Andreas Osiander

⭐⭐ He took a third road, neither the Catholic view of infused righteousness nor Luther's view of imputed righteousness. Justification, as González reports his view, is not something God credits to a person out of loving grace, as Luther said, but something God finds in us because Christ dwells in us: the righteousness of the believer is God himself, dwelling within the believer. Then his famous image, as González gives it: the vast ocean of his divine righteousness swallows up our small drop of sin, and God then looks at the pure ocean, not at the drop of sin, and declares us righteous.

⚠ He did not say this lightly — the position grew out of his Christology. The image of God is not something created in Adam; the image of God is the Son himself. When Adam was created, the Son dwelt in him and, in González's words, made him righteous; and when he sinned, it was exactly this that he lost. So justification is the Son dwelling in us once again. He also held that the incarnation was God's eternal purpose, unconnected with the fall — even if Adam had not fallen, Christ would have become flesh. ⚠ Another point later became a focus of the Formula of Concord: he held that Christ is Mediator according to his divine nature — in the end, as González sums up his view, it is Christ's divinity that justifies us.

⚠ A line he drew himself must also be recorded: atonement and justification, he held, cannot be the same thing, because the atonement took place fifteen hundred years ago, while justification is still taking place in individual Christians.