The Formula of Concord

The Formula exists in two forms. The Epitome states each disputed question, the teaching affirmed (“we believe, teach, and confess”) and the teachings rejected. The Solid Declaration argues the same twelve articles at length: original sin, free will, the righteousness of faith, good works, law and gospel, the third use of the law, the Lord’s Supper, the person of Christ, the descent into hell, church rites, election, and other sects. Both open with a statement of the rule by which doctrine is to be judged: the Scriptures alone are “the only judge, rule, and standard”, and the creeds, the Augsburg Confession and Luther’s catechisms are received as witnesses to how Scripture has been understood.

A note in the Triglot edition records that the manuscripts of the Epitome end “Actum Bergae”, 29 May 1577, followed by six names: Jakob Andreae, Nikolaus Selnecker, Andreas Musculus, Christoph Körner, David Chytraeus and Martin Chemnitz, and that the same names stand at the end of the Solid Declaration.

The Formula was written to end quarrels inside one confession, and it does so partly by drawing lines against others. Its seventh and eighth articles are directed against those it calls Sacramentarians, that is, the followers of Zwingli and Calvin, and its twelfth against Anabaptists, Schwenckfelders and Anti-Trinitarians. What it says of those groups is how their opponents described them.