My website: www.jordanbcooper.com Patreon: / justandsinner This video discusses Philip Melanchthon and his relationship to Martin Luther, as well as his role in the Lutheran tradition and the Lutheran Confessions.
Melanchthon in summarising his position on the human will writes in his Loci Communes of 1521 the following: “If you consider the human will according to predestination, there is no freedom in external or internal works, but everything happens according to divine design. If you consider the will according to external works, natural judgment concludes that some freedom exists” (Location 766, Kindle edition of Commonplaces translated by Christian Preus, published by Concordia 2014) This is in accord with Luther's position in The Bondage of the Will who rejected all human free will on the grounds of God having willed, foreknown and predestined all things that happen. Luther similarly held that the idea that we possess free will in our everyday decisions is only in our perception as it appears we can choose between alternative courses of action when in reality God has necessitated our decisions. So in 1521 Melanchthon was in agreement with Luther's deterministic position that all things must happen as they do according to God's design. However later on Melanchthon at some point begins to change his position on this. Christian Preus has a footnote (41, location 930) stating that Melanchthon in this 1521 edition approves of Laurentius Valla's rejection of free will on the grounds of divine predestination but that in later editions Melanchthon censures Valla as a determinist. So at some point Melanchthon stopped seeing eye to eye with Luther on divine predestination. However I have my doubts as to whether Luther was really aware of this. I tend to think Luther probably wasn't aware that Melanchthon had changed his position, and that Melanchthon wasn't particularly forthcoming that he had. Perhaps Melanchthon had been somewhat influenced by Erasmus's rejection of absolute predestination in his diatribe on free will. And perhaps Melanchthon found himself disagreeing with Luther's wholehearted defence of it in his reply to Erasmus in The Bondage of the Will. I don't know.
I believe that Melanchton was not compromising when he seemed to change his beliefs but rather he was in the process of his mind being renewed and transformed by the word of God. He developed and changed with that development. 1 Corinthians 8:2 And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know. We should stay teachable.
Question of free will is inadequate from the view of eternity, where we come from. In eternity, there is no change. Our decision just unfolds. I think that in eternity we already picked our stance towards JC, we simply find our greatest love again or discover and establish our hate. Are we given free will? Angels are given.
That would seem to be in accord with the two men on the issue of single- or double-predestination. Whereas Luther at one point or another began to accept double-predestination, I believe it was Melanchthon who gently pulled him back towards single-predestination. That is, the Lord being a living God, does not predestine His children to preterition, which (in Calvinist theology) refers to the putative state of not being predestined to salvation. While that may seem like several twists of logic, perhaps that is really an important point. Like being invited to a rich man’s party, salvation is not something to which we get to help ourselves, any more than we get to self-invite ourselves to a person’s party. Heaven is not a block party! We do have the absolute option of turning down an invitation, knowing full well we do not deserve to be invited into heaven, but by the grace of God! We can reject, but not self-invite, which has manifold implications on why Decision Theology is so wrong in many ways! By all means, practice keto; but not veto! When it comes to God’s invitation to faith and heaven, we can humbly accept or recklessly reject, and forever be a reject!
I have always been puzzled about Luther's view of the bread and wine in communion. My understanding is that he said that the real presence of Jesus was in those things, yet he denied transubstantiation. How can that be? If he taught that the real corporeal presence of Jesus is in the bread and wine, how is that not transubstantiation?
For as the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of *two realities,* earthly and heavenly; so also our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity. - Against Heresies 4:18:5 (189 A.D). Paul also says "Is not this *bread* that we break a co-union of the *body* of Christ." As I understand it the philosophy of transubstantiation goes beyond the text and makes the bread somehow vanish. That said, Luther and any Lutheran would be happy to let that one go if Rome would merely drop it's anathemas, and leave us to teach the ancient truth without insisting n John Henry Newman style Ultramontanism.
@@Mygoalwogel I think you were doing ok until "Luther and any Lutheran would be happy to let that one go if..." as if this were a negotiation of church doctrine. Q: Is the Lord's supper bread and wine, or His body and blood? A: Yes, both because His Word plainly says so.
Welcome to the Book of Concord's home on the Internet. The image shown on this page is the title page of the first edition of the Book of Concord, printed in Dresden, Germany in 1580. English translation of the page: CONCORDIA. YHWH. Christian repeated unanimous confession of later-named Electors, Princes, and Estates of the Augsburg Confession, and of their theologians' doctrine and faith. bookofconcord.org/
I hope not only that by now your English has improved, but I also hope that your knowledge of the Gospel and the Church has increased (and in the best case, that you have ended up embracing both and have become a Lutheran).
