Philip Melanchthon on the Trinity
One substance, three persons, co-equal and co-eternal
there is one divine essence which is called and is God, eternal, without body, indivisible, of infinite power, wisdom, goodness, the Creator and Preserver of all things, visible and invisible; and that yet there are three persons of the same essence and power, who also are co-eternal, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
THE POSITION
Article I of the Augsburg Confession opens by ratifying Nicaea by name — one divine essence, three co-eternal persons of the same essence and power — and defines 'person' in the patristic sense as that which properly subsists, not a part or quality in another. The condemnations name the Arians and Eunomians, and then 'the Samosatenes, old and new' — Schaff's note identifies the new ones as the antitrinitarian Anabaptists of Melanchthon's own decade.
17 OTHERS HOLD THIS
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 Trinity", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/melanchthon/trinity (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/melanchthon/trinity).