Augsburg Confession

Definition and Meaning

The Augsburg Confession is the document in which the Lutherans formally set out their teaching during the Reformation. It is also known by its Latin name, the Confessio Augustana. It is regarded as the first official Protestant confession of faith (a public statement of what a church believes). The Lutheran Church regards it as a standard of faith second only to Scripture.

The confession consists of twenty-eight articles. The first twenty-one address doctrines such as God, original sin, Christ, justification, the church, and the sacraments. The remaining seven deal with church practices of the time that the Lutherans believed they had corrected, including the withholding of the cup from the laity at Communion, clerical celibacy, and monastic vows.

Biblical and Historical Background

In 1530 Emperor Charles V convened an Imperial Diet at Augsburg to resolve religious conflict within the empire. The Lutheran princes were required to submit a document explaining their faith. Because Martin Luther was under the imperial ban, he could not attend the diet and remained at nearby Coburg Castle. Luther's colleague Philip Melanchthon therefore took the lead in drafting the document. It was read aloud in German on June 25, 1530, and submitted together with a Latin version.

Melanchthon sought to minimize the differences with the Roman Catholic Church and emphasized continuity with the tradition of the ancient church. Nevertheless, he stated the core convictions clearly. Article 4 confesses that people are justified not by their own merits but by grace, for Christ's sake, through faith, citing Romans 3 and 4 as its basis. Article 7 defines the church as the assembly of saints in which the gospel is purely taught and the sacraments are rightly administered.

The emperor's theologians issued a rebuttal of the document. In response, Melanchthon wrote the Apology of the Augsburg Confession in 1531. In 1540 Melanchthon issued the "Variata" (altered edition), which revised the wording of the article on the Lord's Supper (Article 10) and other passages. John Calvin is also reported to have signed this altered edition. The Lutheran Church, however, generally regards the original 1530 text as its standard. The confession was included in the Book of Concord, the 1580 collection of Lutheran confessional writings. The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 granted legal standing to the territories (lands ruled by princes) that adhered to this confession.

Practice in Korean Churches

Lutheran: The Lutheran Church in Korea accepts this document, together with the other writings of the Book of Concord, as its official confession of faith. It serves as the standard for catechetical instruction and the training of pastors.

Presbyterian and Reformed: Presbyterian denominations hold the Westminster Confession of Faith as their doctrinal standard, and some also use the Heidelberg Catechism. In these denominations the Augsburg Confession is not an official document; it is studied in seminary courses on church history and symbolics (the study of confessions of faith) as the starting point of Protestant confessions. These churches agree with Lutherans on the doctrine of justification, but they differ over how to understand the presence of Christ's body and blood in the Lord's Supper as described in Article 10. This difference is a central issue in the Eucharistic controversy.

Anglican and Methodist: Some of the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles are reported to have been influenced by this document, and the Thirty-Nine Articles in turn influenced the Methodist Articles of Religion. For this reason, indirect traces of it are said to be present in the doctrinal traditions of the Anglican Church of Korea and the Korean Methodist Church.

Korean churches frequently present it alongside the Ninety-five Theses as one of the representative documents for explaining the Reformation.