Andreas Osiander

1498-1552. German Reformer. Born at Gunzenhausen, near Nuremberg, he studied at the University of Ingolstadt and was ordained priest in 1520. He revised the Vulgate on the basis of the Hebrew text. As a reformer in Nuremberg he promoted the distribution of the Lord's Supper under both kinds (bread and wine.) With Lazarus Spengler he furthered the Lutheran movement in Nuremberg in its doctrinal and liturgical forms. As a participant in the Colloquy of Marburg* (1529) he sided with Luther and Melanchthon against Zwingli and Oecolampadius regarding the Lord's Supper. He attended also the Diet of Augsburg (1530). He frequently faulted Melanchthon, particularly after the signing of the Leipzig Interim (1548).

George von Brandenburg requested him to conduct the visitation in Brandenburg. The twenty-three articles of the Schwabacher Visitation of 1528 were expanded by him and Schleufner. The Brandenburg-Nuremberg Church Orders, which contained the sermons on Luther's Catechism, were translated into Latin by Jonas and became the so-called Cranmer's Catechism (1548). After Osiander's appointment as pastor and professor at Königsberg (1549), he attacked Melanchthon on forensic justification, setting forth that in justification the new believers become partakers of the divine nature. In the ensuing controversy Osiander received little support, and his views were repudiated in Article III of the Formula of Concord* (1577). Osiander is noteworthy too because he wrote the anonymous preface to the first edition of Nicholaus Copernicus's De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium.

See E. Hirsch, Die Theologie des Andreas Osiander und ihre geschichtlichen Voraussetzungen (1919).