Marian Views
Melanchthon viewed any veneration of saints rather critically but developed positive commentaries about Mary. In his Annotations in Evangelia commenting on Lk 2,52, he discusses the faith of Mary, “she kept all things in her heart” which to Melanchton is a call to the Church to follow her example. During the marriage at Cana, Melanchton points out that Mary went too far, asking for more wine, misusing her position. But she was not upset, when Jesus gently scolded her. Mary was negligent, when she lost her son in the temple, but she did not sin. Mary was conceived with original sin like every other human being, but she was spared the consequences of it. Consequently, Melanchton opposed the feast of the Immaculate Conception, which in his days, although not dogma, was celebrated in several cities and had been approved at the Council of Basel in 1439. He declared that the Immaculate Conception was an invention of monks. Mary is a representation (Typus) of the Church and in the Magnificat, Mary spoke for the whole Church. Standing under the cross, Mary suffered like no other human being. Consequently Christians have to unite with her under the Cross, in order to become Christ-like.
Read more about this topic: Philipp Melanchthon
Famous quotes containing the words marian and/or views:
“The master, the swabber, the boatswain and I,
The gunner and his mate,
Loved Mall, Meg, and Marian and Margery,
But none of us cared for Kate;
For she had a tongue with a tang,
Would cry to a sailor, Go hang!
She loved not the savour of tar nor of pitch,
Yet a tailor might scratch her whereer she did itch:
Then to sea, boys, and let her go hang.”
—William Shakespeare (15641616)
“The word conservative is used by the BBC as a portmanteau word of abuse for anyone whose views differ from the insufferable, smug, sanctimonious, naive, guilt-ridden, wet, pink orthodoxy of that sunset home of the third-rate minds of that third-rate decade, the nineteen-sixties.”
—Norman Tebbit (b. 1931)