Philip Melanchthon's Theology And His Influence Upon Reformation

Philip Melanchthon(1497-1560)burned in the town of Bretten Deutschland,he was a famous humanist,reformer and theologian in Reformation.In 1518,Melanchthon joined in Reformation with his outstanding abilities of humanism and language,he developed his own unique theology base on Martin Luther's idea.Therefore,Melanchthon became one of the founders of Lutheran as Luther himself,he also had a large influence in Reformation beyond Lutheran.The foundation and development of Melanchthon's theology was effected by different factors and had his own characteristic.On one hand,Melanchthon learned new theology ideas from Luther;on the other hand,he interpreted them with his humanism and built his own theology base on that.During the two men's lives,Melanchthon interacted with Luther on theology without any kind of breakup.Melanchthon's theology used humanism subjects like dialect and rhetoric as methodology,there were also many obvious traits of humanism in doctrinal part of his theology.Melanchthon had a great influence upon Reformation.His most famous theology work Loci Communes which published in 1521 was considered as the very first systematic theology work of all Protestants,he also was the drafter of a series of important Protestant's doctrinal work like Augsburg Confession,Apology of Augsburg Confession and Wittenberg Concord.Furthermore,in about 40 years,Melanchthon worked as a speaker and senior representative in Lutheran.After Luther's death,Melanchthon became the leader of Lutheran,his different ideas with Luther in theology caused a large amount of criticism from those 'Genisio-Lutherans' and finally caused controversy and cleavage in Lutheran.Those chaos gradually calm down after Melanchthon's death in 1560,his theology was condemned and removed from Lutheran's doctrine.Melanchthon also had conversation with reformers beyond Wittenberg,evidences showed that his theology had influence on John Calvin's idea.Meanwhile,his theology also had great effects on English Reformation,especially on Queen Elisabeth I's own faith and her policy of religion during her early reign.Philip Melanchthon always tried to build a commonplace of Protestant's theology and pursuing the concord of Christians during all his life,this was the most laudable and successful achievement in his career,but also the reason why he finally failed.