SOURCE: Cameron, Euan. “Philipp Melanchthon: Image and Substance.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 48, no. 4 (October 1997): 705-22.

In the essay which follows, Cameron finds that Melanchthon's image as “hesitant, temporising, even shifty” is not entirely without basis in historical fact but concludes too that this picture does not do justice to the man or his ideas.

In conferences, symposia and a modest number of publications, 1997 is being marked as the Melanchthon-year. However excellent in their own kind the results of the year's commemoration may be, neither in quantity nor in diversity will they approach the tributes and analyses which greeted the five-hundredth anniversary of Luther's birth fourteen years ago. Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560) is destined forever to occupy the second rank behind Martin Luther, and to be remembered in connection with his greater colleague. While more of his works have recently appeared in English translation, no equivalent to the great American...