A rather astonishing development in Rome: Key figures in the Vatican have discovered the Augsburg Confession, the key doctrinal statement of Lutheranism! Not only that, they want to recognize its catholicity! And they see it as showing a path forward for re-unifying the church! But caution is in order. Still. . . .
The Augsburg Confession is the confession of faith that defines what it means to be Lutheran. It was presented to the Holy Roman Emperor by the Lutheran princes and cities at the Diet of Augsburg on June 25, 1530, to clearly state–against many libelous accusations–exactly what they believed.
It was written by Philipp Melanchthon, with the input and enthusiastic approval of Martin Luther. The confession’s purpose was to show that the Lutheran Reformation was continuous with historic Christianity while identifying the specific issues in need of reform. Thus, the first 21 articles state the “Chief Articles of Faith,” while the last 7 state the “Abuses Corrected” by the Reformers.
Jules Gomes discusses the Vatican’s new interest in the Augsburg Confession in his article for Religion Unplugged entitled ‘Make It Visible’: Vatican Pushes For Unity Across Christian Denominations. He quotes Cardinal Kurt Koch, the prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, who cited discussion in the Vatican for recognizing the catholicity of the document:
The authors “express their fundamental conviction that it is a Catholic confession,” Koch wrote in the Italian edition of the Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano. “With this orientation in mind, we cannot underestimate the ecumenical significance of the Diet of Augsburg.”. . .
Affirming the confession’s dual purpose, Koch explained how the first part demonstrates that “the evangelical communities accord with the doctrinal foundations of the early church,” while the second part justifies the abolition of improper practices which were “not divisive issues at the ecclesiastical level.”
This shows that the Reformation “at its origins, conceived of itself as a movement for the renewal of all Christianity in the spirit of the gospel, convinced that it was a universal renewal of the church and not a reformation that had shattered the unity of the church,” Koch said.
Yes, that’s exactly what Luther intended, as he kept telling everybody. He wanted to reform the existing church, not start a new one. Gomes quotes another high-placed official, Archbishop Flavio Pace, the secretary of the Vatican office that is supposed to work for church unity:
Archbishop Flavio Pace, the dicastery’s secretary, stressed the significance of commemorating the confession to “rediscover a common foundation” and “rediscover something more for our present.”
Pace told the Italian edition of Vatican News that the role of the Augsburg Confession was “an attempt to find common ground” and “a shared profession of faith among the countries we now identify with the Reformation,” after Pope Leo X excommunicated Martin Luther in 1521.
About that excommunication: The pope refused to even consider the reforms that Luther and many other Christians of the day said were needed and instead cast the critics out of the church. This was the action that actually broke up the unity of the church.
Gomes also quotes Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XIV, who praised the efforts “to achieve recognition of the Augsburg Confession as Catholic and thus to affirm the catholicity of the churches of the Augsburg Confession, which makes possible a corporate union in diversity.”
To accept the catholicity of the Augsburg Confession and thus “the churches of the Augsburg Confession”–that is to say, Lutherans–would be a huge step for Rome. Apparently, Lutherans would be accepted as a separate but legitimate branch of Christianity on a par with the Eastern Orthodox. This could give Lutherans credibility in mostly-Catholic countries and among Protestants who yearn for sacraments and catholicity but who still hold to the centrality of the gospel and the Bible.
But hold on! Lots and lots of obstacles remain. To name just a few: purgatory, the veneration of Mary, the role of merit in salvation, the papacy. (The dicastery might want to read another confession Melanchthon wrote: “The Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope.”)
When Gomes sought a Lutheran point of view on all of this, he went to the pastor of the Confessional Lutheran Church of Italy in Rome, which was started by the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. Pastor Lorenzo Murrone offered both an appreciation for the Vatican’s study of the Augsburg Confession and a warning:
“[The Augsburg Confession] certainly deserves consideration as a stellar ecumenical confession of faith. . . .Its intent and spirit were precisely to foster clarity and understanding between the nascent evangelicals and the Roman Catholic emperor.”
“It also rooted the reformation’s justification in church history and scripture, so much that Melanchthon can close it by saying, ‘in doctrine and ceremonies we have received nothing contrary to Scripture or the Church universal,’” the Latin and Greek scholar added. “But history has shown us that confessions … can become casualties in word-battles, losing sight of the sensus auctoris [author’s meaning].’”
He said religious leaders need to take an honest approach and ask: “What did Melanchthon mean by this — and do I agree?”
He was alluding, I think, to the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, a 1997 agreement reached by the Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation that purported to resolve differences on what Lutherans have always called “the article upon which the church stands or falls.” As the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod response to that document says, among other things, the Roman Catholics and the more liberal Lutherans agreed on a common language, but they mean different things by that language. So that is not a true agreement.
Still, Rome seems to believe that justification by faith is no longer an issue that divides Roman Catholics and Lutherans, an assumption that I suspect is also behind their new appreciation for the Augsburg Confession. But if they want some kind of “corporate union in diversity” with the church bodies in the LWF, they will also have to contend with women’s ordination, gay marriage, acceptance of abortion, and other moral common to liberal Lutherans that are in direct opposition to the teachings of Catholicism. Ironically, Catholics would have more in common with confessional Lutheran like the LCMS on those issues, though the theological gap would remain wide.
Still, I’m intrigued by the possibilities of the Augsburg Confession being used as a template for church unity. Tomorrow I want to look at its specific articles to see where agreement was found in the 16th century and where it can be found in the much-changed Catholic church of today. And since church unity would also have to include evangelicals and other Protestants, I also want to see where they might align with the Augsburg Confession.
Illustration: Presentation of the Augsburg Confession by MonandowitschDerivative work MagentaGreen – This file was derived from: Johanniskirche 2 001 (retuschiert).jpg:, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58304007
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