Lutheranism, Councils, and the Augsburg Confessions

[trulytheone]

Do Lutherans consider the doctrines in the Augsburg Confessions and some of the Ecumenical Councils of the first millenium to be infallible?

 

[Daniel9v9]

No, they are confessions of faith and not infallible, but it is believed that they accurately reflect God's Word. God's Word alone is infallible and so the only supreme authority in all things. The Lutheran Church value tradition and creeds, but always in light of Scripture.

 

[John the Ex-Baptist]

It's a popular sentiment these days to claim something like "no creed but the Bible", yet that is simply both impractical and impossible. For the moment you confess what you believe about what it teaches, unless reading verbatim what the text actually says, you are making a creed. Creed meaning simply "I believe".

The Bible (both Old and New Testaments) contains the faith once for all delivered unto the saints, and through the millennia, faithful believers have studied the text diligently to understand its message to us more clearly. Those insights were tested over and over, often through much trial and tribulation, until a consensus was made at various times what the truth was on a particular matter. These things being like building blocks upon which we can continue to build. By all means test them, and test them again to ensure they are solid, but you don't have to keep knocking down the whole building and start again from the foundations every time you approach the Bible.

On the flip side of this, if you come to a brick that doesn't seem to line up with Scripture, then don't just march on regardless.

 

[trulytheone]

Ok...then this leads me to another question: Do the Lutherans believe that they are the continuation of the historic Church started by Christ and preached by the apostles? Do they believe that there has to be at least one church, with apostolic succession, that continues to preserve the apostolic teachings until the reformation?

 

[FireDragon76]

Ok...then this leads me to another question: Do the Lutherans believe that they are the continuation of the historic Church started by Christ and preached by the apostles?

Yes, absolutely.

The Augsburg Confession is similar in authority to the early church councils for us. Not infallible but a confession of what we believed in light of theological disputes of the time.

Do they believe that there has to be at least one church, with apostolic succession, that continues to preserve the apostolic teachings until the reformation?

We do not understand apostolic succession the way Rome or Orthodoxy do. There was a church, of course, but it was in captivity to a false system of authority.

 

[Resha Caner]

The statement of the LCMS with regard to apostolic succession is that we "regard the apostolic succession merely as a valuable symbol of continuity with the past, in a class with the creeds and the liturgy, and do not make it a test of the validity of a clergyman's ministry."

IOW, we believe Lutherans are continuing the faith that has been practiced since the time of the apostles, but don't believe we have been given a secret trust of some kind. People err, and since the Church consists of people, it wanders from time to time. But there has been an unbroken chain of believers who have practiced the faith.

 

[John the Ex-Baptist]

Ok...then this leads me to another question: Do the Lutherans believe that they are the continuation of the historic Church started by Christ and preached by the apostles? Do they believe that there has to be at least one church, with apostolic succession, that continues to preserve the apostolic teachings until the reformation?

As to what constitutes the one true Church, Lutherans confess the following:

[1] It is also taught that at all times there must be and remain one holy, Christian church. It is the assembly of all believers among whom the gospel is purely preached and the holy sacraments are administered according to the gospel.
[2] For this is enough for the true unity of the Christian church that there the gospel is preached harmoniously according to a pure understanding and the sacraments are administered in conformity with the divine Word. [3] It is not necessary for the true unity of the Christian church that uniform ceremonies, instituted by human beings, be observed everywhere. [4] As Paul says in Ephesians 4[:4–5*]: “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism.”
Augsburg Confession article VII

I think there are pretty similar confessions across the Protestant board, for example in the 39 articles it virtually the same.

 

[Resha Caner]

As to what constitutes the one true Church, Lutherans confess the following:

[1] It is also taught that at all times there must be and remain one holy, Christian church. It is the assembly of all believers among whom the gospel is purely preached and the holy sacraments are administered according to the gospel.
[2] For this is enough for the true unity of the Christian church that there the gospel is preached harmoniously according to a pure understanding and the sacraments are administered in conformity with the divine Word. [3] It is not necessary for the true unity of the Christian church that uniform ceremonies, instituted by human beings, be observed everywhere. [4] As Paul says in Ephesians 4[:4–5*]: “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism.”
Augsburg Confession article VII

I think there are pretty similar confessions across the Protestant board, for example in the 39 articles it virtually the same.

It's amazing what the writers of the Confessions thought to cover, isn't it?

 

[FireDragon76]

It's not like Catholics have this firmly nailed down, either. Vatican II in particular opened new questions about Catholic ecclesisology, there is a tension between a more Protestant understanding of the Church, and one resembling Vatican I's absolute monarchy and institutionalism. That's why Catholic theologians occasionally talk about a crisis in ecclessiology.

 

[trulytheone]

It's not like Catholics have this firmly nailed down, either. Vatican II in particular opened new questions about Catholic ecclesisology, there is a tension between a more Protestant understanding of the Church, and one resembling Vatican I's absolute monarchy and institutionalism. That's why Catholic theologians occasionally talk about a crisis in ecclessiology.

Oh you mean conciliarism vs. papal monarchy?

This thought just popped into my mind: It seems that the sedevacantists, those who don't believe that the popes were actually popes since the 1960s, are essentially Lutherans in their belief of the apostolic succesion since they have to conclude that every Roman Catholic bishop in the world defected to a heretical council.

 

[FireDragon76]

Oh you mean conciliarism vs. papal monarchy?

This thought just popped into my mind: It seems that the sedevacantists, those who don't believe that the popes were actually popes since the 1960s, are essentially Lutherans in their belief of the apostolic succesion since they have to conclude that every Roman Catholic bishop in the world defected to a heretical council.

I wouldn't exactly call them Lutherans, but Sedevacantism is proof that Vatican I is broken. Unity cannot be created through one man's pronouncements about his own authority.

 

[trulytheone]

What ecumenical councils do Lutherans accept?

 

[TKA_TN]

Typically the first seven; up until the Second Council of Nicea.

 

[FireDragon76]

What ecumenical councils do Lutherans accept?

Luther actually burned all the canons, so I don't think the councils have the place they do in other churches. All theology is based on the Bible, not councils, which can and do err, as Luther correctly stated. But I would tend to say we don't really have anything against the first seven.

We do not really have an institutional view of the church that has to be right or infallible all the time, that's not how we work.

 

[MarkRohfrietsch]

Typically the first seven; up until the Second Council of Nicea.

You are correct (for confessional Lutherans) other more liberal synods can tend to view the confessions, the Ecumenical councils and even the creeds (Athanasian in particular) as outdated historic documents and nothing more.