Osiander.
During the lifetime of the Reformers, a very earnest controversy began in the Lutheran Church on the nature of justification. This arose from the views of Andreas Osiander, a man of distinguished learning and of a speculative turn of mind; eminent first as a preacher, and afterwards as a professor in the university of Königsberg. His principal work is entitled “De Unico Mediatore Jesu Christo et Justificatione Fidei. Confessio Andreæ Osiandri.” His difference of opinion from the other Reformers so clearly indicated in the following words, in which he denounces the errors which he means to oppose: “Omnes horribiliter errant. Primo, quia verbum justificare tantum pro justum reputare et pronunciare intelligunt, atque interpretantur, et non pro eo, quod est, reipsa et in veritate justum efficere. Deinde etiam in hoc quod nullam differentiam tenent inter redemptionem et justificationem, quum tamen magna differentia sit, sicut vel inde intelligi sit, quod homines furem a suspendio redimere possunt, bonum et justum efficere non possunt. Porro etiam in hoc, quod nihil certe statuere possunt, quid tandem justitia Christi sit, quam per fidem in nobis esse, nobisque imputari oporteat. Ac postremo errant omnium rudissime etiam in hoc, quod divinam naturam Christi a justificatione separant, et Christum dividunt atque solvunt, id quod haud dubie execrandi Satanæ opus est.”1
Osiander taught, (1.) That Christ has redeemed us by the satisfaction which He rendered to divine justice. (2.) But he denied that this was any part of our justification. (3.) He maintained that to justify does not mean to declare just, or to render righteous in a judicial or forensic sense, but to render inherently or subjectively just and holy. (4.) That the righteousness of Christ by which the believer is justified, and which he receives by faith, and which is imputed to him in the judgment of God, is not, as the Protestants taught, the work of Christ, consisting in what He did and suffered as the substitute of sinners, nor is it, as Romanists teach, the work of the Holy Spirit consisting in the infusion of a holy nature or of new habits of grace, but it is the “essential righteousness of God,” “the divine essence, “God Himself.” (5.) That consequently the proximate and real ground of our acceptance with God, and of our reception into heaven, is what we are, or what we become, in virtue of this in-dwelling of God in the soul.
The speculations of Osiander as to the nature of God and his relation to man, might have led him under any circumstances to adopt the peculiar views above stated, but the proximate cause was no doubt the reaction from the too exclusive prominence given at that time to the objective work of Christ. This is not to be wondered at, and perhaps was not to be blamed. The Romanists, with whom the Protestants had to contend, did not deny the necessity of an inward change in the nature of fallen man. But they made this almost all of Christ’s redeeming work. What He did for the expiation of sin and for meeting the demands of justice, was only to open the way for God’s giving renewing and sanctifying grace to sinners. Men were themselves to merit eternal life. It was unavoidable therefore, that the Reformers should strenuously insist upon what Christ did for us and that they should protest against confounding justification with sanctification. Osiander’s cast of mind made him revolt at this, and carried him completely over to the Romish side, so far as the nature of justification is concerned. He said that the Protestant doctrine of justification is “colder than ice.” It is as though a man should pay the ransom of a Turkish slave, and leave him and his children in bondage. Still more violent is his denunciation of the doctrine that Christ’s righteousness, of which we partake through faith, consists of his obedience and sufferings. What good can they do us? Christ obeyed and suffered centuries ago; we cannot appropriate what He then did and make it our own. Imputing it to us does not alter the case. It does not make us better. Speculative as well as Biblical reasons, however, prevented Osiander from accepting the Romish solution of the difficulty. What we are said to receive is “the righteousness of Christ,” “the righteousness of God;” but sanctifying grace is never called the righteousness of God. If, therefore, that righteousness by which the believer is constituted righteous, be neither the obedience of Christ, nor infused grace, what can it be other than the essential righteousness of God, the divine essence itself? Calvin, who in his “Institutes” earnestly combats the theory of Osiander, says that he invented “monstrum nescio quod essentialis justitiæ.” “Dilucide exprimit, se non ea justitia contentum, quæ nobis obedientia et sacrificio mortis Christi parta est, fingere nos substantialiter in Deo justos esse tam essentia quam qualitate infusa… . . Substantialem mixtionem ingerit, qua Deus se in nos transfundens, quasi partem sui faciat. Nam virtute Spiritus sancti fieri, ut coalescamus cum Christo, nobisque sit caput et nos ejus membra, fere pro nihilo ducit, nisi ejus essentia nobis misceatur.”2