Lutheranism is the Christian confession born of Martin Luther's preaching in the sixteenth century: the first and oldest of the confessions born of the Protestant Reformation.[1] Its official birth is dated 25 June 1530, the day the Augsburg Confession was read before Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Augsburg.[2] Its normative doctrinal corpus, the Book of Concord published in 1580, lays down for the Lutheran Churches what right faith is, and by the same gesture what the Catholic Church condemned as heretical.[3]
The heart of the system lies in one thesis: the sinner is justified before God by faith alone, with works contributing nothing.[4] From this thesis everything else follows: the reduction of the sacraments to Baptism and the Supper, the refusal of the sacrifice of the Mass, of apostolic succession and of the Roman Magisterium, and a reading of Scripture that claims to be the sole judge of Tradition.[5]
Condemned by Pope Leo X in 1520 and then cut off from the communion of the Church in 1521, refuted point by point by the Council of Trent (1545-1563), Lutheranism nonetheless became the religion of entire states, then a worldwide communion of about 80 million faithful.[6] Five centuries later, the Catholic Church looks on it with a twofold attitude: undiminished firmness on the points condemned at Trent, and patient dialogue, up to the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification signed at Augsburg on 31 October 1999.[7]
From Protest to Confession (1517-1530)
The life of Martin Luther, his entry among the Erfurt Augustinians in 1505, his crisis over the justice of God, his chair at Wittenberg, belongs to his biographical article.[8] Only the trajectory that turned a monastic protest into a separate confession is retained here.
The Decisive Years
On 31 October 1517, Luther made public his 95 Theses on indulgences.[9] A rapid escalation followed: the Leipzig disputation against Johann Eck in 1519, where Luther came to defend propositions of Jan Hus that the Council of Constance had condemned[10]; the great reforming treatises of 1520 (To the Christian Nobility, On the Babylonian Captivity, On Christian Liberty); then the public break, on 10 December 1520, when Luther burned the papal bull together with the canon law at Wittenberg, before the Elster gate.[11]
Rome had spoken before this gesture: on 15 June 1520, Leo X's bull Exsurge Domine censured 41 propositions drawn from Luther's writings and gave him sixty days to retract.[12] His refusal complete, the bull Decet Romanum Pontificem of 3 January 1521 excommunicated him by name, with his partisans, including Andreas Karlstadt.[13]
Summoned to the Diet of Worms in April 1521 before Charles V, Luther refused to retract unless convinced "by Scripture".[14] Placed under the ban of the Empire by the Edict of Worms, he was smuggled out by his prince, Frederick the Wise, to the Wartburg, where he translated the New Testament into German: the September Testament of September 1522, followed by the complete Bible in 1534.[15]
"Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by evident reasons, I remain bound by the Scriptures I have cited, and my conscience remains captive to the Word of God." — Martin Luther, declaration at the Diet of Worms, 18 April 1521[16]
Marburg 1529: the Eucharistic Break
From 1 to 4 October 1529, Landgrave Philip of Hesse brought Luther and Zwingli together at Marburg to unite the two Reformations.[17] Agreement failed on a single point, but a decisive one: the meaning of "this is my body". Zwingli saw in it only a sign; Luther maintained a real bodily presence, to the point of blurting out, according to the accounts, "you have a different spirit from ours". Protestantism was born divided over the Eucharist, and this fracture would never close.[18]
Augsburg 1530: the Official Birth of Lutheranism
Charles V convened the Diet of Augsburg to restore the religious unity of the Empire. Luther, still under the ban, stayed at Coburg; it was his collaborator Philip Melanchthon who drafted the common confession of the evangelical princes and cities.[19] On 25 June 1530, the Augsburg Confession (Confessio Augustana), in German and in Latin, was publicly read before the emperor: 28 articles, 21 of which set out the doctrine and 7 list the abuses condemned.[20] The emperor had it refuted by Catholic theologians (the Confutatio), and the diet parted without reconciliation: Lutheranism now existed as a distinct doctrinal body, carried by princes.[21]
"Men cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits or works, but they are justified freely, on account of Christ, through faith." — Augsburg Confession, Article IV, On Justification[22]
The Confessional Corpus: What Makes Lutheranism
A Lutheran is not simply someone who admires Luther: it is someone who subscribes to the confessions of faith gathered in the Book of Concord (Liber Concordiae), published at Dresden in 1580 for the fiftieth anniversary of Augsburg.[23] Ten documents, including three symbols of the ancient Church, a way of saying: we are the true Catholic continuity.[24]
| Document | Author | Year | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apostles' Creed, Nicene-Constantinople, Quicumque | Ancient Church | 2nd-6th c. | Claimed Catholic root |
| Augsburg Confession | Melanchthon | 1530 | Founding charter, 28 articles |
| Apology of the Confession | Melanchthon | 1531 | Defence against the Roman Confutatio |
| Smalcald Articles | Luther | 1537 | Uncompromising doctrinal testament |
| Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope | Melanchthon | 1537 | Rejection of the Roman pontificate |
| Small Catechism | Luther | 1529 | Instruction of children and the unlearned |
| Large Catechism | Luther | 1529 | Preaching manual for pastors |
| Formula of Concord (Epitome and Solid Declaration) | Andreae, Chemnitz | 1577 | Settlement of internal quarrels |
| Book of Concord (collection) | — | 1580 | Definitive Lutheran norm |
The Two Catechisms (1529)
In 1529 Luther wrote two catechisms that made him, paradoxically, the greatest catechist of the sixteenth century: the Small Catechism, for fathers of families and children (Decalogue, Creed, Our Father, Baptism, Supper), and the Large Catechism, a preaching manual for pastors.[25] Learned by heart by generations of Lutheran children, they lastingly shaped the domestic piety of the Germanic and Scandinavian world: the family table, morning and evening prayer, self-examination before the Supper.[26]
The Smalcald Articles (1537)
When Pope Paul III convened a council at Mantua, Elector John Frederick of Saxony asked Luther, at the end of 1536, for a statement of what was negotiable and what was not.[27] Luther drafted the Smalcald Articles, adopted by the League in February 1537: three parts, the second of which deals with "the office and work of Jesus Christ" and declares, on the Mass and the pope, that there is nothing to concede.[28] The first article sets the tone of all confessional Lutheranism:
"The first and chief article is this: Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, died for our sins and rose again for our justification." — Martin Luther, Smalcald Articles, Part II, Article I (1537)[29]
The Formula of Concord (1577)
With Luther dead in 1546, his disciples tore each other apart: the Gnesio-Lutherans (the "genuine" ones, around Matthias Flacius) accused the Philippists, disciples of Melanchthon, of selling off the inheritance, notably on the adiaphora, those "indifferent" rites that the Imperial Interim of 1548 claimed to impose on the vanquished of Mühlberg.[30] To close the quarrels, over original sin, free will, the Supper against the crypto-Calvinists, ubiquity, predestination, six theologians, including Jakob Andreae and Martin Chemnitz, drafted the Formula of Concord, settled at Bergen Abbey in 1577 in a brief form (Epitome) and a developed one (Solid Declaration).[31] Joined to the other symbols, it forms the Corpus doctrinae recognised at Dresden on 25 June 1580: the Book of Concord.[32]
- 31 October 1517The 95 Theses
Luther makes his theses on indulgences public at Wittenberg: the starting point of the crisis.
- 15 June 1520Exsurge Domine
Leo X censures 41 of Luther's propositions and demands his retraction within sixty days.
- 18 April 1521Worms
Before Charles V, Luther refuses to retract; the Edict of Worms places him under the ban of the Empire.
- 1-4 October 1529Marburg
The union with Zwingli fails over the Supper: Protestantism is born divided.
- 25 June 1530Augsburg
Reading of the Augsburg Confession before the emperor: the birth certificate of Lutheranism.
- 1537Smalcald
The Smalcald Articles fix the uncompromising threshold: justification, Mass, pope.
- 25 June 1580Book of Concord
Fiftieth anniversary of Augsburg: the normative confessional collection is officially recognised at Dresden.
Lutheran Doctrine Proper
The Solae: the System in Summary
Lutheranism is summed up in the exclusive formulas passed down to posterity: sola Scriptura (Scripture alone carries authority), sola fide (faith alone justifies), sola gratia (grace alone saves), solus Christus and soli Deo gloria.[33] Each has its own dedicated article, setting out the Protestant version and the Catholic answer: only the architecture is given here.[34]
Lutheran originality lies not in each sola taken in isolation, the other Reformed share them, but in their combination with a high doctrine of the Real Presence and a preserved liturgy: where Zwingli and Calvin break with the ancient rite, Luther keeps altars, vestments, hymns and private confession, to the point that his adversaries accused him of having made only a "half-reformed Mass".[35]
"The Epistle of Saint James is an epistle of straw." — Martin Luther, preface to the New Testament (1522 edition)[36]
This famous saying, eine recht stroherne Epistel, targets the epistle that teaches that "man is justified by works and not by faith only" (Jas 2:24).[37] Luther does not remove James from the canon, but he demotes it: a revealing witness to the way the principle of faith alone judges Scripture itself.[38]
The Eucharist: Sacramental Union
On the Supper, Luther refuses both Roman transubstantiation and Zwinglian symbolism.[39] He professes that the body and blood of Christ are received truly, with the bread and the wine, in, cum et sub pane ("in, with and under the bread"), by all communicants, worthy or unworthy.[40] To ground this presence, he develops the doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ's body: by virtue of the hypostatic union, Christ's humanity shares in divine ubiquity and can therefore be present everywhere, including in the consecrated bread.[41] The Mass as a propitiatory sacrifice offered for the living and the dead is, by contrast, rejected with force, notably in the Smalcald Articles.[42]
Only Two Sacraments
Lutheranism retains as sacraments instituted by Christ with a promise of grace only Baptism and the Supper.[43] Confirmation, Holy Orders, Matrimony, Extreme Unction and above all Penance lose their sacramental rank, even if the private confession of sins before the pastor, followed by absolution, long remained practised in the Lutheran Churches.[44]
Law and Gospel, the Simul
All Lutheran preaching rests on the distinction between the Law, which accuses, condemns and kills, and the Gospel, which absolves, consoles and gives life.[45] Correlatively, the baptised remains "at once righteous and sinner" (simul justus et peccator): declared righteous by the imputation of Christ's merits, he remains concupiscent until death, sanctification adding nothing to justification.[46] This is the exact inverse of the Catholic doctrine of justification as interior regeneration by habitual grace, defined at Trent.[47]
The Two Kingdoms
In On Temporal Authority (1523), Luther distinguishes God's two kingdoms: the spiritual kingdom, governed by the Gospel and without constraint, and the temporal kingdom, governed by the sword to restrain the wicked.[48] From this follows obedience to the prince even in religious matters, the matrix of cuius regio, eius religio, and later the massive submission of the Lutheran Churches of Germany to political power, down to the compromises of the twentieth century.[49]
Ministry Without Apostolic Succession
For lack of bishops won over to the Reformation (except in Sweden, where episcopal succession in fact continued), Lutheranism entrusts preaching and the administration of the sacraments to pastors called by the community, the universal priesthood of the baptised absorbing the ministerial priesthood.[50] Holy Orders not being a sacrament, ordination confers no character: it is this point, among others, that leads the bull Apostolicae curae (1896), on the kindred Anglican ordinations, to say that the required "form and intention" are lacking.[51]
Mary and the Saints: Honour Without Invocation
Luther kept all his life a personal attachment to the Mother of God: he commented on the Magnificat in 1521 and maintained Mary's perpetual virginity.[52] But the system excludes the invocation of the saints and of Mary: solus Christus forbids any other mediator, and Marian and sanctoral feasts were progressively purged from Lutheran calendars.[53]
| Point | Catholic Doctrine | Lutheran Doctrine |
|---|---|---|
| Justification | Interior regeneration, faith + hope + charity | Exterior imputation, faith alone |
| Scripture and Tradition | Two sources of one Revelation, Magisterium as judge | Scripture alone as judge, even of councils |
| Eucharist | Transubstantiation, propitiatory sacrifice | Sacramental union, no sacrifice |
| Sacraments | Seven | Two: Baptism and Supper |
| Priesthood | Sacramental character, apostolic succession | Delegated ministry, universal priesthood |
| Saints and Mary | Invocation, intercession, cultus of dulia and hyperdulia | Honour and example, never invocation |
| Pope | Primacy by divine right, infallibility | Human institution, even Antichrist (Smalcald) |
The Church's Condemnations
Exsurge Domine (1520): 41 Propositions Censured
The bull Exsurge Domine, "Arise, O Lord", after Psalm 73 of the Vulgate, does not content itself with a general reprobation: it lists 41 propositions drawn from Luther's writings, qualified as heretical, scandalous or offensive to pious ears.[54] Among them: the denial of free will after sin, the thesis that contrition born of fear makes men hypocrites, the refusal of the pope's power over purgatory, and the affirmation that burning heretics is contrary to the will of the Spirit.[55] The sixty-day delay having expired without retraction, excommunication followed on 3 January 1521.[56]
"Arise, O Lord, and judge Thy cause; remember the outrages the foolish do to Thee all the day." — Bull Exsurge Domine, incipit after Psalm 73:22 (Vulgate)[57]
The Council of Trent (1545-1563): the Dogmatic Answer
The Council of Trent answers Lutheranism without ever naming Luther: it defines the Catholic faith and strikes the contrary theses with anathema.[58] The Sixth Session (13 January 1547) promulgates the decree on justification: 16 chapters and 33 canons, which condemn faith alone, the absolute certainty of being in grace, and the exclusion of man's free cooperation.[59] The Thirteenth Session (1551) defines transubstantiation and Eucharistic worship; the Twenty-Second (1562) the sacrifice of the Mass; the Twenty-Third (1563) the sacrament of Holy Orders.[60] Every cardinal point of the Lutheran system is thus struck by a precise canon, the arsenal on which Catholic controversy would draw for four centuries.[61]
The Constant Judgment Down to Vatican II
From the Tridentine profession of faith imposed by Pius IV (Iniunctum nobis, 1564) to the Syllabus of Pius IX, the Magisterium has not varied on the substance.[62] The Second Vatican Council, in Unitatis Redintegratio (21 November 1964), introduces the distinction that now governs Catholic language: the communities born of the Reformation are separated from full communion, but those who are born and believe in them "cannot be accused of the sin of separation"; their elements of sanctification, Scripture, Baptism, life of prayer, are recognised as goods of the Church of Christ, without the Church renouncing any of the dogmas defined at Trent.[63] And the declaration Dominus Iesus (2000) specifies that these communities are not Churches in the proper sense, for lack of apostolic succession and a valid Eucharist.[64]
Divisions and Metamorphoses (16th-20th Century)
From the Peace of Augsburg to the Thirty Years' War
After Charles V's victory at Muehlberg (1547) and the Interim of Augsburg (1548), which claimed to impose on the vanquished Lutherans a barely retouched Catholicism[65], the Peace of Augsburg (25 September 1555), negotiated by Ferdinand in the emperor's name, gave Lutheranism legal status in the Empire under the principle cuius regio, eius religio: the prince's religion decides that of his subjects.[66] Only Catholics and Lutherans were recognised in it: Calvinists, Anabaptists and others were excluded.[67] The failure of this compromise led, a century later, to the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), closed by the treaties of Westphalia, which extended recognition to the Calvinists and froze Germany's confessional map.[68]
Pietism, Rationalism, Revivals
From the end of the seventeenth century, Lutheran orthodoxy ran out of steam from within. Philipp Jakob Spener published in 1675 his Pia Desideria, the birth certificate of Pietism: small prayer circles (collegia pietatis), the Bible read in common, active charity, a piety of the heart that irrigated Protestantism as far as Methodism.[69] In the eighteenth century, the rationalism of the theology faculties emptied dogmatics of its supernatural content, while the nineteenth century saw the twin reflux of the confessional revival, the Lutheran "High Church", the second Martin, Martin Chemnitz, reread as the true inverted doctor of Trent[70], and of union imposed from above: in Prussia, Frederick William III fused Lutherans and Reformed into the Prussian Union in 1817, provoking the emigration of the intransigent Old Lutherans, notably to America.[71]
Lutherans Beyond Germany
Lutheranism became the state religion of the Scandinavian kingdoms from the sixteenth century, Sweden at the Diet of Västerås (1527), Denmark-Norway, and has remained so to this day in the form of national Churches, now largely secularised.[72] Across the Atlantic, the waves of German and Scandinavian immigration founded a powerful American Lutheranism, marked by the figure of Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther and of the Missouri Synod, organised in 1847 on a strictly confessional basis.[73] It is from this American graft that the most visible fractures of world Lutheranism would be born in the twentieth century.[74]
Lutheranism Today
A Worldwide Communion, Deeply Divided
The Lutheran World Federation (LWF), founded at Lund (Sweden) in 1947, today gathers more than 150 member Churches in 99 countries, representing more than 78 million Christians, the great majority of the world's some 80 million Lutherans.[75] But this communion coexists with gaping fractures: in the United States, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA, born of a 1988 merger), a member of the LWF and committed to moral openness and ecumenism, faces the Missouri Synod and the Wisconsin Synod, strict confessionals, which refuse altar communion with it and with the LWF.[76] The same fault lines in Europe between liberal State Churches and confessional minorities.[77]
Dialogue with Rome: Achievements and Limits
The Lutheran-Catholic dialogue is the oldest and fullest of the ecumenical dialogues: the Malta Report (1972), then decades of joint commissions.[78] Its most famous fruit is the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, signed at Augsburg on 31 October 1999 by the LWF and the Catholic Church: both sides declare in it that a "consensus on basic truths" exists, justification by grace, through faith in Christ, received in Baptism, while maintaining "different explications" on points Trent had settled.[79] The World Methodist Council joined it in 2006, then the Reformed and the Anglicans: what was to bring Lutherans and Catholics closer became a multilateral text.[80]
On 31 October 2016, at Lund, Pope Francis and LWF President Munib Younan presided over a common prayer opening the fifth centenary of the Reformation, in the spirit of the report From Conflict to Communion published by the joint commission in 2013.[81] The Catholic view remains the one Benedict XVI gave in his catechesis of 26 November 2008: Luther is right to recall that salvation comes from God and not from our merits, but the faith that saves is the faith "that works through charity" (Gal 5:6); it includes the believer's new acting, which grace makes possible.[82]
"Together we confess that, by pure grace, by virtue of faith in Christ's saving work and not on the basis of our merits, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit who renews our hearts." — Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, no. 15 (31 October 1999)[83]
A Catholic View: What Is Condemned, What Is Recognised
Catholics do not confuse the registers. Condemned as heretical: that faith alone justifies without hope or charity; that man does not freely cooperate with grace; that Scripture can do without Tradition and the Magisterium; that there are only two sacraments; that the Mass is not a sacrifice; that Holy Orders is not a sacrament; that the pope holds his primacy from men alone.[84] These points, defined at Trent with anathemas, bind faith: the 1999 Joint Declaration, a dialogue text, did not lift them and could not lift them.[85]
Recognised with gratitude: Lutheran Baptism, valid when conferred with water and the Trinitarian formula[86]; the biblical piety and choral singing that Lutheranism brought to a summit, from Luther the musician to Bach, cantor of Saint Thomas in Leipzig[87]; the witness of the Lutheran martyrs of Nazism, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer, honoured by John Paul II at the Colosseum among the twentieth century's witnesses to the faith.[88] And the road remains open: that Lutherans who seek the whole truth may find in the Catholic Church the fullness of the means of salvation, as the "pilgrims to Rome" from Newman to our own day have shown.[89]
Photographic credit: Saint Thomas in Leipzig, Templermeister, 2011, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. Image unmodified.To Go Further
- The biography of the founder: Martin Luther (1483-1546)
- The Catholic answer to Protestantism: Answers to Protestantism
- The five formulas: Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, Solus Christus, The Five Solae
- The council that refuted Lutheranism: The Council of Trent (1545-1563)
- The Reformed neighbours: John Calvin, Calvinism, Zwinglianism
- Catholic Eucharistic doctrine: The Real Eucharistic Presence
- The other modern heresies: Gallicanism (15th-19th Century), Jansenism, Modernism
Notes and References
Lutheran World Federation, "Who we are": "a global communion of churches in the Lutheran tradition" founded at Lund in 1947. Official site: https://www.lutheranworld.org/
1The Augsburg Confession (Confessio Augustana), drafted by Philip Melanchthon, was publicly read before Charles V at the Diet of Augsburg on 25 June 1530, in German then in Latin; see the article "Augsburg Confession", Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the German-Latin text at https://bookofconcord.org/augsburg-confession/
2The Book of Concord (Liber Concordiae) gathers ten normative documents: three ecumenical symbols, the Augsburg Confession, its Apology, the Smalcald Articles, the Treatise on the Pope, the two Catechisms and the Formula of Concord, officially recognised at Dresden on 25 June 1580, the fiftieth anniversary of Augsburg. See Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Book of Concord".
3 23 32Confessio Augustana, art. IV, De iustificatione: "Item docent, quod homines non possint iustificari coram Deo propriis viribus, meritis aut operibus, sed gratis iustificentur propter Christum, per fidem" ("They teach that men cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works, but are freely justified for Christ's sake, through faith"). Text: https://bookofconcord.org/augsburg-confession/article-iv/
4 22On the architecture of the five solae and their detailed articles, see Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, Solus Christus and The Five Solae.
5Lutheran World Federation, official figures: more than 150 member churches (including two associates) in 99 countries, representing more than 78 million Christians in the Lutheran tradition. "Member Churches" page: https://lutheranworld.org/member-churches; Lutherans outside the LWF (Missouri Synod, independent churches) bring the world total to some 80 million.
6 75Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, signed at Augsburg on 31 October 1999 by the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church. Official text (Eerdmans, 2000) and at https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_31101999_cath-luth-joint-declaration_fr.html
7See Martin Luther (1483-1546) for the full biography: Erfurt, Wittenberg, the crisis over God's justice, the writings and the end at Eisleben (18 February 1546).
895 theses "on the power of indulgences" (Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum), made public at Wittenberg on 31 October 1517; see Martin Brecht, Martin Luther, vol. 1, His Road to Reformation, 1483-1521, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1985.
9Leipzig Disputation (27 June - 15 July 1519): facing Johann Eck, Luther defended the view that articles of Jan Hus condemned at Constance (1415) were in reality Christian; see Brecht, Martin Luther, vol. 1, 1985.
10On 10 December 1520, at the Elster Gate in Wittenberg, Luther burned the bull Exsurge Domine with volumes of canon law (Corpus iuris canonici); see Brecht, Martin Luther, vol. 1, 1985.
11Bull Exsurge Domine, Leo X, 15 June 1520: censure of 41 propositions, summons to retract within sixty days of publication in Saxony, failing which excommunication. Latin text: https://www.papalencyclicals.net/leo10/l10exdom.htm
12Bull Decet Romanum Pontificem, Leo X, 3 January 1521: excommunication of Martin Luther and his partisans, including Andreas Karlstadt, for refusal to retract the 41 propositions censured by Exsurge Domine.
13 56Diet of Worms, appearances of 17 and 18 April 1521 before Charles V and the Estates; summons by Johann von der Eck (official of Trier) and refusal to retract without scriptural refutation; Edict of Worms (26 May 1521) placing Luther under the ban of the Empire; see Brecht, Martin Luther, vol. 1, 1985.
14Withdrawn to the Wartburg (May 1521 - March 1522) under the name Junker Jörg, Luther translated the New Testament from Erasmus's Greek text (2nd ed., 1519): September Testament, September 1522; complete German Bible at Wittenberg, 1534, illustrated by the Cranach workshop.
15Words reported by the minutes of the diet; the pithy formula "Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders" ("Here I stand, I can do no other") appears only in later accounts and its literal authenticity is disputed; see Brecht, Martin Luther, vol. 1, 1985.
16Marburg Colloquy, 1-4 October 1529, convened by Landgrave Philip of Hesse: agreement on 14 of the 15 articles of faith discussed, persistent disagreement on the 15th, the Eucharist; see Brecht, Martin Luther, vol. 2, Shaping and Defining the Reformation, 1521-1532, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 1990.
17On the definitive break between Wittenberg and Zurich, see Zwinglianism; on the later Calvinist position, see John Calvin and Calvinism.
18Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560), professor of Greek at Wittenberg from 1518, drafted the Confession from his own Schwabach and Torgau articles, Luther rereading the text from Coburg; see Heinz Scheible, Melanchthon: Vermittler der Reformation, Beck, Munich, 1997.
1921 articles of faith (articuli fidei) followed by 7 articles on abuses (abusus): communion under both kinds, marriage of priests, the Mass, confession, fasts, monastic vows, ecclesiastical power.
20The Catholic Confutatio, read on 3 August 1530, was judged insufficient by the evangelicals; Melanchthon's Apology (1531) answers it point by point. The diet parted in November 1530 on an unenforced recess: the evangelical princes formed the Smalcald League from February 1531.
21By placing the three ecumenical symbols first, the Lutherans signify that their confession is not a novelty but the Catholic faith itself, purified; see the preface of the Book of Concord (Dresden ed., 1580).
24Enchiridion. Der kleine Catechismus (April 1529) and Deutsch Catechismus (May 1529): Luther wrote them after the Saxon pastoral visitations (1527-1528) had revealed to him the religious ignorance of the countryside; see Brecht, Martin Luther, vol. 2, 1990.
25On Lutheran domestic piety (morning and evening prayer, grace before meals, examination before the Supper) shaped by the Small Catechism, see Gerald Strauss, Luther's House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1978.
26Commission from Elector John Frederick of Saxony, 11 December 1536, in anticipation of the council announced by Paul III at Mantua for Pentecost 1537; see the very preamble of the Articles, English trans. Bente-Dau, Triglot Concordia, Concordia Publishing House, Saint Louis, 1921.
27Three parts: I. sublime articles on the divine majesty (Trinity, Incarnation) held in common with Rome; II. Christ's office against the Mass, purgatory, the pope; III. sin, Law, repentance, Gospel, Baptism, Supper. Text: https://bookofconcord.org/smalcald-articles/
28Smalcald Articles, II, 1 (Der erste und Hauptartikel): "Here is the first and chief article: That Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification" (cf. Rom 4:25); English trans. Bente-Dau, Triglot Concordia, 1921.
29Gnesio-Lutherans (Gnesiolutheraner, from gnesios, "genuine") around Matthias Flacius Illyricus against Philippists around Melanchthon: Adiaphoristic (1548-1555), Majoristic, Synergistic, Osiandrian controversies; see Robert Kolb, Bound Choice, Election, and Wittenberg Theological Method, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 2005.
30Final drafting at Bergen Abbey near Magdeburg, May 1577, by Jakob Andreae, Martin Chemnitz, Nikolaus Selnecker, David Chytraeus, Andreas Musculus and Christoph Corner: Epitome (normative summary) and Solid Declaration (developed exposition), 12 articles settling the internal controversies.
31See The Five Solae for the synthesis, and each dedicated article for the detailed refutation.
33Editorial rule of this article: the solae are treated in depth in Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, Sola Gratia and Solus Christus; only the overall architecture is given here.
34On the Lutheran retention of vestments, hymns and private confession, see Luther's Formula Missae (1523) then Deutsche Messe (1526), and, on the Catholic side, Trent's answer on rites, Session XXII (1562).
35Luther's preface to the New Testament, Wittenberg edition, September 1522: "Daraus man wohl urteilen kann, wie und wo man die Bücher des Neuen Testaments unterscheiden soll... Sanct Jakobus Epistel [ist] eine recht stroherne Epistel gegen sie [Johannes, Paulus, Petrus]." ("...Saint James's Epistle is a right strawy epistle compared with them [John, Paul, Peter].")
36"You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith only" (Jas 2:24): the only verse in the whole Bible containing the expression "faith only", and it is to reject it.
37On the Catholic answer to the objection from James, see Sola Fide, section "Objection 2: the strawy epistle".
38Double refusal formulated from On the Babylonian Captivity (1520) against transubstantiation, then at Marburg (1529) and in Vom Abendmahl Christi, Bekenntnis (1528) against symbolism; see Hermann Sasse, This Is My Body: Luther's Contention for the Real Presence, Augsburg, Minneapolis, 1959.
39Classic formula: Christ's body is received "in, cum et sub pane", truly present and distributed with the bread, received by the mouth (manducatio oralis) including by the unworthy (manducatio indignorum); cf. Augsburg Confession, art. X, and Apology, art. X.
40Doctrine of the ubiquity (ubiquitas) of Christ's body, developed against Zwingli: by virtue of the communication of idioms, the assumed humanity shares in the divine attributes; condemned as excess by the Reformed, it lastingly divided Lutherans and Calvinists; see Sasse, This Is My Body, 1959.
41Smalcald Articles, II, 2, De Missa: the Mass as a sacrifice offered for the living and the dead is there called an "abomination", the most violently anti-Catholic passage of the Lutheran corpus.
42Augsburg Confession, art. XIII, De usu sacramentorum: only rites instituted by Christ with commandment and promise of grace are sacraments, in practice Baptism (art. IX) and the Supper (art. X).
43Private confession (Privatbeichte) with pastoral absolution remains inscribed in the Smalcald Articles (third part) and long practised, before withering in the eighteenth century under the effect of Pietism then rationalism.
44Distinction Gesetz und Evangelium, structuring all Lutheran homiletics: the Law reveals sin and condemns (elenctic use), the Gospel promises forgiveness in Christ; cf. Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, art. V.
45Formula simul iustus et peccator: the baptised is declared righteous by imputation (iustitia aliena Christi) while remaining a sinner in himself; cf. Luther, Lectures on Romans (1515-1516 course), and Apology, art. IV.
46See The Council of Trent (1545-1563), decree of the Sixth Session (13 January 1547): justification as interior regeneration and sanctification, canons 9-12 against faith alone and the certainty of grace.
47Von weltlicher Obrigkeit, wie weit man ihr Gehorsam schuldig sei (On Temporal Authority, 1523): doctrine of the two kingdoms (Zwei-Reiche-Lehre), spiritual and temporal; see Brecht, Martin Luther, vol. 2, Shaping and Defining the Reformation, 1521-1532, 1990.
48On the political effects, territorial Churches (Landeskirchen) under princely consistories, then compromises under National Socialism (German Christians, 1933, facing the Confessing Church), see Klaus Scholder, The Churches and the Third Reich, vol. 1, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1988.
49Augsburg Confession, art. V (De ministerio) and XIV (De ordine ecclesiastico): no one may teach or administer the sacraments without a regular call (rite vocatus), with no requirement of episcopal succession.
50Bull Apostolicae curae, Leo XIII, 13 September 1896: nullity of Anglican ordinations for defect of form and intention in the Edwardian rite, a principle applicable, a fortiori, to Lutheran ministries which expressly reject the sacerdotal character.
51Commentary on the Magnificat (Das Magnificat verdeutscht und ausgelegt, 1521): Luther professes in it Mary's perpetual virginity and that she cannot be honoured too highly; cf. Weimarer Ausgabe (WA), vol. 7.
52Augsburg Confession, art. XXI, De cultu sanctorum: the saints may be held up as examples, but Scripture "does not teach us to invoke them"; rejection of intercession and pilgrimages.
53Text of the censure in Exsurge Domine: 41 propositions "respectively heretical, scandalous, false, offensive to pious ears or seductive of simple minds"; cf. Denzinger-Hünermann, nos. 1451-1492 for the main reprises in the Magisterium.
54Censured examples: "free will after sin is a mere word" (prop. 36); "burning heretics is against the will of the Spirit" (prop. 33); "indulgences are pious frauds" (proposition aimed at from theses 51-52).
55Ps 73:22 (Vulgate) / Ps 74:22 (Hebrew): "Exsurge, Domine, et iudica causam tuam"; incipit taken up at the head of the bull of 15 June 1520.
57See The Council of Trent (1545-1563) for the full course: sessions, decrees and anti-Protestant canons.
58Decree De iustificatione, Sixth Session, 13 January 1547: 16 chapters, 33 canons; cf. Denzinger-Hünermann, nos. 1520-1583.
59Thirteenth Session, 11 October 1551 (Eucharist, 11 canons: DH 1635-1661); Twenty-Second Session, 17 September 1562 (sacrifice of the Mass, 9 canons: DH 1738-1759); Twenty-Third Session, 15 July 1563 (Holy Orders, 8 canons: DH 1763-1778).
60On post-Tridentine controversy (Bellarmin, Disputationes, 1586-1593; Bossuet, Histoire des variations, 1688), see Answers to Protestantism.
61Tridentine profession, bull Iniunctum nobis, Pius IV, 13 November 1564; condemnation of liberalism and indifferentism by Gregory XVI (Mirari vos, 1832) and Pius IX (Quanta cura and Syllabus, 1864): continuity of the rejection of free interpretation without a Magisterium.
62Second Vatican Council, decree Unitatis Redintegratio on ecumenism, 21 November 1964, sections 3-4: separated brethren "cannot be accused of the sin of separation" when born in these communities; their liturgical and spiritual riches recognised as a call to unity.
63Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, declaration Dominus Iesus, 6 August 2000, section 17: the ecclesial communities born of the Reformation "are not Churches in the proper sense", for lack of apostolic succession and a valid sacrament of Orders.
64Interim of Augsburg, 15 May 1548: after Mühlberg (24 April 1547), Charles V imposed on the vanquished Protestants a provisional quasi-Catholic status (Mass, celibacy, fasts) conceding only communion under both kinds and the marriage of priests; rejected by the Gnesio-Lutherans, circumvented by Melanchthon's Leipzig Interim.
65Peace of Augsburg, 25 September 1555: negotiated by Ferdinand I for Charles V, it granted only Catholics and adherents of the Augsburg Confession the legal exercise of their religion; cuius regio, eius religio; reservatum ecclesiasticum for converted prince-bishops; cf. "Peace of Augsburg", Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, art. "Augsbourg (Paix d')".
66Excluded from the benefit of the peace were Zwinglians, Calvinists and Anabaptists, the source of the next confessional war, the Reformed being admitted only at Westphalia (1648).
67Treaties of Münster and Osnabrück (24 October 1648): extension of the peace to the Calvinists, normative year 1624, end of the Thirty Years' War; Pope Innocent X protested by the brief Zelo domus Dei (26 November 1648).
68Philipp Jakob Spener, Pia Desideria (Pious Aspirations, 1675): six-point programme (abundant Word, universal priesthood, practical charity, charitable controversies, formation of pastors, edifying preaching); foundation of Halle University (1694) with August Hermann Francke.
69Martin Chemnitz (1522-1586), called the "second Martin": Examen Concilii Tridentini (1565-1573), the most powerful Lutheran refutation of Trent, and co-author of the Formula of Concord; cf. the English edition Examination of the Council of Trent, trans. Fred Kramer, Concordia Publishing House, Saint Louis, 1971.
70Prussian Union (1817), 300th anniversary of the Reformation: Frederick William III fused the Lutheran and Reformed Churches of Prussia; the Old Lutherans refusing the union (J. G. Scheibel, Breslau) suffered persecution then emigration, the origin of part of American confessional Lutheranism.
71Deutsche Evangelisch-Lutherische Synode von Missouri, Ohio und andern Staaten, organised at Chicago in April 1847 under the impulse of C. F. W. Walther (1811-1887): strict foundation on the Book of Concord, Saint Louis seminary (Concordia Seminary, 1849), America's second Lutheran body by size.
73On contemporary American fractures (ordination of women, sexual morality, inerrancy), see the section "Lutheranism Today" and Condemned Catholic Liberalism for the Catholic counterpart.
74ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America), constituted in 1988 by the merger of three bodies (ALC, LCA, AELC); out of communion with the Missouri Synod (Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod) and the Wisconsin Synod (WELS), which practise closed communion and refuse intercommunion with the LWF.
76In Europe, the fault line opposes the historic Churches members of the LWF (Churches of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany's EKD) to the confessional free Churches (Germany's SELK, Sweden's Mission Province), notably on the ordination of women and same-sex marriage.
77Malta Report, The Gospel and the Church (1972), first joint Catholic-Lutheran commission: justification "must no longer divide the Churches", founding step toward the 1999 Declaration.
78Joint Declaration, section 15 (cf. text cited) and section 40: the sixteenth-century doctrinal condemnations "do not apply" to the partners "as they are presented in this Declaration", a thesis contested on the Catholic side (cf. following note).
79Adherence of the World Methodist Council (Seoul, 2006), then of the World Communion of Reformed Churches (Wittenberg, 2017) and of the Anglican Communion (ACC resolution 16.17, Lusaka, 2016).
80Common prayer at Lund (cathedral, 31 October 2016) then ecumenical celebration at Malmö: Francis and Bishop Munib Younan signed a joint statement committing to walk together, opening the 500th anniversary (1517-2017), in the wake of the report From Conflict to Communion (Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity, 2013).
81Benedict XVI, general audience of 26 November 2008, catechesis on the Pauline doctrine of justification: the sola fide formula is true "if faith is not opposed to charity", for Saint Paul teaches that what counts is "faith working through love" (Gal 5:6). Text at https://www.vatican.va/
82Joint Declaration, no. 15: "Together we confess: By grace alone, in faith in Christ's saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works." (official English text; French edition, Éditions du Cerf, 1999).
83Summary of the applicable Tridentine anathemas: justification (Session VI, canons 9-14), Scripture-Tradition (Session IV, 1546), sacraments in general and in particular (Session VII, 1547), Eucharist and Mass (Sessions XIII and XXII), Holy Orders (Session XXIII), purgatory and invocation of the saints (Session XXV, 1563).
84Response of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (25 June 1998, Response to the Joint Declaration): the text leaves divergences that prevent speaking of a consensus on basic truths in the full sense, hence the Annex (Official Common Statement) specifying both readings before signature.
85Baptism conferred with natural water and the Trinitarian formula is valid whatever the confession of the minister, provided the intention is to do what the Church does; cf. Code of Canon Law, can. 869, and CCC 1256.
86Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), cantor of Saint Thomas in Leipzig from 1723 to his death: Saint John and Saint Matthew Passions, Mass in B minor, 200 cantatas, the musical summit of Lutheranism, received by the Catholic Church as a common good (John Paul II citing the Saint Matthew Passion; Benedict XVI, Light of the World, 2010).
87Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), Lutheran pastor executed at Flossenbürg on 9 April 1945: John Paul II had him commemorated with the twentieth-century martyrs at the Colosseum, 7 May 2000, without prejudging his theological positions, some of which (religionless Christianity) remain incompatible with the Catholic faith.
88On returns to unity (Oxford, Newman, 1845; contemporary Lutheran conversions; the ordinariate for Anglicans, Anglicanorum coetibus, 2009, a model of reconciliation), see Answers to Protestantism, ecumenical section.
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