MELANCHTHON, PHILIPP – Collaborator and friend of Luther, born at Bretten (Palatinate) on 16 Feb. 1497, died at Wittenberg on 16 Apr. 1560.
Of a well-to-do family and related to the humanist Reuchlin, who persuaded him to Hellenize the name Schwarzerde into Melanchthon, he received an intensely humanistic education at Heidelberg and Tübingen. Early on, besides editing Latin classics (Terence, 1516), he devoted himself to the study of the Fathers and the Greek text of the New Testament; in the controversy between Reuchlin and the professors of Cologne, he took Reuchlin’s side. In 1518, at the age of only twenty-one, he obtained the chair of Greek at the recently founded University of Wittenberg and began his teaching with a programmatic discourse, *De corrigendis adolescentiae studiis*, which also touched on theology. Here he came under Luther’s influence, aligning himself with him and vigorously polemicizing against Eck, and even before Luther he formulated the thesis of the Bible as the supreme doctrinal authority. In 1519 he became bachelor of theology; yet he never wished to accept the doctorate in theology, considering himself fundamentally a philologist and grammarian.
Nevertheless, it fell to Melanchthon to be the author of the first treatise of Lutheran theology with his *Loci communes rerum theologicarum seu hypotiposes theologicae* (1520–21), which treats of sin, grace, free will, law, Gospel, faith, justification, and regeneration, and which in successive editions was greatly expanded (cf. vol. XXI of the *Corpus Reformatorum*, 2nd ed. [Halle 1535], and the 3rd [ibid. 1543]).
In 1522 Melanchthon had to confront at Wittenberg the radical iconoclasm of the Anabaptists, who came from Zwickau, and of Carlstadt, who sought to push the Reformation to the point of overturning traditional worship; it was Melanchthon who recalled Luther from his refuge at the Wartburg so that he might intervene with his authority and energy. On this occasion his conservative bent was revealed, his concern to preserve as far as possible ecclesiastical institutions, especially worship and organization, in line with tradition. This conservative tendency is likewise very evident in the *Confessio Augustana* (1530), signed by the Protestant princes but drafted by him at the behest of the Elector of Saxony, in which the doctrinal points of divergence from Catholicism are either passed over in silence or obscured, and the Reformation is presented essentially as a matter of practical reform, namely the elimination of abuses that had allegedly crept in through scholastic terminology and canon law. This conservative character of the document, and hence of Melanchthon’s thought, stands out in full relief when it is compared with the uncompromising and violent tone of the *Schmalkaldic Articles* drawn up by Luther (1537). It is true that in the *Apology of the Augsburg Confession* (a reply to the *Confutatio catholica*), likewise drafted by Melanchthon and published under his name, the polemical note is heightened, as also in *De potestate Papae* (1537), which he wrote and circulated in view of the Council convoked at Vicenza that year. Melanchthon’s conciliatory tendency resurfaced in the religious colloquies of 1540–41, in which, representing the reformers, he sought to support Emperor Charles V’s policy of mediation and, for example, on the points concerning the effects of original sin, human nature, and the nature of justification, accepted the formulas proposed by Pighius and Contarini. Even after 1548, during the Augsburg Interim, in the lively controversy over the *adiaphora*, he pursued a policy of Catholicizing tendencies, maintaining that the worship practices reimposed by Charles V in Saxony after the defeat suffered by the Schmalkaldic League at Mühlberg were to be regarded as “indifferent,” not binding on Lutheran conscience or conviction.
Melanchthon was above all an organizer and a humanist. As an organizer, he gave structure to the Church of Electoral Saxony in the *Instructions to the Visitors of Pastors* (1528), to which Luther wrote the preface. In this, as in other similar writings, Melanchthon sought to restore discipline, order, and uniformity in teaching and in the practice of worship; he recommended respect for constituted authority in the Church and laid down norms to avoid the laxist consequences of the principle of justification by faith alone, insisting on the practice of good works as commanded by God, even though these were to be regarded as devoid of meritorious value.
As a humanist and philologist, he collaborated with Luther in the latter’s German translation of the Bible, vigorously upholding the decisive primacy of the literal sense of Scripture over the four senses recognized by traditional scholastic exegesis; he edited many ancient authors, wrote textbooks for the study of Latin and Greek, as well as commentaries on works of rhetoric, dialectic, physics, ethics, politics, school manuals for these disciplines, and not a few academic disputations on them. An introduction to universal history, including ecclesiastical history, is the *Chronicon* of Curio. He promoted the creation and reorganization of many Latin schools, often drafting their statutes, as, for example, in the reorganization of the churches and schools of Wittenberg (1533). The guiding principle of this educational reform, which is also significant for his conception of the study of theology, is that philosophy and the sciences should form the basis for the proper study of theology. This principle clearly emerges in the reorganization of the universities, where Melanchthon left his deepest imprint. The faculties of arts became distinctly humanistic: logic, which then predominated in teaching, had to give way to languages, and specifically to classical Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, to which was accorded a preeminence precisely because they are the languages in which the original text of the Bible is written. The classics supplanted medieval grammarians in the study of Latin; philosophy, embracing the various branches of knowledge, was taught on the basis of Aristotle, but also of Cicero and other ancient writers. Theology retained preeminence even in the study of the *bonae litterae*. Yet it was first and foremost exegesis of Holy Scripture, according to the principle affirmed by Luther; the very dogmatic principles were to be developed and defended in an exegetical-scriptural context. Only in a second stage could systematic expositions of dogma be added.
The old universities to which the Melanchthonian reform was applied were Frankfurt, Leipzig, Rostock, and Heidelberg; the new ones, created with statutes inspired by him, were Marburg (1527), Königsberg (1544), and Jena. It is for this vast pedagogical work that Melanchthon was called “Praeceptor Germaniae.” In this educational direction he appears as a promoter of Christian humanism, that is, the subordination of the methods and results of philosophy to the demands of theology, understood as exegesis of Holy Scripture and conceptual elaboration of the biblical Revelation contained therein.
Melanchthon, Philip – Portrait. Painting by L. Cranach (1543). Florence, Uffizi.
In this sense the predominant note of M.’s personality comes to be that of the theologian: and this not only because his theological activity quantitatively (polemical works, commentaries on the books of the Old Testament and the New Testament, especially on the Epistles of St Paul, letters dealing with theological problems) prevails in his literary output, but because it was precisely in the theology of the innovators that M. inserted motifs which gave it a distinctive stamp, in part in antithesis to Luther’s intentions. His theological conception can be recognized in the 1535 edition of the Loci, which indeed shows his distancing from certain positions of his master and the influence of humanistic demands upon M.
Thus is mitigated the radical divine determinism regarding salvation; a certain capacity of human free will to do good is affirmed, thereby laying the foundations for the “synergistic” position regarding the relationship between Grace and free will; God is not the cause of sin and man is responsible for his acts. Man’s salvation requires his cooperation, even though one cannot speak of merits on his part. Similarly, M. emphasized, even in a theological context, the necessity of good works, albeit with particular reference to the ethical-social and ecclesiastical viewpoint; they are necessary for eternal life, inasmuch as they must follow the reconciliation of the sinner, or, in other words, inasmuch as a new spiritual life must manifest itself in the Christian.
In three points M.’s conception diverges more distinctly from Luther’s, giving rise among his disciples (known as “Philippists,” while Luther’s followers, under Flacius, called themselves “Gnesio-Lutherans” and contested the changes M. had introduced into the Augsburg Confession [varied edition of 1541]) to a lively and protracted controversy, which at times seemed even to threaten the unity of the new Churches.
First, regarding the conception of the consequences of original sin upon man’s natural faculties: for this reason, as has already been noted, M. rejects Luther’s radical pessimism, and M.’s viewpoint prevailed in the Formula of Concord of 1578. Secondly, regarding the manner of understanding justification, which M. holds to be a merely extrinsic, “forensic” imputation of Christ’s merits, thus in no way sanctification, sharply distinguishing from it, as a second moment, positive justification, the infusion of the Holy Spirit, inner regeneration; this conception too was imposed in the Formula of Concord. Thirdly, in the doctrine of the Eucharist, in which M. inclined toward the idea of a merely spiritual presence of Christ in the faithful, thus toward Calvinist symbolism, provoking from the Lutherans against him and his disciples the persistent and serious accusation of “crypto-Calvinism.” The Lutheran confessional formulas on this point explicitly maintained the principle of the real presence of Christ’s Body in the eucharistic elements.
M.’s influence, though contested, increased after Luther’s death (1546), both on account of the particular motifs of his theology and even more because of his concept of the function of theology as right thinking about the word of God in the life of the faithful and of the Church: “It lays the foundations of Lutheran orthodoxy as a requirement of the Church, with reference to the professions of faith, to be considered as genuine formulations of the thought of Holy Scripture, norm and limit of teaching. M. thus imposed his personality within the framework of the Lutheran Reformation as that of the systematic theologian, alongside the figure of Luther, who represents that of the awakener.