The Augsburg Confession - Augustana, in Latin - Established the Biblical Truth

 

I joined Salem Lutheran Church and consequently signed up for Augustana College. My mother graduated from the college. I met Christina the first day of Augie (as they nicknamed the school in 1966). Chris and I graduated from Augustana, 1969, and we married on the way to Waterloo, Ontario.

What can I say about those 60 years, starting with the Augustana College degree - no longer connected with the Augsburg Confession in name or substance?

Through college, seminary, and various schools - I enjoyed the Biblical languages and the Book of Concord, but the "scholars" are washed away by indifference. The best I can do is an emphasis on the Scriptures (King James Version).

A sheep farmer, Tom Fisher, often adds to the graphics with his flock.

The Augsburg Confession - Gregory L. Jackson and Norma Boeckler - 12 Years Ago

 

The Augsburg Confession Paperback – May 7, 2014

by Dr. Gregory L. Jackson (Author), Norma A. Boeckler (Author)

4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars   (3)

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* Includes 10 unique, original illustrations by Norma Boeckler. Many people misunderstand confessions of faith, as if confessions were in opposition to the Scriptures. The Bible is the revealed Word of God, inerrant and infallible, while a confession is man’s witness about God’s revelation. Therefore, the Scriptures are God’s unique message to man – irreplaceable. For that reason, The Holy Bible judges all books. Nevertheless, confessions are valuable and instructive. They are man’s testimony about the meaning of God’s Word. They are concise and precise. When there are conflicts about the meaning of the Scriptures, confessions help people compare areas of agreement and disagreement. Paul commended this activity when he wrote, “For there must be also heresies among you that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.” 1 Corinthians 11:19 KJV. Luther compared this to identifying the wormy flour and separating it from the good flour. Bakers know that wormy flour must be removed immediately from the tons of flour around it, before everything is corrupted and ruined with bugs. We recognize confessions of faith as that same process.

Neve - Almost Forgotten Augsburg Confession

 

Hi Friends,
In the mornings I've been reading small bits of Neve's (small) book on the Augsburg Confession.  In the third section of the book he intersperses paragraphs of the Confession with questions and answers.  Somehow separating out these individual sections is helping me to get more out of the Augsburg. 

This morning in the first question in Article Two, Neve wrote this:

"1. What is to be said on the importance of this article?
"We keep in mind that Article IV on Justification is the central article of our Confession..."

Question for Greg, Jim and all of us in our little Bethany group:
Given that a Lutheran is someone who believes the Augsburg Confession is an accurate description of the Bible's teaching, isn't Neve saying here that anyone who de facto denies Justification by Faith (Article IV of the Augsburg), is in fact not Lutheran?

Follow up question, how in any way can "objective justification" be reconciled with Article IV?  Or how can anyone who confesses the Augsburg hate and malign "justification by faith"?

[GJ - The LutherQueasies call us OJ-Deniers! Wahahahaha!]

Rhetorical questions for us to think about. 
May the dear Lord continue to deliver us from sharks and wolves!

I took Christology under Heick at Waterloo Lutheran Seminary.
His two-volume book was based on Neve. The LCA canned it.
Christina and I went to lunch with Heick and visited him in the hospital.

Pastor James Shrader Thought Two Doses of the Augsburg Confession Would Help Those Wandering in Objective Justification Land.

 

 That Augsburg Confession?

Yes, that Augsburg Confession.

I tried it countless times, even trying the Scriptures, but I got no results from those hardened hearts.

The Book of Concord Series. The Nature of Confessions of Faith.

 

The Book of Concord can be viewed backwards in time. In 2023 there are ordained Lutheran pastors - and other denominations - who ridicule and broadcast their contempt for the Christian Faith. Those blasphemies come from a history of resisting expressions of faith in Jesus Christ, 

• the Son of God, Savior, 
• born of the Virgin Mary, 
• miracle worker and teacher, 
• who cured lepers and the blind, 
• bore the cross, died for our sins, 
• rose from the dead, and ascended into Heaven.

Another six-fold creed is found in 1 Timothy 3:16,  a passage used and abused by those who claim the entire world was absolved of all sin and saved the moment Jesus rose from the dead, truly the dogma of the Devil.

KJV 1 Timothy 3:16

16 And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: 

1. God was manifest in the flesh, 
2. justified in the Spirit, 
3. seen of angels, 
4. preached unto the Gentiles, 
5. believed on in the world, 
6. received up into glory.

This verse is both hymn and confession, concise and poetic, in complete harmony (concordia - Latin, harmony) with the Scriptures.

Confessions of faith die in the darkness, as the popular pundits say, so people reject the apostates, go back to the Scriptures, and enlighten their generation.

The Book of Concord, 1580, is the result of Lutherans working together to repudiate false doctrine and clarify the use of the Scriptures. The Book of Concord was signed and published 50 years after the Augsburg Confession risked the lives of Evangelicals by stressing the truth of the Bible against the destructive dogmas of the Church of Rome.

Loy Reviewed for Amazon

Free Augsburg Confession by Loy PDF

The Augsburg Confession and Its Impact on the Midwestern Lutheran Sects

Matt the Fatt repudiates the Augsburg Confession. Mirthless Mark repudiates the Augsburg Confession. Pope John the Malefactor repudiates the Augsburg Confession. And - they rejoice in their unfaithful agreement -  Objective Justification.

June 25, 1530 - Presentation of the Augsburg Confession

What makes the LCMS-ELS-WELS-CLC Papacy so antagonistic toward Melanchthon and the Augsburg Confession?

Melanchthon was a genius, so valuable to the Reformation that Luther never wanted his associate leave their partnership. Philip would have been the Reformer in any other country, such as England.

Lutheran clergy today - anxious that they might miss lunch or an appointment to the district camping committee - could never have endured the Reformation. Luther was still in danger of being roasted by His Holiness the Pope if he attended at Augsburg, so Melanchthon became the leader. The laity put their necks in the noose, too, insisting on signing it with the theologians.

If we pick 1517 as the start of the Reformation and 1530 as the establishment of Evangelical Biblical doctrine, then that is the span of time when Luther's life was in constant danger. He married in 1525, expecting to die a martyr.

Melanchthon is either ignored or hated. In typical LCMS fashion, there are so many inconsequential bits to engulf Phillip's reputation.

The real cause - Justification by Faith is clearly taught in the Augsburg Confession, elaborated in the Apology. The leaders would look foolish, even demonic, if they attacked the Confessions, the entire Book of Concord.

Luther and the Book of Concord editors considered themselves "theologians of the Augsburg Confession." That is the bedrock of the Bible and the Reformation.

The Lutheran Papacy - and ELCA - simply gloss over their opposition to the Chief Article of Christianity and promote Objective (without faith) Justification. Grassy weeds in my garden do the same thing, gradually displacing the roses with their shade and greedy roots. The results are inevitable.

Look at that - they made the Book of Concord disappear, and they got a bit chonky since then.

Scholasticism and So-Called Lutheran Orthodoxy - As Meaningless as the Confessional Lutheran Label

Just before he joined the Roman Catholic Church as a priest, Richard J. Neuhaus (LCMS, AELC, ELCA) called himself a Confessional Lutheran. Those who agreed with him were also Confessional Lutherans, some of them following in the wake of his incense. They sinuflected all the way to Rome, too.

If we turn a gimlet eye toward the LCMS, we can see that its favorite labels are misleading too. Supposedly CFW was an Old Lutheran aiming at the repristination of Lutheran doctrine. That is such a laugh. He was a Pietist before his group made Martin Stephan their Pietist guru, and they sought him out chiefly because their previous Pietist leader moved and assumed room temperature.

Moreover, Stephan was a Bohemian Pietist (as in Count Zinzendorf) and only received his call, lacking a diploma, because it was a Pietist congregation built on land donated by Zinzendorf, with permission to hold cell group meetings only on the property.
Stephan studied at Halle, making him the perfect Pietist.

Most Lutherans came to America through Pietist missionary societies or movements. Many were shocked by the religious zoo they found and gravitated toward the Book of Concord and Luther.
A prime example is the Swedish Augustana Synod because they kept their loyalty to Pietism but moved away from revivalism and such movements as Bishop Hill, Illinois. William Passavant served as a godfather to Augustana and other groups, and he too had reacted against revivalism. He encouraged the study of the Book of Concord, which was the reason for the name - Augustana (Augsburg Confession - Confessio Augustana).

 Stephan brought the group over because he was under house arrest and unemployable - for his cavorting with young women and misuse of funds. Stephan left his wife behind but took his main mistress in the next cabin on his ship.

The German Synod

The LCMS was almost entirely German during the years of Walther and his hand-picked disciple F. Pieper. It seems that many of the Pietists and revivalists sought direction from the late scholastic or orthodox theologians.

The Calvinists attacked the Lutherans during the post Book of Concord (1580) era, and that led to increasing reliance on Latin terminology, truly a terrible path to follow.

J. Gerhard worked with Chemnitz, but he was already drifting into the verbose and overly technical language of scholasticism. Afterward Gerhard, there was often a blend of Lutheran doctrine and Pietism, so Old Lutheran is really a mixed label. So is Orthodox Lutheran.

Walther was insecure (for good reason) about Biblical teaching, so he lectured in Latin (!) and asked questions in Latin, demanding Latin answers. He used an otherwise forgotten theologian (Baier) for his dogmatics text, and infused the LCMS with a repeat-after-me system of learning, copied by WELS.

Walther-Pieper inspired an obsession with Latin theological terms. David Scaer created a large book explaining the terms, yet he never caught onto the Chief Article, hating anyone who taught Justification by Faith.

So if you think the path to understanding Justification is Latin, Walther-Pieper-Scaer prove otherwise. They also created entire lobbying groups (Higher Things, Steadfast Lutherans, Gottesdienst) devoted to their Pietistic cause.

 The hideous Walther shrine is a spooky eye-sore.

We only have so much time, so much mental energy. If that is spent pursuing the exact meaning and history of the non-reciprocity of the second genus, the Scriptures will be neglected.

Pastors are tempted to wow others with their vast knowledge (one inch deep) of those terms. I remember Paul Kuske talking to the Columbus WELS pastors and getting the terms mixed up. They all acted superior in harmony with him because they were trained to think they were the best.

Recently, Steve Spencer and another Objective Justification sell-out insisted to me that they held to a quia subscription to the Book of Concord, another fig-leaf to cover the shame of the Olde Synodical Conference, which once taught Justification by Faith and now brays "OJ OJ OJ."

Luther's and Formula of Concord Term
I was impressed with the editors of the Book of Concord identifying with Luther's term - Theologian of the Augsburg Confession. They agreed and also considered themselves "theologians of the Augsburg Confession."

Do you wonder why the LCMS-WELS leaders do not like Melanchthon at all, when Luther praised his brilliant associate?

So our little church does not have an organization to venerate. We reach Europe, Australia, and the Philippines. A lot of readers come from Russia.

However, we are big because those who actually agree with the Augsburg Confession are one with us. We do not have an adulterous sugar-daddy to give us millions of dollars, so we rely on the efficacy of the Word in the Means of Grace. As I look around, the Word has had more success than those glittering mausoleums to synod glory.

 Be sure to read the LCMS jokebook, to learn how one organizes a mob to threaten, rob, and kidnap church leaders. Synodical elections would be so much more newsworthy using Walther's tactics against Stephan.