OSIANDER, ANDREAS. - Protestant theologian, b. 19 Dec. 1498 at Gunzenhausen (Brandenburg), d. 17 Oct. 1552 at Königsberg. A priest in 1520 at Nuremberg, professor of Hebrew among the Augustinians, restless and combative, he led the movement that in 1522-25 made the whole of Nuremberg Protestant. Present at the Colloquy of Marburg (1529), he drew up a report on it; in 1530 at Nuremberg he advocated, against Luther, the necessity of fighting the Emperor by force of arms. At the Diet of Augsburg (1530) he had close relations with Melanchthon, whose conciliatory spirit, however, he sharply criticized.
Once an unbreathable atmosphere had arisen in Nuremberg, O. took advantage of the Interim of 1548 to take refuge with Albert of Prussia, who made him a professor at the University of Königsberg (1549). His personal opinions on Justification gave rise here to the controversy known under the name of Osiandrism (Oct. 1550). As early as 1524 O., in a work that remained almost unnoticed (Ein gut Unterricht und getreuer Ratschlag aus heiliger göttlicher Schrift), had defended a thesis of his own that conflicted with the fundamental ideas of Protestantism: whereas Luther affirmed that Justification consists in the extrinsic imputation of Christ's righteousness to individual men through the act of fiducial faith, O. held that the Word, in which all divine life resides, communicates itself really and inwardly to the soul at the moment when the soul hears the outward word, Scripture (a reflection of the Eternal Word), and makes it its own (interiorizes it) through faith: therefore the real indwelling of Christ in individual souls, which operates as the head does in the members, brings with it all divine righteousness and moves from within to the performance of good works. This mysticism, which comes close to Catholicism, alarmed O.'s opponents.
when it was revived by him at Königsberg in three short works: De lege et Evangelio; An Filius Dei fuerit incarnatus, si peccatum non introivisset in mundum. Item de imagine Dei (18 Dec. 1550); Von dem einigen Mittler Jesu Christo (8 Sept. 1551, Latin trans., De unico mediatore Jesu Christo: 24 Oct. 1851). In them he also defends the Scotist thesis of the necessity of the Incarnation, even on the hypothesis that Adam had not sinned, since otherwise the similitudo Dei, which is the Word, would not have been communicated either to man or to creation, and therefore the universe would have remained like an *opus imperfectum**, without its supernatural summit, to which it is ordered. To O. is commonly attributed also the theory of eucharistic Impanation, in perfect parallelism with that of Justification: just as the Word received through faith communicates real righteousness to the soul, so the words of the Consecration communicate to the bread and wine the real presence of the Body and Blood of Christ, establishing an almost hypostatic union. This is in any case Bossuet's interpretation (Histoire des variations, I, II, ch. 3), of O.'s ambiguous words.
His opponents, and Calvin too, attacked above all the thesis of Justification: O. replied with equal violence, but died in the heat of the struggle; his faithful disciple Lukas Funck was condemned to death in 1557, and therefore Osiandrism disappeared in Prussia, and in 1567 Lutheranism triumphed unchallenged. There remained, however, in Germany some secret followers of O., in a dynasty of theologians who cultivated the doctrine down to the 18th century. The theory of justification proposed by Newman (v.), while still an Anglican, has particular affinities with this current of thought.
Bibliography5 works
Antonio Piolanti