[Syntagma Theologiae Christianae (Hanau, 1609; 1615)]
Amandus Polanus von Polansdorf (16 December 1561, Opava, Silesia – 17 July 1610, Basel, Switzerland) was a faithful servant of Christ, and a principal light among the early Reformed orthodox. Born in Silesia, he pursued the knowledge of God in diverse schools—Opava, Wrocław, Tübingen, Basel, and Geneva—furnishing his mind with the treasures both of Scripture and humane learning. His early labours were spent as tutor to the noble house of Zierotin in Heidelberg and Basel, and as a teacher at the school of the Bohemian Brethren in Ivančice, ever intent to build up the household of faith. In the year of our Lord 1596, he was called to Basel as Professor of the Old Testament, and was joined in marriage to the daughter of Johann Jakob Grynaeus, thereby uniting two noble lines of Reformed learning. Twice made Dean of the Theological Faculty, and twice advanced to the rectorship of the University, he discharged his office with gravity and diligence. Polanus is chiefly renowned for his Partitiones Theologicae and the magisterial Syntagma Theologiae Christianae, wherein he did methodize the doctrine of faith with precision, after the manner of Ramus, yet always according to the analogy of faith. In his writings he abhorred vain speculation, seeking rather to establish the truth and guard the flock from error. His labours were characterized by lucidity, order, and a zealous defense of Reformed doctrine, though without bitterness or curiosity. In 1603 he produced the first Calvinistic German translation of the Scriptures, thus advancing the kingdom of Christ in the common tongue. A consolidator rather than an innovator, Polanus did not aspire to novelty, but to the faithful conservation of the truth, balancing the doctrines of God’s sovereignty with those of Christ, the covenant, and Christian practice. So did he serve the church of God in his generation, and, having fought the good fight, entered into rest.
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THE FULFILLMENT OF THE LAW is another part of the humiliation of Christ, whereby He subjected Himself to the entire Law of God—not only the ceremonial, but also the moral; not only to the threatenings added to the Law, but also to the commandments—most perfectly fulfilling them in Himself and through Himself, in our place and stead, so that with all our debt discharged, He might make full satisfaction for us all to the righteousness and judgment of God.
This is also called the righteousness and satisfaction, the merit of Christ, obedience. Isaiah 53; Philippians 2:8: “He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Hebrews 5:8: “Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.”Romans 5:19: “By the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.”
The fulfillment of the Law has two parts: the perfect observance of the precepts of the Law, and sufficient payment of the penalty due to our sins according to the threatenings of the Law and signified by the sacrifices and other figures.
Perfect observance of the precepts of the Law is the first part of the fulfillment of the Law, whereby He rendered for us and in our behalf that complete obedience to the precepts of God’s Law throughout His entire life which we owed, being not only conceived and born holy and entirely free from original sin, but also avoiding all actual sins which the Law prohibits and performing all works which the Law commands. Romans 5:19: “By the obedience of one, many shall be made righteous.” And Romans 10:4: “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.”
The payment of sufficient penalty for our sins is the second part of the fulfillment of the Law, whereby He sustained for us the punishment which we had deserved, that He might satisfy the most severe justice of God for us, so that we are no longer obligated to suffer that punishment, since Christ has paid it in our place. Isaiah 53; Philippians 2:7-8.
This was voluntary, not coerced. Psalm 104:8-9.
When it is said in Psalm 69:5, “What I took not away, yet I restored,” as Vatablus and Tremellius have it, the word “compelled” is not used properly, but metaphorically to indicate the violence of Christ’s enemies—the priests, scribes, and others who conspired with them against Christ. Although in the Hebrew text there is no word having the signification of compelling, but there is ashib, which can simply be translated “I repay, I restore, I render,” as it is rendered in the French Bibles: “j’ai lors rendu ce que je n’avois point ravi” [I then rendered what I had not taken]. Or it can be translated in Latin: “Then what I took not away, it behooves me to repay,” as it is rendered in the Bohemian Bibles.
The punishment which Christ bore for us was temporal indeed in reality or duration, but infinite and eternal in virtue and value.
The parts of the payment of penalty for our sins are two: the humility of the incarnation, and continual misery after the incarnation.
I. The humility of the incarnation is perceived in this: that Christ, who was equal with God the Father, as if divesting Himself of His divine right and all heavenly goods, assumed a form conformed to flesh subject to sin, servile and liable to injuries; He was conceived in a most poor mother and despised before the world, born in extreme poverty and want, excluded from hospitality in His own country, thrust into a place destined not for human habitation but for the stabling of cattle, neglected by His own people for whose sake He was born.