The Augsburg Confession

The confession was written for a political occasion. Charles V had summoned the estates of the empire to Augsburg to deal with the Turkish threat and with the division in religion, and, as the preface records, he asked the estates to submit their opinions on the second matter in German and Latin. Luther, under the imperial ban, could not attend, and Philip Melanchthon drew up the text on the basis of earlier articles. It was signed by the elector John of Saxony, six other princes and the cities of Nuremberg and Reutlingen, and the German version was read aloud before the emperor on 25 June 1530.

The first twenty-one articles set out teaching, among them justification by faith (IV), the church (VII) and the Lord’s Supper (X); the last seven defend changes in practice such as communion in both kinds and the marriage of priests. The tone is deliberately moderate. The signers argue that they hold nothing contrary to Scripture or to the catholic church, and several matters then in dispute, the papacy among them, are passed over. The German and Latin texts are both original and do not agree word for word; the translation linked here follows the Latin. Melanchthon later issued altered versions, and the Lutheran churches bind themselves to the text of 1530, called the Unaltered Augsburg Confession.