ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONFESSIONS 1 CON1-Q041 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: To what extent is the Augsburg Confession the authoritative guide for confessing our faith today and for shaping our Lutheran identity? For example, what would it say to the ecumenical efforts many Lutherans are making today with Rome and with other denominations? And if I may be permitted a third question. If the Augsburg Confession is the authoritative guide, why is it necessary to subscribe to the other documents in the Book of Concord? Do all Lutherans bodies accept all of the Lutheran Confessions? >> DR. KLAUS DETLEV SHULTZ: Well, David, those are certainly a lot of questions that you are asking me here, and I'm not quite clear whether I'll be able to answer them all in the sequence as you have put them. At any rate, the first question you are asking is how authoritative is and are the Augsburg Confessions for us today. Well, I think the one fact is they are as authoritative for us as they were in the 16th century. We are subscribing to them because they are the first statements the Lutherans have made, and they have accepted them as their confessions. We consider ourselves as Lutherans also. But we consider ourselves specifically concerned with a number of issues that the Lutheran Confessions, especially the Augsburg Confession, enunciate, that of justification through faith by Jesus Christ alone. We still hold that as true as a principle that organizes our theology. We believe, for example, in Article 7 that it is absolutely necessary in the ecumenical world discussions today that we maintain the rules that are laid down in that article; namely, that we should maintain a pure preaching of the gospel and a right administration of the sacraments. Thereby, an agenda is set for us that we must follow clearly. The pure understanding of the Gospel, how is that understood? Well, it means that we must embrace all the articles of the Augsburg Confession, everything that is being said about the state of our humankind, about God himself, the triune God, about the means of grace, about the church, about the two kingdoms, about all those abuses and malpractices in the church so that they set for us an agenda, and on that we go back to identify ourselves and to make ourselves out as Lutherans. You asked then one question, why should we then have all the other confessions included also? Well, I believe that the other confessions, just as much as the Augsburg Confession, want to highlight these number of items that I have just listed. The Formula of Concord also speaks of very important issues, but these are already found in the Augsburg confession, just that they are explained a little further. So together, the Lutheran Confessions highlight, perhaps, one important point above all: that we do not want to say anything that is outside of scripture, but that we must be brought back to scripture because therein, everything is found that is necessary for our salvation. To help us Lutherans to map out a road, theologically speaking, that helps us to understand scripture. At the time of the 16th century, it was already the practice of usurping the Augsburg Confession for any ulterior motives. Some tried to bring the Augsburg Confession into a unionism with the Swiss reformers, for example, of bringing those together. And in 1817, we recall the Prussian Union where the Augsburg confession, and at the same time, those confessions of the reform, especially the Heidelberg Catechism, were brought together. You see, for this reason, the Augsburg Confession speaks out clearly to those who believe to be truly confessional Lutherans, but then at the same time, it is also used, and often abused, by others who use it for ulterior reasons. We then have to go back to the Augsburg Confession and always ask: How clearly does it speak to us today? And I believe we can do that by reading all the other confessions and see how they read the Augsburg confession. The Augsburg confession and the Formula of Concord, for example, are not two different, separate theological statements that disagree with each other as so many churches today say. No. They agree with one another. We also have, for example today, the Lutheran World Federation. It subscribes to the Augsburg Confession, but understands Article 7 in a different way. They want to highlight the catholic church, the church, maybe, that wants to unite with others contrary to what the Augsburg Confession itself says on justification. They've entered, for example, in the year 2000, the anniversary of the Augsburg Confession, in a discussion with the Roman Catholic Church signing a joint declaration on the doctrine of justification, the JDDJ. Thereby, they believe in a certain historical conditioning of the Augsburg Confession saying that what it said at the time of the 16th century does not pertain to us today. The Roman Catholic Church looked at those attempts somewhat befuddled, I must say, and maintains a strong position that its theology, that of the Roman Catholic Church, was never abrogated by signing the JDDJ. But we must ask from our point of view: How then can they still continue to maintain certain things addressed in Article 22 through 28. Those clearly speak against the practice, or the understanding, of the doctrine of justification in Article 4 of the Augsburg Confession. So what I'm saying here really is the Confessions are sometimes misunderstood, and a clear subscription to them. An unconditional subscription is necessary in order to give them credit for what they want to say; namely, to be an ecumenical statement. As they were in the 16th century, they are also so today. Some Scandinavian countries like Denmark and Sweden have pledged their allegiance to the Augsburg Confession. And for a while, that was and remained the only confession they subscribed to. When in 1580, the Book of Concord was released with all the other six particular confessions, the rulers of Denmark and Sweden demanded that the formula of Concord would not be subscribed to, but that the Augsburg Confession served as a sufficient document for Lutherans to maintain their identity. We have, today, formed the International Lutheran Council, the ILC, that has made a deliberate point in subscribing unconditionally to the Book of Concord and all the particular confessions therein. This is in contrast to the Lutheran World Federation that seems to be taking a more lenient position on subscribing to the Book of Concord and embracing positions that go in some ways, if one looks at them carefully, contrary to that what is stated in the confessions of the 16th century. We can thus say that the Augsburg Confession serves as the basis for many churches, but one has to be very careful and evaluate exactly what kind of subscription we are talking about. The International Lutheran Council and confessional Lutherans around the world have made a very important point that they would like to understand the Augsburg Confession as the queen of all confessions, but not to leave it all on its own, but to take with it also the interpretations of the other confessions such as the (inaudible) articles, the Large and Small Catechism, the treatise, and the Formula of Concord.