Melanchthonian Method as a Guide to Reading Confessions of Faith

The Index of the Book of Concord and Late Reformation Learning

Bibliographic Data

ID7711973
AuthorsRobert Kolb (0000-0003-0187-3391, Concordia Seminary, corresponding author)
Year2003
Volume72
Issue3
Pages504-524
Publication date2003-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueChurch History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0009-6407 • E-ISSN: 1755-2613
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0009640700100332
OpenAlexW2133497574
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited8

Horst Kunze, the contemporary German authority on indexing, writes, “An index is not a tool that has its own independent existence. It is an aid for the use of another literary object. It is like a signpost. Like a signpost it has no other purpose than to point the way in certain directions.” Indices seldom attract scholarly investigation. Casual users accept the index as a more or less objective guide to the contents of a book. However, the index prepared in 1580 for the initial publication of the Book of Concord, appearing in several of its first printings, was designed to point in specific directions, to cultivate a particular way for its primary audience to read the volume and put it to use. It took the form of loci communes —topics—as they had been developed a generation earlier by Martin Luther's Wittenberg colleague Philip Melanchthon for the proper, fruitful, study of theology. By selecting the doctrinal topics and categories into which pastors and teachers were to organize the content of this volume for their own use, this index offers one of the first theological commentaries on the Book of Concord. The index also reveals how Melanchthon's theological method continued to dominate the way the heirs of the Wittenberg Reformation thought—in spite of the fact that it directs readers away from and against the theology of some of Melanchthon's followers whom scholars have dubbed with his name, “Philippists.” (In fact, some contemporaries objected to the Book because they believed it to be anti-Melanchthonian

Art · Casual · Faith · German · Index (typography) · Linguistics · Literature · Object (grammar) · Point (geometry) · Political science · Reading (process) · Theology · Classics · Computer Science · Historical Influence and Diplomacy · History · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Renaissance Literature and Culture

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