In the incarnate Logos, however, according to whom man was created, humanity and divinity are personally united. When the Word was made flesh, the divine essence was imparted to His human nature. And Christ, in turn, imparts the same essence to all who by faith are one with Him. From eternity the incarnate Word was destined to be the head of the congregation in order that the essential righteousness of God might flow from Him into His body, the believers. Before the Fall the Son of God dwelled in Adam, making him just by God's essential righteousness. By the Fall this righteousness was lost. Hence the redemption and atonement of Christ were required in order again to pave the way for the renewal of the lost image or the indwelling of God's essential righteousness in man. The real source of this righteousness and divine life in man, however, is not the human, but the divine nature of Christ. In the process of justification or of making man righteous, the human nature of Christ merely serves as a medium, or as it were, a canal, through which the eternal essential wisdom, holiness, and righteousness of Christ's divine nature flows into our hearts.
Christ, the "inner Word" (John 1), says Osiander, approaches man in the "external Word" (the words spoken by Jesus and His apostles), and through it enters the believing soul. For through Word, Sacrament, and faith we are united with His humanity. In the Lord's Supper, for instance, we become the flesh and blood of Christ, just as we draw the nourishment out of natural food and transform it into our flesh and blood. And since the humanity of Christ, with which we become one in the manner described, is personally united with the deity, it imparts to us also the divine essence, and, as a result, we, too, are the abode of the essential righteousness of God. "We cannot receive the divine nature from Christ," says Osiander, "if we are not embodied in Him by faith and Baptism, thus becoming flesh and blood and bone of His flesh, blood, and bone." As the branches could not partake of the nature of the vine if they were not of the wood of the vine, even so we could not share the divine nature of Christ if we had not, incorporated in Him by faith and Baptism, become flesh, blood, and bone of His flesh, blood, and bone. Accordingly, as Christ's humanity became righteous through the union with God, the essential righteousness which moved Him to obedience toward God, thus we also become righteous through our union with Christ and in Him with God. (Frank 2, 104. 20ff.; Seeberg 4, 497f.)
In view of such speculative teaching, in which justification is transformed into a sort of mystico-physical process, it is not surprising that the charge of pantheism was also raised against Osiander. The theologians of Brandenburg asserted that he inferred from his doctrine that the believers in Christ are also divine persons, because the Father, Son and Holy Ghost dwell in them essentially. But Osiander protested: "Creatures we are and creatures we remain, no matter how wonderfully we are renewed; but the seed of God and the entire divine essence which is in us by grace in the same manner as it is in Christ by nature and remains eternally in us (das also aus Gnaden in uns ist wie in Christo von Natur und bleibt ewiglich in uns) is God Himself, and no creature, and will not become a creature in us or on account of us but will eternally remain in us true God." Frank says concerning the doctrine of Osiander: It is not pantheism or a mixture of the divine and human nature, "but it is a subjectivism by which the objective foundation of salvation as taught by the Lutheran Church is rent to the very bottom. It is a mysticism which transforms the Christ for us into the Christ in us, and, though unintentionally, makes the consciousness of the inhabitatio essentialis iustitiae (indwelling of the essential righteousness) the basis of peace with God." (2, 19. 10. 13. 95. 103.) In his teaching concerning the image of God and justification, Osiander replaced the comforting doctrine of the Bible concerning the substitutionary and atoning work of Christ in His active and passive obedience unto death with vain philosophical speculations concerning divinity and humanity or the two natures of Christ. It was not so very far beside the mark, therefore, when Justus Menius characteized his theory as "a new alchmistic theology." (Planck 4, 257.)
181. Error of Stancarus.
The Stancarian dispute was incidental to the Osiandric conflict. Its author was Francesco Stancaro (born in Mantua, 1501), an Italian ex-priest, who had emigrated from Italy on account of his Protestant views. Vain, opinionated, haughty, stubborn, and insolent as he was, he roamed about, creating trouble wherever he appeared, first in Cracow as professor of Hebrew, 1551 in Koenigsberg then in Frankfort-on-the-Oder, next at various places in Poland, Hungary, and Transylvania. He died at Stobnitz, Poland, November 12, 1574. Stancarus treated all of his opponents as ignoramuses and spoke contemptuously of Luther and Melanchthon, branding the latter as an antichrist. In Koenigsberg he immediately felt called upon to interfere in the controversy which had just flared up. He opposed Osiander in a fanatical manner, declaring him to be the personal antichrist. The opponents of Osiander at Koenigsberg however, were not elated over his comradeship, particularly because he fell into an opposite error. They were glad when he resigned and left for Frankfort the same year he had arrived at Koenigsberg. In Frankfort, Stancarus continued the controversy, publishing, 1552, his Apology against Osiander—Apologia contra Osiandrum. But he was ignored rather than opposed by the Lutheran theologians. In 1553 Melanchthon wrote his Answer (Responsio) Concerning Stancar's Controversy. Later on, 1561, when Stancarus was spreading his errors in Poland, Hungary, and Transylvania, Calvin and the ministers of Zurich also wrote against him. The chief publication in which Stancarus set forth and defended his views appeared 1562, at Cracow, under the title: Concerning the Trinity (De Trinitate) and the Mediator, Our Lord Jesus Christ. As late as 1585 Wigand published his book Concerning Stancarism—De Stancarismo.
Stancarus had been trained in scholastic theology and was a great admirer of Peter Lombard. In his book De Trinitate et Mediatore he says: "One Peter Lombard is worth more than a hundred Luthers, two hundred Melanchthons, three hundred Bullingers, four hundred Peter Martyrs, five hundred Calvins out of whom, if they were all brayed in a mortar, not one drop of true theology would be squeezed. Plus valet unus Petrus Lombardus quam centum Lutheri, ducenti Melanchthones, trecenti Bullingeri, quadringenti Petri Martyres et quingenti Calvini, qui omnes, si in mortario contunderentur, non exprimeretur una mica verae theologiae." (J. G. Walch, Religionsstreitigkeiten 4, 177.)
Concerning Christ's obedience Peter Lombard taught: "Christus Mediator dicitur secundum humanitatem, non secundum divinitatem…. Mediator est ergo, in quantum homo, et non in quantum Deus. Christ is called Mediator according to His humanity, not according to His divinity…. He is therefore Mediator inasmuch as He is man, and not inasmuch as He is God." (Planck 4, 451; Seeberg 4, 507.) In accordance with this teaching, Stancarus maintained, in pointed opposition to Osiander, that Christ is our Righteousness only according to His human nature, and not according to His divine nature. The divine nature of Christ, Stancarus declared must be excluded from the office of Christ's mediation and priesthood; for if God the Son were Mediator and would do something which the Father and the Holy Spirit could not do, then He would have a will and an operation and hence also a nature and essence different from that of the Father and the Holy Spirit. He wrote: "Christ, God and man, is Mediator [and Redeemer] only according to the other nature, namely, the human, not according to the divine; Christ made satisfaction for us according to His human nature, but not according to His divine nature; according to His divine nature Christ was not under the Law, was not obedient unto death, etc." (Frank 2, 111.) Stancarus argued: "Christ is one God with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Apart from the three personal properties of 'paternitas, filiatio, and spiratio passiva' the three divine persons are absolutely identical in their being and operation. Their work is the sending of the Mediator, whose divine nature itself, in an active way, participates in this sending; hence only the human nature of the God-man is sent, and only the human nature of the Mediator acts in a reconciling way. Men are reconciled by Christ's death on the cross; but the blood shed on the cross and death are peculiar to the human nature, not to the divine nature; hence we are reconciled by the human nature of Christ only, and not by His divine nature (ergo per naturam humanam Christi tantum sumus reconciliati et non per divinam)." (Schluesselburg 9, 216ff.)
Consistently, the Stancarian doctrine destroys both the unity of the person of Christ and the sufficiency of His atonement. It not only corrupts the doctrine of the infinite and truly redeeming value of the obedience of the God-man, but also denies the personal union of the divine and human natures in Christ. For if the divine nature is excluded from the work of Christ, then it must be excluded also from His person, since works are always acts of a person. And if it was a mere human nature that died for us, then the price of our redemption is altogether inadequate, and we are not redeemed, as Luther so earnestly emphasized against Zwingli. (CONC. TRIGL. 1028, 44.) True, Stancarus protested: "Christ is Mediator according to the human nature only; this exclusive 'only' does not exclude the divine nature from the person of Christ, but from His office as Mediator." (Frank 2, 111.) However, just this was Luther's contention, that Christ is our Mediator also according to His divine nature, and that the denial of this truth both invalidates His satisfaction and divides His person.
The Third Article of the Formula of Concord, therefore, rejects the error of Stancarus as well as that of Osiander. Against the latter it maintains that the active and passive obedience of Christ is our righteousness before God: and over against the former, that this obedience was the act of the entire person of Christ, and not of His human nature alone. We read: "In opposition to both these parties [Osiander and Stancarus] it has been unanimously taught by the other teachers of the Augsburg Confession that Christ is our Righteousness not according to His divine nature alone, nor according to His human nature alone, but according to both natures; for He has redeemed, justified, and saved us from our sins as God and man, through His complete obedience; that therefore the righteousness of faith is the forgiveness of sins, reconciliation with God, and our adoption as God's children only on account of the obedience of Christ, which through faith alone, out of pure grace is imputed for righteousness to all true believers, and on account of it they are absolved from all their unrighteousness." (917, 4.)
182. Deviations of Parsimonious and Hamburg Ministers.