Thanks to an unfortunate decision by the largest Lutheran church body in America I have been fielding "what do Lutherans believe" questions left and right.

While some are blushing and apologizing for being Lutheran, I've never been more excited! I am resisting the urge to dive into a systematic theology here, and will instead focus on what Lutherans believe on the Word of God.

For decades some who call themselves Lutherans have been fighting a "God wrote every word of Scripture and didn't make any mistakes" view by saying "We believe what Luther believed."

Of course, what they believe that Luther believed is what they want to believe now. If that confused you, welcome to the club. It's called bishop-speak, and it's been happening for a long time.

Past brushes with bishops led me to brush up on my facts, so I will be spending the next several weeks blogging on what Lutherans said about God's Word way back at the Reformation. That seems to be a fair study.

My source is the Book of Concord, a collection of Lutheran documents produced to clarify the Lutheran position at a time when the German nobility was deciding whether or not to fight Rome- with their military. Thus the Book of Concord could be said to be a book of "what is so essential to Lutherans that we will die to protect it." If you are a Roman Catholic reading this, please be patient with those authors for any harsh comments- there were plenty. Their heads were on the line, after all, and death sentences make one jumpy.

First entry? The preface updated by Martin Chemnitz and James Andreae in 1578-1580: 

In these last times of this transitory world almighty God in His immeasurable love, grace, and mercy toward mankind has permitted the pure, unalloyed and unadulterated light of His holy Gospel and of the Word that alone brings salvation to appear to our beloved fatherland, the German nation, and to light its way out of papistic superstition and darkness. Thereupon a short confession was compiled out of the divine, prophetic and apostolic Scriptures. It was submitted in the German and Latin languages by our pious and Christian predecessors to the then Emperor Charles V, of most praiseworthy memory, at the Diet of Augsburg in the year 1530, presented in the presence of all the estates of the empire, and published and proclaimed in all of Christendom throughout the wide world.

Let God's Word remain true in your life.

Go serve your King,
PW