Pekka Kärkkäinen

 karkkainen-p Pekka Kärkkäinen, Senior researcher
Recognizing the “scholastic” heritage in early Lutheranism

The study aims at finding out what function the recognition of medieval philosophical and theological theories and the authors of those theories had for early Lutheran theologians. Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon and their less known colleague Johannes Bernhardi formed much of their emerging evangelical and humanist identity by dismissing the many medieval theories as obsolete “scholastiscism”. However, at the same time they all tacitly and openly utilized and recognised much of the medieval philosophical and theological heritage. As exemplary cases the study focuses on Luther’s theology and the philosophical psychologies of Melanchthon and Bernhardi in which the tension between recognition and non-recognition of the medieval heritage is most clearly visible.