Melanchthon, Philipp

Melanchthon, Philipp (1497–1560), German Reformer. In 1518 he became professor of Greek at Wittenberg, where he both influenced M. Luther and was influenced by him. In 1521 he found himself at the head of the Reformation movement while Luther was confined at the Wartburg. One of the most erudite and intellectually powerful figures of his age, Melanchthon was closer than Luther to Catholic teaching on the Law and free will, but his concern to prevent further divisions made him more open to Zwinglian and Calvinist doctrines on the Eucharist. He took part in the Diet of Speyer (1529), the Marburg Colloquy (1529), and the Diet of Augsburg (1530), where he was the chief architect of the Augsburg Confession. In 1537, however, he objected to the overt condemnation of the Papacy in the Schmalkaldic Articles. At the Catholic-Protestant Conferences of Worms (1540–41) and Ratisbon (1541) he and M. Bucer tried hard to unite the Churches. In his later years he was largely concerned with the organization of the Church in Saxony on a semi-episcopal basis and with the adiaphorist controversy. His characteristic teaching on free will, namely that the human will can co-operate with the Holy Spirit and with the grace of God in the act of conversion (known as synergism), received its definitive formulation in the 1535 edition of his Loci communes (1st edn. 1521).