Uses of Philosophy in Reformation Thought: Melanchthon, Schegk, and Crellius

Abstract

In the face of such memorable attacks on human philosophising as this in Luther’s Disputation against Scholastic Theology, one may be forgiven for assuming that either no philosophy was taught at Protestant universities, or that even if it had been taught, philosophy no longer had anything to do with theology until the late 16th and early 17th century. “The return of metaphysics” around 1600 in Protestant German universities is a well-known, and, indeed, a well-studied, episode in the history of Western philosophy.² Here I wish to discuss some Protestant views of the relationship between philosophy and theology before the full-scale reintroduction of metaphysics instruction in Northern Europe. In particular, I shall discuss the views of Philip Melanchthon, Jacob Schegk, and Fortunatus Crellius. It is indeed the case that the traditional, medieval assumptions about the relationship between philosophy and theology were seriously questioned and even abandoned by the first generation of Protestant thinkers; but this did not mean that philosophy lost is relevance to theological issues altogether. In the struggle for reconciliation and need for differentiation within the evangelical camp during the second half of the sixteenth century, philosophy became an indispensable tool for shaping confessional identities, and to this end, humanist scholarship as well as categories of medieval scholasticism were drawn upon. The return of metaphysics around 1600, then, is a culmination of developments that had been going on for at least half a century.

43. It is an error to say that no man can become a theologian without Aristotle ... 45. To state that a theologian who is not a logician is a monstrous heretic, this is a monstrous and heretical statement ... 50. Briefly, the whole of Aristotle is to theology as darkness is to light. This in opposition to the scholastics.¹