The Book of Concord

After the death of Martin Luther, the Lutheran rulers say in the preface to the Book of Concord, false teaching and division spread in their churches, and their opponents taunted them that they no longer knew which was the true Augsburg Confession. Meetings of princes at Frankfurt in 1558 and Naumburg in 1561 did not bring the peace they wanted (Book of Concord, preface 4–8, 16). In 1576 the elector of Saxony called a group of theologians to Torgau. Their draft was sent to the other Lutheran rulers, examined by their theologians, revised, and then read by some of the rulers to the clergy and schoolmasters of their territories, who subscribed it (Book of Concord, preface 12–15).

The result was the Formula of Concord. The manuscripts of its short form, the Epitome, are dated at Bergen on 29 May 1577 and signed by six theologians, Jakob Andreae first and Martin Chemnitz last (Formula of Concord, Epitome, closing note in the Triglot edition, p. 842). It starts from a rule. The Scriptures of the prophets and apostles are “the only judge, rule, and standard” of doctrine; the three creeds, the Augsburg Confession of 1530 with its Apology, the Smalcald Articles and Luther’s catechisms “are not judges” but a testimony to how Scripture has been understood (Formula of Concord, Epitome, Rule and Norm 1–8).

Twelve articles then take the disputed points in turn. On justification the Formula teaches that faith alone is the means by which Christ’s righteousness is laid hold of, and that to justify means to absolve, “to declare free from sins” (Formula of Concord, Epitome III.5, 7). On election it says that God’s eternal choice extends only over the godly, the children of God, and is a cause of their salvation, that his foreknowledge is not the cause of evil, and that he is not willing that any should perish (Formula of Concord, Epitome XI.4–5, 10).

On the Lord’s Supper it speaks against those it calls Sacramentarians. Christ’s body and blood, it says, are “truly and essentially present” and are received with the bread and wine by mouth, by the unworthy and unbelieving as well as by believers (Formula of Concord, Epitome VII.1–2, 6, 15–16). The Reformed taught otherwise: the Heidelberg Catechism says that Christ according to his human nature is now not on earth, and that believers are united to his body by the Holy Spirit although he is in heaven and they on earth (Heidelberg Catechism questions 47 and 76). The preface adds that the condemnations are aimed at false opinions and their obstinate teachers and not at those who err in simplicity, “much less” at entire churches (Book of Concord, preface 20).

The Formula was printed with the older confessions as one book (Book of Concord, table of contents). Its preface carries the names of three electors, Louis of the Palatinate, Augustus of Saxony and John George of Brandenburg, followed by other princes, counts and thirty-five cities (Book of Concord, preface 25). The signers say that they publish it so that the living and those who come after may know what their churches confess (Book of Concord, preface 4–8, 16).