ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONFESSIONS 1 CON1-Q028 JANUARY 2005 CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY: CAPTION FIRST, INC. P.O. BOX 1924 LOMBARD, IL 60148 * * * * * This text is being provided in a rough-draft format. Communications Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. * * * * >> DAVID: What was the purpose and significance of the Augsburg Confession for the Lutherans in the 16th century? And do these values remain today, or will you come to this point later on in our conversation? >> DR. KLAUS DETLEV SHULTZ: Well, David, the Augsburg Confession must be seen as the first confession that the Lutherans have. And, as I've already said previously, it was an attempt still to remain within the Roman Catholic Church and to reform that what was understood as being wrong. However, as time progressed, it became ever more clear to the Lutherans that they were now finding themselves in a different camp. They formed, for example, late in the year 1530 and early in 1531, the Small Court League, those rulers of territories and churches that came together and thought that they needed to protect themselves. And they used the Augsburg Confession as their confession, their document, on which their faith rested. And I think for this reason, we consider the Augsburg Confession the queen of the Lutheran Confessions. We can see that the Small Court Articles, the Large and Small Catechism, and so forth, are found later after the Augsburg Confession in the Book of Concord. That might not necessarily go with the chronology of those books because, as you know, the Lutheran Catechisms, both the Small and Large, were written in 1529. But it means the Augsburg Confession wants to serve as the base from which all other confessions later draw from. So when it speaks for the church, it speaks for all of Christianity in Augsburg Confession Article 7, the * una sancta, the communion of saints spread all over the world. It speaks on behalf of their faith. So it wants to be ecumenical, the Augsburg Confession. And it wants to embrace all those who agree with it, even if they do not know exactly what it means to be Lutheran by name itself. They might agree with the Augsburg Confession in theology. The Formula of Concord of 1577 calls the Augsburg Confession the symbol of our time. That means they also regarded it as the first prime confession, and they did not intend to interpret anything different than that what the Augsburg Confession said already. The Formula of Concord attempted only to bring back union, once again, within the Lutheran camp, for it had become divisive over a number of issues that the Augsburg Confession had already expressed. Take, for example, the issue of original sin. The Formula of Concord Article 1 says that understanding that of the Augsburg Confession Article 2 of original sin still remains standing. But it can explain it a little deeper and further than that what is said, and then comes to the statement that our original sin is understood as a total corruption. So these are examples of how the Augsburg Confession speaks out clearly during the time of The Reformation and is used as the first document and *represtonated in the Formula of Concord by quoting it, but then also explaining it further. Of course, the Augsburg Confession has also been interpreted differently by various churches. For example, the Swiss Reformed had not been given any legal status during the time of The Reformation. After 1530, the question was: Where does *Ulrich Zwingli fit it? And it was always understood by those that had opposed the Lutheran Reformation that these who profess the faith of *Ulrich Zwingli and the reformed, would also be incorporated into the Augsburg Confession. Obviously, we know that Article 10 of the Augsburg Confession clearly rejects the interpretations of *Ulrich Zwingli. However, Melanchthon soon realized that by changing certain statements in the Augsburg Confession, such as Article 10 on Holy Communion, which he did in 1540 with the *Confessio Augustana Variata, the varied form, that thereby, the Swiss reformers could take refuge under the Augsburg Confession and be embraced by it as a legitimate movement that then was accepted in 1555. This means that already during the 16th century, it was difficult to come down to a conclusive statement, always, about what Augsburg Confession � what edition do we find binding. The interpretations of the Swiss reformists, for example, going with the 1540 edition would have to be considered as an illegitimate approach towards the Augsburg Confession and its claim because we do accept, today, as then in the 16th century, as the Formula of Concord then does, the 1530 edition, the *Confessio Augustana Invariata. Today, the Augsburg Confession is embraced by many churches also, and we will speak to that later on, as you have already suggested in your question.