Brrr . . . it's cold here in Grand Rapids. Snow, snow, and more snow.

I had lunch with Dr. Kolb and Jay Collier of Reformation Heritage Books. It was a great ecumenical exchange. Dr. Kolb floated his thesis, which I think I embrace, that if Luther and Calvin would have ever met in person, they would have come to agreement on the Eucharist . . . if only that could have been!

Monday's class with Dr. Kolb was excellent. I have dubbed him "the Godfrey of the Lutherans." He's brilliant, he has an encyclopedic knowledge, he's witty, and I think he actually lived in the days of Melanchthon, Amsdorf, Chemnitz, Agricola, and Major!

Day 1 was all about the historical foundations of Lutheran Orthodoxy, which Dr. Kolb's periodizes is roughly from 1550 to 1750.

One interesting thing was Dr. Kolb's classification of the Lutherans: Luther was the fountain and Amsdorf and Melanchthon were his cohorts, yet Amsdorf was not very influential but Melanchthon was Because all the great Lutherans were educated by Melanchthon. In the aftermath of the Smalcaldic War (1547), the Augsburg Interim (1548), and the Leipzig Proposal, the Lutherans (also known as the Melanchthonians) were divided into two groups:

1) Philippists, called the Adiaphorists by their opponents (further divided into two groups):
—Crypto-Calvinists
—Moderates

2) Gnesio-Lutherans, called the Flacians by their opponents (further divided into three groups):
—Moderates
—Antinomians (so-called as they denied the third use, not the first use)
—Radical Flacians

The Cryptos became Calvinists (and many became Unitarians, which Dr. Kolb said was one of the few delights of the Germans!) and the Flacians moved east to Austria and died out in two generations.

The Moderate Philippists, Moderate Gnesios, and Antinomians came together in the Formula of Concord to form Lutheran Orthodoxy in 1577.

Most enlightening was Dr. Kolb's latest thesis. He is preliminarily proposing that the debates between the Philippists and Gnesios (all Lutherans were committed to being Lutheran and advancing Luther's ideas) was all about the tension between Law and Gospel. This means the debate was between Law, that is, man's responsibility in "salvation," and Gospel, that is, God's responsibility in "salvation." Dr. Kolb does not believe Melanchthon was a "synergist," although some of his followers became that, but that Melanchthon, who taught humanities and arts of rhetoric and logic, was seeking to test ways to express homiletically and pastorally the doctrines of Law and Gospel. In the aftermath of Augsburg he was seen as a traitor by his own students, who read him suspiciously and angrily. As well, Melanchthon was the Duke's representative before the Emperor's Roman representatives, and this led Melanchthon to do all he could to ease tensions and thereby save Lutheran pulpits from the Spanish armies of Charles.

Dr. Kolb's summary was that political and personal issues created the tensions and the divide.

As an aside, I think I have my paper topic already. Amidst the lecture Dr. Kolb mentioned that the Gnesio-Lutherans had a vestment controversy with the Philippists. While the Philippists were willing to practice much that was adiaphora, the Gnesios rejected all vestments for two reasons: 1) they had been laid aside 20 years earlier as a symbol of breaking from Rome and 2) in times of confession (when the true church was persecuted), there are no adiaphora. Sounds like there was a time of Lutheran Puritanism in mid-sixteenth century Germany!

Back to my reading for today's class on Martin Chemnitz's works on the Lord's Supper against the "Sacramentarians" (us) and the Council of Trent.