Melanchthon finished his "Theological Common-Places or Ground-Thoughts (Loci
Communes or Loci Theologici), in April, 1521, and sent the proof-sheets to Luther on the Wartburg.
They appeared for the first time before the Close of that year.^466
This book marks an epoch in the history of theology. It grew out of exegetical lectures on
the Epistle to the Romans, the Magna Charta of the evangelical system. It is an exposition of the
leading doctrines of sin and grace, repentance and salvation. It is clear, fresh, thoroughly biblical,
and practical. Its main object is to show that man cannot be saved by works of the law or by his
own merits, but only by the free grace of God in Christ as revealed in the gospel. It presents the
living soul of divinity, in striking contrast to the dry bones of degenerate scholasticism with its
endless theses, antitheses, definitions, divisions, and subdivisions.
The first edition was written in the interest of practical Christianity rather than scientific
theology. It is meagre in the range of topics, and defective in execution. It is confined to anthropology
and soteriology, and barely mentions the metaphysical doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation,
as transcendent mysteries to be adored rather than curiously discussed. It has a polemical hearing
against the Romanists, in view of the recent condemnation of Luther by the Sorbonne. It also
contains some crude and extreme opinions which the author afterwards abandoned. Altogether in
its first shape it was an unripe production, though most remarkable if we consider the youth of the
author, who was then only twenty-four years of age.
Melanchthon shared at first Luther’s antipathy to scholastic theology; but he learned to
distinguish between pure and legitimate scholasticism and a barren formalism, as also between the
Aristotelian philosophy itself and the skeleton of it which was worshiped as an idol in the universities
at that time. He knew especially the value of Aristotle’s ethics, wrote a commentary on the same
(1529), and made important original contributions to the science of Christian ethics in his
Philosophiae Moralis Epitome (1535).^467
Under his improving hand, the Loci assumed in subsequent editions the proportions of a
full, mature, and well-proportioned system, stated in calm, clear, dignified language, freed from
polemics against the Sorbonne and contemptuous flings at the schoolmen and Fathers. He embraced
in twenty-four chapters all the usual topics from God and the creation to the resurrection of the
body, with a concluding chapter on Christian liberty. He approached the scholastic method, and
even ventured, in opposition to the Anti-Trinitarians, on a new speculative proof of the Holy Trinity
from psychological analogies. He never forsakes the scriptural basis, but occasionally quotes also
the Fathers to show their supposed or real agreement with evangelical doctrines.
Melanchthon’s theology, like that of Luther, grew from step to step in the heat of controversy.
Calvin’s Institutes came finished from his brain, like Minerva out of the head of Jupiter.
The Loci prepared the way for the Augsburg Confession (1530), in which Melanchthon
gave to the leading doctrines official shape and symbolical authority for the Lutheran Church. But
he did not stop there, and passed through several changes, which we must anticipate in order to
form a proper estimate of that work.
(^466) Under the title: Loci communes rerum theologicarum seu hypotyposes theologicae, Wittenberg, 1521. Bindseil puts the publication
in December. I have a copy of the Leipzig ed. of M.D.LIX., which numbers 858 pages without indices, and bears the title: Loci Praecipui
Theologici. Nunc denuo cura et diligentia summa recogniti, multisque in locis copiose illustrati, cum appendice disputationis de conjugio,
etc.
(^467) See his ethical writings in vol. XVI. of his Opera, in the "Corp. Reform.," and a discussion of their merits in Wuttke’s Handbuch
der christl. Sittenlehre, 3d ed. (1874), I. 148 sqq.