Philip Melanchthon on the final state of the lost
Eternal conscious punishment
Christ shall appear to judge, and shall raise up all the dead, and shall give unto the godly and elect eternal life and everlasting joys; but ungodly men and the devils shall he condemn unto endless torments. They condemn the Anabaptists who think that to condemned men and the devils shall be an end of torments.
THE POSITION
Eternal conscious punishment, stated as part of the single-return article and paired with a condemnation. Christ returns at the consummation, raises all the dead, gives the godly and elect eternal life, and condemns the ungodly and the devils to torments without end; those who expect an end to those torments are condemned by name.
20 OTHERS HOLD THIS
See all 23 figures on the final state of the lost →ABOUT THIS FIGURE
Luther's colleague at Wittenberg and the Reformation's systematizer. He wrote the first Protestant systematic theology (Loci Communes, 1521), drafted the Augsburg Confession (1530) and its Apology (1531), and then revised his own work far enough that the Formula of Concord condemned the later version seventeen years after his death. This entry rests on the Augsburg Confession read in Latin and English — Part I less Articles VI-VIII and XIV-XVI, plus Part II Articles XXII-XXIV and XXVIII — on the opening articles of the Apology in English, and on the successive editions of the Loci through Latin sentences preserved by Schaff and Bente; no edition of the Loci itself was read.
Cite this page
"Philip Melanchthon on the final state of the lost", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/melanchthon/final-state (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/melanchthon/final-state).