Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 81:1 (Spring 2019)
Article: Melanchthon’s Innovative ContributionOn Penance In 1527: A Corrective Addendum To Luther?
Author: Herman A. Speelman

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WTJ 81:1 (Spring 2019) p. 49

Melanchthon’s Innovative ContributionOn Penance In 1527:
A Corrective Addendum To Luther?

Herman A. Speelman

Herman A. Speelman is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Early Modern Reformed Theology at the Theological University of Kampen, the Netherlands.

Was Melanchthon’s innovative contribution in 1527 on the evangelical understanding of penitence a correction on Luther’s view? With this question in mind, we look at Melanchthon’s visitation documents, Luther’s new view on the sacrament of penance, and the discussion about this with John Agricola.

Although there proved to be unmistakable differences between Luther and Melanchthon where penitence was concerned, and between the two of them and Agricola, when considered as a whole, the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation, should, in the history of church and theology, mainly be viewed as a protest against the manner in which the medieval church had attempted to gain increasing control over the Christian life through the sacrament of penance. Luther freed up penitence and repentance from the sacramental isolation in which it had fallen, and restored its position at the center of everyday life.

A debate that caused much turmoil in the early church concerned the matter of “second penance.”1 The question was whether or not sins of once-baptized Christians would still be eligible for forgiveness, and if so, which ones? There have always been strict factions in the church wishing either to exclude the possibility altogether or at least to subject it to maximal restrictions. Notwithstanding, this “second penance” became an increasingly accepted practice across the church, and an entire, extensive ecclesiastical institution of penance has grown from it over the course of the ages. In the early church this still took the form of a public display of penance in the presence of the bishop, while in the medieval era the secrecy of auricular confession

WTJ 81:1 (Spring 2019) p. 50

made its entrance through the monasteries and became common practice in the Western church, until it was opposed and abandoned as a sacrament by the sixteenth-century Reformers.

However, an important point which should not be forgotten is that the meaning of penance plays a much more profound role in Christian faith and life and stretches out much further than would seem to be suggested by the specific discussion over the ecclesiastical practice of penance and discipline that continues up until the present day. One might even state that the primary significance of the sixteenth-century Reformation and, more specifically, also of Melanchthon’s Instruction for the ...

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