The Augsburg Confession is divided into “Articles of Faith and Doctrine” and “Articles Concerning Dissension, and Corrected Abuses.” In order to better understand the two-fold structure of the Augsburg Confession, this study began with a quick review of the historical events from 1517 to 1530 (page 3 of last week’s handout). Due to the conciliatory and gentle demeanor of Emperor Charles’ invitation to the Diet of Augsburg, the Lutherans were expecting quite a different kind of meeting than what transpired. We saw from the preface to the Augsburg Confession that the Lutherans were still desiring a “general, free, and Christian council” in 1530. Following the diet of Augsburg, that expectation quickly faded away.
When the “Evangelicals”(what the Lutherans were called) arrived in Augsburg, they discovered that the pamphlet, “The Four Hundred Four Articles of John Eck,” had been circulated, in which they were accused of practically every heresy that had ever been condemned by the church. Therefore, the first 21 articles were added to the Augsburg Confession after they arrived, in order to reprove Eck’s slanderous document and show the orthodoxy of Lutheran doctrine.
This study worked its way through an overview of the first five articles of The Augsburg Confession. Having arrived at the fifth article , we made the observation that Tappert’s translation included an erroneous and misleading footnote(#4 on page 31), which claimed “that the Reformers thought of ‘the office of the ministry’ in other than clerical terms.”
Quiz #6 (green sheet): Quiz-6-for-Oct-20-Book-of-Concord-Subscription.pdf
Handout 1 (from October 6): Subscription-What-Kind.pdf
Handout 2: Handout-Articles-of-the-Augsburg-Confession-Overview.pdf
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