'Europe should listen to Melanchthon'

“The mature layperson who can judge what is heard and apply it independently: this trade-mark of Protestantism goes back to Melanchthon.” These were the words of the President of CPCE, the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe, on the 450th anniversary of the death of Philip Melanchthon on 19th April.

Melanchthon was “the great educator of the Reformation”, said Wipf. The combination of “science and the Holy Spirit anchored the evangelical church among the people and gave Protestantism a distinctive character which even today makes it capable of facing the future”. In many ways Melanchthon “brought to clear articulation what Luther had thought”.

The Leuenberg Agreement, and with it the theological foundation of CPCE, rests on Melanchthon as mediator and reconciler between the Reformers and Reformation currents. Wipf: “Melanchthon had recognised: It is about the unity of the church alongside variation in customs. Diversity is not harmful so long as the foundation is shared.” Amid church upheavals it was a fundamental principle of his always to combine diversity with the search for the principles of unity, and that holds good for CPCE as well.

“In spite of Melanchthon’s efforts modern Europe was marked by the principle of emphasised differentiation”, thus Wipf in regard to the political map of the last century. Only with the work of European reconciliation after the War did we begin to attend more closely to what unites us. Wipf: “Here Europe should listen to Melanchthon.”

The President of the church community of 105 churches from 29 countries stressed the influence of Melanchthon across Europe. Thus the University of Cambridge tried to bring him to England, while the University of Copenhagen organised itself anew according to Melanchthon’s guidelines. In Hungary he was the most published author of his time, and over a hundred students from Sweden and Finland studied with him. Finally the reformation of the church in Poland or Iceland was also moulded by him-

Note:The Reformer Philip Melanchthon (born 16.02.1497 in Bretten – died 19.04.1560 in Wittenberg) was a driving force of the German and European ecclesiastical-political Reformation. The Augsburg Confession compile dby him belongs today to the confessional documents of the Lutheran churches.

Berne, 19th April 2010