Philipp Melanchthon

He was a combative, learned and impatient man.

And there was the newest member of the faculty, Philipp Melanchthon, a 21-year-old wunderkind, who arrived in August 1518 to take the new chair in Greek.

And he bowled everyone over with his inaugural lecture, which we're probably going to discuss in more detail sometime later.

He would very quickly become Luther's closest and longest-suffering collaborator.

Krusiger? Krusager? Krusager? Anyway, I call her Lizzie, right? No, Elizabeth here, of course, starts out in a convent, ends up as a nun, runs away, all that stuff, right? She actually runs away before Catherine von Boreda.

She runs away in 1522. um but while she was in the nunnery while she was placed there she learned to read she learned to write she could do latin she could kind of make music um she runs off to wittenberg she runs into luther's group she gets married uh to one of luther's best students they have a couple children together and uh in fact one of her sons casper jr here caspar i don't know anyway He'll replace Melanchthon as like when Melanchthon dies.

If you don't know, Melanchthon is like Martin Luther's right hand man.

He helps create education.

He's a really important guy.

I knew that of the major Christian traditions, Lutheranism was probably the most similar to Anglicanism.

I wasn't highly familiar with conservative Lutheranism or confessional Lutheranism, but I had read some Luther and Melanchthon.

I had read The Freedom of a Christian, The Bondage of the Will, the Loki Communis, and I knew that confessional Lutherans definitely believed in grace alone and faith alone.

I knew they taught the inerrancy of Scripture and that the sacraments are means of grace.

But there's another man in the history of Lutheranism that had a huge impact in not only working alongside Luther but carrying on his work and was instrumental in much of the Reformation ideas that have shaped Lutheranism.

And that was about a man by the name of Philip Melanchthon.

And so I've asked you to come in today to, I want to play the part of the student and let you play the part of the professor and just ask you some questions about how much influence Melanchthon had in the the shaping of what is modern Lutheranism and what you guys believe and teach.

But before we do that, could you just give us a broad snapshot of what you would say it means to be a Lutheran, as in distinguished from, say, a Presbyterian or a Baptist or another denomination of Protestant Christianity? What are some of the distinctives that make someone Lutheran?

Yeah, so if you're going to define a Lutheran, like any tradition, I would really define Lutheranism by its confessions.

when we know Christ, and we know Christ when we know his benefits.

To know Christ is to know his benefits.

That's a phrase that Melanchthon uses.