THE SAVING HUMANITY OF CHRIST:

JOHN CALVIN'S CRITIQUE OF ANDREAS OSIANDER

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JASON T. INGALLS

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1+1 Canada ABSTRACT

In the 1559 edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin spent portions of

Books I-III addressing the work of Lutheran Andreas Osiander. The disagreement's heart seems to be the doctrine of justification; however, contemporary scholars have suggested four other possibilities: the relationship of justification and sanctification, the nature of union with Christ, the place of Christ's humanity in human salvation, and the relationship of Christ's divine and human natures. After considering these issues in turn, this thesis concludes that the heart of the disagreement is the systematic place given to Christ's human nature vis-a-vis his divine nature in his Person and in the economy of salvation. Insofar as Calvin's position against Osiander represents an early break with non-Philipist Lutheranism over justification, this thesis has significant implications for the study of Reformation era theology and the charting of "Reformed" and "Lutheran" influence in other Reformation traditions.

u ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks to Dr. Victor Shepherd, for his thoughtful and wise counsel throughout the writing of this thesis; to W. Travis McMaken, for his help in revising and clarifying this thesis with an eye to contemporary theological discussions; and, above all, to my wife Dr. Monique Ingalls, for always being able to see this project through fresh eyes and for sharing that insight with me.

m CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION. "WHY" AND "WHAT"? 1 Why Did Calvin Choose to Address Osiander? 1 The Heart of the Matter 13

CHAPTER 1. JUSTIFICATION AND SANCTIFICATION 15 Osiander and Essential Righteousness 17 Calvin on Justification and Sanctification 23 The Relationship of Justification and Sanctification 33 Conclusion 39

CHAPTER 2. THE UNION OF THE BELIEVER WITH CHRIST 41 Shared Emphasis 45 Osiander's Doctrine of Union 47 Calvin's Doctrine of Union 49 Conclusion 60

CHAPTER 3. RIGHTEOUSNESS, DISTANCE, UBIQUITY, AND THE COMMUNICATIO IDIOMATUM 62 Which Righteousness? 63 How do we overcome the distance between Christ and us? 73 Two Christologies 78 Conclusion 82

CONCLUSION. CALVIN'S CATHOLIC CHRISTOLOGY 84

BIBLIOGRAPHY 91

iv Introduction

"Why" and "What"?

Staggered with growing illness, spitting blood, and eager to finish his greatest project, John Calvin began the final revision of his Institutes of the Christian Religion in

1558.1 In the decade leading to this revision, published in 1559, Calvin had grown increasingly involved in debates with Lutheran interlocutors about the Lord's Supper.

But instead of confronting those opponents directly in the final revision of the Institutes, he chose instead to spend a considerable amount of time addressing the then-deceased

Lutheran Reformer Andreas Osiander. While an increasing number of Calvin studies scholars in the last forty years have become interested in Osiander, Osiander's importance for Calvin's thought has been largely ignored. However, Calvin's interaction with Osiander became one of his defining engagements, profoundly affecting the shape of the 1559 Institutes. In this thesis I will address the major issues in

Calvin's Osiandrian polemic and outline its implications for future studies.

Why Did Calvin Choose to Address Osiander?

Why did Calvin choose to address Osiander in the 1559 edition of the Institutes? Calvin did so because he believed what Osiander said and represented threatened his ongoing

1 Bruce Gordon, Calvin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 301.

1 2 eciunenical work.2 Contemporary scholars rarely address this "why" question.3 Instead, most assume that Calvin addressed Osiander for purely theological reasons. James Weis puts the controversy into historical perspective in his seminal article, "Calvin Versus

Osiander on Justification". He notes that the argument Calvin has with Osiander unfolded amidst the Eucharistic controversies of the 1540s and 1550s.4 He also mentions that Calvin was "quite sensitive" to the charge of being Osiandrian, a charge which

Calvin's Lutheran interlocutors had leveled against him.5 Weis goes on to say that the controversy enabled Calvin to clarify his doctrine of justification and differentiate himself from Osiander's aberrations. However, the question remains open: why was

Calvin so sensitive to being lumped together with Osiander?

The next question follows quickly upon the first: If Calvin is so sensitive to the accusation of Osiandrianism, why did he go so far out of his way to rescue parts of

Osiander's phraseology in sections of the Institutes?6 Patricia Wilson-Kastner in her

2 It might be anachronistic to call Calvin's work "ecumenical." I find the term useful because it highlights some of the major characteristics of Calvin's ongoing relationships with leaders of other Protestant churches.

3 A notable exception is Mark A. Garcia, Life in Christ: Union with Christ and Twofold Grace in Calvin's Theology, Studies in Christian History and Thought (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2008).

4 James Weis, "Calvin Versus Osiander on Justification," Springfielder 29 (Aut 1965): 31.

5 Weis, "Calvin Versus Osiander on Justification," 43; See also, John Calvin, "To Peter Toussain (12 October 1558)," in Letters of John Calvin, ed. Jules Bonnet, trans. David Constable, vol. 3, 4 vols. (New York: B. Franklin, 1972), 477-479.

6 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 3.11.5-3.11.6 Each section contains a back and forth between Calvin and 3 important article "Andreas Osiander's Theology of Grace in the Perspective of the

Influence of Augustine of Hippo" puts it well:

Calvin, however, is willing to admit that Osiander does not wish to eliminate the element of grace in justification; is not mistaken in saying that we are one with Christ, who is our Head as redeemer; is correct that faith does not justify, but only Christ received in faith; and has perceived that redemption is beyond the work of human nature [Institutes III, 11 (5-12)]. When all is said and done, however, at the same time, and sometimes in the same sentence that Calvin admits the usefulness of Osiander's assertions, he attacks him.. .7

However, while Wilson-Kastner notes the oddity, she does not ask after the reason for its presence. Instead, she notes Calvin's claim to be "free of all perverted motives" while attacking Osiander for stubbornness and perversity, as well as Calvin's sudden moves from appreciation to attack.8 She implies that Calvin's own theological stubbornness is to blame.9

There are two questions, then, that scholars have raised only implicitly: 1) Why was Calvin so sensitive to the charge of Osiandrianism? and 2) Why does Calvin go out of his way to agree with Osiander when he has the opportunity? Recent works leave these two questions unanswered. J. Todd Billings, for example, raises the "why"

Osiander wherein Calvin points out how Osiander could have kept his main insights without straying into error.

7 Patricia Wilson-Kastner, "Andreas Osiander's Theology of Grace in the Perspective of the Influence of Augustine of Hippo," The Sixteenth Century journal 10, no. 2 (Summer 1979): 88.

8 Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.10; Wilson-Kastner, "Andreas Osiander's Theology of Grace in the Perspective of the Influence of Augustine of Hippo," 88.

9 Wilson-Kastner, "Andreas Osiander's Theology of Grace in the Perspective of the Influence of Augustine of Hippo," 88. 4 question, but answers it similarly to Weis and Wilson-Kastner, showing that Calvin's

Lutheran interlocutors were accusing Calvin of Osiander's errors, and Calvin felt the need to defend himself.10 Billings points out Calvin's sympathies with Osiander's thought even while showing how Calvin downplayed these similarities.11 Because the question of why Calvin chose to engage Osiander remains implicit in Billing's work, no clear answer emerges.

In contrast, Mark Garcia asks the "why" question directly.

Calvin's participation in the Osiandrian controversy is among the most conspicuous features of his later, exceptionally trying years. But the question should be raised from the outset why Calvin would involve himself to such great lengths in what was really an intra-Lutheran debate. The answer to this question is complex but deeply significant.12

Garcia answers this question in a decidedly theological way. According to Garcia, the reason Calvin engages Osiander is that Osiander represents a consistent, Lutheran approach to soteriology based on the increasingly common theological concept of ubiquity, the belief that Jesus' human nature was united to his divine nature in such a way that his human nature took on the characteristics of the divine. However, while

Garcia raises the right question (Why did Calvin address Osiander?), he answers a different one (What was the content of the disagreement?). I consider the latter

10 J. Todd Billings, "United to God through Christ: Assessing Calvin on the Question of Deification," Harvard Theological Review 98, no. 03 (2005): 325.

» Ibid., 325-26.

12 Garcia, Life in Christ, 197. 5 question, and Garcia's answer, to be of the utmost importance for understanding

Calvin's theological work leading up to the 1559 Institutes, and I will address that question in the main body of this thesis. However, it is important to answer the first question first, since it impinges on the interpretation of the texts at hand and answers the two questions that are already implicit in scholarly discussion of Calvin's

Osiandrian polemic.

Answering the "why" question, I suggest that Calvin engaged with Osiander in the 1559 Institutes because Calvin believed what Osiander said and represented threatened his ongoing ecumenical work. At least as early as 1529, Protestant princes had attempted to forge peace between Luther and Zwingli. The Marburg Colloquy was a failure, and the differences between the two parties seemed intractable. In the 1530s

Martin Bucer and Wolfgang Capito traveled and wrote in attempts to bring the two sides together. According to Bruce Gordon, "For them, unlike for Luther and Heinrich

Bullinger, Zwingli's successor as head of the Zurich church, the debate over the meaning of 'this is my body' was a battle over words which could be resolved by calm heads."13 Calvin took up Bucer's cause and made it his own.14

That the unity of the Church was of vital importance to Calvin is demonstrated amply in his writings. In a 1552 letter to Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, Calvin wrote

13 Gordon, Calvin, 53.

14 Ibid., 54. 6 that the division of the churches was "to be ranked among the chief evils of our time."15

It seems that the longer Calvin lived, the more pressing this concern was to him. In the

1559 Institutes, he revised a sentence on the unity of the church, making it much stronger (the addition is shown in italics): "The church is called 'catholic,' or 'universal/ because there could not be two or three churches unless Christ be torn asunder - which cannot happen!"16 He continues in that section and the next to say that the unity that the

Church already has in Christ should be visibly expressed.17 The disunion of the

Protestant churches troubled Calvin deeply.

In contrast to those who made idiosyncratic theological claims the basis of unity,

Calvin pursued unity pragmatically. He corresponded often with German, Swiss, and

English church leaders and attempted to show especially that the differences over the

Supper could be resolved by patient theological conversation.18 He placed a high premium on councils, once even suggesting that a universal council chaired by the Pope could resolve all of Christendom's ills, so long as the Pope agreed to abide by the

15 John Calvin, "To Cranmer (April 1552)," in Letters of John Calvin, ed. Jules Bonnet, trans. David Constable, vol. 2 (New York: B. Franklin, 1972), 347.

16 Calvin, Institutes, 4.1.2.

17 Calvin, Institutes, 4.1.2-3; See also Ronald S. Wallace, Calvin, Geneva and the Reformation: A Study of Calvin as Social Reformer, Churchman, Pastor and Theologian (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1988), 147-48.

18 Gordon, Calvin, 161. 7 decisions of the council.19 Calvin's humanist training made him think that rancour and recrimination were works of the devil.20 Bernard Cottret puts it well, "He was a churchman more than a statesman, but a churchman as one is a statesman."21

From 1545 to 1559, Calvin mentioned Andreas Osiander in his letters exclusively in the context of the ecumenical damage that he thought Osiander was causing.22 Calvin mentioned Osiander in this way in reference to each of the three major ecumenical dialogues in which he participated: the dialogues with the Lutherans, Zwinglians, and the English. In a letter "to an unknown personage," Calvin told the story that someone had "in an elegy" attacked Osiander's theology.23 Calvin acknowledged that Osiander is

"a person who is himself rather wanting in good sense."24 When Osiander responded in print, Calvin bemoaned the "rancour" with which Osiander executed his defense. In addition, Calvin wrote, "nothing has given me more vexation, than that he insults the

Zuinglians [sic] in every third line."25 Calvin was aware of the animosity that already

19 Wallace, Calvin, Geneva and the Reformation, 150.

20 Gordon, Calvin, 161.

21 Bernard Cottret, Calvin: A Biography, trans. M. Wallace McDonald (Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co, 2000), xii.

22 One letter I do not summarize in the main body of the text is Calvin, "To Peter Toussain (12 October 1558)." In this letter, Calvin responds to Peter Toussain's accusation of being Osiandrian. Calvin seems to experience it as a personal attack.

23 John Calvin, "To an Unknown Personage (January 1545)," in Letters of John Calvin, ed. Jules Bonnet, trans. David Constable, vol. 1 (New York: B. Franklin, 1972), 445.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid. 8 existed between the Germans and the Swiss, and Osiander's vitriolic attack on the

Zwinglians threatened to widen the divide. Calvin wrote, "It is even after such a sort as this that we seem to have hired ourselves, both hand and tongue, to the ungodly, that we may afford them sport and pastime by tearing one another to pieces."26

Calvin explicitly addressed Osiander to his Lutheran ecumenical partner and good friend Philipp Melanchthon. In a series of letters, Calvin repeatedly condemned

Osiander for the damage his reckless theological speculation was doing to the cause of

Protestant unity. In a 1545 letter, Calvin went into greater detail about the work in which Osiander insulted the Zwinglians, and sometimes Zwingli himself, "every third line."27 This kind of behavior only hurts the Protestant cause, Calvin said. He bemoaned

"what pleasant sport and pastime do we afford to the Papists, as if we had hired ourselves to do their work!"28 In a 1552 letter, Calvin coupled Osiander's name with those who tore apart the church with "unintelligible disputations."29 He railed against a party that claimed Melanchthon's authority and was sowing dissension in the Genevan church and mentioned Osiander's retirement next. Calvin was glad that Osiander had chosen to depart. He wrote, "But let him retire: it is an advantage to us to have got rid

26 Ibid.

27 John Calvin, "To Melanchthon (21 January 1545)," in Letters of John Calvin, ed. Jules Bonnet, trans. David Constable, vol. 1 (New York: B. Franklin, 1972), 437.

zs Ibid., 438.

29 John Calvin, "To Melanchthon (28 November 1552)," in Letters of John Calvin, ed. Jules Bonnet, trans. David Constable, vol. 2 (New York: B. Franklin, 1972), 376. 9 of him."30 Finally, in 1554, two years after Osiander's death, Calvin mentioned those of

Osiander's party who divisively claimed Melanchthon for their own.31 It seems that

Osiander's ghost haunted Calvin's ongoing ecumenical efforts.

Osiander also troubled Calvin's ecumenical work in England. In a 1551 letter to

Farel, Calvin related the content of a letter from Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. One of

Calvin's previous letters had been quite graciously received in the royal court, filling the young king "with extraordinary delight."32 Cranmer informed Calvin that he "could do nothing more useful than to write to the King more frequently."33 This approbation made Calvin feel as though he had received a reward greater than gold. Calvin wrote to

Farel that he did not mention Bucer's death to the English so as not to "open my own wound afresh."34 Calvin then bemoaned the loss of good teachers in the church. Bucer was gone and Vadian as well. In the sentence after Calvin mentions Vadian's death, he wrote, "Osiander is absolutely mad."35 Calvin did not place Osiander in the ranks of

30 Ibid., 379 Calvin could not have known that Osiander had died the month previous. It may be that Melanchthon's two year silence following this letter was precipitated in part by Calvin's mistimed vitriol as well as his demands that Melanchthon be more firm in his stance.

31 John Calvin, "To Melanchthon (27 August 1554)," in Letters of John Calvin, ed. Jules Bonnet, trans. David Constable, vol. 3 (New York: B. Franklin, 1972), 63.

32 John Calvin, "To Farel (15 June 1551)," in Letters of John Calvin, ed. Jules Bonnet, trans. David Constable, vol. 2 (New York: B. Franklin, 1972), 311.

33 Ibid.

34 Ibid., 312.

55 Ibid. 10

"faithful teachers." Instead, Calvin called him crazy and then encouraged Farel, "Let us take courage, however, until we shall have finished our course and reached the goal."36

In the context of the letter, it seems likely that the "goal" is the unification of the

Protestant churches.

In the spring of 1552, Calvin replied to Cranmer's letter. Throughout, he affirmed

Edward's and Cranmer's desire to hold a "general meeting" of Protestants for the sake of "handing down to posterity the true doctrine of Scripture."37 Calvin encouraged

Cranmer to pursue this "noble" and "auspicious" goal with all earnestness, since

"members of the Church [are] severed, [and] the body lies bleeding."38 The greatest threat to a council and the healing of the body seemed to be the "stupid acquisitiveness" that has characterized the theologically uneducated and had begun to creep into the "ranks of the pastors."39 Calvin cited only Osiander as an example of this malady and then went on to write: "It is too well known with what mad actions

Osiander is deceiving himself and deluding certain others."40 Osiander was Cranmer's wife's uncle. Calvin saw Osiander's work and influence to be so damaging to his ecumenical work in England that he impugned him to the Archbishop himself.

36 Ibid.

37 Calvin, "To Cranmer (April 1552)/' 345, 47.

38 Ibid., 347-48.

39 Ibid., 346.

40 Ibid. 11

In summary, Calvin mentioned Osiander as a threat to church unity in connection with his major ecumenical endeavors with the Lutherans, Zwinglians, and

English. As a German Lutheran, Osiander's rash insults threatened union with Zurich.

Osiander and his influence were part of what divided the Lutheran camp itself against the cool-headed Melanchthon. Finally, "stupid acquisitiveness," the threat that

Osiander embodied, endangered England's attempts to call a general council of

Protestant churches in Europe.

Perhaps more importantly for our purposes, it seems that Calvin's desire for the unity of the church was inextricably bound with his theological polemic against

Osiander. Mark Garcia points out that throughout the 1550s Calvin develops and deploys a theological metaphor around the issues raised by Osiander, Westphal, and his other Lutheran interlocutors: that Osiander's theological arguments "tear" the body of Christ. Calvin deployed the "tearing metaphor" in the 1556 revision of his Romans commentary, especially in chapter eight. He also used it in the Osiandrian polemic in

Book III of the Institutes.41 Garcia maintains that the metaphor "serves to integrate the christological/eucharistic and soteriological strains of Calvin's thought as this complex of concerns was intensified in the polemics of the 1550s."42

41 Garcia, Life in Christ, 249, 230-35.

«Ibid., 234. 12

Calvin employed the same metaphor in Book IV of the Institutes. Again, the 1559 addition is in italics: "The church is called 'catholic/ or 'universal,' because there could not be two or three churches unless Christ be torn asunder - which cannot happen!"43 Calvin opposed Osiander's theological speculation in part because his doctrines "tore" the

Body of Christ both theologically and ecumenically.

Clearly there are grounds for maintaining that Calvin engaged with Osiander in the 1559 Institutes because Calvin believed what Osiander said and represented threatened his ongoing ecumenical work. This interpretation not only makes sense of the forgoing evidence; it also answers the two questions left unaddressed in the literature. Calvin was so sensitive to being called Osiandrian because Osiander represented everything Calvin had opposed throughout his theological activity. In

Calvin's view, Osiander threatened to destroy the unity of the Church with his vain speculation. On the other hand, Calvin still tried to rescue some of Osiander's ideas and phrasing in the 1559 Institutes because he was still engaging in ecumenical theological dialogue. In the midst of the polemic, he was still trying to build bridges between himself and his opponents, apparently convinced that adequate dialogue would enable both parties to agree on the pure doctrine of Scripture, which could form the basis of a united Protestant Church in Europe.

« Calvin, Institutes, 4.1.2. 13

The Heart of the Matter

Having addressed why Calvin chose to engage Osiander in the 1559 Institutes, the content of that engagement now demands examination. When recent scholars have turned their attention to the polemic, they have most often addressed the doctrine of union with Christ. However, a close reading of the Osiandrian material in the Institutes makes plain that union with Christ is only one of the presenting issues. I will argue in this thesis that the heart of Calvin's disagreement with Osiander is the systematic place that Osiander gives Christ's human nature vis-a-vis his divine nature. I will demonstrate that this is the case in each of the sections of Calvin's refutation of

Osiander in Books I-III of the Institutes.

This thesis reconsiders the question: What is Calvin's central and defining disagreement with Osiander? I argue that the central and defining disagreement is about Christology. Anglophone literature of the past decade has dealt with this question in a variety of ways. These responses all agree that since Calvin's disagreement with Osiander takes place most vehemently over the doctrine of justification, the answer should be found in some relationship to this conflict. Thus, they focus their attention on Calvin's response in Book III of the Institutes. While few scholars have responded to this question directly, five general responses emerge from the discussion: justification, the relationship of justification and sanctification, the 14 nature of the believer's union with Christ, the place of Christ's humanity in human salvation, and the relationship of the divine and human natures in Christ.

I will proceed in the following three chapters by examining three sets of relationships in Calvin's 1559 Institutes: justification and sanctification, the believer and

Christ, and the human and divine natures of Christ. These chapters will lay out both

Calvin's description of Osiander's problems in the named areas and his own answer to those problems, citing evidence from the Institutes, the letters, and the tracts.

In each chapter, the problem addressed is one of relationship. Calvin thought that regarding each of these aspects Osiander misconstrued a relationship between theological terms, and he sought to rectify the error. The fact that the relationship between justification and sanctification (ch. 1) and between the believer and Christ (ch.

2) is at issue in Calvin's polemic is uncontroversial. They are clearly visible in the

Institutes, and it is around these issues that the majority of scholarship gathers. Chapter three will show that the more theologically basic relationship between the human and divine natures of Christ is also at stake, that Calvin knew it was at stake, and that

Calvin believed that getting this one relationship right influenced the way one could coherently speak about the other two. Without the proper relationships observed here, the theological unity of Christ himself would be torn. Without the basis of catholic

Christology that is at stake in this argument, Calvin also believed that the visible Body of Christ would be torn as well. Chapter 1

Justification and Sanctification

When scholars point to the basic disagreement between Calvin and Osiander, many point to the doctrine of justification itself. Karla Wubbenhorst argues that the dispute is primarily about forensic or non-forensic theories of justification.1 She is concerned to show that Calvin's doctrine of justification is simply a variation on

Luther's theme. James Weis also thinks that the main issue is justification, but he broadens the scope of analysis to include two ancillary themes: the righteousness of

Christ and union with Christ.21 will elaborate these two themes in later chapters. Still,

Weis believes that of the two ancillary themes Calvin gives unio Christi more weight, and he suggests that the centre of the issue, and the place where the difference between

Osiander and Calvin is most plain, is in the relationship of the doctrines of justification and sanctification.3

Some scholars follow Weis in moving beyond a consideration of the doctrine of justification and point to the relationship between justification and sanctification as the real heart of the conflict. They suggest that it is a controlling disagreement which has

1 Karla Wubbenhorst, "Calvin's Doctrine of Justification: Variations on a Lutheran Theme," in Justification in Perspective: Historical Developments and Contemporary Challenges, ed. Bruce L. McCormack, 2006,116.

2 James Weis, "Calvin Versus Osiander on Justification," Springfielder 29 (Aut 1965): 40.

3 Ibid., 42.

15 16 implications for the way justification itself is described. Thomas L. Wenger and J. Todd

Billings both point in this direction. Thomas L. Wenger believes that Calvin held

Osiander's main error to be the "commingling" of justification and sanctification.4 His article is a polemic against the so-called "New Perspective on Calvin/' a school that aims (he maintains) to bring Calvin into line with recent Pauline exegesis. Wenger believes this "commingling" is precisely the sin of which the "New Perspective" school is guilty.

J. Todd Billings also believes the relationship of justification and sanctification is crucial. While highlighting the similarity between Calvin and Osiander, Billings also points out their significant differences. While both employed the language of

"participation" to describe the believer's relationship to Christ's righteousness,

Osiander believed that because humans participated in Christ, justification could not be forensic, arguing that a person could not hope to participate in Christ's divine righteousness without being transformed from the inside out.5 Billings argues that

Calvin disagreed because of the relationship Calvin maintained between justification and sanctification. For Calvin, justification and sanctification are "distinguishable, but inseparable" because, Billings says, they are both in Christ and Christ cannot be

4 Thomas L. Wenger, "The New Perspective on Calvin: Responding to Recent Calvin Interpretations," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 50, no. 2 (June 2007): 323.

5 J. Todd Billings, Calvin, Participation, and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 57. 17 divided.6 "While justification always and necessarily leads to real sanctification/'

Billings writes, "the former is irreducibly forensic, and the latter involves a moral transformation of the believer by the Spirit."7

Drawing from these and other scholarly sources, this chapter addresses how both Osiander and Calvin understand the relationship between justification and sanctification. Osiander believed that they were one and the same. Calvin thought they were distinct but inseparable. For Calvin, justification and sanctification do not have their union in a relationship to one another but in their shared relationship to union with Christ through Spirit-given faith. In order to understand the full range of Calvin's argument, I will first address Calvin's portrayal of Osiander's position on justification and sanctification.8 Then, I will outline Calvin's theology of their relation.

Osiander and Essential Righteousness

Osiander took issue with ideas of forensic justification. He specifically wanted to avoid what he perceived to be a latent antinomianism in Philipp Melanchthon's theology.9

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid., 57-58.

8 This thesis is concerned with the shape of Calvin's polemic in the 1559 Institutes, not whether or not Calvin's polemic was a fair representation of Osiander's theology. For more thorough and sympathetic descriptions of Osiander's thought, see Patricia Wilson-Kastner, "Andreas Osiander's Theology of Grace in the Perspective of the Influence of Augustine of Hippo," The Sixteenth Century Journal 10, no. 2 (Summer 1979): 73-91.

9 Julie Canlis, "Calvin, Osiander and Participation in God," International Journal of Systematic Theology 6, no. 2 (2004): 171; Mark A. Garcia, Life in Christ: Union with Christ and Twofold Grace in Calvin's Theology, Studies in Christian History and Thought (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2008), 206; Weis, "Calvin Versus Osiander on Justification," 33. 18

Osiander wanted salvation to mean a real change for believers, and he thought that forensic justification amounted to nothing but an unjust justifying of the wicked.

Instead, he wanted to say that Christ only justifies those who are righteous and that

God makes human beings righteous by an infusion of the Son of God's own righteousness. Osiander traced this argument back to creation and the image of God.

He also says that even Jesus himself was only righteous by way of an infusion of essential righteousness.

It is a hallmark of Calvin's theology that justification is a legal term to be understood in the context of guilt and acquittal. Osiander disagreed. Calvin wrote that

Osiander "laughs" at the people who teach that justification is a legal term, "because we must actually be righteous."10 Osiander could not conceive of God proclaiming someone righteous for any other reason than that they were really righteous themselves. As Jonathan Rainbow says, Osiander was "scandalized by God's justification of the ungodly."11 To be more precise, Osiander was scandalized by those who said that God was that kind of God. Calvin says that Osiander found forensic justification "insulting to God and contrary to his nature."12 The only way that God

10 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, I960), 3.11.11.

11 Jonathan H. Rainbow, "Double Grace: John Calvin's View of the Relationship of Justification and Sanctification," ExAuditu 5 (1989): 101.

12 Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.11. 19 could justify the wicked and remain true to God's nature would be to make the wicked righteous before passing the verdict of "just."

According to Cornells Venema, "Osiander makes our justification depend upon an intrinsic righteousness that inheres in us."13 According to Calvin, Osiander extended the verb "to justify" in two different directions. The first was reconciliation with God through free pardon. The second was "to be made righteous" intrinsically.14 Osiander used "to justify" in this second sense to refer to "that by which we are moved to act rightly."15 Reading this definition together with Philippians 2:13 ("for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure." NRSV),

Osiander reasoned that the righteousness with which God justified human beings was the divinity of God himself.16

According to Calvin, Osiander believed this union took place by a mixture of substances in which "God transfuses himself into us, as it were - makes us part of himself."17 God makes human beings "partakers in God's righteousness when God is united to us in essence."18 He averred this was the natural sense of Jeremiah 23:6, 33:16,

13 Cornelis P. Venema, Accepted and Renewed in Christ: The "Twofold Grace of God" and the Interpretation of Calvin's Theology (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 161.

14 Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.6.

15 Ibid., 3.11.12.

16 Ibid.

17 Ibid., 3.11.5.

18 Ibid. 20 and 51:10 in which God promised to be Israel's righteousness.19 Through the infusion of the Son of God's essential righteousness, "God pours himself into us as a gross mixture" of humanity, God himself, and "the goodness or holiness or integrity of

God."20

Osiander read his doctrine of essential righteousness back into the creation story.21 In Book II of the Institutes, Calvin addressed Osiander's doctrine of the incarnation. Osiander thinks that humans are made in God's image because God made them in the image of Christ who is the image of God. Osiander coupled this understanding with the speculation that even if Adam had not sinned, Christ would still have become incarnate. Whereas Calvin believed that the image of God resided in humanity's exceptional gifts, Osiander maintained that the image of God dwelt essentially in human beings before the fall.22 For Osiander, human beings were made to be essentially united with God.23

19 Ibid., 3.11.8.

20 Ibid., 3.11.10.

21 While most scholars address only the Osiandrian controversy in Book III of the Institutes, some look further back in the 1559 edition and find other sections in Books I and II that also take up Osiander's ideas. See especially, Charles Partee, The Theology of John Calvin (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008); Garcia, Life in Christ.

22 Calvin, Institutes, 2.12.6.

23 There is a distinction to be drawn between essential union with God and union with Christ through faith. For more on this topic, see the discussion in chapter two. 21

Osiander appears to have had a problem with historical contingency in theology.

Calvin wrote, "Osiander blithely declares that because Christ as man had been foreknown in the mind of God, he was the pattern to which men were formed."24 Calvin responded by emphasizing Jesus' place in history. He was the descendent of Adam.

Paul called him the second Adam, not the first. The only reason that Scripture gives for

Jesus' incarnation is reconciliation with God.25 To go beyond this as Osiander does,

Calvin maintained, was to go beyond what he could say from Scripture. It could be that

Calvin and Osiander simply had two different understandings of election. Osiander believed that Christ became incarnate because God foreknew it. In God's foreknowledge of the incarnation, he created human beings in Christ's body-and-soul image. Calvin, on the other hand, believed that Christ became incarnate only as a remedy for the fall. His Trinitarian theology allowed him to say that even if Christ had never become incarnate, human beings would still have been made in the Son's image, for the Word is the image of God.26

As Calvin saw it, the doctrine of essential righteousness constituted a denial of

Christ's human righteousness.27 Calvin agreed with Osiander that the work of justifying

24 Calvin, Institutes, 2.12.7.

«Ibid.

*> See Ibid.

27 For more on Christ's human righteousness and its relevance to Calvin's Osiandrian polemic, see chapter three. 22 is too great for human nature alone, but he did not follow Osiander in concluding from this point that Christ's justifying work "can be ascribed only to divine nature."28 But

Osiander pursued his logic: if human beings cannot be righteous apart from an infusion of God's essential righteousness, then the same is true of Christ. Osiander inferred that if God is the source of human righteousness, then humans must be essentially righteous because "the essence of God's righteousness dwells" in human beings.29 On Osiander's accounting, Christ's flesh adds nothing to salvation. In his humanity, Christ receives an infusion of divine righteousness which impels him to "fulfill the tasks enjoined upon him."30 It seems that these tasks did nothing except open a way for other human beings to receive the same divine infusion that Christ himself received from God.

The doctrine of essential righteousness answered a pressing question for

Osiander: How can God justify the wicked and still be called just? Osiander believed that God justifies by renovating the human being, filling her with God's own righteousness, and uniting himself essentially with her. God created humanity in this state, and he intended to renew this blessedness for humanity in the person of Christ, the image of God. As Jesus was righteous through the divine essential indwelling, so believers might also be through an infusion of Christ's own divine righteousness.

28 Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.9.

29 Ibid., 3.11.12.

30 Ibid. 23

Calvin on Justification and Sanctification

Calvin responded that Osiander had confused two things that are meant to be distinguished: justification and sanctification. Calvin believed that justification is reconciliation with God through forgiveness and imputed righteousness, while sanctification is the restoration of the image of God through mortification and vivification. They are distinct but inseparable realities. Their distinction allows for the assurance of the believer, something Osiander's account lacks. Their unity comes by both being simultaneous consequences of faith.

Before Calvin took his fight with Osiander into the Institutes, he published a small tract simply called, "Against Osiander." In the tract, Calvin pointed out the confusion between justification and sanctification that he saw in Osiander's theology.

Calvin used the word "righteousness" to mean "undeserved reconciliation" or justification. He used the words "sanctification" and "regeneration" to mean "man's renewal." Calvin wrote of Osiander, "In his use of the words, Osiander falsely confuses regeneration with righteousness."31 Before beginning the Institutes' Osiander sections,

Calvin had already begun to work out in print some of the relationships that will be important below.

31 John Calvin, "Against Osiander," in Calvin's Ecclesiastical Advice, trans. Mary Beaty and Benjamin W Farley (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1991), 33-34. 24

In the Institutes, Calvin said that Osiander confused "justification and regeneration" under the term "double righteousness."32 This confusion resulted from taking the verb "to justify" in two different directions. In justification, Osiander believed that sinners were both pardoned and restored to grace. As Rainbow puts it,

"Osiander sees justification not only as imputed righteousness but also as infused righteousness."33 Calvin saw this as an unnecessary conflation which did more harm than good. In Calvin's thought, justification and sanctification are distinct but inseparable realities. I will first address their distinction and its result: the assurance of the believer. Then I will describe Calvin's idea of their unity.

Justification

"Justification" is a legal term that Calvin used to gloss many other biblical terms that describe the free acceptance that God vouchsafes to us in Christ. For Calvin, justification is twofold. It is the forgiveness of sins and the imputation of righteousness. Christ himself is the author of justification, and he applies it to us by the Holy Spirit through faith. Since the ground of justification is Jesus Christ alone, believers can be assured of their standing before God.

Calvin maintained that justification is clearly a forensic term, and he expresses this nowhere more clearly than in his polemic against Osiander. To support the claim,

32 Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.11.

33 Rainbow, "Double Grace," 101. 25

Calvin rallied exegetical evidence from Paul and the Psalms, calling Osiander an

"incompetent interpreter" for confusing what to him was plain from Scripture.34 Paul used "justification" to gloss a number of other biblical terms like "acceptance,"

"adoption," "imputation of righteousness," "forgiveness of sins," and "reconciliation," all of which point to God's free acceptance of the ungodly.35 Calvin wrote, "Forgiveness of sins is preached when men are taught that for them Christ became redemption, righteousness, salvation, and life, by whose name they are freely accounted righteous and innocent in God's sight."36

For Calvin, justification is twofold. It is "the acceptance with which God receives us into his favor as righteous men. And we say that it consists in the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ's righteousness."37 When it comes to being accounted righteous before God's tribunal, not even the highest and best "spiritual works" are taken into account. No one has "sufficient merit of works to acquire righteousness before God."38 Also, Calvin considers the imputation of Christ's righteousness to be part of the remission of sins.39 God renders the verdict "righteous" or "innocent" over the

34 Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.6, 3.11.11.

35 Ibid., 3.11.4.

* Ibid., 3.3.19.

37 Ibid., 3.11.2.

38 Ibid., 3.11.14.

»Ibid., 3.11.4. 26 justified, not simply a verdict of "not guilty," which presumes that only the lack of guilt may be established instead of the presence of righteousness.40 Those proclaimed innocent are the ones who by faith are identified with the righteous one, Jesus Christ, and God justifies these people through free pardon.41

Calvin maintained that Christ himself was the author of justification. Christ is both the material cause and the "Author and Minister of this great benefit" of righteousness.42 He justifies humanity through the power of his death and resurrection, that is, Christ justifies humanity through his obedience to the Father.43 Calvin maintained that the semantic differences between Osiander and himself could be overcome so long as Osiander granted that justification was the result of Christ's human, fleshly obedience.44 Christ makes the benefit of free pardon ours by the Holy

Spirit through faith, which means that human beings may be assured of their standing before God. Assurance of God's free acceptance through Christ is an important strand of Calvin's Osiandrian polemic which I will consider later in this chapter. However, free acceptance is not the only benefit of Christ's human obedience. There is also the restoration of humanity which Calvin calls sanctification.

40 Cf. Ibid., 3.11.2.

41 Ibid., 3.11.11.

42 Ibid., 3.11.7.

43 Ibid., 3.11.8-9.

44 Ibid., 3.11.9 Their material disagreement on this issue is the subject of the next chapter. 27

Sanctification

Calvin treated the doctrine of sanctification under the heading of "repentance."45

"Repentance," "restoration," "regeneration," and "sanctification" are all synonyms, and

Calvin used them interchangeably.46 The process of sanctification is continual and slow.

Calvin wrote that each believer was given a "race of repentance" to run which culminated in the goal (albeit, not in this life) of "true holiness and righteousness" before God.47 Because the process is never complete, those being sanctified are always liable to the judgment of death before God's tribunal.48 Sanctification, then, is the continual and slow process of restoring the defaced - but never effaced - image of God in the human person.

To understand Calvin's critique of Osiander, we must look to his full engagement in the Institutes. The major section is Book III in which Calvin addressed

Osiander's doctrine of justification. However, in Books I and II, Calvin laid the groundwork for Book Ill's argument. In Book I, Calvin outlined his doctrine of the image of God in distinction to Osiander's. While Osiander believed that Jesus in his humanity was the image of God in which God made Adam, Calvin placed the imago in

«Ibid., 3.3.9.

« Cf. Ibid.

47 Ibid.

«Ibid., 3.11.11,3.14.9. 28 the excellence of human beings over against other creatures.49 In the fall, Adam was alienated from God in such a way that the image, though "not totally annihilated and destroyed in him," "was so corrupted that whatever remains is frightful deformity."50

Calvin maintained that Christ is called the "second Adam" because Christ's life and work "restores us to true and complete integrity."51 The purpose of regeneration or sanctification is "that Christ should reform us to God's image."52 Calvin maintained this idea in Book III of the Institutes, where in his main polemic against Osiander he wrote,

"The closer any man comes to the likeness of God, the more the image of God shines in him. In order that believers may reach this goal, God assigns to them a race of repentance, which they are to run throughout their lives."53

The race of repentance, the life of sanctification, is the "true turning of our life to

God, a turning that arises from a pure and earnest fear of him; and it consists in the mortification of our flesh and of the old man, and in the vivification of the Spirit."54 The church preaches the mortification of repentance when it proclaims that all of a human

«Ibid., 1.15.4.

50 Ibid.

51 Ibid.

52 Ibid.

53 Ibid., 3.3.9. Emphasis added.

s^ Ibid., 3.3.5. 29 being's thoughts, inclinations, and efforts "are corrupt and vicious."55 The church preaches the vivification of the Spirit when it follows the mortification of the flesh with the proclamation of rebirth in Christ.56 The life of repentance is continual and slow; human beings must devote themselves to it "if they would abide in Christ."57

According to Calvin, God does not intend sanctification to make believers anything other than human beings. Together with Calvin, Osiander believed that sanctification restored the image of God. However, Osiander described the imago differently from Calvin. On the one hand, the image of God is Christ in his humanity.

On the other hand, Osiander tied the image of God together with his doctrine of essential righteousness.58 Osiander believed that God restored his image in human beings by pouring the eternal Son's metaphysical substance into them. Calvin retorted,

"as if God were unable to make us conform to himself by the inestimable power of his

Spirit!"59 Calvin believed that restoring the image of God in humanity did not render human beings consubstantial with God.60

55 Ibid., 3.3.19.

56 Ibid.

57 Ibid., 3.3.20.

58 Ibid., 1.15.5.

59 Ibid. Calvin based his retort on 2 Corinthians 3:18.

60 Ibid. 30

Instead, Calvin argues that God intends sanctification to forge and form a human righteousness that is analogous to or harmonious with God's own righteousness. Calvin wrote, "The object of regeneration ... is to manifest in the life of believers a harmony and agreement between God's righteousness and their obedience, and thus to confirm the adoption that they have received as sons."61 For Calvin, sanctification is the process whereby the Spirit of God calls forth in human beings a truly human, obedient response to the divine action in Jesus Christ.

According to Calvin, Christ is the author of sanctification just as he is the author of justification.62 In this way, sanctification is a gift of God the Father.63 God "reforms us by his Spirit... through the hand of his Son, to whom he has entrusted the whole fullness of the Holy Spirit."64 Christ, the author of justification and sanctification, both freely accepts us and reforms us by Spirit-ually uniting us to him.65 The call to repentance and regeneration is freely given, but its efficacy depends upon the working of the "Spirit of regeneration."66

61 Ibid., 3.6.1. Calvin cited Galatians 4:5 and 2 Peter 1:10 here.

62 Ibid., 3.3.20.

w Ibid., 3.3.21.

<" Ibid., 3.11.12.

65 Ibid., 3.11.10.

«• Ibid., 3.3.21. 31

The Assurance of the Believer

As the previous sections have shown, Calvin maintained that justification and sanctification were distinct but inseparable. His account attempted to make sense of the biblical material on the topic of human salvation, and his explanation had direct pastoral implications. Calvin insisted that distinguishing justification and sanctification while keeping them united in Christ allowed the believer both to be assured of her free acceptance before God and yet also to appraise realistically her own sin and faithfully run the race of repentance.

The assurance of the believer is a recurring theme in the Osiander material.67

Calvin stated that Osiander's doctrine of essential righteousness enfeebled the assurance of the believer.68 Since Osiander mixed free acceptance and regeneration in such a way that the former was dependent upon the latter, Calvin believed that under

Osiander's understanding no one could rest "wholly in God's mere mercy."69 So long as free acceptance is based entirely on the infusion of God's essential righteousness, something within the believer is the basis of justification. And since the transformation is not complete in this life, Calvin wrote, "Assuredly, he will hang uncertainly,

67 Cf. Billings, Calvin, Participation, and the Gift, 57-58. Billings suggests that "gratitude" is one of the main reasons that Calvin maintains the distinction between justification and sanctification. While gratitude might be a result of assurance, the assurance of God's free acceptance is more prominent in Calvin's Osiandrian polemic.

68 Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.11.

«> Ibid., 3.11.12. 32 wavering to this side and to that, for he will not be allowed to assume in himself as much righteousness as he needs for assurance."70

The reason the believer would hang uncertainly in this way is that sanctification is never complete in this life. The believer can stand with full confidence before God only if sanctification is a distinct process and if justification is founded outside the believer. Bruce McCormack makes this point well, "[God's work in us] knows of periods of growth and flourishing, but it also knows of periods of extreme aridity. If we were to look to ourselves for our assurance, all would be lost."71 As Wilhelm Niesel further notes, for Calvin even our best deeds are still "sullied by sin." Even the works of the regenerate need to be justified by God's grace through faith.72 Justification means that humans are covered by the righteousness of Christ so that they do not have to tremble at the coming judgment even though they know that they would fall short if judged on their own merits.73 The distinction of justification and sanctification means that believers may rest on Christ alone for their free acceptance before God. The person who lives fully with the distinction and unity of justification and sanctification in Christ

70 Ibid., 3.11.11.

71 Bruce L. McCormack, "Justitia aliena: Karl Barth in Conversation with the Evangelical Doctrine of Imputed Righteousness," in Justification in Perspective: Historical Developments and Contemporary Challenges, ed. Bruce L McCormack, 2006,172.

72 Wilhelm Niesel, The Theology of Calvin, trans. Harold Knight (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1956), 136.

73 Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.11. 33 can live inside the reality expressed in Romans 7. There Paul cries, "Oh, wretched person that I am!" and yet falls completely upon the mercy of God.74 This pastoral concern drives significant sections of the Osiander material in the 1559 Institutes.75

The Relationship of Justification and Sanctification

While Osiander confused justification with sanctification, Calvin held them to be distinct but inseparable realities. Calvin's emphasis on sanctification has led

Wubbenhorst to call him the "theologian of regeneration" vis-a-vis Luther, the

"theologian of justification."76 While Calvin did perhaps distinguish justification and sanctification in ways that Luther sometimes did not, Calvin is more a "theologian of

Christ" than Wubbenhorst allows. For Calvin, Christ himself is the unity of justification and sanctification.

Calvin called justification and sanctification, considered together, the "sum of the gospel."77 He considered it a "fact abundantly clear" that "the whole of the gospel is contained under these two headings."78 There is little wonder then, as Venema says, that Calvin tried to develop a doctrine that insured "both the inseparability of and the

™ ibid.

75 Cf. McCormack, "Justitia aliena," 171-72; See also, Ellen T. Charry, By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). Charry has tried to alert us to the importance of considering the pastoral function of Christian doctrine.

76 Wiibbenhorst, "Calvin's Doctrine of Justification," 117.

77 Calvin, Institutes, 3.3.1.

7» Ibid., 3.3.19. 34 distinction between justification and sanctification."79 Separation and mixing are both problems. Separating them from one another rends the gospel. Fusing them, as

Osiander did, renders the gospel bad news for there would be no hope of resting finally on the grace of God in Christ.

If justification and sanctification are inseparable but not fused together, then how is it possible to describe their relationship? First, Calvin used an image from nature: the sun both illumines and warms the earth. But "if the brightness of the sun cannot be separated from its heat, shall we therefore say that the earth is warmed by its light, or lighted by its heat?"80 Light and heat are mutually and indivisibly connected, but

"reason itself forbids us to transfer the peculiar qualities of the one to the other."81

Given the state of science in the Sixteenth Century, Calvin's metaphor was apt. Here was an example in nature of two things (light and heat) that were distinct but inseparable.

Recently, scholars have speculated about how Calvin related justification and sanctification to one another. Bruce McCormack suggests that Calvin made regeneration the ground of justification because regeneration was Calvin's account of how the Spirit awakens faith in human beings. Since justification is founded on faith

79 Venema, Accepted and Renewed in Christ, 160.

80 Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.6.

si Ibid. 35 and faith comes from regeneration, then justification is founded upon regeneration.82

McCormack suggests that despite Calvin's best intentions, Calvin made something in human beings the ground of justification instead of or alongside of the alien righteousness of Christ.83

Thomas Wenger takes the opposite view: Calvin founds sanctification on justification. He argues that Calvin placed justification in the primary theological position because sanctification "is impossible if not founded on justification."84

According to Wenger, Calvin thinks that Paul reasons from justification to the

"consequent work" of sanctification.85 In Wenger's estimation, faith leads to justification which leads to sanctification.

Even though McCormack and Wenger draw from the same material, both miss the mark. McCormack appears to read Calvin through the lens of later Reformed understandings of the relationship of faith and regeneration which put regeneration before faith in the ordo salutis. Wenger appears to read Calvin through the lens of his argument with the so-called "New Perspective on Calvin" school which interprets

82 Bruce L. McCormack, "Union with Christ in Calvin's Theology: Ground for a Divinization Theory?," in Tributes to John Calvin: A Celebration of His Quincentenary (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2010), 523-24.

83 Ibid., 526-27. It should be noted that McCormack makes this point against those who want to place more weight on union with Christ than Calvin's understanding can support. His point here may be more of an exegesis of readings of Calvin than a reading of Calvin himself.

84 Wenger, "The New Perspective on Calvin," 323.

85 Ibid. 36 union with Christ toward Eastern ideas of deification. As the previous discussion of the

Institutes has shown, Calvin did not maintain that either justification or sanctification grounded the other. Instead, he averred that justification and sanctification are the simultaneous benefits of Christ's death and resurrection. Neither founds the other because both are direct consequences of the faith which receives Christ.86

Second, justification and sanctification do not occur at different times. Calvin wrote clearly about the temporality of justification and sanctification both in and before the 1559 revision of the Institutes. As early as 1539, Calvin wrote, "The Lord freely justifies his own in order that he may at the same time restore them to true righteousness by sanctification of his Spirit."87 Later in that edition, Calvin wrote that God joins justification "at the same time" with sanctification.88 Calvin carried the phraseology into the 1559 Osiandrian material. When God receives someone into grace [justification],

God "at the same time" bestows the sanctifying Spirit.89 God graciously gave Christ to be received by faith in order to bestow this "double grace" of salvation upon human beings.90 Calvin complained that Osiander separated what should never be separated.91

86 For more on the relationship of faith and union with Christ, see chapter two.

87 Calvin, Institutes, 3.3.19. Emphasis added.

88 Ibid., 3.14.9.

89 Ibid., 3.11.6.

90 Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.1; See also Alister E McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 255-56.

91 See Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.11. 37

Jonathan Rainbow calls justification and sanctification "theological equals" that "always come together."92

Third, justification and sanctification, while distinct, are the simultaneous benefits of Christ's death and resurrection. Calvin noted in the 1539 edition the

"twofold blessing" that came from Christ's death: "liberation from the death to which we had been bound [justification], and mortification of our flesh [sanctification]."93 In

1559, Calvin added in a later section, "Therefore, we divide the substance of our salvation between Christ's death and resurrection as follows: through his death, sin was wiped out and death extinguished; through his resurrection, righteousness was restored and life raised up, so that—thanks to his resurrection—his death manifested its power and efficacy in us."94 Calvin attributed both of the negative aspects of his definitions of justification and sanctification (the forgiveness of sins and the mortification of the flesh) to Christ's death. He did the same with the resurrection, attributing the positive definitional parts (imputation of righteousness and vivification) to it. Christ and his work are so central to justification and sanctification that both have their root and are integrated in Christ.95

92 Rainbow, "Double Grace," 102.

93 Calvin, Institutes, 2.16.7.

94 Ibid., 2.16.13.

95 Partee, The Theology of John Calvin, 222; Rainbow, "Double Grace," 103. 38

Fourth, neither justification nor sanctification is logically prior to the other. While it is misleading to say that justification and sanctification stand on their own grounds, as Rainbow does, he is right to mention that faith appropriates them both and that they remain distinct aspects of Christ's work in the life of the believer.96 Calvin wrote in 1559,

"Now, both repentance and forgiveness of sins—that is, newness of life and free reconciliation—are conferred on us by Christ, and both are attained by us through faith."97 In the same paragraph, Calvin clarified the relationship of regeneration/repentance and faith: "There are some, however, who suppose that repentance precedes faith, rather than flows from it, or is produced by it as fruit from a tree. Such persons have never known the power of repentance, and are moved to feel this way by an unduly slight argument."98 In other places, Calvin states flatly that repentance is neither the basis for deserving pardon nor is it the cause of salvation.99

All of Calvin's sustained concern about the relationship of justification and sanctification resolves in the Osiandrian polemic. Calvin was concerned that Osiander based justification in regeneration, ironically, the same concern McCormack raises about Calvin.100 Calvin responded not by basing faith in regeneration and justification in

96 Rainbow, "Double Grace," 102.

97 Calvin, Institutes, 3.3.1.

98 Ibid.

99 Ibid., 3.3.20-21.

100 Ibid., 3.11.6. 39 faith, but by basing both regeneration and justification in the faith which is nothing more than grasping the Christ who has already come to claim it.101 This, too, is a gift from God, but faith is not the result of regeneration. Faith is regeneration's instrumental cause.102 God gives Christ to be grasped by faith. Christ himself gives the double grace of justification and sanctification.103

Conclusion

This chapter addressed the differing relationship that Osiander and Calvin saw between justification and sanctification. Osiander rejected Melanchthon's understanding of forensic justification and made justification depend upon the renovation of the believer by an infusion of God's essential righteousness. Calvin disagreed. He believed that mixing free acceptance and renovation only confused the issue and made it impossible for a believer to rely fully on the grace of God.104 To separate them was to effectively tear Christ into pieces.105 Therefore, for Calvin, justification and sanctification are distinct but inseparable. Their distinction allows for the assurance of the believer, and one can only find their unity in their shared relationship to union with Christ through Spirit-given faith. While it was undoubtedly a

101 Ibid., 3.3.19.

102 Q: Partee, The Theology of John Calvin, 222.

103 Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.1.

104 Ibid., 3.11.12.

105 Ibid., 3.11.6. 40 cause for disagreement, the relationship between justification and sanctification is not the central or controlling issue in Calvin's Osiander material because, for Calvin, it relies on deeper concerns to frame itself: to distinguish himself from Osiander, Calvin appealed to the faith that unites believers with Christ. Union with Christ, a topic that both Calvin and Osiander thought controlled their doctrines of justification, is the topic of the next chapter. Chapter 2

The Union of the Believer with Christ

The majority of contemporary scholars see the crux of the argument between

Calvin and Osiander as a disagreement over the nature of the believer's union with

Christ. Cornells Venema calls the whole conversation of union with Christ the "crucial difference" between Calvin and Osiander, and he believes that "in Calvin's judgment,

[Osiander's] confusions of justification and sanctification, as well as his diminishment of

Christ's redemptive work, spring from his doctrine of an immediate and essential union of the believer with Christ."1 In other words, Osiander's errors regarding union control his errors in the justification/sanctification relationship and in his diminution of the salvific importance of Christ's humanity.

For Craig Carpenter, both Osiander and Trent misunderstood "the nature of our union with Christ, the way Christ is in us and we are in Christ, which holds 'the highest degree of importance' in articulations of the way we receive the grace of Christ."2

Alister McGrath believes that "union with Christ" has heuristic value in explaining the development of the Institutes in its 1559 edition. He believes that Calvin is concerned,

1 Cornelis P. Venema, Accepted and Renewed in Christ: The "Twofold Grace of God" and the Interpretation of Calvin's Theology (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 158.

2 Craig B. Carpenter, "A Question of Union with Christ? Calvin and Trent on Justification," Westminster Theological Journal 64, no. 2 (Fall 2002): 382.

41 42

"not so much with justification, as with incorporation into Christ (which has, as one of its necessary consequences, justification)."3 This concern of Calvin's "goes some considerable way towards explaining" the relatively unimportant place given to justification in the 1559 edition.4 Richard Gaffin puts the issue into soteriological perspective: "justification . .. stands or falls with the believer's underlying union with

Christ, properly understood."5 For these and other scholars, the crucial point of disagreement between Calvin and Osiander is not justification itself, or even the relationship of justification and sanctification, but rather the understanding of the union of the believer with Jesus Christ.

Nevertheless, there is considerable difference in the way scholars describe this divergence. Patricia Wilson-Kastner argues that the real issue for Calvin is that

Osiander mingles human and divine nature in his understanding of the believer's union with Christ.6 Carpenter agrees and points out that Calvin's understanding of non- substantial union is not meant to put union with Christ into some kind of "secondary status" vis-a-vis justifying imputation. Union is not the problem; a "gross mingling of

3 Alister E McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 256.

4 Ibid.

5 Richard B. Gaffin Jr., "Justification and Union with Christ," in A Theological Guide to Calvin's Institutes: Essays and Analysis, ed. David W. Hall and Peter A. Lillback (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2008), 269.

6 Patricia Wilson-Kastner, "Andreas Osiander's Theology of Grace in the Perspective of the Influence of Augustine of Hippo," The Sixteenth Century Journal 10, no. 2 (Summer 1979): 88. 43

Christ with believers" is. A certain type of union is still primary in Calvin's understanding of human salvation.7

Julie Canlis, like Carpenter, attempts to articulate the crucial difference between

Calvin and Osiander on union.8 Both Calvin and Osiander describe participation in

Christ, but Osiander uses "substantial categories," while Calvin uses "Spirit- categories."9 Canlis highlights the importance of the Spirit in Calvin's understanding of union: "When we underestimate Calvin's doctrine of the Holy Spirit as enabling a true, non-substantial participation in God and his gifts, then we misunderstand the nature of his complaint against Osiander."10 Both wanted to prioritize participation, but while

Osiander wanted a metaphysical participation between humans and Christ, Calvin wanted "participation by the Spirit in Jesus."11

Stephen Edmondson develops these ideas similarly; however, he does not employ "Spirit-categories" to describe Calvin's view. Instead, he speaks of a union of persons: "Calvin distances himself from Osiander's contention that this union is metaphysical in nature, a union between Christ's divinity and our humanity. Instead,

7 Carpenter, "A Question of Union with Christ?," 383.

8 Julie Canlis, "Calvin, Osiander and Participation in God," International Journal of Systematic Theology 6, no. 2 (2004): 175.

9 Ibid., 176.

10 Ibid.

» Ibid. 44 he turns to the notion of fellowship."12 Edmondson says that this union is "in the first place, social," and he points to the image of Christ sitting around a table with his disciples.13 The emphasis here is on a "relationship established between persons." 14

While Edmondson seems to be moving in the right direction, the distinction should still likely be between a metaphysical and a spiritual union, not a metaphysical and a personal one. For Osiander, on the one hand, the union with Christ is through substantial participation; i.e., the union with Christ is achieved and explained metaphysically. For Calvin, on the other hand, the union is through the secret power of the Holy Spirit; i.e., the union with Christ is achieved and explained Spirit-ually. By characterizing Calvin's view as "personal" as opposed to "metaphysical," Edmondson draws attention to the fact that Osiander thought primarily of a substantial union with

Christ's divinity. Calvin's spiritual participation, on the other hand, is with the whole

Christ. However, Edmondson's account neglects that a union with the whole Christ

(i.e., a "personal" union) could also be achieved and described metaphysically. If Calvin had developed his account metaphysically, we might expect to a kind of Neo-Platonic participation serving as the means of union. Instead, Calvin maintained that the means of this union is the secret power of the Spirit.

12 Stephen Edmondson, Calvin's Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 140.

" Ibid.

" Ibid. 45

While union with Christ formed an important part of Calvin's and Osiander's respective soteriologies, as contemporary scholars have noted, this shared emphasis masks deep differences of opinion. Osiander taught that union took place between the believer and the divine nature of Christ by way of an essential indwelling of Christ's divine nature through an infusion of divine essence. Calvin argued that union took place between the believer and the whole Christ by way of a "conjunction of essence" with Christ's human nature through the secret power of the Holy Spirit and faith.15

Despite this important divergence over union, their major material difference resides closer to the doctrine of the Lord's Supper (see below).

Shared Emphasis

While Calvin and Osiander diverge greatly on the theme of union with Christ, scholars are right to see union with Christ as a point of shared emphasis. Calvin's Lutheran interlocutors, in fact, accused Calvin of Osiandrianism because of his major emphasis on participatory union with Christ. There are two major similarities in how Calvin and

Osiander understand union with Christ. These similarities are worth noting in order to place Calvin's writings within a proper polemical context.

First, in their soteriologies, both Calvin and Osiander put union before justification. I outlined in the last chapter the way Calvin related justification and

15 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 3.11.6. 46 sanctification to faith. I will discuss later in the chapter the way in which Calvin tied faith to union with Christ, effectively placing union with Christ logically, if not temporally, 'before' justification. Calvin acknowledged that Osiander made a similar theological move. In the brief, "Against Osiander," Calvin wrote, "But he places the image of the essence of righteousness at the first and highest level (an appearance that he has fashioned himself) and leaves nothing to the gracious acceptance of God, which he makes only a sort of inferior appendix."16 For Osiander, the essence of righteousness is given through the essential indwelling of God in the believer. Osiander puts indwelling before justification, which he then seems to make "a sort of inferior appendix."

Second, both Calvin and Osiander also tied their respective theologies of union to the Lord's Supper. According to Calvin, Osiander called all people who did not agree with his doctrine of essential righteousness "Zwinglian" because "they do not hold the view that Christ is eaten in substance in the Lord's Supper."17 Calvin also saw that there was an important connection to be drawn between union with Christ and the Lord's

Supper and made this connection in the Institutes well before 1559.18 Later, he maintained that there was a "communion of believers with the flesh and blood of the

16 John Calvin, "Against Osiander," in Calvin's Ecclesiastical Advice, trans. Mary Beaty and Benjamin W Farley (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1991), 33.

17 Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.10.

«Ibid., 4.17.2. 47

Lord" attested and realized in the Supper.19 In 1559, he argued that the Spirit lifts believers to Christ's presence in the Supper and that the Supper is "a help whereby we may be engrafted into Christ's body, or, engrafted, may grow more and more together with him, until he perfectly joins us with him in the heavenly life."20

Osiander's Doctrine of Union

According to Calvin, Osiander taught that union took place between the believer and the divine nature of Christ by way of an essential indwelling of Christ's divine nature through an infusion of divine essence. It will be helpful to outline Osiander's doctrine of union as Calvin saw it in order to situate Calvin's understanding of union with Christ vis-a-vis the duplex gratia and the sacraments. Ultimately, the comparison will show that there are more substantive issues between the two thinkers than their description of union with Christ.

Osiander taught that union took place between the believer and Christ's divine nature. Osiander maintained not just that union with Christ was a necessary part of understanding salvation; he also specified the means of that union. "For the fact that it

[union] comes about through the power of the Holy Spirit that we grow together with

Christ... he reckons of almost no importance unless Christ's essence be mingled with

is Ibid, 4.17.9.

20 Ibid., 4.17.31,33. 48 ours."21 For Osiander, there is no union with Christ without an essential indwelling of

Christ in the believer.22

By insisting on essential indwelling, Calvin argued that Osiander forced "a gross mingling of Christ with believers."23 It would seem right to say that this confusion of natures was Calvin's central objection to Osiander; however, Calvin himself pressed deeper.24 He maintained that Osiander's doctrine would lead believers "away from the priesthood of Christ and the person of the Mediator to his outward deity."25 However,

Calvin averred that Christ's deity was shared by the whole Trinity. If Christ's deity is our righteousness, then the deity of God is our righteousness. Calvin appealed to 1

Corinthians 1:30 in which Paul claimed that Christ was made our righteousness by God.

Calvin maintained that Osiander's doctrine of essential indwelling implied that the whole Trinity became righteousness for believers.26

Osiander's doctrine was, therefore, not simply a union with Christ by essential indwelling; it was a union with the divinity of the whole Trinity. As Calvin saw it, there

21 Ibid., 3.11.5. See also, 3.11.8.

22 Ibid., 3.11.10. Calvin accused Osiander of "wrongly twisting" scriptural passages "from the heavenly life to the present state." It seems that Osiander's scriptural interpretation suffered from an over-realized eschatology.

23 Ibid.

24 Wilson-Kastner, "Andreas Osiander's Theology of Grace in the Perspective of the Influence of Augustine of Hippo," 88.

25 Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.8.

26 Ibid. 49 were two results to this understanding. First, "God pours himself into us as a gross mixture."27 Second, God breathes his own righteousness on humans so as to make them really righteous.28 This righteousness is "both God himself and the goodness or holiness or integrity of God."29 The result is a "mixture of substances by which God transfusing himself into us, as it were - makes us part of himself."30 By placing the weight of union on Christ's divine nature, Osiander effectively removed Christ's human life and work from the equation by replacing the Mediator with, as Venema says, "an immediate absorption of the believer into the sphere of the divine being."31

Calvin's Doctrine of Union

The topic of union with Christ is discussed at length in contemporary scholarship.

Whether as an exploration of coherence between Calvin's theology and St. Bernard's or as an attempt to put Calvin into dialogue with Eastern understandings of deification, scholarship keeps asking the question, "What did Calvin mean by union?"32 The locus classicus of this discussion in the Osiander material has been Institutes 3.11.10:

27 Ibid., 3.11.10.

28 Ibid.

29 Ford Lewis Battles, Analysis of the Institutes of the Christian Religion of John Calvin (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980), 3.11.10.

30 Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.5.

31 Venema, Accepted and Renewed in Christ, 159.

32 See, Dennis E. Tamburello, Union with Christ: John Calvin and the Mysticism of St. Bernard (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994); J. Todd Billings, "United to God through Christ: Assessing Calvin on the Question of Deification," Harvard Theological Review 98, no. 03 (2005): 315-334; 50

Therefore, that joining together of Head and members, that indwelling of Christ in our hearts—in short, that mystical union—are accorded by us the highest degree of importance, so that Christ, having been made ours, makes us sharers with him in the gifts with which he has been endowed.33

Calvin discussed "mystical union" (and that, very briefly) in only one other passage of the Institutes. That section happens to also be in material intended to refute Osiander's theology.34 If Calvin only employed the phrase "mystical union" in polemic against

Osiander, it follows that Calvin's usage of the phrase had a polemical edge that relates to Osiander's own conceptions. In contrast to Osiander's immediate absorption of believers into God, Calvin asserted that union between the believer and the whole

Christ takes place when Christ unites the believer to himself by way of a conjunction of essence with his human nature through Holy Spirit-inspired faith. It is "mystical" because it cannot be adequately described in the categories that Osiander put forward; in short, it is a mystical union because it is a mysterious one wrought by the "secret power" of the Holy Spirit.

Carl Mosser, "The Greatest Possible Blessing: Calvin and Deification," Scottish Journal of Theology 55, no. 01 (2002): 36-57; J. Todd Billings, Calvin, Participation, and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Carpenter, "A Question of Union with Christ?"; Marcus P. Johnson, "Luther and Calvin on Union with Christ," Tides Et Historia 39, no. 2 (Sum-Fall 2007): 59-77; Gaffin Jr., "Justification and Union with Christ"; Bruce L. McCormack, "Union with Christ in Calvin's Theology: Ground for a Divinization Theory?," in Tributes to John Calvin: A Celebration of His Quincentenary (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2010), 504-29; Charles Partee, "Calvin's Central Dogma Again," The Sixteenth Century Journal 18, no. 2 (Summer 1987): 191-200; Mark A. Garcia, Life in Christ: Union with Christ and Twofold Grace in Calvin's Theology, Studies in Christian History and Thought (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2008).

33 Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.10.

34 Calvin, Institutes, 2.12.7; Tamburello, Union with Christ, 84. 51

Calvin's doctrine of union with Christ, however conceived, is an important part of the Institutes.35 Gaffin points out that union is "so central and pivotal" to the

"application of redemption" in Calvin's soteriology that Calvin placed it at the beginning of Book 3 of the Institutes as its point of departure.36 Its location shows the

"controlling importance Calvin placed on union" in his soteriology.37 Partee, while acknowledging the difficulty of finding a "central doctrine" for Calvin, still suggests that the doctrine of union can serve as an adequate central point for viewing the whole of the Institutes.38, While Calvin developed the theme throughout the several editions of the Institutes, he added considerable material on the topic in 1559, a large portion of which went to rebut Osiander.

The importance of union for Calvin's soteriology prompts the question about its relationship to Eastern ideas of divinization or deification. Carl Mosser argues that since

"mystical union" is a technical phrase for deification, Calvin's usage twice of the phrase should be taken as evidence that Calvin himself held a view "substantially the same as the patristic notion of theosis."39 Since Calvin used the phrase only in refutation of

35 For the place of Paul and Luther in the development of Calvin's doctrine of union, see Garcia, Life in Christ; Johnson, "Luther and Calvin on Union with Christ."

36 Gaffin Jr., "Justification and Union with Christ," 259.

37 Ibid., 266.

38 Partee, "Calvin's Central Dogma Again," 196.

39 Mosser, "The Greatest Possible Blessing," 50. 52

Osiander, as Mosser acknowledges, it is better to say that while Calvin might be in substantial agreement with the Fathers on divinization, here he was using the phrase for a specific polemical purpose. There is no evidence that since some other theologians used "mystical union" as a term for divinization, Calvin also intended the same.

The contemporary concept of deification is not the same as Calvin's participation in Christ.40 Partee writes, "The concept of deification applied to Calvin might have some plausibility if the reality of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is understood in a Sabellian direction."41 That is, Calvin would have to make the same move as Osiander (essential union with Christ's divinity) in order to support an idea of the divinization of the human being. However, Calvin is clear throughout the Institutes, and increasingly clear in the 1559 material, that union is with Christ, "Christ" being understood as the divine- human Mediator between God and humanity. While Osiander made Christ's humanity merely instrumental to union with God, Calvin made union with the whole Christ synonymous with union with God.42 Apart from his insistence on the concrete reality of union with Christ, Calvin refuses the "stupid inquisitiveness" he attributes to Osiander

40 For a detailed description of the development of the doctrine of deification in the East, see Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

41 Charles Partee, The Theology of John Calvin (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 167.

42 Ibid., 167,178. In a later section, I will show how Calvin retreats from this stance in his treatment of the eschaton. 53 and remarks on at least seven occasions in the Institutes that the nature of our union with Christ is arcanus or incomprehensibilis.43

In addition, union with God was humanity's primal state. In 1539, Calvin linked the imago dei with participatio dei: "Scripture attributed nothing else to him than that he had been created in the image of God [Gen. 1:27], thus suggesting that man was blessed, not because of his own good actions, but by participation in God."44 In 1559, the same year he rebutted Osiander's understanding of a primal union with God in the imago, he added that it was Adam's original state to be "united and bound to his Maker."45 In that same passage, incorporating material from earlier editions, Calvin attributed the original union with the same gifts that we might receive from our sanctifying union with Christ: wisdom, virtue, holiness, truth, and justice. However, the fall from union with God led to blindness, impotence, impurity, vanity, and injustice.46 It is the perfection of human happiness to be united with God.47 Therefore, the union with

Christ in salvation is the beginning of a restoration of something humanity had lost. If

43 For "stupid inquisitiveness," see John Calvin, "To Cranmer (April 1552)," in Letters of John Calvin, ed. Jules Bonnet, trans. David Constable, vol. 2 (New York: B. Franklin, 1972), 346; The seven references to mystery may be found in Calvin, Institutes, 2.12.7, 3.11.5,4.17.1, 4.17.9, 4.17.31, 4.17.33, 4.19.35; These references were helpfully pointed out in Tamburello, Union with Christ, 89.

44 Calvin, Institutes, 2.2.1.

45 Ibid., 2.1.5.

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid., 1.15.6. 54

Calvin has a doctrine of "deification" in the Institutes, it is a doctrine of the restoration of, not addition to, human nature.

The mysteriousness of the union does not keep Calvin from expressing some of its central features. First, it is Christ who unites the believer to himself. Calvin wrote in the Osiander material, "We do not, therefore, contemplate him outside ourselves from afar...," instead, "he deigns to make us one with him."48 Elsewhere, in material reworked for 1559, he wrote, "he unites himself to us by the Spirit alone."49 This emphasis on Christ's unifying action also appears in the 1543 edition: "We can be fully and firmly joined with God only when Christ joins us with him."50 This final quotation emphasizes what we have already said: there is no union with God that is not a union with Christ. Christ, the agent of union, is also its mediator and its terminus.

Second, the union with Christ is not by an infusion or mingling of essence, but by a conjunction of essence. "Essence" is a word that many scholars have found difficult to apply to Calvin's doctrine of union. Partee, for example, says that union for Calvin is

"real," not mystical or substantial.51 More recently, Julie Canlis makes the distinction between Osiander's use of "substance-categories" and Calvin's use of "Spirit-

«Ibid., 3.11.10.

«Ibid., 3.1.3.

5" Ibid., 2.16.3.

51 Partee, "Calvin's Central Dogma Again," 196. Partee calls the union "real" "in a genuine but unspecified and unspecifiable sense." 55 categories."52 For many, ontological language does not seem to fit Calvin's view of the world.

However, Calvin was willing to speak both of "substance" and "essence" in ad- hoc ways when he explicated his doctrine of union. From distinguishing between the substance of human nature created good by God and the accidents of human nature that were corrupted by sin, to saying that we eat and drink the substance of Christ in the Supper, Calvin was not afraid to use language with ontological freight, especially when he attempted to distinguish himself from those who he felt used the language poorly.53 Billings helpfully points out that "the key term that Calvin objects to in

Osiander is not 'substance', but the 'inflowing' or 'transfusion' of substance in a way that neglects the Spirit."54

So how did Calvin respond to Osiander's claim that we are made one with Christ by a commingling of essence? Calvin maintained that if only Osiander had said that by a "conjunction of essence" Christ had become ours, then "he would have fed on these delights with less harm."55 Given this one caveat, he would have allowed Osiander to

52 Canlis, "Calvin, Osiander and Participation in God/' 176; See also, Edmondson, Calvin's Christology, 140-41. Edmondson distinguishes metaphysical and personal union and posits a "social metaphor" as "Calvin's primary understanding" of union with Christ.

53 Billings, Calvin, Participation, and the Gift, 46.

54 Ibid., 63.

55 Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.6. 56 go so far as to say that the "essence of the divine nature is poured into us"!56 While

Calvin worried that this language could be grossly misunderstood without proper qualification, still he did not think it was outside the bounds of responsible theological discourse to use it. As Billings writes, Calvin was after "a differentiated union of humanity with God."57

Third, and importantly, the conjunction of essence is between our human nature and Christ's human nature. In union with Christ, we share Christ's righteousness when we become "sharers with him in the gifts with which he has been endowed."58 We "put on Christ and are engrafted into his body."59 McCormack rightly notes, "[Union with

Christ] is a participation in the humanity of Christ, a participation in the 'substance' of his body that remains separated from us in space even as we participate in it."60 Union with Christ's humanity is itself a "spiritual" union for Calvin, a union which unites us to Christ's life and death in such a way that we reap the benefits of Christ's obedience.61

Edmondson, using Calvin's language, will call this a "fellowship of righteousness."62

56 Ibid.

57 Billings, "United to God through Christ," 316-17.

58 Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.10.

59 Ibid.

60 McCormack, "Union with Christ in Calvin's Theology," 509.

61 Tamburello, Union with Christ, 92-93; Calvin, Institutes, 2.16.7, 2.16.13, 3.3.9.

62 Edmondson, Calvin's Christology, 140; Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.10. 57

We are united with Christ's humanity as human beings in a fellowship of sharing God's gifts.

Fourth, the Holy Spirit is the bond of union between Christ and us. Throughout the Institutes, Calvin referred to the Holy Spirit in this way, affirming that it is only through the Spirit that we have communion with God in Christ.63 The Father gives the

Spirit to the Son to be its minister and steward. Through the Spirit, Christ unites us to himself.64 Just as union with God is mediated through Christ, so also is union with

Christ mediated through the Spirit.65 As the vinculum or coniunctio of union with Christ, the Spirit itself is the conjunction that binds the essence of Christ together with our essence, bridging the gap between heaven and earth.66

The Spirit's bridging of heaven and earth became especially important to Calvin in his sustained arguments with and against the Lutheran doctrine that Christ's human nature had received divine attributes by virtue of its hypostatic union with the eternal

Son, including omnipresence, a doctrine referred to today as the doctrine of ubiquity.

Calvin railed against Lutherans, especially Westphal and Heshusius, for this way of

63 See, for example, Calvin, Institutes, 1.13.14, 3.1.1, 3.2.24, 3.11.5; See also, Calvin, "Against Osiander," 33.

64 Calvin, Institutes, 3.1.2.

65 See Wilhelm Niesel, The Theology of Calvin, trans. Harold Knight (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1956), 124.

66 Cf. Garcia, Life in Christ, 210-11. 58 bringing Christ's body and blood to the Table at the Lord's Supper.671 reserve a full discussion of this topic for the next chapter; however, it is important to note here that

Calvin replaced the ubiquitarian ontology with a theology of the gap-bridging Spirit.68

He preferred referring to the "secret power of the Spirit" before relying on what seemed to him to be questionable theological tactics.69

Fifth, the Spirit works faith in us. Calvin called faith "the principal work" of the

Spirit and set faith at the head of the twofold grace of justification and sanctification.70

Faith has no content other than the Christ it receives and embraces.71 Faith, in effect, is the bond of union "seen from our side."72 Christ "unites himself to us by the Spirit alone," and by that grace and power we in turn possess him.73 The Father gives Christ

67 John Calvin, "Clear Explanation of Sound Doctrine Concerning the True Partaking of the Flesh and Blood of Christ in the Holy Supper in Order to Dissipate the Mists of Tileman Heshusius," in Tracts and Treatises on the Reformation of the Church with a Short Life of Calvin by Theodore Beza, ed. Thomas F. Torrance, trans. Henry Beveridge, vol. 2, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958), 496-572; John Calvin, "Last Admonition of John Calvin to Joachim Westphal, Who, If He Heeds It Not, Must Henceforth Be Treated in the Way Which Paul Prescribes for Obstinate Heretics; Herein Also Are Refuted the Censures by Which Those of Magdeburg and Elsewhere Have Tried to Overturn Heaven and Earth," in Tracts and Treatises on the Reformation of the Church with a Short Life of Calvin by Theodore Beza, ed. Thomas F. Torrance, trans. Henry Beveridge, vol. 2, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958), 346-494.

68 Garcia, Life in Christ, 248-49.

69 Calvin, Institutes, 2.12.7, 3.11.5, 4.17.33.

70 Calvin, Institutes, 3.1.4. Elsewhere, Calvin also called faith the "proper and entire work of the Holy Spirit (4.14.8). See also, Partee, The Theology of John Calvin, 230-31; Gaffin Jr., "Justification and Union with Christ," 259.

71 Calvin, Institutes, 3.2.8.

72 Gaffin Jr., "Justification and Union with Christ," 259.

73 Calvin, Institutes, 3.1.3. 59 to be grasped by us, and the Spirit, the bond of union itself, binds us to Christ through faith. Faith is like a vessel open to receive Christ; it is meaningless and ultimately non­ existent without him.74

While Calvin placed Spirit-worked faith at the head of the twofold graces, he did so logically, not temporally. Calvin wrote about sanctification, "When we refer the origin of repentance to faith we do not imagine some space of time during which it brings it to birth."75 Faith and the sanctification of the Spirit cannot be separated from one another. They occur simultaneously.76 To be sure, there is a temporal priority given to the work of Christ as the atoning One. Its objective reality is what the Spirit illumines for us and causes us to receive in the faith from which flows the believer's new standing

(justification) and the believer's new nature (sanctification).77

In conversation with Osiander, Calvin answered the charge that he had been teaching that faith itself was righteousness by emphasizing faith's weakness. Calvin considered this accusation "slander," and he appealed to the empty faith that receives nothing but Christ.78 Faith does not have the power in itself to justify; only Christ has

74 Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.7; Victor A. Shepherd, The Nature and Function of Faith in the Theology of John Calvin (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1983), 20-24.

75 Calvin, Institutes, 3.3.2.

76 Ibid., 3.2.8.

77 Cf., Ibid., 3.1.4.

78 Ibid., 3.11.10. 60 that power.79 As Victor Shepherd writes, "Faith 'justifies' only in so far as faith puts on him who alone is rightly related to the Father."80 Faith, ever only weak and middling, cannot be the bond of union considered in itself. The Spirit, whose principal work is faith, is the bond of union, and we are kept in the grace of Christ not by our own grasping of him but by the Spirit's secret power.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Calvin's doctrine of union with Christ as seen through the lens of the

Osiander material can be summarized thus: Christ unites us to himself by the Spirit through faith in such a way that his essence and ours remain distinct. This union is a human one, shared between our humanity and Christ's. In this union, and in no other, we are united with God and participate in the life of the Trinity. This doctrine of union controls the relationships that pertain between justification and sanctification and relates closely to Calvin's doctrine of the Lord's Supper.

However, the doctrine of union is not the material difference that we have been looking for. There are other reasons why Calvin and Osiander disagree even on this topic. One such reason we have already mentioned briefly: the doctrine of ubiquity. The other remains to be addressed: the place of Christ's human nature in salvation. These

79 Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.7; Partee, The Theology of John Calvin, 230.

80 Shepherd, The Nature and Function of Faith in the Theology of John Calvin, 1. 61 deeply interrelated themes in the Osiandrian discourse are the topics of the next chapter.

Since both Osiander and Calvin put union with Christ before justification, it is clear that union with Christ is a higher-level disagreement than the relationship of justification and sanctification in that the doctrine of union conditions and places limitations upon the ways in which the two theologians could talk about salvation. The relationship of union to the Lord's Supper is less clear. Calvin did not maintain that the mode of Christ's presence in the Lord's Supper was different from the mode of Christ's presence in saving union with the believer. Instead, he talked in similar terms about both. What becomes clear when we systematically consider his doctrine of union is that it alone cannot be the final understanding of what divides Calvin and Osiander because there are other reasons why Calvin and Osiander disagreed even on this topic. One such reason we have already mentioned briefly: the doctrine of ubiquity. The other remains to be addressed: the place of Christ's human nature in salvation. We consider both in the next chapter. Chapter 3

Righteousness, Distance, Ubiquity, and the Communicatio Idiomatum

The first two chapters of this thesis outlined two of the major doctrinal loci over which Calvin and Osiander fought: the relationship of justification and the union between the believer and Christ. However, in searching for the heart of the disagreement, we must go deeper. In this chapter, I argue that the relationship of the divine and human natures in the Person of Christ is the heart of Calvin's dispute with

Osiander. This is seen most clearly in the way that Calvin and Osiander answer two different but interrelated questions: 1) Which righteousness is at stake in justification, sanctification, and union? and 2) How can we account for the overcoming of the distance between Christ in heaven and us on earth? In answering these questions, two different Christologies emerge which describe the communication of properties

(communicatio idiomatum) between Christ's human and divine natures differently. These different Christologies set basic patterns of relationships for the arguments already outlined in chapters one and two. Because these differing Christologies are

"controlling" theologies in the sense that what the authors decide at this level effects their decisions throughout the argument, this locus alone is the heart of the argument between Calvin and Osiander.

62 63

Which Righteousness?

Which righteousness is at stake in justification, sanctification and union? Calvin and

Osiander answered this question in different ways. Bruce McCormack and Charles

Partee have made this question explicit in their work. The major distinction that

McCormack sees between Calvin's and Osiander's understandings is between

"essential" and "acquired" righteousness. This distinction brings to a head many of the themes in the Calvin/Osiander dispute. In terms of justification, Osiander maintained that human beings were justified (by means of substantial participation) by the righteousness that was essentially Jesus Christ's by virtue of his divine nature. In contrast, Calvin maintained that human beings were justified (by means of Spiritual participation) by the righteousness that Christ acquired through his obedience in his human nature.1 The implication is clear: the major disagreement between Calvin and

Osiander in relationship to justification is over the role of Christ's humanity in human salvation.

For Partee, Calvin's "central objection" to Osiander's theology is that Osiander fails to grasp the significance of Christ's human nature for soteriology. He calls this trend "christological truncation."2 He argues that Calvin saw this as a problem for a

1 Bruce L. McCormack, "Justitia aliena: Karl Barth in Conversation with the Evangelical Doctrine of Imputed Righteousness," in Justification in Perspective: Historical Developments and Contemporary Challenges, ed. Bruce L. McCormack, 2006,171 n.6.

2 Charles Partee, The Theology of John Calvin (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 226. number of reasons. First, if the righteousness with which human beings are justified is the righteousness of Christ's divine nature, then the distinctive role of the Mediator is subsumed entirely and lost in the Trinity. Second, the Chalcedonian doctrine of the

Incarnation forbids an improper distinction between Christ's humanity and divinity such that "righteousness" could come from one alone. Third, Partee quotes Calvin quoting Paul, who 'established the source of righteousness in the flesh of Christ alone'

(III.11.8).3

For all of Calvin's insistence upon the flesh of Christ, he did not lose sight of the righteousness of God. In opposition to Osiander, we might expect Calvin to have excluded divine righteousness altogether. However, Calvin argued that we still receive divine righteousness, but only through the channel of Christ. Further, Calvin posited that we receive a human righteousness from Christ which serves as a channel for God's accommodating eternal righteousness. In this chapter, I will consider both human righteousness and the channel of Christ's humanity below.

Osiander and Calvin on Christ's Human Righteousness

Osiander argued that Christ was righteous by virtue of his divine nature; that is, the righteousness that Christ had for human beings was that righteousness that was essentially his as the second Person of the Trinity. The essential righteousness we discussed in chapter one has a Christological root. Calvin wrote, "Osiander sharply

3 Ibid. 65 states that Christ is himself our righteousness, not in so far as he, by expiating sins as

Priest, appeased the Father on our behalf, but as he is eternal God and life."4 Osiander applied verses such as Jeremiah 51:10 ("Jehovah will be our righteousness") directly to

Christ's divine nature. Calvin retorted, "But from this he shall deduce nothing but the fact that Christ, who is our righteousness, is God manifested in flesh."5 Osiander seemed to have little space for the humanity of Christ in his soteriology. If anything, the humanity was just a middle term between human beings and God with no integrity of its own.

In contrast, Calvin argued that Christ acquired human righteousness for our salvation. Three things should be said to elucidate Calvin's point. First, Calvin located righteousness in the flesh of Christ. In the Institutes, Calvin addressed Osiander's objection that the excellence of Christ's work "surpasses human nature" and that therefore righteousness could not be attributed to it.6 Calvin responded by quoting Paul to the effect that Christ was made righteousness for us.7 Calvin concluded: "Paul has established the source of righteousness in the flesh of Christ alone."8 This is seen clearly

4 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, I960), 3.11.6.

5 Ibid., 3.11.8.

6 Ibid., 3.11.9.

7 Calvin quoted Romans 5:19, Philippians 2:7, and II Corinthians 5:21.

8 Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.9. 66 in the sacraments which point us to the whole Christ, but specifically to his flesh and blood.9 Partee calls Osiander's treatment of Christ's humanity "christological truncation" because it relegates righteousness to the divine nature only.10 In contrast,

Calvin related justifying righteousness for sinners to Christ's human nature in its active union with Christ's divine nature.

Second, Calvin posited that Christ acquired his righteousness through the course of this earthly life. According to Calvin's reading, Paul "lodged our righteousness in

Christ's obedience."11 This obedience acquired human righteousness that renders "God favorable and kindly toward us."12 While Scripture focuses on Christ's righteous obedience in his voluntary death, Calvin saw the cross as the fulfillment of Christ's earthly career: "From the time when he took on the form of a servant, he began to pay the price of liberation in order to redeem us."13 From taking the form of a servant to dying in the place of sinners, Christ acquired human righteousness in his flesh.

Third, as David Willis points out, Calvin maintained that Christ becomes righteousness for us not by divine coercion but by a voluntary act of his human will.14

s Ibid.

,0 Partee, The Theology of John Calvin, 226.

11 Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.23.

12 Ibid., 2.16.5.

" Ibid.

14 Cf. E. David Willis, Calvin's Catholic Christology: The Function of the So-Called Extra Calvinisticum in Calvin's Theology, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought v. 2 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966), 72-73. 67

The testing of the will is increased, not diminished, by the presence of Christ's divinity.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, it is not merely a human being with human means of escape who submits himself to death; it is also the Eternal Son who had infinite means of escape.15 In Christ, human obedience is tested to the very limits. Calvin wrote, "And truly, even in death itself his willing obedience is the important thing because a sacrifice not offered voluntarily would not have furthered righteousness."16 Calvin prized the human righteousness Christ acquired through the course of his voluntary obedience to the Father.

The Channel of God's Eternal Righteousness

We might conclude that Calvin emphasized the human righteousness of Christ in such a way that he lost sight of God's righteousness, but such a conclusion would be premature. Whereas Osiander argued that "righteousness" is "both God himself and the goodness or holiness or integrity of God," Calvin held that the righteousness of God is to be understood "as that righteousness which is approved of God," not necessarily something that originates in God's being.17 However, Calvin wrote that he would not have had a problem with Osiander saying that we become partakers of God's eternal righteousness so long as Osiander abided by the caveat that Christ acquired human

15 Ibid., 90.

16 Calvin, Institutes, 2.16.5.

17 Ibid., 3.11.10, 3.11.9. 68 righteousness and was made an atoning sacrifice for us.18 Yet Osiander did not. Instead,

Osiander held that the power of justifying is beyond both angels and human beings and that therefore Christ "himself was righteous by divine righteousness" alone.19

Calvin reconciled his idea that the eternal righteousness of God comes to us in

Christ and that Christ himself is made righteousness for us in his human nature by conceiving Christ's human nature as a channel which made available the righteousness of God. He wrote, "I usually say that Christ is, as it were, a fountain, open to us, from which we may draw what otherwise would lie unprofitably hidden in that deep and secret spring, which comes forth to us in the person of the Mediator."20 Calvin admitted that righteousness does "come forth to us from the secret wellspring of Christ's divinity," and he held that Osiander's error did not necessarily follow from this truth.21

Despite the fact that Christ makes God's eternal righteousness available to human beings, he still "in the flesh sanctified himself for our sake."22 The whole Christ is the author of life. Calvin does not want to deny that we receive God's righteousness; he only wants to "make clear" how it "comes to us that we may enjoy it."23 This coming-to-

18 Ibid., 3.11.8-9.

19 Ibid., 3.11.12.

20 Ibid., 3.11.9.

21 Ibid., 3.11.12.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid. 69 us of God's righteousness seems to include God generating a righteousness compatible with our natures in the human nature of Christ.24

Calvin's and Osiander's differences in regard to human righteousness can be linked to their disagreement over the Incarnation. Osiander taught that Christ would have become incarnate even if there had been no fall into sin.25 For Osiander, the

Incarnation was the completion of God's plan to create human beings in God's image, the image of God being the flesh-and-blood image of Christ who is the image of God.

Calvin revolted against such language. For him, we can only rightfully give the reason for the Incarnation based on the testimony of Scripture, where it is universally proclaimed to be an answer to human sin. Calvin summarized: "Whenever Christ is mentioned we should not in the least depart from the grace of reconciliation."26 For

Osiander, Christ's flesh established the image of God in creation. For Calvin, Christ's flesh re-established the image of God in redemption. Calvin maintained that to go beyond reconciliation as the reason for the Incarnation is the kind of "perverse curiosity" which leads people to a different Christ than the one attested to in Scripture.27

Despite Osiander's insistence on the ontological necessity of Christ's Incarnation, the effect of his soteriology was to deny the necessity of Christ's humanity for human

24 Cf. Ibid., 3.6.1.

«Ibid., 2.12.5.

2« Ibid.

27 Ibid. 70 salvation.28 In contrast, Calvin exalted Christ's flesh as necessary for human salvation alongside Christ's divinity. Edmondson succinctly summarized Calvin's emphasis on the importance of Christ's humanity: "Christ's humanity plays an equal role in our salvation, serving as the channel by which that life and righteousness are conveyed to the Church."29 Christ's Incarnation is necessary because it establishes in Christ's flesh a relationship that did not exist before: Christ is now our brother.30 It is from within this relationship that Christ's righteousness-acquiring work find its scope and meaning.31

It is also within this relationship that the benefits of Christ's righteousness - acquiring work make their way to us. Union with Christ is a substantial union by way of a conjunction of essence with Christ's humanity, without which the benefits of

Christ's obedient life, death, and resurrection would not profit us.32 Union with Christ's humanity is a spiritual union in two senses.33 First, it is something other than a physical

28 See Richard B. Gaffin Jr., "Justification and Union with Christ," in A Theological Guide to Calvin's Institutes: Essays and Analysis, ed. David W. Hall and Peter A. Lillback (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2008), 267; and Mark A. Garcia, "Imputation and the Christology of Union with Christ: Calvin, Osiander, and the Contemporary Quest for a Reformed Model," Westminster Theological Journal 68, no. 2 (Fall 2006): 235.

29 Stephen Edmondson, Calvin's Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 184.

3° See Ibid., 209-10.

31 Calvin, Institutes, 2.13.1, 3.11.12.

32 Bruce L. McCormack, "Union with Christ in Calvin's Theology: Ground for a Divinization Theory?," in Tributes to John Calvin: A Celebration of His Quincentenary (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2010), 509; Calvin, Institutes, 3.1.1.

33 See Dennis E. Tamburello, Union with Christ: John Calvin and the Mysticism of St. Bernard (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), 93. 71 union. While Calvin is capable of calling it a substantial union, he does not make it a crass intermingling of Christ's human nature and our own. Second, it is a spiritual union because it is mediated by the Holy Spirit, the bond of union between Christ's flesh and ours.34 Christ's flesh, which mediates between God and us, is mediated by the

Holy Spirit, God himself. God needs nothing outside himself to bring his salvation to us.

That God needs nothing outside himself does not mean that he does not employ means of bringing his grace to us, but these means are not abstracted from Christ's human work; such means are tied inextricably to Christ's flesh. By the sacraments, mediated through Christ's acquired righteousness and the bond of the Holy Spirit, God pours his own life into us.35 In a tract against Tileman Heshusius, Calvin reflected on his critique of Osiander in the Institutes: "Osiander imagined that righteousness is conferred on us by the Deity of Christ. I showed, on the contrary, that salvation and life are to be sought from the flesh of Christ in which he sanctified himself, and in which he

34 Calvin, Institutes, 3.1.1.

35 Cf. Partee, The Theology of John Calvin, 226. 72 consecrates Baptism and the Supper."36 The Spirit lifts us up to Christ through the flesh- consecrated Sacraments.37

Which righteousness is at stake in justification, sanctification, and union?

Ultimately, Calvin answers that the righteousness is a genuinely human righteousness called forth by God's eternal righteousness, acquired by Christ and mediated by the

Spirit. Calvin painted a deeply Trinitarian and bracingly human account of how human beings participate in God's eternal righteousness. Christ acquires righteousness through the whole course of his obedient human life. The Spirit lifts human beings up to that humanity and binds them to it through faith and the sacraments. By preserving the integrity of Christ's human nature vis-a-vis his divine nature, Calvin's theology carved out a space for the integrity of our human natures in union with Christ. Just as Christ's humanity was not overwhelmed or obliterated by his divinity, so are we left whole and intact in our reconciliation with God. By becoming the channel of God's righteousness to us in his flesh, Christ created a space for us to be God's truly human creatures without either diminution of our humanity or confusion with the Godhead.

36 John Calvin, "Clear Explanation of Sound Doctrine Concerning the True Partaking of the Flesh and Blood of Christ in the Holy Supper in Order to Dissipate the Mists of Tileman Heshusius," in Tracts and Treatises on the Reformation of the Church with a Short Life of Calvin by Theodore Beza, ed. Thomas F. Torrance, trans. Henry Beveridge, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958), 554.

37 Calvin, Institutes, 4.17.31. 73

How do we overcome the distance between Christ and us?

We can also begin to see the heart of the dispute between Osiander and Calvin in the way they answered a second question: how can we account for the overcoming of the distance between Christ in heaven and us on earth? This was a pressing concern in the

Eucharistic controversies of the Sixteenth Century. The problem of distance had at least two components: geographical and ontological. Geographically, there was the problem posed by the Ascension of Christ into heaven. How is it possible for a believer to be united with Christ's humanity when it is not available in our space and time?

Ontologically, there was the problem of the difference between divinity and humanity.

How is it possible for a believer to be united with God when deity is completely beyond humanity in every respect?38

Both Osiander and Calvin had different responses to each component. Osiander, together with many of his Lutheran contemporaries, bridged both the geographical and ontological gap by blurring the distinction between the human and divine natures in

Christ in the doctrine of ubiquity. Calvin answered by pointing to the secret power of the Holy Spirit which bridged the geographical gap and united believers with the human Christ, thus bridging the ontological gap.

38 Wilhelm Niesel, The Theology of Calvin, trans. Harold Knight (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1956), 124-25; J. Todd Billings, Calvin, Participation, and the Gift: The Activity of Believers in Union with Christ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 42; Garcia, "Imputation and the Christology of Union with Christ," 42. 74

For Calvin, these questions had more than academic significance; they signified the ongoing divide among the Protestant factions. As Calvin developed his doctrine of the Supper, he simultaneously attempted to exposit the doctrine he found in Scripture and to bridge the ever-widening gulf between the Lutherans and the Zwinglians.

Calvin resisted both parties where he believed they said too much: the Zwinglians where they rejected Christ's human presence at the Supper and the Lutherans where they attempted by the doctrine of ubiquity to ensure Christ's human presence everywhere.39 His resistance to the doctrine of ubiquity is the broader context in which his dispute with Osiander took place.

This connection is most clearly seen in Calvin's last polemical tract against

Joachim Westphal.40 Westphal and his party had accused Calvin of being Osiandrian.

Calvin wrote, "Here they bedaub us with the slime of their own Osiander, as if we had any kind of affinity with him."41 Osiander had "despised a humiliated Christ" in his teachings, and Calvin turned the tables on his polemical targets by accusing them of that which they thought to accuse Calvin. They, not he, despised the humiliated human

Christ because they allowed Christ's divinity so to overtake his humanity that even at

39 Bruce Gordon, Calvin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 167.

40 John Calvin, "Last Admonition of John Calvin to Joachim Westphal, Who, If He Heeds It Not, Must Henceforth Be Treated in the Way Which Paul Prescribes for Obstinate Heretics; Herein Also Are Refuted the Censures by Which Those of Magdeburg and Elsewhere Have Tried to Overturn Heaven and Earth," in Tracts and Treatises on the Reformation of the Church with a Short Life of Calvin by Theodore Beza, ed. Thomas F. Torrance, trans. Henry Beveridge, vol. 2, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958), 346-494.

41 Ibid., 488. 75 the moment of the crucifixion, "that flesh in which he suffered sat immortal in the heavens." Calvin would not endorse this assertion, on the grounds that it would

"extinguish the whole substance of our salvation."42

In the Westphal tract, Calvin stigmatized the doctrine of ubiquity (that the flesh of Christ is "immense") as part of the "monstrous errors" propagated by his opponents.43 Having been accused of "blasphemous derision" with regard to the

Supper, Calvin retorted that the "sacred ordinance of Christ" was something different from "their senseless and absurd figments."44 As Gordon says, Calvin "had no sympathy for the Lutheran teaching of ubiquity."45

Calvin condemned the teaching because it effectively eliminated the integrity of

Christ's human nature, thereby rendering his earthly human ministry and heavenly human session a delusion. Calvin maintained that if "Christ is everywhere in the flesh, because of his Divine nature," then it makes no sense to say that Christ, after his death, was "enclosed in the sepulchre." It makes no sense for the angels to proclaim his

Resurrection with the "He is risen; he is not here." Perhaps worst of all, it makes no sense to say that Christ suffered for humanity when the "flesh in which he suffered sat

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid., 486-87. The "immensity" of Christ's flesh is another way of describing its ubiquity.

44 Ibid., 487.

45 Gordon, Calvin, 167. 76 immortal in the heavens."46 If Christ's humanity is everywhere by virtue of the hypostatic union, then it makes no sense to say that it was anywhere at all. It only appeared to be.

Calvin argued that the doctrine of ubiquity makes the Ascension and Christ's heavenly human session a "mere delusion" as well.47 Without a human body that can and must be in only one place at a time, the Ascension is an illusion, a mere pantomime played out in front of the apostles. If that was the case with the Ascension, then it was also the case with Christ's heavenly session at the Father's right hand. In this case,

Calvin recognized that the doctrine of ubiquity was motivated by the problem of geographical distance. His opponents did not believe that Christ's power could be present to them unless Christ's literal flesh also was, and they attempted to resolve this problem with the doctrine of ubiquity. Edmondson sums up Calvin's critique: "A ubiquitous human nature is no human nature at all."48

In the midst of the Westphal polemic, Calvin provided his own resolution to the problem that avoided what he saw as the pitfalls of ubiquitarianism, establishing two important points. First, Calvin maintained that in the course of Christ's career, his flesh

46 Calvin, "Last Admonition to Joachim Westphal," 487-88.

47 Ibid., 489.

48 Edmondson, Calvin's Christology, 214. 77

"is invested with heavenly glory, not divested of its own nature."49 Local presence is absolutely vital to human nature for Calvin. Without the bond of finitude, humanity ceases to be humanity. Without humanity, Christ ceases to be the one Mediator between

God and us. Without the Mediator, we are lost indeed.50 Second, even though Christ's flesh is locally present in heaven, "as the head of the Church he fills all things."51 While this sounds like the ubiquitarian picture, Calvin wrote, "it is preposterous to wrest this into a proof of the immensity of his flesh."52 Christ's body really is only present in heaven, but he exhibits his power and presence by the operation of the Spirit. Calvin summarized his stand against the ubiquity of Christ's flesh: "Though Christ as God and man, and the Mediator between God and men, whole and undivided, fills heaven and earth, yet in respect of his flesh, he is only in heaven."53

In summary, here and elsewhere in Calvin's writings, Calvin answered the problem of distance by appealing to the secret power of the Holy Spirit. In one sense, this is an appeal to mystery. The Spirit's secret power is beyond human speculation, and Calvin regularly made this appeal. In justification, Christ does not impute righteousness from a distance. Instead, he unites himself to us when we put him on and

49 Calvin, "Last Admonition to Joachim Westphal," 489.

50 See Willis, Calvin's Catholic Christology, 18, 24; and Edmondson, Calvin's Christology, 211, 213.

51 Calvin, "Last Admonition to Joachim Westphal," 489.

sz Ibid.

53 Ibid., 488. 78 are engrafted into his body, "in short, because he deigns to make us one with him."54

How is this possible? Calvin wrote, "He effects this by the miraculous and secret agency of his Spirit, to whom it is not difficult to unite things otherwise disjoined by distance of place."55 Because of the Spirit, "Christ, the Mediator, is not prevented by distance of place from infusing life into us from his flesh."56 What Osiander and his Lutheran contemporaries accomplished by way of mingling Christ's human and divine natures,

Calvin accomplished by way of a Trinitarian picture of God's interaction with the world. As Garcia writes, "Calvin substitutes the Spirit in union for the ubiquitarian focus on ontology."57

Two Christologies

Two different Christologies emerge from our discussion of Calvin's and Osiander's dispute. One posits a relationship between Christ's human and divine natures intermingled and interpenetrating in such a manner that Christ's human nature takes on the properties of divinity. The other preserves the distinction between the natures in an attempt to guard each nature's integrity. The former functionally side-steps Christ's humanity in soteriology. The latter places it on equal footing with Christ's divinity in

54 Calvin, Institutes, 3.11.10.

55 Calvin, "Clear Explanation to Dissipate the Mists of Tileman Heshusius," 553-54. Calvin here is citing his own catechism.

56 Calvin, "Last Admonition to Joachim Westphal," 489.

57 Mark A. Garcia, Life in Christ: Union with Christ and Twofold Grace in Calvin's Theology, Studies in Christian History and Thought (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2008), 249. 79 accomplishing human salvation. The major difference between the two Christologies is the way in which they handle the communication of attributes (communicatio idiomatum) between Christ's two natures. One treats the communicatio ontologically; the other treats it attributionally.

Calvin worked out his doctrine of the communicatio in the context of his interactions with the Lutherans and Servetus. Melanchthon was a Lutheran with whom

Calvin could find deep sympathies.58 There were other Lutherans, however, who construed the communicatio in such a way that allowed for ubiquity.59 As we have seen,

Calvin had no patience with this construal. Despite the deep differences between himself and the non-Philipist Lutherans on the communicatio, Calvin chose to work through his Institutes section by rebutting Servetus's novel doctrine of the Incarnation.

At the same time, he had to defend himself from Servetus' accusation of Nestoriansim.60

Calvin's account of the relationship of the natures of Christ in the Incarnation is relatively straightforward. When the Word took on human flesh, it did not do so by turning into flesh or being mingled with flesh. There is no "conf usion of substance" between the natures. The natures find their oneness in the unity of the Person, the

Eternal Son of God. Each nature "retains its distinctive nature unimpaired, and yet

58 Willis, Calvin's Catholic Christology, 11.

59 Ibid., 24.

60 Edmondson, Calvin's Christology, 204. 80 these two natures constitute one Christ."61 Calvin wrote, "We therefore hold that Christ, as he is God and man, consisting of two natures united but not mingled, is our Lord and the true Son of God even according to, but not by reason of, his humanity."62 He maintained that it was just as improper to mingle the natures as it was to separate them.63 They find their unity in the hypostatic union which "constitutes one person out of two natures."64

As a doctrine, the communicatio idiomatum attempts to describe how it is that

Scripture speaks of Christ's humanity in terms of divinity or his divinity in terms of his humanity. Scripture has no problem talking about God's blood (Acts 20:28) or the Lord of Glory's crucifixion (1 Cor. 2:8). What does it mean theologically that it speaks in this manner? There are two basic possibilities: either the communicatio is ontological or attributional. If the communicatio is construed ontologically, as it was by Osiander and some Lutherans, then one nature takes on the characteristics of the other. In this way, for example, the human nature takes on the divine property of omnipresence, hence ubiquity. If it is construed attributionally, as Calvin does, then the natures remain distinct while communicating their properties as a sort of naming convention to the

Person whose life includes them.

61 Calvin, Institutes, 2.14.1.

«Ibid., 2.14.4.

«Ibid.

M Ibid., 2.14.5. 81

Joseph Tylenda offers a helpful summary of Calvin's definition: "The communication of properties is that interchange of properties by which a subject denominated by one of his two natures, so possesses the other nature and its properties that these properties may be truly attributed to him."65 Since Calvin refers the attributes to the Person, instead of to the two natures themselves, his Christology has a decidedly

Antiochene character while still resting soundly within the bounds of Chalcedonian orthodoxy.66 As I have already said, Calvin's understanding secures the integrity of the natures. Christ's human nature remains human while the divine nature remains divine.

Without such a distinction, we might be forced to accept that the whole Trinity became incarnate, not simply the Eternal Son. As Tylenda writes, "To predicate such properties of the divine nature as such, or in the abstract, is also saying that the Father as well as the Holy Spirit became incarnate."67 The union of the two natures takes place in the

Person of the Son who has a divine nature. In taking up a human nature, the Son has a life, a history, sweat, blood, and tears in his human nature. These may only improperly predicated of the divine nature.

65 Joseph N. Tylenda, "Calvin's Understanding of the Communication of Properties," Westminster Theological journal 38, no. 1 (Fall 1975): 65.

66 Billings, Calvin, Participation, and the Gift, 54-55; Derek W.H. Thomas, "The Mediator of the Covenant," in A Theological Guide to Calvin's Institutes: Essays and Analysis, ed. David W. Hall and Peter A. Lillback (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2008), 217-18.

67 Tylenda, "Calvin's Understanding of the Communication of Properties," 58. 82

The communicatio is always a manner of speaking, like a grammatical rule that governs the use of theological language. Calvin called it a "figure of speech."68 It is meant to express, albeit imperfectly, the union of the natures in the Person of the

Eternal Son.69 Edmondson writes that as a hermeneutical term, the communicatio is meant to express, not define or explain, the unity of Christ "without defining the mechanics of that unity or threatening the integrity of the natures in that unity."70

Calvin admitted how awkward the communicatio idiomatum was for speech but points out how in Scripture God himself uses this type of language, intentionally ascribing to his divine Person what would seem to be only proper of his human nature. The use of the language in Scripture makes it permissible for us, it seems, to transfer things from the human nature "improperly, although not without reason, to his divinity."71

Conclusion

At the heart of the disagreement between Calvin and Osiander, two Christologies emerge. Osiander's Christology construes the communicatio idiomatum ontologically.

This construal has implications all the way through Osiander's account. In the context of union with Christ, since Christ's humanity is mingled with his divinity, it makes little

68 Calvin, Institutes, 2.14.1.

69 Paul Van Buren, Christ in Our Place: The Substitutionary Character of Calvin's Doctrine of Reconcffiation ^Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1957), 21-22; Edmondson, Calvin's Christology, 216.

70 Edmondson, Calvin's Christology, 216-17.

71 Calvin, Institutes, 2.14.2. 83 sense to speak of a human righteousness with its own integrity vis-a-vis Christ's divine righteousness. Jesus is righteous himself based on the transfusion of the Son of God's divine righteousness, and human beings are united to God through a similar transfusion of essence. In the context of justification, since Christ's humanity is righteous by infusion, so we are also justified by infusion. The decision to construe the communicatio ontologically affects every other level of the argument we have discussed.

On the other hand, Calvin's Christology construed the communicatio idiomatum attributionally, and this freed him to address these topics differently. The problem of ontological distance is overcome by the hypostatic relationship of Christ's humanity and divinity in his Person. The problem of geographical distance is overcome by way of the secret power of the Spirit. The righteousness we receive from Christ by way of the

Spirit is none other than Christ's acquired human righteousness. The union that brings this righteousness to us is a conjunction of essence between our human nature and

Christ's in which the distinction between each is observed inside a larger unity, just as in Christ's Person his humanity and divinity are kept. The same can be said of the relationship of justification and sanctification. The pattern Calvin established in his

Christology governs even this relationship of unity and difference. This pattern strongly suggests that the heart of the disagreement between Calvin and Osiander was neither justification nor union. It was Christ himself. Conclusion

Calvin's Catholic Christology

What is the heart of the issue between Calvin and Osiander? I have argued that divergent theologies of the two natures of Christ is the defining disagreement between the two theologians because the decisions they make about the communicatio idiomatum affect and motivate their arguments at the more commonly addressed loci of justification/sanctification and union with Christ. Mark A. Garcia has argued a similar thesis, though he stops short of the communicatio and rests his case in the doctrine of ubiquity. Examining briefly his work sheds light on the implications of this thesis' argument.

It has been suggested that in the Osiandrian controversy the Protestant doctrine of justification took on its more finished form, and this form would be shared among all the magisterial Reformation churches thereafter.1 Garcia offers a counter-thesis. Given his reading of the Calvin/Osiander material, Garcia advocates that "at least the possibility should be entertained that the Osiandrian controversy, and specifically

Calvin's 1559 refutation, marks the inception of an explicit divergence between Lutheran and Reformed in the area of salvation." This argument implies that while the Lutherans

1 Bruce L. McCormack, "Justitia aliena: Karl Barth in Conversation with the Evangelical Doctrine of Imputed Righteousness," in Justification in Perspective: Historical Developments and Contemporary Challenges, ed. Bruce L. McCormack, 2006,170.

84 85 and Reformed agreed formally on justification, there were deeper issues that were never resolved. For Garcia, it is at this deeper level that the disagreement between

Calvin and Osiander played itself out.

Based on Calvin's "regular pattern of expression," Garcia argues that the disagreement over the relationship of justification and sanctification corresponds to the

Lutheran/Reformed quarrels about the christological roots of ubiquitarianism. Garcia writes, "According to Calvin, the confusion of what is properly divine and human at the level of Lutheran Christology and ubiquitarianism is simply carried through at the soteriological level in Osiander's doctrine of essential union which results in a mixing of what is properly justification and sanctification."2 Garcia, therefore, sees the entire

Osiandrian discourse in the 1559 Institutes as a "strategic attack on Lutheran ubiquitarianism, intended to demonstrate not only that Osiander's doctrine of justification is 'wrong' but that it is necessarily implied in a distinctly Lutheran understanding of Christ and the Supper."3

Just as the Spirit plays an important role in understanding the basic metaphysical/Spiritual distinction between Calvin and Osiander at the level of union with Christ, Garcia argues that the Spirit also serves as the "theological safeguard" here,

2 Mark A Garcia, Life in Christ: Union with Christ and Twofold Grace in Calvin's Theology, Studies in Christian History and Thought (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008), 247.

3 Ibid., 250. 86 serving to guard "against confusing the divine and human natures of Christ."4 As we have seen, in the ubiquitarians' view a communication of attributes was established in the hypostatic union between the human and divine natures of Christ such that the human nature received divine attributes. Christ's human nature could thus be omnipresent just as his divine nature was, with the result that Christ's humanity was rendered ubiquitously present in the world and thus available for every Christian communion table. The Reformed, and Calvin, argued vigorously for the local presence in heaven of Christ's humanity. Christ was present at the table by the secret power of the Holy Spirit, they said, not by a theological tactic of questionable orthodoxy that confused the human and divine natures of Christ. Garcia writes, "According to Calvin, the confusion of what is properly divine and human at the level of Lutheran

Christology and ubiquitarianism is simply carried through at the soteriological level in

Osiander's doctrine of essential union."5 The polemical genius of these sections, if

Garcia is right, is Calvin's implied counter-accusation that Osiander is himself the "only consistent Lutheran, as one who alone follows fully the logic of Lutheran Christology."6

Garcia argues, as I have, that there is a "systemic divergence" between Calvin and

Osiander, one which runs far deeper than the presenting issues of justification,

4 See Ibid., 247.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid., 259. 87 sanctification, and union with Christ.7 Without these "architectonic and structural" differences in mind, the full weight and importance of the Osiandrian polemical sections are lost. Garcia writes, "Without an appreciation of these factors, Calvin's refutation is easily misunderstood as just one more occasion in which he defended the evangelical teaching on justification against someone who threatened to compromise it, but nothing more."8 My argument agrees substantially with Garcia's assessment of the issues in Calvin's debate with Osiander. I have substantiated and extended one part of

Garcia's thesis by looking at the other Osiandrian material in the Institutes, together with the letters and tracts. I have shown that the systematic place of Christ's humanity vis-a-vis his divine nature was Calvin's central disagreement with Osiander's theology.9

The conclusions presented in this thesis are relevant to Calvin and Reformation studies in several ways. First, this thesis serves as a vindication and expansion of a part of Garcia's thesis through a close reading of a range of primary sources, only some of which were used by Garcia in his argument.

Second, this thesis has implications for historical theology. It suggests that we should posit an even earlier differentiation between Calvinists and Lutherans over

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid., 250-51.

91 did not take the second step and compare Osiander's Christology with Luther or contemporaneous Lutherans. That was beyond the scope of this argument but would be an interesting avenue for further research. 88 justification. While formally similar, their doctrines of justification reference a much different theological framework grounded in Christology.

Third, because of the two previous points, this thesis has theological implications for Calvin's Christology and soteriology. Much of the work done on Calvin's soteriology has focused on the so-called "mystical union" in Calvin, and various authors have attempted to describe Calvin's view on this topic in terms of divinization, deification, or theosis. However, very few of these treatments mention the Osiandrian background of the dispute. This thesis has offered a corrective to this oversight, bringing the overlooked polemic back into perspective. Calvin, against Osiander, chose to articulate a robustly catholic Christology rooted in the Chalcedonian relationships between the human and divine natures of Christ. Any treatment of Calvin's account of participation in God through Christ that does not take these insights into consideration is in danger of irrelevance by way of oversimplification.

Fourth, this thesis has suggested a context in which Calvin's argument with

Osiander makes sense. Garcia rightly places their dispute in the context of Calvin's eucharistic debates of the 1550's. Through looking at the historical situation of these debates and at the way Calvin treated Osiander as a threat to his ongoing ecumenical dialogues, I have shown that the larger context for Calvin's polemical activity of the

1550's is his desire to see the Protestant churches united in their witness to the Gospel of

Jesus Christ. In Calvin's view, Osiander tore the Body of Christ both theologically and 89 ecumenically. Calvin insisted on his version of catholic Christology for the health of the visible Body of Christ.

Finally, this thesis has implications for describing other Reformation movements.

Anglicanism is a fine example. To use common labels, is early Anglicanism more

"Lutheran," "Reformed," or "catholic?" To answer this question, some have turned to the hotbed issues of predestination and free will; however, against Osiander, Calvin thought that Christology was the defining issue. In that case, might it not be more fruitful to ask the Christological question? If we were to apply the

Christological/soteriological question to early Anglicanism, we might be able to conclude that early Anglicanism is "catholic" in this instance precisely because it is

"Reformed," a valuation which could open new avenues for study of the English

Reformation.

*****

Nearing the end of his life, John Calvin set about the final revision of the Institutes in which he prominently addressed the theology of Andreas Osiander. The man Osiander represented for him the "vain inquisitiveness" that had driven so many of his ecumenical hopes to ground. Osiander's theology exemplified a strand of continental

Protestant thought that Calvin felt was equally damaging to the unity of Christ's catholic church. In opposing these views, Calvin, completing what Luther had started, harmonized the Protestant doctrine of justification completely and necessarily with the 90

Christological doctrine of the undivided Church. For Calvin, hope in God's free acceptance was hope in no one other than the One with whom we have been united in one body, Jesus Christ himself. And what God has joined together, let no theologian tear asunder. BIBLIOGRAPHY

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