The Lutheran Confessions

History and Theology of The Book of Concord

Charles P. Arand, Robert Kolb, James A. Nestingen, Charles P. Arand, Robert Kolb, James A. Nestingen

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780800627416
• eBook ISBN: 9781451410594
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

Part I

The Ecumenical Creeds

1

A History of the Ancient Creedal Texts
Apostles, Nicene, and Athanasian

Once taken for granted in a world that was largely Christian, the so-called ecumenical Creeds—the Apostles, Nicene, and Athanasian—today find themselves pushed increasingly into the foreground of a postmodern world for at least two reasons. First, they have become increasingly important because of the need to define the boundaries of historical Christianity in the face of numerous attempts to redefine Christianity in the light of ancient Gnosticism and revisionist versions of Christianity. However some may wish to revise the picture of early Christianity, the creeds define historically the faith as Christians have confessed it from its earliest centuries on. They embody the constituent components of the church’s confession of Christ. Second, in a world of thirty thousand Christian denominations, the creeds set forth what all Christians have held in common throughout history. While each denomination or church body arose in a particular era and thus was shaped by it, they all arose out of a common history in the early church and lay claim to it.1 In a pluralistic age, it has become increasingly important to stress what it means to be Christian as well as Lutheran. The ecumenical creeds fit the bill well.

The Lutheran church places the three ecumenical creeds first in its collection of confessional statements. Historically, the Apostles and Athanasian Creeds belong properly to the church’s tradition in the West. Of the three, the Nicene Creed is the truly ecumenical creed acknowledged by the Eastern and Western church alike. But in the sixteenth century, all three were considered ecumenical in the West. The Lutheran Confessions themselves demonstrate that they give more than lip service to them. From the outset, in Article I, the Augsburg Confession grounds its confession of catholicity in its adherence to the faith of Nicaea. The Creeds also shape the contours of the faith set forth in the Lutheran Confessions. Augsburg Confession Article III uses the wording of the Apostles Creed, from which it draws out the soteriological implications for believers. Likewise, in part 1 of the Smalcald articles, Luther also draws on the Apostles Creed. Both of his catechisms expound this Creed. The first article of the Formula of Concord—on original sin—uses it as the rule by which it rejects Flacius’ conclusions. The confessions also draw on language of the Athanasian Creed when speaking of the Trinity in Augsburg Confession Article I and Smalcald Articles, part I. Finally, the “Binding Summary” of the Formula points to the creeds as the pattern that they themselves wish to emulate when resolving the controversies of their own day.

Lutherans employ both a historical and a canonical interpretation of the Creeds.2 They need to be read as documents that stand on their own within a particular historical context. Thus, for example, when considering the Nicene Creed attention must be given to the ecumenical councils in which the Christology of Nicaea was expounded and expanded. These councils provide something of the church’s interpretation of the Nicene Creed and show its theological trajectory. At the same time, as documents that are gathered into a collection of other confessional writings such as the Book of Concord, they are seen to stand alongside and cohere with the church’s subsequent theological confessions.

The Wittenberg Reformers found in the creedal tradition of the Western medieval church a foundational form for the confession of the message of Scripture. In their formal identification of who and what they understood their churches to be, the princes who sponsored the publication of the Book of Concord wished only to repeat and apply to their own time the teaching of Scripture as “briefly summarized in the time-honored ancient Symbols; teaching that was recognized as that ancient, united consensus believed in by the universal, orthodox churches of Christ and fought for and reaffirmed against many heresies and errors.”3 Their theologians affirmed as they set forth their “binding summary, basis, rule and guiding principle” for judging all teaching according to God’s Word that their confession in the Formula of Concord only repeated “the true Christian teaching as it was correctly and soundly understood [and] summarized on the basis of God’s Word in short articles or chief parts” formulated in the Apostles, Nicene and Athanasian, “the three ecumenical creeds.”4 Indeed, the authors of the Formula were only following the example of Philip Melanchthon, who had based the Augsburg Confession upon the Nicene faith5 and placed lectures on the Nicene Creed into the Wittenberg curriculum in 1545/1546.6 When Caspar Cruciger died while lecturing on the Creed, Melanchthon assumed the task. His lectures on the second and third articles, published a quarter century later, in 1574, began with the topic De gratia et de iustificatione (on “who for us human creatures and for our salvation descended from heaven”). In addition to the wide-ranging comments on faith and the good works that flow from it, Melanchthon treated the church and the sacraments in detail under the third article of the Creed.7 The Creed provided him with a firm basis for the exposition of the heart of biblical teaching.

Luther offered commentary on the Apostles Creed in his catechisms and also in his treatise of 1538 on the Apostles and Athanasian Creeds and the Te Deum Laudamus, apparently assuming the Nicene Creed, which is printed at the end of the treatise, as the basis for the others.8 Those who composed catechisms or catechetical sermons followed in his path, with often extensive proclamation of the creedal faith.9 Two Wittenberg disciples composed devotional treatises on the Creed or parts of it.10 Two of their fellow students issued series of sermons specifically on the Creed.11 Amidst the sacramental and Christological controversies of the 1570s, Nikolaus Selnecker found the texts of all three ecumenical creeds as a suitable basis for a cultivation of careful consideration of the points under dispute. This effort grew out of his instruction of young people in Luther’s catechism, he told his readers.12 A decade later Johann Freder, rector of the University of Rostock and a student of David Chytraeus, used Chytraeus’s lectures to defend the Christology of the Formula of Concord in the form of an exposition of the second article of the Apostles Creed.13 The ancient creeds were thus deeply embedded in the thinking of Luther, Melanchthon, and all who taught and confessed the ancient, biblical Christian faith in their train.

The three creeds reflect very different historical developments that coincide with their respective purposes. The Apostles Creed developed as a baptismal creed for teaching the faith to catechumens and for liturgical use in the baptismal rite. The Nicene Creed represents a conciliar creed (though based on a baptismal creed and subsequently used as one). It was formulated in order to define the faith over and against the Arian heresy. The Athanasian Creed’s history is shrouded in more mystery but appears to have served primarily as a summary of the faith for teaching purposes.

The Apostles Creed

To this day the Apostles Creed remains the baptismal and catechetical creed used in most Lutheran congregations, in large part due to the continued use and importance of Luther’s Small Catechism.14 It is thus one of the first pieces of Christian literature that a child or newly converted adult learns. Apart from the Lord’s Prayer, there is perhaps no set of words that the church uses more frequently. For most Lutheran churches it is also used on a regular basis in non-communion services and in catechetical services. As such, it provides perhaps one of the most important summaries of the faith for many Christians.

The Apostles Creed is at one and the same time the church’s oldest creed and newest creed.15 What we today refer to as the Apostles Creed was formulated over a period of five centuries (between the third and eighth centuries). We can point to a definitive and relatively fixed text only from the ninth century to the present. Its history can be divided roughly into two periods. The first involves the formulation of early forms of the Apostles Creed that are represented by the baptismal creed of the Roman church (referred to as the Old Roman Creed) and its variants that appear from the third to the eighth centuries. The second period of its history extends from the ninth century forward, a time when scholars can speak of a definitive and fixed text of this Creed (scholars usually refer to this as the textus receptus, the “received text”) that came to be used widely within the Western church.

The Old Roman Creed

The Apostles Creed can trace its genesis back to the era of the New Testament. Already there we see the impulse for Christians to confess their faith. Simple and concise confessions of Jesus can be found on the pages of the New Testament. They often took the form of what scholars call Christological acclamations. The most common of these are easily recognizable: “Jesus is Lord,” “Jesus is the Christ,” and “Jesus is the Son of God.”16 Some think that they took the form of personal confessions of the faith by which one announced his or her allegiance to Christ. As acclamations they also offered him praise and adoration.

Alongside these personal confessions of faith and Christological acclamations, slightly longer confessional formulaic statements—sometimes called “Christological sequences” or Christological “catch-phrases”—arose at the beginning of the second century. These were summaries of Christ’s life and often were formulated to address errors regarding the identity and story of Jesus. One such example is provided by Ignatius of Antioch: “For our God Jesus Christ was conceived by Mary according to God’s plan, of the seed of David and of the Holy Spirit; who was born and was baptized that by his passion He might cleanse water.”17 In general, these recounted key moments in the life of Jesus.18 In some cases they were composed to address Docetist19 errors that brought into question the reality of Jesus’ human existence. This appears to have been the case with Ignatius’ formula. Already at the end of the firs...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I
• 1
• 2
• Part II
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• Part III
• 7
• 8
• 9
• 10
• 11
• 12
• 13
• 14
• 15
• Postscript
• Notes
• Index of Scriptural Citations
• Index of Names and Subjects