together in this what the Lutherans regard partly as the negative effect of His active obedience to the law, and partly as the positive effect of His whole obedience to God. The superior maturity and clearness of the Lutheran formula is obvious.

In making distinctions with regard to time and place between the Mediator’s works in their references to God and to men, Osiander had appropriated the doctrine of Luther and Melanchthon, so far as it had been deliberately wrought out; particularly with reference to this point,—that justification as a result is brought about upon the individual by means of God’s word, the gospel of forgiveness of sins (pp. 170-1). As the Reformers had satisfied themselves with this way of explaining justification, while not even Melanchthon wrought out the doctrine of atonement by Christ which had been formulated by himself as the objective antecedent to the doctrine of justification (p. 202), Osiander, by adopting Melanchthon’s formula, goes beyond the circle of vision of his predecessors, just in so far as after his own fashion he has marked off the respective boundaries and mutual relations of the reconciliation of God and of the justification of men. However far Osiander’s Lutheran opponents thought they had occasion to enter into his way of regarding the matter, they also were unable to discover any other objective intermediary between the general result of Christ’s work and the justification of the individual than the so-called means of grace. Thus Menius says that “the righteousness which Christ has earned for us by His obedience, He causes to be presented, offered, and given to every one through the preaching of the gospel, and through the holy sacraments. Whoever, therefore, believes in the promise, really receives these treasures of grace.” But faith itself also exists only as operation of the Word of God received by hearing. We ought not to be surprised that the Lutherans never got beyond this formula. For it had Luther’s authority on its side, and the epigoni of Luther had not learned from Melanchthon anything of the discipline of accurate theological thinking. Must not the question have pressed itself upon them how those processes to which they pointed stood related to the idea of the Church? Does the Church take its rise first of all from those who are justified through the instrumentality of the gospel and the sacraments? or do not rather the means of grace presuppose the existence of the community of believers? For, after all, the gospel—the keys of the kingdom of heaven—are intrusted principaliter to the Church, and the sacraments cannot even be thought of apart from it. Or, in conformity with the structure of the Catholic idea of the Church, are we to understand the exercise of the means of grace to be a function peculiar to particular officials previous to the existence of any community of believers? If this is really not to be thought of, must not then the idea of the Church at once be placed in direct relation to the redeeming acts of Christ, in order that the operation of the means of grace towards the justification of individual believers may have what, in the evangelical sense, is its necessary presupposition? If Christ by His obedience once purchased righteousness for us, who then are “we,” unless the community of believers regarded as the totality that is previous to the individual? While now that motto of the original believing consciousness of the Reformation again comes out here also (as indeed it never became extinct in the doctrinal tradition of Lutheranism), the problem is thus reduced to narrower limits than in Strigel’s proposition (p. 219), that Christ 1500 years before established redemption and justification for the whole human race. Strigel’s view, accordingly, is just as hard hit by a remark of Melanchthon, his master, as is that declaration of Osiander against which it is directed. Melanchthon characterizes it as a frightful proof of impiety in Osiander that he extends the forgiveness of sins, as the general result of Christ’s passion, to all men, instead of limiting it to believers; because the wrath of God abides upon those who do not believe in the Son. According to such a view the sins of men would be forgiven first of all only at the very moment of their actually achieving faith.37 But how is it, then, with that immediate effect of Christ’s passion, which Melanchthon notwithstanding always regards as justificatio and reconciliatio, without limiting it as Osiander does to placatio Dei (p. 179)? Either this latter effect must be asserted with reference to the whole human race with the reservation that it finds its limits in application to individuals, or then justificatio and reconciliatio must from the outset be regarded as referring to the community of believers. The circumstance that in the Lutheran theology adequate clearness has never been attained on this point, must be attributed, I think, amongst other causes, to the influence of Melanchthon’s unsystematic method, which continued to prevail among the Lutherans,—and all the more immoveably too as they were persuaded that by their rejection of his doctrine of the Supper they had escaped the influence of the man they suspected. Flacius, particularly, who in respect of the contents of his doctrine is a highly important intermediary between Luther and the formula concordiæ, betrays precisely, by the very negligent form of his writings against Osiander, how little he had grown away from the influence of Melanchthon. That an acuteness which displays itself in sporadic instances can be associated with general heedlessness respecting the systematic laws of doctrinal exposition, can be observed in other instances also among Lutheran theologians in the development of the doctrine of reconciliation. These, by this latter peculiarity of their procedure, show even now that they are more faithful to Melanchthon than they themselves are aware; but precisely in a trait of character which is one of the weak points of that Reformer.

At the same time the Lutheran opponents of Osiander who did not know how to avail themselves of the thought of the Church, with a view to the adjustment of the doctrine in dispute, can claim our lenient judgment all the more because even Calvin did not realize to himself with sufficient clearness the importance and difficulty of the problem which had been pointed out to him in Osiander’s erroneous solution of it. This shows itself at once in the circumstance that Calvin in his doctrine of justification supposes that he can dispose of Osiander in a perfunctory way. He therefore simply brings assertions against assertions. These are true in themselves; but, as proof is wanting, knowledge is not advanced by them; nay, rather it is in a measure thrown back. I may here call it to mind that Luther was able to throw himself into the line of Osiander’s ideas, because he manifestly felt how unsatisfactorily he himself had given expression to the connexion that subsists between regeneration and justification (p. 174); in like manner Osiander is not vanquished, because Calvin (iii. 11. 6, 11), like Melanchthon and the Lutherans generally (p. 220), asserts the concurrence of the two states without investigating the bearing of justification upon regeneration as an end, and the consequent necessity of their coincidence in the individual believer. Still more unfavourable for the course of the development of the doctrine is Calvin’s procedure in pointing out that Osiander’s assertion of a crassa mixtura Christi cum fidelibus, is confuted by his view of the unio mystica of the regenerate with Christ.38 Calvin, in invariably giving preference to this comparison, has given occasion to the supposition, which Schneckenburger in particular has deliberately stated (p. 191), that he too, like Osiander, regards God’s judgment of justification as proceeding upon the real union of the believer with Christ. But Calvin’s thought ought not to be brought into direct parallelism with the similarly-sounding thought of Osiander. For Calvin’s unio mystica indicates the individual’s membership in the Church as the condition under which he becomes conscious within himself of justification through Christ’s obedience (p. 191); the indwelling of Christ, as Osiander understands it, is a predicate of the individual believer as such, upon whom the means of grace have taken effect in accordance with Christ’s intention to his being made righteous, and so to his membership in the body of Christ. How then could Calvin show that he set up a spiritualis conjunctio in opposition to the crassa mixtura of Osiander, when the latter would hardly at all have accepted this representation of his view? The spiritual and moral sort of union with Christ could have been proved as against Osiander’s pretended physical indwelling of Christ in the believer, only if Calvin had analysed the thought (which he was indeed cherishing), that the individual subject can be thought of as recipient of the Holy Ghost, and as possessing the consciousness of justification through Christ only on condition that he be viewed as a member of the community of believers, and that this last be regarded as the object of Christ’s redeeming purpose. But in his chief dogmatic work Calvin has not determined upon the last-mentioned thought, and the first he has weakened of its full effect, in so far as in the last edition of the Institutio he has shifted the doctrine of the Church from the place which it occupied in the earlier editions, and which of right belongs to it (p. 187).

← Chapter IV. The Reformation Principle of Justification by Faith in Christ · Contents · Chapter VI. The Orthodox Doctrine of Reconciliation and Justification as Held →

Footnotes

  1. I can find no echo of Anselm’s theory, as directly excluding the punitive justice of God, except in Peter Martyr Vermilius: Loci Communes, ii. 17, 19 (p. 295). This author, however, declares himself, L. C. ii. 18, 17 (p. 300), for the Reformation doctrine of satisfaction. ↩

  2. Contra duas epistolas Pelagianorum, iv. 4: Christus solus pro nobis suscepit sine malis meritis pœnam, ut nos per illum sine bonis meritis consequeremur gratiam. ↩

  3. Summa, P. i. qu. 47, art. 2: The cry of Christ (John xix. 30) means that in morte Christi lex vetus consummata est, that He omnia veteris legis præcepta implevit, moralia, inquantum passus est et ex dilectione patris (John xiv. 31) et ex dilectione proximi (Gal. ii. 20) ceremonialia (inasmuch as he fulfilled the typical sacrifices) judicialia, quæ præcipue ordinantur ad satisfaciendum injuriam passis, quoniam, quæ non rapuit, exsolvit (Ps. lxix. 5) permittens se ligno affigi pro pomo, quod de ligno homo rapuerat contra Dei mandatum. Art. 3. In quo ostenditur et Dei severitas, qui peccatum sine pœna dimittere noluit. ↩

  4. Expositio in passionem Domini (Opp. ed. E. du Pin, tom. iii. pp. 1157, 1187, 1188): Per læsæ majestatis crimen mortis es obnoxius. Rex tamen adeo justus fuerit, quod nec ullo pacto crimen tuum dimittere velit impunitum, altera vero ex parte tam benignus et misericors, quod proprium filium suum innocentem doloribus committat et morti, et id quidem sponte sua, ut justitiam concordet cum misericordia, fiatque criminis emendatio.—Nunquam Deus malum impunitum permitteret; eapropter omnia peccata et delicta nostra I. Chro. supposuit. Ideo ipse est justitia et redemtio nostra, modo nos junxerimus ei et per fidem gratiamque ei adhæserimus. The same thought is put forward by Joh. Wessel, although with less precision. Compare Ullmann: Reformatoren vor der Reformation, ii. p. 496. See other traces chiefly from Sermons, in Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, iii. 1, p. 249 sqq. ↩

  5. Compare Köstlin: Luther’s Theologie, ii. pp. 48, 53; and my Geschichtl. studien zur christl. Lehre von Gott. Art. ii. (Jahrb. f. deutsche Theol. xiii. 88.) ↩

  6. Compare Harnack: Luther’s Theologie, i. p. 522 sq.; Köstlin, i. p. 405. ↩

  7. On this and on what follows compare Köstlin: ii. p. 306 sqq., 402 sqq. ↩

  8. Köstlin: as above, p. 313. ↩

  9. Adnot. in Ev. Matth., C. R. xiv. p. 938. Enarr. Symb. Nic., C. R. xxiii. p. 338. Declamatio, C. R. xi. p. 779: Exponatur mirandum Dei consilium, quod cum sit justus et horribiliter irascatur peccato, ita demum placari justissimam iram voluerit, quia filius est factus supplex pro nobis et in sese iram derivavit et pro nobis piaculum et victima factus est. ↩

  10. Köstlin: as above, p. 308. ↩

  11. As above, pp. 420 sqq. ↩

  12. iii. p. 180: Invenit divina bonitas, quo justitiæ quidem satisfieret, misericordiæ vero sinus absque justitiæ detrimento liberaliter pandere liceret. Non quo sibi hac ratione ab adversario caveret, aut figulo non liceret e consperso luto facere vel refingere, qualemcunque velit testam, sed quo per hoc justitiæ exemplum oscitantiam et torporem a nobis tolleret, ac se, qualisnam esset, justus, bonus, misericors, nobis exponeret; aut ne nimium de ejus consiliis loqui præsumamus, quia sic illi placuit… . Cum ergo Deus juxta sit justus et misericors, tametsi ad miserationem propendeat, justitiæ tamen ejus omnino satisfieri, ut iratus placetur, oportet. ↩

  13. Compare Jahrb. für deutsche Theologie, xiii. (1868), p. 96. ↩

  14. Baur, indeed (Versöhnungslehre, p. 334), denies that Calvin deduces the satisfactory character of the death of Christ from the idea of the Divine justice; but see lib. ii. cap. 16. 2, 3. Baur’s subsequent characterization of the theology of Calvin is also incorrect. ↩

  15. Compare Jahrb. für deutsche Theol. xiii. (1868), p. 105 seq. ↩

  16. Trechsel: Antitrinitarier, ii. pp. 97, 167. ↩

  17. Compare Jahrb. für deutsche Theol. xiii. (1868), p. 271. ↩

  18. Compare Jahrb. für deutsche Theol. xiii. (1868) p. 108. ↩

  19. John Wessel also distinguishes between satisfacere and satispati in the works of Christ. Compare Ullmann, Reformatoren vor der Reformation, ii. p. 497, note. ↩

  20. Compare Köstlin, ii. pp. 404; 405. ↩

  21. In two passages, however, of the Postille (C. R. xxiv. pp. 216, 242) there occurs also an assignation of value to obedientia activa along with satisfactio as contributing to justification. ↩

  22. Compare Schneckenburger, Zur kirchl. Christologie, p. 65. Ursimus, Explicatio catechesis; ad. qu. 16 (Opp. i. pp. 92, 93). ↩

  23. In what follows I reproduce the substance of my essay, “ Ueber die Rechtfertigungslehre des Andreas Osiander,” in the Jahrb. für deutsche Theol. ii. (1857) pp. 795-829. ↩

  24. Compare Heberle, Osiander’s Lehre in ihrer frühesten Gestalt. Stud. u. Krit. 1844, p. 386 sqq. Wilken, A. Osiander’s Leben, Lehre und Schriften, 1ste Abth. 1844, p. 5. Möller, A. Osiander, 1870. ↩

  25. Compare Osiander’s Excerpta quædam dilucide et perspicue dictorum de justificatione fidei in commentario super Epistolam Pauli ad Galatas reverendi patris Domini Martini Lutheri, 1551 (republished with additions in the Confessio de Justificatione). ↩

  26. De Unico Mediatore Jesu Christo et Justificatione fidei Confessio. Regiomonte Prussiæ (24 Oct. 1551). Compare the previous Disputatio de Justificatione, hab. ix. Kal. Nov. 1550; the principal heads of which are to be found extracted in Gieseler, Kirchengeschichte, iii. 2, p. 275 sq. ↩

  27. As set forth in Osiander’s tract, An filius Dei fuerit incarnandus, si peccatum non introivisset in mundum, item, de imagine Dei quid sit. Montereg. Pr. 18 Dec. 1550. ↩

  28. Censurae der fürstlich-sächsischen Theologen zu Weimar und Coburg auf das Bekenntniss Andreas Osiander’s von Rechtfertigung des Glaubens, Erfurt, 1552 (containing three tracts prepared by Menius, Strigel, and Schnepf, and signed by them along with others, e.g. Amsdorf and Jonas). Matth. Flacius, Verlegung des Bekenntnisses Osiandri von der Rechtfertigung armen Sünder durch die wesentliche Gerechtigkeit der hohen Majestät Gottes allein. Magdeburg, 1552. ↩

  29. Antwort auf das Buch Herrn A. Osiander’s von der Rechtfertigung des Menschen, Wittenberg, 1552. C. R. vii. pp. 892-902. ↩

  30. Confessio, c. 4: Posteaquam thesaurus redemtionis—in externo verbo nobis offertur, apprehendimus eum fide ad justificationem nostri, scientes, quod eundem in verbo interno, quod in corde nostro manet, certo habeamus, ac de eo in omnibus certaminibus conscientiæ contra omnes portas inferorum confidere, gaudere, ipsoque uti possimus. P. 2: Cum peccatum sit remissum, et tamen adhuc in nobis hæreat, debet ipse (Jesus) obedientiam suam, qua legem implevit, nobis donare, ac pro nobis ponere, ne nobis imputetur, quod legem nondum possumus adimplere, sed adhuc quotidie peccamus et offendimus. S. 2: Quamvis legem etiam post resurrectionem non pure et perfecte impleamus, tamen hujusmodi defectus, infirmitas et debitum nobis non imputatur sed condonatur, et impletio Christi pro nobis substituitur. ↩

  31. Q. 3: Christus implet nos justitia sua,—ita ut Deus ipse et omnes angeli, cum Christus noster et in nobis sit, meram justitiam in nobis videant.—Et quamvis peccatum adhuc in carne nostra habitet et tenaciter adhæreat, tamen perinde est, sicut stilla immunda respectu totius purissimi maris. Et propter justitiam Christi, quæ in nobis est, Deus illud non vult observare. ↩

  32. In Osiander’s Widerlegung der ungegründeten undienstlichen Antwort Philipp Melanchthon’s (Königsberg, 21st April 1552), we read: “Thou must not rely in this life upon thy obedience nor upon thy purity, but upon the obedience and purity of my Son, who has perfectly fulfilled the law for thee; for His righteousness is not imputed to thee by me because it works in thee any works, be they great or small, but only because it is in thee by faith.” ↩

  33. Confessio, M. 3: Cum Christus per fidem in nobis habitat, tum affert suam justitiam, quæ est ejus divina natura, secum in nos, quæ deinde nobis imputatur ac si esset nostra propria, imo et donatur nobis, manatque ex ipsius humana natura tanquam ex capite etiam in nos tanquam ipsius membra et movet nos, ut exhibeamus membra nostra arma justitiæ Dei. Widerlegung Melanchthon’s:—“If we by faith become living members of Christ then do we become partakers also of His essential righteousness, for He dwells in us. But we are not completely obedient thereunto; in fact, our obedience has hardly made any beginning; but it ought to grow from day to day, and will be made perfect in the resurrection. Meanwhile, God imputes to us His essential righteousness, simply because it is in us, irrespective of the fact that we are not perfectly obedient as we ought to be.” ↩

  34. The distinction was first laid down by Osiander in his “Constitution of the Nürnberg and Brandenburg Churches” (1533). ↩

  35. Compare the citations from the writings of Flacius and Menius to be found in Thomasius: Das Bekenntniss der lutherischen Kirche von der Versöhnung, pp. 56-71. Formula Concordiæ, Art. III. : Epitome (p. 584): Christus obedientia sua, quam patri ad mortem usque absolutissimam præstitit, nobis peccatorum omnium remissionem et vitam æternam promeruit. Sol. decl. (p. 685): Ipsius obedientia, non ea tantum, qua patri paruit in tota sua passione et morte, verum etiam, qua nostra causa sponte sese legi subjecit eamque obedientia illa sua implevit, nobis ad justitiam imputatur, ita ut Deus propter totam obedientiam, quam Christus agendo et patiendo . . praestitit, peccata nobis remittat, pro bonis et justis nos reputet et salute aeterna donet. ↩

  36. Töllner (Der thätige Gehorsam Jesu Christi, p. 563) formulates these premisses quite accurately: “The double obligation that lies upon men arises from the fact that as men they are bound to give the obedience that they have hitherto failed to give, and that as sinners they are bound to suffer.” ↩

  37. C. R. viii. p. 580: Osiander divellit remissionem peccatorum a justitia. Expresse ait, omnibus hominibus esse remissa peccata, sed Neronem damnari, quia non habeat essentialem justitiam. (I do not know where Osiander has said so.) Hic primum manifesta et horribilis impietas est, dicere omnibus hominibus, etiam non credentibus, remissa esse peccata (John iii. 36; Acts x. 43).—Quare tum primum remittuntur hominibus peccata, cum fide statuunt sibi remitti illa propter mediatorem. ↩

  38. iii. 11. 10: Conjunctio illa capitis et membrorum, habitatio Christi in cordibus nostris, mystica denique unio a nobis in summo gradu statuitur, ut Christus noster factus donorum, quibus præditus est, nos faciat consortes.— Quia ipsum induimus et insiti sumus in ejus corpus, unum denique nos secum efficere dignatus est, ideo justitiæ societatem nobis cum eo esse gloriamur. Sed Osiander hac spirituali conjunctione spreta crassam mixturam Christi cum fidelibus urget. ↩

← Back to the beginning of Chapter V. The Reformation Doctrine of Reconciliation Contrasted in Its Principles with That of the Middle Ages and with Osiander's Doctrine of Justification