All confessions of the church are written either to answer a question\n or to defend against a heresy. Our Lord desires that such confession be\n made. Saint Paul wrote, \u201cthat if you confess with your mouth the Lord \nJesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, \nyou will be saved.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first of the Lutheran Confessions was written in 1530 at the \nrequest of Emperor Charles V. In early 1530 called for a diet or \ncongress to meet in Augsburg to discuss the Turkish invasion and, \u201cto \nconsider furthermore what might and ought to be done and resolved upon \nregarding the division and separation in the holy faith and the \nChristian religion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Upon receiving word of the Emperor\u2019s request, Elector John at Torgau \ncommissioned Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon and several other \ntheologians to write the requested confession of faith. Melanchthon \nwrote the Augsburg Confession by discussing the teachings of Luther. He \nalso presented the Confession to the Diet at Augsburg because Luther was\n still under a death sentence if he traveled outside Saxony. The first \npublic reading of the Confession was at Augsburg on June 25, 1530.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Each article of the Augsburg Confession is drawn from Scripture. \nIndeed, the hallmark of the Reformation is the insistence on Scripture \nalone for the doctrines and teaching of the church. Melanchthon appealed\n to the ancient church for additional arguments for the understandings \nexpressed in the Confession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In all there were twenty-eight articles which set forth the Lutheran \nunderstanding of the faith. These articles ranged from God and \nJustification to a position on the marriage of priests. Many of the \narticles were controversial because the were directly opposed to the \nteachings of the Church of Rome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Augsburg Confession marks the first time a church had \nsystematically written its beliefs. Before this various articles of \nfaith had been discussed and written, but the entire content of faith \nhad not been documented in one place. Therefore the churches which hold \nto the Augsburg Confession can rightly claim to be the first \n\u201cconfessional\u201d church. Rome did not document their understanding of the \narticles of faith until the Council of Trent in 1545.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unlike later church bodies which can and do modify their basic \nconfessions, the Lutheran Church holds firmly to the Confession \ndelivered to the Emperor on that fateful day of 1530. Later confessions \nwere written, but they built on the framework provided by the Augsburg \nConfession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even today Lutherans can appeal to the confessions because the \nconfessions agree totally with Scripture and are subservient to \nScripture. Although the political picture has changed since 1530, the \nConfession speaks to our world with the same power as to the world in \nLuther\u2019s time. Salvation is still by God\u2019s grace, through faith, for the\n sake of Christ. That will never change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Text of the Augsburg Confession<\/a> in a new window.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What we believe: Augsburg Confession All confessions of the church are written either to answer a question or to defend against a heresy. Our Lord desires that such confession be … Continue reading “Augsburg Confession”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":91,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-117","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/trinityslayton.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/trinityslayton.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/trinityslayton.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trinityslayton.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trinityslayton.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/trinityslayton.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":322,"href":"http:\/\/trinityslayton.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/117\/revisions\/322"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/trinityslayton.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/91"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/trinityslayton.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}