The authority of Dr. Philipp [Melanchthon].
The authority of Dr. Philipp [Melanchthon].
§ 117. As concerns the opinion of Dr. Philipp [Melanchthon], to which the appeal is often made in this question, we should note that he thinks more properly than he speaks. Also his earlier writings must be distinguished from his later ones. In the first edition of his Loci (in the year ’23, p. 39), he writes as follows: “All told, there are two parts of Scripture: the Law and the Gospel. The Law reveals sin; the Gospel, grace. The Law indicates the illness; the Gospel, the remedy. The Law is the minister of death; the Gospel, of life and peace. The Law is the strength of sin; the Gospel, the power to salvation for all who believe.”13 [Melanchthon again] (in the article De poenit., p. 86): “Mortification takes place through the Law, which terrifies and kills the conscience; vivification takes place through the Gospel or through Absolution, for the Gospel is nothing other than the absolution from sins.”14 (See also Disput. de jubilaeo, held in 1549, theses 24, 32, and 36; also Disput. de discrimine legis et evangelii, held in 1550, theses 5–7, which are in his Opera, vol. 4, pp. 551, 553).
In his Oratio de ecclesia, delivered the year before his death (found in Declam., vol. 5, f. 217), he writes as follows: “Let us not be disturbed by the sophistry over the word ‘Gospel.’ Under this title I include the entire doctrine of repentance and of eternal promise and, in fact, even the main points gathered together in the Creed, just as the apostles used the word ‘Gospel’ to refer to the entire teaching of their ministry.”
Those are the words of Dr. Philipp [Melanchthon]. From these statements it is clear that he used the word “Gospel” in a looser sense insofar as he takes it for the entire ministry of the Word. But when we speak specifically and properly about the Gospel, then as the words of the Apology of the Augsburg Confession have it: “It is the promise of the remission of sins and of justification for Christ’s sake, which declares the righteousness of faith in Christ.”15
§ 118. Somehow Bucanus acknowledges this very fact (locus 20, p. 193, in a response to the question whether it is the function of the Law or of the Gospel to preach repentance): “If by the word ‘repentance’ you mean not μεταμέλεια but μετάνοια, that is, not contrition but a salutary conversion to God through faith, then it is the function not of the Law but of the Gospel (according as ‘Gospel’ is taken generally, meaning the entire ministry of the New Testament).”
Those are the words of Bucanus, on the basis of which a judgment can be made in regard to the arguments by which he attempts to prove that the Gospel is the preaching of repentance. In fact, most of them are far from the point because here the question is not about the Gospel according as it is taken generally, for the whole ministry of the New Testament, but according as it properly and specifically denotes the preaching of grace. Moreover, subordinates and things joined amicably must not be opposed to each other with respect to the one result that they produce. The preaching of repentance, according as the entire conversion of a person is understood by the word “repentance,” must be attributed to the ministry not only of the Law nor only of the Gospel but of both, yet in such a way that each doctrine fulfills its purpose and the two work together amicably to produce one common result.
1 The Second Article of the Apostles’ Creed (Concordia, 16).
2 Thesen gegen die Antinomer (1540), WA 39/1:344–47.
3 Against the Antinomians (1539), WA 50:468–70 (cf. AE 47:107–9).
4 For example, AC XII 2–5; Ap XIIa (V) 28–30.
5 Chemnitz’s Works 8:829–33.
6 Cf. Thesen gegen die Antinomer (1540), theses 18–19, WA 39/1:348.
7 E.g., Luther, Commentary on Psalm 110 (1539), LW 13:288; Church Postil (1540–44), LW 77:386.
8 FC Ep V; FC SD V.
9 Lectures on Galatians (1535), WA 40/1:527 (cf. AE 26:343).
10 reductive. To practitioners of logic, reductio is the technique of making an imperfect syllogism perfect either by providing more evidence or by a “reduction to absurdity.” (See Micraelius, Lexicon Philosophicum, s.v. “Reductio”; and Signoriello, Lexicon peripateticum philosophico-theologicum, 243–44.) Here the former kind of reductio seems to be meant. Previously (§ 111) Gerhard had described the interplay of Law and Gospel in terms of a syllogism. Here he seems to mean the same thing: the Passion of Christ, which really is Gospel, also reveals what sin is, though the Law is what accuses that sin.
11 Thesen gegen die Antinomer (1540), WA 39/1:345–46.
12 Cf. Chemnitz’s Works 8:830.
13 Cf. Philip Melanchthon, Commonplaces: Loci Communes 1521, trans. Christian Preus (St. Louis: Concordia, 2014), 91.
14 Cf. Melanchthon, Commonplaces: Loci Communes 1521, 176.
15 Ap IV 43 (cf. Concordia, 88).