“Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560) was one of the most influential lay theologians in the history of Christianity. His Loci communes, published when he was only twenty-four and expanded in later editions, remained for a century the most important synthesis of Lutheran teaching. Martin Luther valued Melanchthon’s ability to write synthetic theology, the more so since his own writings were mainly exegetical, pastoral, or polemical. It was Melanchthon who in 1530 drew up the fundamental confession of the Lutheran churches, the Augsburg Confession. Melanchthon also earned the proud title of praeceptor Germaniae, teacher of Germany, because of his work in curriculum revision, textbook writing, and indefatigable lecturing to packed halls of eager undergraduates. Melanchthon contributed more than anybody except Luther himself to the foundation and consolidation of Lutheranism. This volume makes available for the first time in English one of Melanchthon’s earliest theological writings, his Annotationes in Epistolam priorem ad Corinthios, which was delivered as lectures to students at the University of Wittenberg in the summer and fall of 1521 and was first published by Luther in 1522. The translation is printed side by side with the Latin.” — From the Preface by John Patrick Donnelly, S.J.