The Lutheran Confessions: Pastoral, Practical and Personal — What Do You Think About Them?
The Lutheran Confessions are Pastoral
The constant drum beat throughout them is the goal of comforting and caring for souls. The Lutheran Confessions are not theological speculations or abstractions. The times in which it was written called for pastoral care on a scale that could only be compared to a national emergency. Souls bruised and bullied by legalisms and demands placed on them outside of and beyond the Sacred Scriptures were healed by the healing and life-giving Gospel. Persons who were not hearing the comforting promises of the Holy Gospel, the free and full forgiveness of all salvation through Christ, received the mercy of God as they heard of the Savior who loved them and died and rose for them. The Lutheran Confessions speak to us today because they speak of the most important issues any of us ever face in our life. Who am I? What is life’s meaning? Who do I know God? Am I loved? How can I be sure? What am I do to with my life?
The Lutheran Confessions are Practical
They go right to the heart of the key issues and, even in spite of the length of some articles in them, never wander off on side paths. It is a book on a mission and that is to deliver the Gospel: purely, cleanly, correctly and practically, again, for the care of souls. They are not journal articles indulging in scholarly pursuits, or the pet interests of their authors in the pursuit of credibility and respect in the academic community. The Confessions are practical resources for people’s faith and life, as they live and especially, as they die. Why? Because the golden thread running throughout them is the chief and most important teaching of the Christian faith: justification by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone, the teaching drawn from Scripture, alone: the Gospel.
The Lutheran Confessions are Personal
The Book of Concord was written by people who had deep and long first-hand experience with the various theological ills they are decrying and had first-hand knowledge of just how powerfully comforting and consoling the Gospel is. Therefore, for example, when you read about monasticism in this book, always behind these discussions stands the man who spent well over a decade of his life in this lifestyle, tortured and tormented no end by the lack of Gospel: Martin Luther. The book could almost be said to be a spiritual autobiography of all those who contributed to it. They are not dispassionate scientific essays. They are not mystical and obscure texts. They are personal statements of faith expressed on behalf of the Church, and for the Church, in order to gather more and more into the Church.
Those are three reasons why I am so passionate about the Book of Concord.
Reader, why do you like the Book of Concord? What have you found helpful in it? What do you keep coming back to in it that has been of particular help and meaning to you?
The confessions have deep insight into the true meaning of many, many Bible passages. Too often our modern Bible translations obscure the deep doctrinal content of the Bible. The authors of the BoC knew the Scriptures much more deeply than any currently-living scholar does. Therefore the BoC is my first reference when preparing a sermon after my Greek NT and dictionary.
Why do I like the Book of Concord? It is a commentary on the WHOLE
Bible. When one finishes reading it, he/she has a better
understanding of Christian doctrine.
(Lutheran doctrine IS pure Christian doctrine).
I did have trouble with understanding parts of the Solid Declaration
of the Formula of Concord and I am wondering if you can recommend a
good commentary.
I keep coming back because in the Book of Concord the Church also confesses catechesis and prayer particularly in the Small and Large Catechisms. We confess the necessity of hearing the Word in the 3rd Commandment, and so the Church is called together to sit at the feet of the Lord Who gave us His life. We confess marriage between a man and a woman in 4th and 6th Commandments and so teach marriage. We confess prayer as praying the Word of God in 2nd Commandment and in The Lord’s Prayer. We confess life in the 5th Commandment and so teach the sanctity of life. And so in the Catechisms there is laid out the clear distinction of Law and Promise. And as you have well-written: pastoral, practical and personal. Great insight. Thanks.
I read through it every couple of years (as well as consulting it often on specific questions in between).
I still recall the first time I read through article IV on the Apology (on justification). It floored me, even as one who had always affirmed justification by faith in Jesus Christ. As a practical matter, my conception of justification was a mish-mash of faith and love for God. Article IV distinguishes the two sharply, and the necessity that faith in Christ precede love for God. It is the evangelical faith, pure and uncut.
Commentaries on the FC:
* Contemporary Look at the Formula of Concord, by Preus, Robert; Rosin, Wilbert, editors Item #: 155055WEB / 2001 / Paperback / 320 Pages. ONLY $10
* Getting into the Formula of Concord : a history and digest of the Formula, by Eugene F. A. Klug and Otto F. Stahlke (St. Louis: Concordia, 1977).
Paul, at your Book of Concord site, do you have a list of commentaries on the confessions?
@David C Busby
I second David’s take!
Also, great article, Pastor McCain!
Randy Keyes
@Randy Keyes
That is, his beginning take, not his question.
Randy