The Unity of the Lutheran Church

If a particular historical confession does not actually belong to the essence of the church of Christ, then it does however belong to the essence of the Lutheran Church. By “Lutheran Church” we mean that segment of Christendom which accepts as scriptural the great doctrinal decisions of the Lutheran Reformation, as they are recorded in the Lutheran confessions. As we determine this, so we guard against the misunderstanding which appeared in the Lutheran church of the 19th century, that the church be like a type of association and the confession, so to speak, the rules of the organization, as a political party has a platform as a type of worldly confession. Such a party or association is indeed held together by such rules, as its individual members declare their joining based on such rules. Hardly any other misunderstanding of the Lutheran confession has damaged our church like this one. The confession of the church is never, like the rules of an association, the expression of the opinions of individuals who link themselves together into a body. It is the expression of the consensus about the correct faith, brought about by the Holy Spirit. It must be noted that the confessional writings are not caused by the Holy Spirit, but rather the faith, to which they attest, and the consensus of faith in the community of the church. The riddle, which is inconceivable to the world, of how the confession of personal faith by the individual Christian – nobody else can believe for me – can be, at the same time, the confession of the entire orthodox church , is explained by the fact that the Holy Spirit always does both at the same time, as Luther says it so well in the explanation of the third article:

…the Holy Spirit has called me by means of the gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the correct faith, just as He calls, gathers, enlightens, sanctifies, and keeps all Christendom with Jesus Christ in correct, unified faith.

This distinguishes the true ecclesiastical confession from the pseudo-confession of modem protestant churches, those formulas of compromise, which serve more to veil unbelief than to confess belief, formulas, in which one attempts to bring the religious views of many individuals together under a common name. The Lutheran confessions did not come about in this way. Even the introductory sentence of the Solid Declaration may not be understood in such a manner:

The primary requirement for basic and permanent concord within the church is a summary formula and pattern, unanimously approved, in which the summarized doctrine commonly confessed by the churches of the pure Christian religion is drawn together out of the Wordof God …. In the same way we have from our hearts and with our mouths declared in mutual agreement that we common confessions which have at all times and in all places been accepted in all the churches of the Augsburg Confession … and which were kept and used during that period when people were everywhere and unanimously faithful to the pure doctrine of the Word of God …

Neither the common agreement of the authors of the Formula of Concord, which the signatories approved, nor the determination that the church needed a “summary formula and pattern, unanimously approved” can be interpreted in this sense, as if the confession were a party platform or an association’s rule, arising from the will of individuals who set a norm for themselves. Already the fact that “we believe, teach, and confess” contradicts such a view, the phase with which the doctrinal decisions of the Formula of Concord begin corresponds to the great “we” which is the speaking subject in all great confessions of the church, from thepisteuomen of the Nicene Creed to Luther’s hymnic form of the credo: “we all believe in one God” and to the ecclesiae magno consensu apud nos docent of the Augsburg Confession. The Lutheran confession, understood in this sense, belongs indeed to the essence of the Lutheran church. It alone makes it into that which it is. Our church is essentially a confessional church in a sense in which neither the Catholic nor the Reformed churches are – because all these churches have, in addition to their confession, something else, which characterizes them in their uniqueness and holds them together: their constitution, their liturgy, their discipline, or whatever else. The Lutheran Church does not have all that. It is part of its understanding of the divine Word, of the distinction between Law and Gospel, that it finds no laws in the New Testament about church constitution, church discipline, and liturgy. It can live with presbyteral, episcopal, or congregational forms of constitution. Its liturgical possibilities reach from Swedish high-churchliness to the liturgy-lessness of W ürttemberg. It has only its confession. If Gospel and sacrament are the notae ecclesiae, by which we recognize the presence of the church of Christ, then the notae ecclesiae Lutheranae, the trait by which we recognize whether a church is Lutheran or not, is the Lutheran confession. Inasmuch as we determine this, we do not need, after all that has been said, to protect ourselves primarily from the misunderstanding, that we would place the notae of the invisible church of God on the same level with the traits of earthly historical ecclesiologies. We believe the church of God to be in, with, and under the earthly ecclesiologies, because we see the Gospel and the sacraments there, and insofar as we see the Gospel and the sacraments there. The confession, by which we recognize the Lutheran church, is for us nothing else than the “Yes!” to this Gospel and to these sacraments.

Via Herman Sasse, “Concerning the Unity of the Lutheran Church”