Melanchthon and
Luther
The fact is that Melanchthon himself
was somewhat ill at ease with many facets of Luther’s teachings, particularly
as regards the latter’s apparent insistence o man’s total passivity in
justification. For Luther, there is a perfect, almost mystical continuity
between faith and works; works would be the automatic (hence passive) product
of the former, much in the same way as the life of faith is virtually identified
with the action of God’s Spirit in man. When Christ ‘takes over’ in the admirable
commercium, according to Luther, man no longer acts for Christ ‘lives in
him’.
Melanchthon, in the later editions of
his often re-written work Loci communes, explains that justification
must make reference to three contributing factors: the Word of God, the
Holy Spirit and the faculty of the human will, not only the first two as Luther
would have held. The latter he terms the facultas applicandi se ad gratiam,
a way of speaking hardly to Luther’s liking. In addition, his early commitment
to a doctrine of predestination ante praevisa merita (1521) in line with
Luther’s is replaced later on by that of predestination post paevisa merita
(1535). The significance of the ex-humanist always attached to the tangible
human factor in Christian life made it difficult for him to conceive of Christ’s
action and presence ‘taking over’ completely, as it were, in man. After his
1519-20 conversion from an ethical doctrine of justification centered on
mortification of the flesh and the affections, to a strongly Lutheran position in
early 1520s, a certain rationalizing of the Lutheran message comes to the fore
again in the late ‘20s and ‘30s.
In specific terms, Melanchthon
constantly attempts to clarify and reconcile a series of elements of Luther’s
theology seemingly at odds with one another: (1) the central role of the person
of Christ and our union with him; (cf. for example P. Melanchthon, Annotationes
in Evang. Iohannis [1523]) (2) the forensic or extrinsicist notion of grace
and justification (justice as favor Dei); (‘Non aliud enim est gratia,
si exactissime describenda sit, nisi Dei benevolentia erga nos’ [P.
Melanchthon, Loci Communes]) (3) the regenerative or real effectiveness
of justification in the believer and his cooperation with grace. Melanchthon’s
relevance for the theological history of Lutheranism lies not so much in having
resolved the tensions between these elements, but for having formulated them
clearly in the first place.
However, Melanchthon’s reflection is
characterized by an incapacity to hold on to the three realities at one and the
same time, as Luther had done in his brilliant, living and paradoxical theologizing.
Under Melanchthon’s influence, the dialectical genius of Luther seems to come
to pieces; his vision of grace and Christian life becomes functional, almost
mechanical. He moves away from a personalist view of Christ to one centered on
analyzing his work: hoc est Christum cognoscere, beneficia etus
cognoscere. (P. Melanchthon, Loci communies [1521], praefatio)
A formal distinction, not to be found in Luther, is drawn between justification,
the external act by which God pronounces or declares te believer to be
righteous (Gerechtsprechung), and regeneration, the internal
process of renewal in which the believer
is sanctified in collaborating with the action of the Christ’s Spirit. The former becomes more
and more emphasized and established as the hallmark of genuine Lutheranism.
Melanchthon speaks increasingly of iustitia aliena as something quite
distinct from sanctification and renewal, in such a way that he (and not
Luther!) should be considered as the most authentic representative before
history of the classic notion of extrinsic (imputed or forensic) justification consistently
(and perhaps not unjustly) censured by Catholic theologians for its one-sidedness.
No longer is justification language
vouched in terms of Luther’s spousal, personalist and mysterious Christ-centered
admirabile commercium, which harmonized the extrinsic and inner elements
of justification is an impressive, closely-woven, though elusive dialectic. Melanchthon
and a good part of Lutheranism of his time explained justification in terms of
a juridical analogy based on Roman law. Just as in legal affairs, the
transgressor is declared or considered free in foro, so also the
sinner is justified, that is, declared to be righteous, in foro vidino;
hence the term ‘forensic’ as applied to justification. Melanchthon says: ‘Justification
means the remission of sins, the reconciliation or acceptance of the person for
eternal life. For the Hebrews “to justify” is a forensic term; it is as if I
were to say that the Roman people had justified Scipius, who had been accused
by the tribunes, when the latter had, in their turn, absolved him or “declared”
him just. Paul uses the term “justification”, following the custom of Hebrews
speech, to mean acceptance, that is, reconciliation and remission of sins. (P.
Melanchthon, Loci communes [1535])
To be noted in respect of Melanchthon’s
way of expressing the doctrine of justification is the fact that Erasmus, in
his Novum instrumentum omne (1516), employs the forensic concept of acceptilatio
(the purely verbal remission of a debt without payment) as an illustration of
the biblical term imputare. It would seem therefore that Melanchthon’s
teaching cannot be taken simply as a further expression or natural development
of Luther’s extra nos, but to some degree a return (perhaps unwittingly
made) to the very categories which, as a follower of Luther he had ostensibly abjured.
(Paul O’Callaghan, Fides Christi: The Justification Debate [Dublin: Four
Courts Press, 1997], 46-49)
H. Schmid sums up classical ‘Lutheran’
doctrine as follows: ‘The effect of faith is justification; by which is to be
understood that act of God by which He removes the sentence of condemnation to
which man is exposed in consequence of his sins, releases him from his guilt,
and ascribes to him the merit of Christ . . . “Justification denotes that act
by which the sinner, who is responsible for guilt and liable to punishment, but
who believes in Christ, ins pronounced just by God the Judge”. This act occurs
at the instant in which the merit of Christ is appropriated by faith, and can
properly be designated a forensic or judicial act, since God in it, as if in a
civil court, pronounce a judgment upon man, which assigns to him an entirely different
position, and entirely different rights. By justification we are, therefore, by
no means to understand a moral condition existing in man, or a moral change
which he has experienced, but only a judgment pronounced upon man, by which his
relation to God is reversed, and indeed in such a manner, that a man can now
consider himself one whose sins are blotted out, who is no longer responsible
for them before God, who, on the other hand, appears before God as accepted and
righteous, in whom God finds nothing more to punish, with whom he has no longer
any occasion to be displeased’ (H. Schmid, The Doctrinal Theology of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church, Minneapolis n/d, pp. 424f.). (Ibid., 48 n. 35)
Karl Holl, using Kantian terminology,
established a distinction between ‘analytic’ and ‘synthetic’ justification.
Synthetic justification was defined as a declarative judgment of God whereby
the sinner is justified solely on the basis of Christ’s work, as a kind of
legal fiction. According to Holl, Luther rejected this understanding; it was
Melanchthon who understood and expressed the doctrine of justification in this
way, and popularized it. Luther’s understanding of justification,
conversely, was analytic, according to Holl, insofar as God really makes the
sinner righteous; were he not to have done so, he would be a liar, in treating
the sinner as righteous when in fact he was not so. Cf. K. Holl, “Luther’s
Bedeutung für den Fortschritt der Auslegungskunst’, in Gesammelte Aufsätze
zur Kirchengeschichte, vol. 1: Luther, Tübingen 1927, pp. 544-582. (Ibid.,
48 n. 36, emphasis in bold added)