What are The Lutheran Confessions? — Part 1

For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved” (Romans 10:10).

The Word of God brings me to faith. It is the tool that the Holy Spirit uses to turn me from an unwilling enemy of God into a willing friend and follower of Jesus. Faith in Christ comes from hearing the message about Christ. With that message the Holy Spirit calls all men, and by grace some are not just called, but gathered, enlightened, sanctified and kept in the one true faith.

That faith rests on Christ alone. Jesus made that plain in Matthew 21. He quoted Psalm 118 and applied it to himself: “Have you never read in the Scriptures: ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes’” (21:42). The rock solid foundation of the Christian faith is Christ, who, as the apostle Peter said “redeemed [you] from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers.” And he did it “not with perishable things such as silver or gold…but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:18-19).

This Christians believe in their heart. That heartfelt faith Christians also confess with their mouth. He can do no other. He says things about his faith. He explains his faith. He puts it into words to defend himself from attack or defend the Scriptures from attack.

This is a key component of the festival of the Reformation we celebrate every year around October 31. The Reformation is about confessing the faith. It officially began with that loquacious little monk, Martin Luther, posting a confession of faith (really a request for scholarly debate divided into ninety-five parts) on the door of his hometown church. It wasn’t the first confession of faith in Church history (think of the Apostles’ or Nicene Creed from centuries before), nor was it the last. Not nearly the last.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church recognizes that confessions of faith are  necessary. The Lutheran Church, in fact, cherishes confessions of faith. So much so that we have a book of them, which Lutherans call “The Book of Concord,” or “the Lutheran Confessions” (You can read them for yourself at www.bookofconcord.org.).

These confessions don’t replace Scripture. They aren’t equal to Scripture. They serve as witnesses and testimonies to what the Christian Church teaches in a particular place and time. They serve as the “What does this mean?” of the Bible, which is a sad, but necessary task. We would wish to have only the words of the Bible, but because, as others have said, the Word of God is like an ocean, so shallow a child can play in it, yet so deep an elephant could drown, sometimes we need to explain what the Scriptures says and mean (Sunday School and catechism class, anyone?).

We also know the truth of Jeremiah’s words, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it” (17:9)? Many of the Church’s confessions of faith came into being as a result of the deceitfulness of men’s hearts, which attack the words of Holy Scripture. Heresies and false teachings developed as people tried to say more or less than the Bible did. This forced Christians down through the ages to say, “We believe, teach, and confess,” not only positively, but also negatively, “We reject.”

Consider that we have but one Bible, yet how many thousands of denominations? All of us read the same words in Ephesians 2:8-9, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.” Some read that and still say it’s by doing good works that you get to heaven. Some say it’s faith and works. Some say it’s faith alone based on the grace of God alone. A public confession of faith allows a church to say, “Here we stand. This is what we believe and confess the Scriptures to say. This is what we reject.”

It’s very easy to form a party spirit around a confession of faith: “My country, right or wrong.” That’s not what we do with confessions. We hold to confessions not despite their mistakes and errors or out of party spirit. We hold to confessions of faith, that is, make them our own, only when we are convinced that they say what the Bible says. Completely. We subscribe to a confession because it says what the Bible says (the technical term for this is a quia subscription; Latin for “because”). We don’t go along for the ride “in so far as” a confession agrees with Scripture, but because it agrees with Scripture (the technical term for this is a quatanus subscription; Latin for “in so far as”) . Notice, it is Scripture that stands above all. Scripture norms all our words, thoughts, behaviors, and testimonies. Our confessions flow forth from the fountain of Holy Scripture, God’s Word, the Old and New Testaments. In other words, our confessions of faith are normed by and yield to the Holy Scriptures.

Further, we hold to confessions of faith not to display our superiority over others, “We’re right, you’re wrong; hope you can handle heat well.” Rather, we make, hold to, and subscribe to confessions of faith out of love for the Word of God and love for the world. We want the world to know what God’s Word says, because we, like God, want all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth, and we are convinced, with Christ, that God’s Word is truth (cf. John 17:17). It is not arrogant to prepare or hold to a confession of faith; it is, rather, imperative to hold to a standard of faith. Paul told Timothy, “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Timothy 4:16).

Because the Word of God has always been under attack (and always will be), the Lutheran Church (including the part of it to which I belong, the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod) has and holds to confessions of faith to help people understand what Scripture teaches and what it means to be “Lutheran.” From the very beginning of the Reformation these confessions began taking shape.

These Lutheran confessions, our book “other than the Bible”, are contained in a single volume called the Book of Concord, which I mentioned above. They are ten in number:

•  The three ecumenical creeds: the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian
• The two catechisms (Small and Large) of Dr. Martin Luther
• The Augsburg Confession and its Apology (or Defense), written by Philip Melanchthon
• The Smalcald Articles of Dr. Luther
• The Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope
• The Formula of Concord

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In the next post I plan to offer a thumbnail sketch of these confessions of faith to help you understand why Lutherans have them and use them.