It was his advocacy of this doctrine, as the very foundation of sanctification, which earned for him the striking commendation we find in a letter written by Luther to Jonas in 1529. Melanchthon had been of greater service to the Church and the cause of holiness than “a thousand fellows of the ilk of Jerome, Hilarion or Macarius, those Saints of ceremonies and celibacy who were not worthy to loose the laces of his boots nor—to boast a little—of yours [Jonas’s], of Pomeranus [Bugenhagen], or even of mine. For what have these self-constituted Saints and all the wifeless bishops done which can compare with one year’s work of Philip’s, or with his ‘Loci’?”[1146]
Yet this very work was to bear additional testimony to Melanchthon’s abandonment of several of Luther’s fundamental doctrines.[1147]
In 1530 and 1531 Melanchthon passed through a crisis, and from that time forward a greater divergency in matters of doctrine became apparent between the two friends. Even in his work for the Diet in 1530 Melanchthon had assumed a position of greater independence, and this grew more marked when he began to plan a revised edition of his “Loci.” He himself was later to acknowledge that his views had undergone a change, though, in order to avoid unpleasantness, he preferred to make out that the alteration was less far-reaching than it really was. “You know,” he wrote to an ardent admirer of Luther’s, “that I put certain things concerning predestination, determination of the will, necessity of obedience to the law, and grievous sin, less harshly than does Luther. In all these things, as I well know, Luther’s teaching is the same as mine, but there are some unlearned persons, who, without at all understanding them, pin their faith on certain rude expressions of his.”[1148] But was Luther’s teaching really “the same”? The truth is, that, on the points instanced, “Luther had not only in earlier days taught a doctrine different from that of Melanchthon, but continued to cherish the same to the very end of his life.”[1149] It fitted, however, the cowardly character of Melanchthon to conceal as much as possible these divergencies.
It is worth our while to examine a little more closely the nature of the doctrinal differences between Luther and Melanchthon, seeing that the latter—to quote the Protestant theologian Gustav Krüger—was the real “creator of evangelical theology” and the “founder of the evangelical Church system.”[1150]
As a matter of fact Melanchthon had already shaped out a course of his own by the modifications which he had seen fit to introduce in the original Confession of Augsburg.
Not only did he omit whatever displeased him in the new doctrine, but he also formulated it in a way which manifestly deviated from Luther’s own. Human co-operation, for instance, plays a part much greater than with Luther. Unlike Luther, he did not venture to assert plainly that the gift of faith was the work of God independent of all human co-operation. Concerning the “law,” too, he put forward a different opinion, which, however, was not much better than Luther’s.[1151] In 1530, so says Fr. Loofs, one of the most esteemed Protestant historians of dogma, “he was no longer merely an interpreter of Luther’s ideas.”[1152] “Yet he had not yet arrived at a finished theology of his own even in 1531, when he published the ‘editio princeps’ of the ‘Augustana’ and the ‘Apologia.’”[1153] One of the first important products of the change was the Commentary on Romans which he published in 1532. Then, in 1535, appeared the revised edition of the “Loci,” which, in its new shape, apart from mere modifications of detail, was to serve as his measure for the last twenty-five years of his life. “The ‘Loci’ of 1535 embody the distinctive Melanchthonian theology.”[1154]
“Thus, even before the death of Luther, and before altered circumstances had restricted Melanchthon’s influence, the stamp which the latter had impressed upon the principles of the Reformation had already become the heritage of a large circle of evangelical theologians.”[1155]
Leaving aside the idea of an unconditional Divine predestination, he spoke in both these works of the “promissio universalis” of salvation. The Holy Ghost—such is his view on the question of conversion—by means of the “Word” produces faith in those who do not resist. The human will, which does not reject, but accepts grace, forms, together with the “Word of God” and the “Holy Ghost,” one of the three causes (“tres causæ concurrentes”) of conversion. It is really to Luther’s deterministic doctrine that the author of the “Loci” alludes in the 1535 edition: “The Stoics’ ravings about fate must find no place in the Church.”[1156]
Human co-operation in the work of salvation came to be designated Synergism. The Protestant historian of dogma mentioned above points out “that, by his adoption of Synergism, Melanchthon forsook both the Lutheran tradition and his own earlier standpoint.” The assumption of an unconditional Divine predestination, such as we find it advocated by Luther, Zwingli, Bucer, Calvin and others, was here “for the first time thrown overboard by one of the Protestant leaders.”[1157] The same author, after commenting on Melanchthon’s new exposition of justification and the law in relation to the Gospel, declares that here, too, Melanchthon had exploited “only a part of Luther’s thought and had distorted some of the most precious truths we owe to the Reformation.”[1158]
This same charge we not seldom hear brought against Melanchthon by up-to-date Protestant theologians. In the school of Albert Ritschl it is, for instance, usual to say that he narrowed the ideas of Luther, particularly in his conception of faith and of the Church. The truth is that Melanchthon really did throw overboard certain radical views which had been cherished by Luther, particularly in his early days. The faith which is required for salvation he comes more and more to take as faith in all the articles of revelation, and not so much as a mere faith and confidence in the forgiveness of sins and personal salvation; “the first place is accorded no longer to trust but to doctrine,”[1159] though, as will appear immediately, he did not feel quite sure of his position. In his conception of the Church, too, he was more disposed to see “an empirical reality and to insist on its doctrinal side,”[1160] instead of looking on the Church, as Luther did, viz. as the “invisible band of all who confess the Gospel.”[1161] Johannes Haussleiter, the Protestant editor of the Disputations held under Melanchthon from 1546 onwards, thus feels justified in saying that, “it was in Melanchthon’s school that the transition was effected ... from a living confession born of faith and moulded with the assistance of theology, to a firm, hard and rigid law of doctrine.... This, from the point of view of history, spelt retrogression.... If it was possible for such a thing to occur at Wittenberg one generation after Luther’s ringing testimony in favour of the freedom of a Christian Man, what might not be feared for the future?”[1162]