# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1860_S339
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Luther and Melanchthon. 339

proving; rhetoric, however, is the guide to speaking fittingly and beautifully. From this practical point of view he also regarded theology. Well known is his saying: I am conscious of never having pursued theology for any other reason than to better my life. It was the powerful impression of Luther's person and cause that moved him to devote his powers to theology, for the study of which he had already laid a good foundation at Tübingen. The man of classical studies was, by the nature of the case, directed to the interpretation of Scripture, especially of the New Testament. But the interpretation of Scripture was the very center of gravity of Reformation theology. We possess a fair number of expositions of biblical writings by Melanchthon. An expositor of Scripture, says Melanchthon, must be grammaticus, dialecticus, and testis [grammarian, dialectician, and witness]. Yet the philological side recedes considerably in Melanchthon's scriptural expositions. What mattered to him above all was the context and the thoughts. Out of an essay in which Melanchthon had developed the basic ideas of the Epistle to the Romans, there arose in 1521 his Loci theologici, the first dogmatics of Protestantism, which admittedly bears predominantly the character of a confession. Proceeding from the conviction that the Epistle to the Romans is the canon within the canon, he develops the doctrine of justification, with its premises and consequences, as the sum of the Gospel. In this book the doctrine of the Reformation first appeared in connected form. Small wonder that it met with immense success, and was held by Luther almost to be a book worthy of the canon. The man who had first developed the Reformation doctrine in connected form was, by his calm, mildness, objectivity, conscientiousness, and roundness of expression, the appointed editor of the fundamental confession of German Protestantism, the Augsburg Confession and its Apology; the fittest interlocutor in the many negotiations of the following period; and, after Luther's death, the chief authority in the many doctrinal controversies. Luther, in his polemical and theological writings, did not possess that talent for purely objective exposition of doctrine, that many-sided and circumspect deliberation, that almost painstaking scrupulousness, that quiet ear for the thoughts of an opponent, which we admire in Melanchthon. No one felt his own limits better than he did. But the theological world of thought that was Melanchthon's had nevertheless sprung from Luther's soul. It is a tendentious interpolation to speak of a peculiar doctrinal system of Melanchthon's. Melanchthon appropriated Luther's circle of theological thought with independence and sought to bring it to scholarly expression. But the modifications which he introduced into it did not arise from any peculiar principle of his own, but were the results of conscientious examination in particular matters. On the whole, Melanchthon was not a systematic thinker. Neither was Luther, but he was a theologian of creative spirit, speculative depth, and wonderful — one might almost