The Augsburg Confession & the Heresies It Condemns
One of Martin Luther’s lifelong opponents was a theologian named Johann Eck. Eck became one of the Roman Catholic Church’s “watchdogs,” and Dr. Luther’s excommunication – and the ensuing Lutheran Reformation of the 16th century – is largely due to him. Always thorough, Eck set out to condemn the Lutherans. If the Ninety-Five Theses made Martin Luther instantly famous, Johann Eck tried to one-up him with his own 404 Theses. In these 404 Theses, Eck conflated the moderate reforms of Luther and the Lutherans with the radical reforms of the Anabaptists. The true achievement of Eck’s Theses, however, is that he accused the Lutherans of every single heresy he could muster in order to justify the Roman church’s animosity toward the Lutherans.
About the same time Eck was busy, the Lutherans were preparing a common statement (or “confession”) of faith. Their first attempt at was the Torgau Articles, written in March 1530. These Articles looked very different from the articles of the Augsburg Confession. The Torgau Articles are summed up as a defense of why the Lutherans had departed from some common worship practices among the Roman Catholic Church of their day. After their authors had gotten wind that Eck would present his 404 Theses before the Holy Roman Emperor, Luther’s colleague Philipp Melanchthon drafted a brand-new confession of faith. This new confession (named after the city of Augsburg) devoted its first twenty-one articles to points of doctrine which the Lutherans were convinced they held in common with the Roman Catholic Church “in so far as the latter’s teaching is reflected in the writings of the Fathers.” Only the final seven articles deal with “abuses” that needed reform, such as clerical celibacy, the Sacrifice of the Mass, and the lordly status of bishops.
The first twenty-one “catholic” articles present the Lutheran’s affirmative teaching on the basic articles of the Christian faith. The first article affirms that Lutherans do indeed worship the Holy Trinity (which certain contemporary Anabaptist groups denied); the second, original sin; the third elucidates the Lutherans’ understanding of who Jesus is, with a nod to the ancient Fathers and Councils of the Church. Each article presents the positive Lutheran teaching and its antithesis. To save space, the authors often name an ancient or contemporary heresy that taught otherwise.
The heresies mentioned in the Augsburg Confession respond directly to Eck’s 404 Theses, proving that Lutherans are not heretics. Eck had accused Luther, for example, of being a Manichee (someone who believes the physical world is an evil creation); Luther was also in league with the Enthusiasts (who deny the saving power of the Sacraments); for all this, Eck also reasoned that Lutherans must be Donatists (that is, those who believe that only perfect people can be effective ministers… a convenient device for a sect that believes in its monopoly on perfection). Each of these heresies is flatly condemned in the twenty-eight articles drafted by Philipp Melanchthon, which Martin Luther personally approved (he admitted that he could not have been so conciliar).
The Augsburg Confession is furnished with citations not only from the Scriptures, but also from the Church Fathers to prove that the Lutheran Church’s interpretations of Scripture were not new. Contrariwise, it attempts to show that the “abuses” of the Roman Catholic Church were new and, wherever possible, to show how they came to be. The open-minded reader of the Augsburg Confession should discover that our teachings are compatible with historic Christianity.
Pastor Heide
