SOURCE: Engelland, Hans. Introduction toMelanchthon on Christian Doctrine: Loci Communes 1555, translated and edited by Clyde L. Manschreck, pp. xxv-xlii. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965.

In this essay, Engelland compares Melanchthon's approaches to theology in his earlier and later works and considers some controversial questions of scriptural interpretation in Melanchthon's writings.

On the twenty-ninth of August, 1518, Philip Melanchthon, a small, slender, unpretentious, almost timid figure, entered the Wittenberg Castle Church, which served as the great hall of Wittenberg University, and walked to the rostrum to give his inaugural speech on the reform of university education, De corrigendis adolescentiae studiis. It inaugurated a career that was to influence not only higher education but theology and the Church as well, for Melanchthon's influence brought about a spiritual outlook in Germany's evangelical universities that lasted for one hundred and fifty years, until the time of Wolffianism. Through the universities and the...