The Lutheran tradition has broad, ecumenical application.
Many evangelicals oppose public allegiance to historic documents that pull together the heart of Christian doctrine. Their fear is that these “confessions” take the place of authority in the church that should be held by the Bible alone, not by any human statement. They look with suspicion not so much on the documents themselves (e.g., the Westminster Confession, the Belgic Confession, the Augsburg Confession) as on “confessionalism.”
These are people who think that simply affirming an ancient creed not only does not save anyone, but may actually be a hindrance to conversion. They view these statements of faith as having been powerless to maintain orthodoxy in some large denominations. They see how even Roman Catholic encyclicals and councils permit a high level of doctrinal tolerance and change.
But deep down, this evangelical antipathy to confessions rests on the firm belief that no one human document can do justice to the Bible. Paradoxically, many evangelical institutions and organizations try to guarantee their orthodoxy by requiring annual subscriptions to statements of faith that are interdenominational “confessions.”
As an evangelical Lutheran, I want to defend the value of our confessions and show why it is important that Lutheran clergymen subscribe to them at their ordination.
Lutherans see their confessions as statements of the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 3). Unlike the Catholic understanding, the Lutheran view does not recognize doctrinal development. Rather, Lutherans look to a single core of confessions. One confession expands upon another, but it is not an addition. All confessions derive their authority from the Bible, and thus, Lutherans look at their confessional allegiance as biblical.
They do no more than Peter did when he confessed that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ, God’s Son. One who subscribes to a historic confession of faith acknowledges the Bible as the source of the church’s teaching. These confessions show that one strand of truth stretches from the original apostolic witness to the church today.
Three ancient creeds comprise the heart of the Lutheran confessions: the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian. The first two were probably constructed from forms already in use in apostolic times. When a Christian affirms allegiance to these creeds, it is far more than a contractual agreement. As part of the liturgy, they are essential to the believer’s devotional life. That is why Martin Luther wanted the Apostles’ Creed recited eight times a day!
Lutherans also recognize documents from the sixteenth century as authoritative expressions of the apostolic faith: Luther’s Small and Large Catechisms (1529), the Augsburg Confession (1530), the Apology of the Augsburg Confession (1531), the Smalcald Articles and the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope (1537), the Formula of Concord (1577), and the Preface to the Book of Concord (1580), a collection of these documents.
Melanchthon’s Augsburg Confession, a guideline for many non-Lutherans as well, is the centerpiece of these confessions. When its four-hundred-fiftieth anniversary was observed in 1980, it appeared that the “ecumenical parousia” was going to materialize. The most intriguing response came from Rome where it was hinted that the Pope might recognize the Augsburg Confession.
More fuel for the ecumenical fires was provided by Vincent Pfnür’s discovery that Melanchthon and Eck in fact came very close to agreement during some behind-the-scenes negotiations in the summer of 1530 at Augsburg. Eck, who later refuted the document, apparently agreed with Melanchthon on all but 2 of the first 19 articles. Pfnür, a Catholic theologian at the University of Münster, implied that Catholics and Protestants had therefore unfortunately and unnecessarily been separated for four-and-a-half centuries.
The anniversary also brought reminders that Calvin himself had subscribed to a later edition of the Augsburg Confession (1540). But overlooked was the fact that this edition minimized the characteristic Lutheran understanding of the real presence in the Lord’s Supper.
So, the ecumenical possibilities in 1980 came to nought. Regardless, Lutherans have never understood the confession as an isolated document anyway, but rather one fleshed out by the other sixteenth-century statements. These subsequent documents in fact circumscribe the ecumenical possibilities of Augsburg. For example, Melanchthon in his Apology to the Augsburg Confession rendered rapprochement with Catholicism impossible by insisting on the total moral depravity of man and justification as God’s activity in Christ alone, excluding all human contribution. While resembling Catholics in baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the Lutherans did not endorse the transubstantiation theory. In his Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope, Melanchthon rejected the papacy as a divine institution, but affirmed the validity of the ordained clergy and of bishops as spiritual but not secular leaders.
Luther himself wrote three confessions. His “Small Catechism” is a compendium of doctrine, widely recognized for its brevity, clarity, simplicity, and profundity. He prepared it originally for poorly educated priests, to explain the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper. Lutherans now use it for family devotions and to prepare for Communion. The “Large Catechism” includes Luther’s sermons for priests who had little Bible knowledge and lacked preaching skills.
It is in the Smalcald Articles, however, that Luther’s real thunder sounds forth. He covers basic doctrine, but also attacks the Mass, false repentance, and the pope as the Antichrist. While Catholics are aware of these barbs, some ecumenically minded Lutherans are embarrassed by them. Lutherans do not see these confessions in a narrow denominational sense. They consider them to be statements applying to the church at large, because they are based on the pre-Reformation church fathers. They are restatements of the Apostles’ Creed demanded by the Reformation.
Lutherans do not put the confessions on a par with the Bible, but repudiate this kind of “confessionalism.” They do not replace biblical faith with a sixteenth-century version. The Bible is central and the sola Scriptura principle obtains for Lutherans just as much as for other Protestants. In matters of conversion and instruction for church membership, doctrines must be demonstrated from the Bible. Because Lutherans understand the confessions to be doctrinally derived from the Bible, they accept them as a basis for church teaching. They never insist that we must first accept the confessions without examining the biblical evidence for their correctness.
Of course, the writers of the confessions never intended to put the church into an exegetical straitjacket. But they did intend to say that the doctrine revealed through the prophets and apostles remains true and valid for Christians until Jesus comes again. Strictly speaking, no new doctrines have been revealed since the apostles. The confessions were intended to be not only biblical and apostolic, but also catholic—one faith for all times.
To confess these confessions publicly was costly for the Lutherans. They had to be willing to stake their lives on them. Within a generation of Augsburg some of the princes who signed it lost their thrones. They committed themselves to something far more significant than a political ploy to break the back of Rome. They saw themselves as standing before Jesus as Judge on the Last Day.
By placing their fives and fortunes on the fine they proved that they believed the confessions to be more than theological theories. They believed they were divine truth.
Confessions abbreviate, but they also preserve, the apostolic faith. They are not a postapostolic phenomenon, but are rooted in the practices of the apostles and the early Christians. Saint Paul observed that the Lord Jesus Christ himself made the good confession before Pontius Pilate. Paul’s son in the faith, Timothy, did the same before many witnesses (1 Tim. 6:12–13). Lutherans maintain this tradition.
Dr. Scaer is professor of systematic theology at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
