Philip Melanchthon

Preceptor of Germany, 1497–1560

Philip Melanchthon was Martin Luther’s colleague and co-reformer at Wittenberg, the scholar who gave the Reformation its first systematic theology and the principal author of the Augsburg Confession. Trained as a humanist and a master of Greek, he was never ordained, yet he became the chief teacher of the Lutheran churches and the reformer of their schools and universities, and Germany remembered him as its Praeceptor, its teacher.1 Luther summed up the difference between them: “I am rough, boisterous, stormy, and altogether warlike. … but Master Philip comes along softly and gently sowing and watering with joy, according to the gifts which God has abundantly bestowed upon him.”2

The Boy from Bretten

He was born Philip Schwartzerd at Bretten on February 16, 1497, the son of George Schwartzerd, an armorer. His great-uncle by marriage, the Hebraist Johannes Reuchlin, encouraged his Greek and Latin and gave him the Greek name Melanchthon, which, like Schwartzerd, means “black earth.”3 He took his bachelor’s degree at Heidelberg at fourteen, was refused the master’s degree because he looked too young, and moved to Tübingen in 1512, where he earned it and lectured on Virgil, Terence, and Cicero.4 Samuel Clarke records that he always carried a Bible with him, “yet was he carried away with the common errors of the times,” and that he later said, “I tremble to think with what blind devotion I went to Images, whilst I was a Papist.”5

Professor at Wittenberg

On Reuchlin’s recommendation the Elector Frederick called him to teach Greek at Wittenberg. He arrived on August 25, 1518, aged twenty-one, small, young-looking, and shy, and the professors were disappointed. Four days later he gave his inaugural address, and Luther wrote to Spalatin:

Melancthon, four days after his arrival, delivered an address so beautiful and so learned, that it was listened to with universal approbation and astonishment. We have soon got the better of the prejudices which his stature and personal appearance had produced. … I ask no other Greek master.6 Martin Lutherto Spalatin, 1518

His lectures drew hundreds, the theologians among them. He soon embraced Luther’s gospel, took the degree of bachelor of theology in 1519, and stood with Luther at the Leipzig Disputation.7 When Eck pressed him with an argument he could not answer on the spot, he said, “Sir, I seek not mine own glory in this business but the Truth. To morrow (God willing) you shall hear further.”8 In November 1520 he married Katharina Krapp, daughter of the mayor of Wittenberg, and they lived together thirty-seven years.9 Melanchthon said of Luther, “If there is any one whom I love strongly, and whom my whole soul embraces, it is Martin Luther.”10

The Loci Communes

In 1521, while Luther was hidden at the Wartburg, Melanchthon published the Loci Communes, the first systematic statement of evangelical theology. He worked through Romans and drew from it the “common places” of Paul’s argument, with justification by faith at the center.11 Its most famous sentence sets Christ at the heart of theology: “For by them is Christ properly known, if indeed this is to know Christ, to wit, to know his benefits.”12 Luther judged that “next to Holy Scripture, there is no better book.”13 The same gospel runs through his later work on justification, translated into English in 1548:

As for the Gospel it doth remove and put away the condition of our worthiness and merits, bearing witness that God is reconciled again to us freely for the merits of Christ his own sake: and nat for our merytynge: considering that this faith: that is to say the sure confidence of the mercy of God doeth lean and depend only on Christ and his merits.14 Philip MelanchthonThe Justification of Man by Faith Only

Augsburg

Melanchthon took part in the Saxon visitation of 1527 and came home determined to raise the schools of Germany, the work that earned him his title.15 In 1530, with Luther left behind at Coburg Castle, Melanchthon drafted the confession that seven princes and two cities presented to Charles V at Augsburg on June 25.16 The days of negotiation tormented him. D’Aubigné heads one section “Melancthon’s Weakness,” and Luther wrote from Coburg:

As for Melancthon, it is his philosophy that tortures him, and nothing else. For our cause is in the very hands of Him who can say with unutterable pride: No one shall pluck it out of my hands.17 Martin Lutherto Justus Jonas, 1530

When the emperor accepted the Roman Confutation, Melanchthon answered with the Apology of the Augsburg Confession (1531), enlarging on justification by faith alone.18 In 1540, on the way to the conference at Hagenau, he fell so ill at Weimar that he made his will. Luther hurried to him, fell on his knees, and prayed, and Melanchthon confessed “that if Luther had not come, he had died.”19

After Luther

Luther died in 1546, and Melanchthon spoke at his funeral: “Some have complained that Luther displayed too much severity. I will not deny this. But I answer in the language of Erasmus: ‘Because of the magnitude of the disorders, God gave this age a violent physician.’”20 Defeat in the Schmalkaldic War brought the emperor’s Augsburg Interim of 1548, and Melanchthon was the first to speak against it.21 His opinion was translated into English that summer by John Rogers, who wished to answer the rumor that Melanchthon had recanted:

if we should now our selves deny the known and acknowledged truth, & bind our selves to the persecution of the same truth, that were a blaspheming of God.22 Philip Melanchthonon the Augsburg Interim, 1548

He lived fourteen years after Luther, under constant attack from fellow Lutherans. A few days before his death he wrote down why he would be glad to die: he would be free from sin, “from trouble and vexations and from the fury of the theologians”; he would “see God” and “behold the Son of God.”23 Asked at the last whether he wanted anything, he answered, “Nothing except heaven; ask me no more.” He died on April 19, 1560 and was buried in the Castle Church at Wittenberg, across from Luther.24

Cautions

Melanchthon’s desire for peace sometimes outran his firmness. At Marburg in 1529, Bainton notes, Luther was briefly willing to share communion with the Swiss “until Melanchthon interposed out of regard for Ferdinand and the emperor.”25 In later editions of the Loci he spoke of the human will as a third cause in conversion, beside the Word and the Spirit; in the altered Augsburg Confession of 1540, the Variata, he softened the article on the Supper; and in 1548 he drafted the Leipzig proposal, which conceded ceremonies as things indifferent and borrowed language from the Interim he had opposed. Gnesio-Lutherans such as Amsdorf and Flacius saw betrayal, and the quarrels between them and the “Philippists” were not settled until the Formula of Concord in 1577.26 Bainton also faults his Greek translation of the Augsburg Confession for recasting justification in the categories of Greek theology.27 Reformed readers will note that Calvin, who loved him, first rebuked him over the adiaphora and later concluded the blame was undeserved, while Melanchthon himself never publicly defended Calvin against Westphal.28

The popular sources need correcting at several points. Nichols says he came to Wittenberg in 1519; he arrived in August 1518. Clarke dates the Loci to 1522 and places the drafting of the confession at the Diet of Speyer in 1529 rather than at Augsburg in 1530. Reformation Heroes puts his near-fatal illness at Weimar in 1536; Clarke places it on the way to Hagenau in 1540. Hagstotz claims he was “cleared” of weakening Luther’s teaching “by the action of the Lutheran Church itself,” but the Formula of Concord in fact rejected several Philippist positions.29

Other Reformers   Martin Luther

Notes

  1. David M. Whitford, ed., T&T Clark Companion to Reformation Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2012), pt. 2, “A Reformation ABC,” s.v. “Melanchthon, Philip 1497–1560”; Hilda Hagstotz, Heroes of the Reformation, chapter “Philipp Melanchthon: Author of the Augsburg Confession.” ↩
  2. Luther, quoted in Scott M. Manetsch, “The Man in the Middle: Luther among the Reformers,” in R. C. Sproul and Stephen J. Nichols, eds., The Legacy of Luther (Orlando: Reformation Trust, 2016). ↩
  3. Whitford, Companion, s.v. “Melanchthon”; Diana Kleyn with Joel R. Beeke, Reformation Heroes, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2009), chap. 6, “Philip Melanchthon.” ↩
  4. Hagstotz, Heroes of the Reformation, “Philipp Melanchthon”; Samuel Clarke, The Marrow of Ecclesiastical History (London: printed for T. V., 1654), “The Life of Philip Melancthon.” ↩
  5. Clarke, Marrow, “Philip Melancthon.” ↩
  6. Luther to Spalatin, August 31, 1518, in J. H. Merle d’Aubigné, History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century, vol. 1 (Glasgow: William Collins, 1845), bk. 4. ↩
  7. Manetsch, “Man in the Middle”; Sean Michael Lucas, “The Fury of Theologians: Lutheran Theology after Luther,” in Sproul and Nichols, Legacy of Luther; Hagstotz, Heroes of the Reformation, “Philipp Melanchthon.” ↩
  8. Clarke, Marrow, “Philip Melancthon.” ↩
  9. Kleyn and Beeke, Reformation Heroes, chap. 6; Whitford, Companion, s.v. “Melanchthon.” ↩
  10. D’Aubigné, Sixteenth Century, 1: bk. 4. ↩
  11. Whitford, Companion, s.v. “Melanchthon”; Lucas, “Fury of Theologians.” ↩
  12. Melanchthon, Loci Communes (1521), quoted in Lucas, “Fury of Theologians.” ↩
  13. Manetsch, “Man in the Middle.” ↩
  14. Philip Melanchthon, The Justification of Man by Faith Only, trans. Nicholas Lesse (London: William Powell, 1548). ↩
  15. Lucas, “Fury of Theologians.” ↩
  16. Ibid.; Whitford, Companion, s.v. “Melanchthon.” ↩
  17. Luther to Jonas, 1530, in d’Aubigné, History of the Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, vol. 4 (New York: Robert Carter, 1846), bk. 14. ↩
  18. Whitford, Companion, s.v. “Melanchthon”; Lucas, “Fury of Theologians.” ↩
  19. Clarke, Marrow, “The Life of Martin Luther.” ↩
  20. Manetsch, “Man in the Middle.” ↩
  21. Whitford, Companion, s.v. “Melanchthon.” ↩
  22. Philip Melanchthon, A Waying and Considering of the Interim, trans. John Rogers (London: Edward Whitchurch, 1548). See John Rogers. ↩
  23. Lucas, “Fury of Theologians.” ↩
  24. Kleyn and Beeke, Reformation Heroes, chap. 6; Whitford, Companion, s.v. “Melanchthon.” ↩
  25. Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1950), chap. 18, “The Church Territorial.” ↩
  26. Manetsch, “Man in the Middle”; Lucas, “Fury of Theologians.” ↩
  27. Bainton, Here I Stand, chap. 7. ↩
  28. Theodore Beza, “Life of John Calvin,” in John Calvin, Tracts Relating to the Reformation, trans. Henry Beveridge, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1844), under 1549; Lucas, “Fury of Theologians.” ↩
  29. Stephen J. Nichols, The Reformation: How a Monk and a Mallet Changed the World (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007), chap. 2, “A Monk and a Mallet”; Clarke, Marrow, “Philip Melancthon”; Kleyn and Beeke, Reformation Heroes, chap. 6; Hagstotz, Heroes of the Reformation, “Philipp Melanchthon”; Lucas, “Fury of Theologians.” ↩