Changes

===Lutheran Orthodoxy===

===Lutheran Orthodoxy===

Lutheran orthodoxy may be treated briefly after depicting Melanchthon's system. It lived and moved in the understanding of the Gospel to which Melanchthon gave words and form, notwithstanding the controversies of Gnesiolutherans and Philippists, and the preference shown for the former when the princes were compelled to take sides (see Philippists). For it the Bible was the only actual authority of faith, even the creeds adopted serving merely to settle points of controversy, and the task of theology was to interpret, systematize, and defend in pedagogic fashion what the Bible contained. The classic theologian of the period, Johann Gerhard (q.v.), gave little space to the confessions in his Loci, (9 vols., Jena, 1610–22) and treated them only incidentally. It is not meant that Gerhard, or any one, was indifferent to the confessions, but he was so fully convinced that they accorded with the Bible and bound to nothing except what was in the Bible that he could give them a very secondary place. It was far more important to show that Lutheranism and the early Church were in harmony, and that the new teachings were supported by the testimony of the Church Fathers. Practically the confessions were important chiefly on the political side. The Augsburg Confession served as a statement of the Evangelical faith which could be used juristically in dealings between Lutheran states and the Empire; and the states often felt the need of documents which could be appealed to in matters of uncertainty in their internal church policy.

Lutheran orthodoxy may be treated briefly after depicting Melanchthon's system. It lived and moved in the understanding of the Gospel to which Melanchthon gave words and form, notwithstanding the controversies of Gnesiolutherans and Philippists, and the preference shown for the former when the princes were compelled to take sides (see Philippists). For it the Bible was the only actual authority of faith, even the creeds adopted serving merely to settle points of controversy, and the task of theology was to interpret, systematize, and defend in pedagogic fashion what the Bible contained. The classic theologian of the period, Johann Gerhard (q.v.), gave little space to the confessions in his Loci, (9 vols., Jena, 1610–22) and treated them only incidentally. It is not meant that Gerhard, or any one, was indifferent to the confessions, but he was so fully convinced that they accorded with the Bible and bound to nothing except what was in the Bible that he could give them a very secondary place. It was far more important to show that Lutheranism and the early Church were in harmony, and that the new teachings were supported by the testimony of the Church Fathers. Practically the confessions were important chiefly on the political side. The Augsburg Confession served as a statement of the Evangelical faith which could be used juristically in dealings between Lutheran states and the Empire; and the states often felt the need of documents which could be appealed to in matters of uncertainty in their internal church policy.