II. THE SYNERGISTIC CONTROVERSY (1550--1567). [512]
It extended over the difficult subject of man's freedom and his relation to the converting grace of God. It was a conflict between the original Augustinianism of the Reformers and the later Melanchthonian Synergism, or a refined evangelical modification of semi-Pelagianism. [513]
Pfeffinger, Professor in Leipzig, who opened the controversy by an academic dissertation (1550), and then wrote a book on the freedom of the will (1555), Major, Eber, and Crell, in Wittenberg, and Victorin Strigel, in Jena, advocated a limited freedom in fallen man, as a rational and responsible being, namely, the power of accepting the prevenient grace of God, [514] with the corresponding power of rejecting it. They accordingly assigned to man a certain though very small share in the work of conversion, which Pfeffinger illustrated by the contribution of a penny towards the discharge of a very large debt.
Amsdorf, Flacius, Wigand, and Heshusius, on the other hand, appealing to the teaching of Luther, [515] maintained that man, being totally corrupt, can by nature only resist the Spirit of God, and is converted against and in spite of his perverse will, or must receive a new will before he can accept. God converts a man as the potter moulds the clay, as the sculptor carves a statue of wood or stone. They also advocated, as a logical consequence, Luther's original theory of an unconditional predestination and reprobation. But the 'Form of Concord' rejected it as well as Synergism, without attempting to solve the difficulty.
Both parties erred in not making a proper distinction between regeneration and conversion, and between receptive and spontaneous activity. In regeneration, man is passive, in conversion he is active in turning to God, but in response to the preceding action of divine grace, which Augustine calls the gratia præveniens. Conversion certainly is not a compulsory or magical, but an ethical process. God operates upon man, not as upon a machine or a dead stone (as Flacius and also the 'Form of Concord' maintain), but as a responsible, rational, moral, and religiously susceptible though very corrupt being; breaking his natural hostility, making willing the unwilling, and preparing him at every step for corresponding action. So far Melanchthon was right. But the defect of the Synergistic theory is the idea of a partnership between God and man, and a corresponding division of work and merit. Synergism is less objectionable than semi-Pelagianisrn, for it reduces co-operation before conversion to a minimum, but even that minimum is incompatible with the absolute dependence of man on God.
III. THE OSIANDRIC CONTROVERSY (1549-1566). [516]
It touched the central doctrine of Evangelical Lutheranism, justification by faith, whether it is a mere declaratory, forensic art of acquittal from sin and guilt, or an actual infusion of righteousness.
Luther and the other Reformers made a clear distinction between justification as an external act of God for man, and sanctification as an internal act of God in man; and yet viewed them as inseparable, sanctification being the necessary effect of justification. Faith was to them an appropriation of the whole Christ, a bond of vital union with his person first, and in consequence of this a participation of his benefits. [517]
In the Osiandric controversy, justification and sanctification were either confounded or too abstractedly separated, and the person of Christ was lost sight of in his work or in one of his two natures.
Andrew Osiander (1498-1552), an eminent Lutheran minister and reformer at Nuremberg (since 1522), afterwards Professor at Königsberg (1549), a man of great learning and speculative talent, but conceited and overbearing, created a great commotion by a new doctrine of justification, which he brought out after the death of Luther. [518] He assailed the forensic conception of justification, and taught instead a medicinal and creative act, whereby the sinner is made just by an infusion of the divine nature of Christ, which is our righteousness. This view was denounced as Romanizing, but it is rather mystical. He did not make justification a gradual process, like the Roman system, but a single and complete act, by which Christ according to his divine nature enters the soul of man through the door of faith. [519] He meant justification by faith alone without works, but an effective internal justification in the etymological sense of the term. He was Protestant in this also, that he excluded human merit and represented faith which apprehends Christ, as the gift of God. In connection with this he held peculiar views on the image of God, which he made to consist in the essential union of the human nature with the divine nature, and on the necessity of the incarnation, which in his opinion would have taken place even without the fall, in order that through Christ's humanity we might become partakers of the essential righteousness of God. [520] He appealed to Luther, but denounced Melanchthon as a heretic and pestilential man.
Osiander was protected by Duke Albrecht of Prussia, whom he had converted, but opposed from every quarter by Mörlin, Staphylus, Stancarus, Melanchthon, Amsdorf, Menius, Flacius, Chemnitz. Between the two parties stood the Swabian divines Brentius and Binder. The controversy was carried on with a good deal of misunderstanding, and with such violence that the Professors in Königsberg carried fire-arms into their academic sessions. It was seriously circulated and believed that the devil wrote Osiander's books, while he enjoyed his meals.
After Osiander's death (1552), his son-in-law, John Funck, chaplain of the Duke, became the leader of his small party; but he was executed on the scaffold (1566) as a heretic and disturber of the public peace. Mörlin was recalled from exile and made Bishop of Samland. The Prussian collection of Confessions (Corpus Doctrinæ Pruthenicum, or Borussicum, Königsberg, 1567) condemned the doctrines of Osiander.
In close connection with the Osiandric controversy on justification was the Stancarian dispute, introduced by Francesco Stancaro (or Stancarus), an Italian ex-priest, and for a short time Professor in Königsberg (d. 1574 in Poland). He asserted, against Osiander and in agreement with Peter the Lombard, that Christ was our Mediator and Redeemer according to his human nature only (since he, being God himself, could not mediate between God and God). [521] He called his opponents and all the Reformers ignoramuses. [522]
Another collateral controversy, concerning the obedience of Christ, was raised, A.D. 1563, by Parsimonius, or Karg, a Lutheran minister in Bavaria. [523] He derived our redemption entirely from our Lord's passive obedience, and denied that his active obedience had any vicarious merit, since Christ himself, as man, owed active obedience to God. He also opposed the doctrine of imputation, and resolved justification into the idea of remission of sins.
Karg was opposed by Ketzmann in Ansbach, by Heshusius, and the Wittenberg divines. Left without sympathy, and threatened with deposition and exile, he recanted his theses in 1570, and confessed that the obedience of Christ, his righteousness, merit, and innocence are the ground of our justification and our greatest comfort. [524]
The 'Form of Concord' teaches that Christ as God and man in his one, whole, and perfect obedience, is our righteousness, and that his whole obedience unto death is imputed to us.