Happy Augsburg Confession Day

You know you want to celebrate it.

On June 25th in the year of our Lord 1,530, the evangelical princes presented their Confession of Faith to Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Augsburg. Later today you should probably raise a pint to the memory of those brave men and Master Philipp Melanchthon, who wrote the Confession. You may also enjoy reading the following reflections on the Augsburg’s ecumenical potential as a compendium of the apostolic teaching (which I republish free of charge). Prost!

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I’m making the case that apostolic Christianity is a reality so big and beautiful and miraculous that you have to approach it from three interrelated angles. In parts 2 and 3 I’ll tackle apostolic mission and office. In part 1a, I proposed the 1530 Augsburg Confession as a serviceable summary of the apostolic teaching. Here in part 1b, it’s time to dig into the details. (NB: I abbreviate using “CA,” from confessio augustana, to avoid thoughts of air conditioners and antichrist and also in keeping with old habits from the academic years.)

As a heads up, this post is long. Has to be, to do justice to the apostolic teaching and to the different ways it’s been received, handed on, tangled, mangled, or whiffed in different sections of the Great Church. Bear with me, gentle reader. Subsequent posts will be shorter.

1. The Holy Trinity

On the great article of the Holy Trinity — mystery of mysteries, foundation of all sound preaching and teaching — Eastern, Roman, and Evangelical catholics agree with CA 1 as it stands:

In the first place, it is with one accord taught and held, following the decree of the Council of Nicaea, that there is one divine essence which is named God and truly is God. But there are three persons in the same one essence, equally powerful, equally eternal: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. All three are one divine essence, eternal, undivided, unending, of immeasurable power, wisdom and goodness, the creator and preserver of all visible and invisible things. What is understood by the word ‘person’ is not a part nor a quality in another but that which exists by itself, as the fathers once used the word concerning this issue.

A hypostasis, in other words.

Two provisos are necessary, however. First: that Western Christians concede to the Eastern churches the liturgical/canonical invalidity of the filioque (“and the Son”) in the Nicene Creed. The Anglican Church in North America has done this — more or less, with customary Anglican ambiguity — via an asterisk and footnote in the 2019 Prayer Book that renders the filioque optional but not necessary in the eucharistic liturgy. Second: that Eastern theologians allow a place for the trinitarianism of love that stems from Augustine as a venerable theological position (theologoumenon) within the bounds of a generous but faithfully Nicene orthodoxy. This is not too much to ask of love. Besides, read the penetrating meditations of Romanian Orthodox theologian Dumitru Staniloae on “The Holy Trinity: Structure of Supreme Love” and you’ll find that the East isn’t as far from the West as the polemicists have led us to believe. “We characterize the Spirit as the ‘Love’ between the Father and the Son … The Spirit plays the special role of ‘bearer of love’ from the Father to the Son and from the Son to the Father. The Spirit is the hypostatic form of the eternal actualizing and conveying of the Father’s love for the Son and of the Son’s response to this same love.” Augustine couldn’t have put it better himself.

No, the real challenge in this area of doctrine arises not from the old East-West divide, but from the widespread rejection of God’s simplicity and impassibility as well as the sheer theological indifferentism that characterizes so much of American Christianity. (Never forget Bonhoeffer’s prophetic critique of our “Protestantism without Reformation.”) What else can we expect, when plugging in the curate (or vicar, or associate) to preach on Trinity Sunday remains the order of the day? We abandon the field, afraid the people will stone us if we tell them “irrelevant” truth about God, and are shocked to find they do not confess the faith of our fathers. Courage, brothers. Preach the Word. Declare the excellencies of the one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, the Maker and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

2. Original sin

Western Christians who hold fast the old paths are agreed:

Since the fall of Adam all men who are born according to the course of nature are conceived and born in sin. That is: all men are full of evil lust and inclinations from their mothers’ wombs and are unable by nature to have true fear of God and true faith in God. Moreover, this same innate disease and hereditary sin is truly sin and condemns to God’s eternal wrath all who are not in turn born anew through baptism and the Holy Spirit (CA 2).

Compare, for example, Anglican Article ix:

ORIGINAL Sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk), but it is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit, and therefore, in every person born into this world, it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation. And this infection of nature doth remain, yea, in them that are regenerated … And although there is no condemnation for them that believe and are baptized, yet the Apostle doth confess that concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature of sin.

Alas, in the (correlative) doctrines of sin and grace semi-Pelagianism is ensconced in the Eastern church, where John Cassian is “Saint” and Augustine is “Blessed” (an old professor, now an Orthodox bishop, once acknowledged this with a laugh); in Rome, for the most part, which corrected St Paul at the Council of Trent and banished the doctrine of her own doctor gratiae a century later; and in the lion’s share of American evangelicalism, riddled with the revivalism of a spiritual entrepreneur who would have made Pelagius blush (Charles Finney).

Sometimes, the ancient Pelagian snake slithers in using old-fashioned theological forms. More often, it arrives less as a theology than as a Geist, the Zeitgeist, Reiff’s “triumph of the therapeutic” animated by Paul’s powers and principalities. So Michael Hanby: “The therapeutic patois of human resource directors crowds out the older languages of the soul.” On every side autopoiesis, self-creation/realization, infects and harms the body of Christ, its force multiplied by unknown factors through its fusion with the digital gnosticism of the age. Your self has no limits. Take and eat, and your eyes will be opened. Dare to be master over good and evil. Recast moral truth in the image of your own desires, after the likeness of your own will. You must be you, and you can be you. You are free to make yourself free …

As a matter of fact, before the grace of God in Christ conquered us, we were “free” in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were we getting at that time from the things of which we are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that grace has set us free from sin, and we have become slaves of God — in whose service is perfect freedom — the fruit we get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of our rebellion is death, but the free gift of God is righteousness and life in Jesus Christ (Rom 6.20ff).

The witness of Scripture is clear — the classic anti-Pelagian prooftexts, Gen 6.5, Job 14.1-4, Ps 51.5, 130.3, 143.2, Prov 20.9, Eccl. 7.29, Isa 64.6, Jer 17.9, Jn 3.3-8, 3.27, 6.44, 15.5, Rom 3.9-20, 5.12-21, 7.7-25, 8.7f, 1 Cor 2.14, Eph 2.1-3, 4.18f, etc., still say what they said in fifth-century North Africa and sixteenth-century north Europe — and for those interested in such things the second synod of Orange in a.d. 529 must also be reckoned with.

Of course, it is not as if all is well in the churches of the Reformation. Our laissez-faire approach to infant baptism is an indicator of how seriously we take original sin. How un-seriously, that is. And consider our approach to disordered desire, whether in preaching and teaching or in the day-to-day battle of baptismal dying-and-rising with Christ. “Side B” conversations about the status of homoerotic desire are only the tip of the iceberg. Trent declared that what the apostle catachrestically calls “sin” in Rom 7, the catholic church has never understood to be sin properly so-called. Be honest with yourself: is your approach to your own unruly desires as deadly serious as it ought to be, if with the Reformation you confess that what the apostle calls “sin” in Rom 7 is, in fact, sin? It is one thing to oppose — rightly — the well-meant but confused theology of concupiscence found in Wesley Hill and his fellows. It is quite another to look your own old Adam right in the eye, confess it, grieve over it, fight it to the death, abase yourself lower and lower as you press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call, and in the meantime boast only in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. For we are original sinners.

Ah, one more word on this article: Adam. His historical existence is too big a topic for this essay. For now, let this be said: without a real Adam (and Eve) the doctrine of original sin falls apart. Both Roman (Matthew Levering) and Reformed theologians (Henri Blocher) have worked out scenarios that uphold evolutionary theory and the reality of Adam. So I am not pronouncing on that hornet’s nest of a debate; a both-and approach is possible (though see this fascinating essay, where Yale’s David Gelernter comes out of the closet). However the Almighty got him there, Adam stood upright in Eden until he chose to revolt. Alas, revolt he did. And when he revolted, we all died.

3. Jesus Christ, Son of God and Savior

On the person of Jesus Christ, his saving deeds, his atoning death, and the victory of the resurrection (CA 3) all churches that receive the first four ecumenical councils, East and West, are agreed. That’s a good place to start. Any church that rejects the divinity of the Son (homoousios) and the reality of his incarnation has abandoned the apostolic teaching and opted for a different gospel. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1.14). Nonetheless: “many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist” (2 Jn 7). Hence in our churches it is taught that “God the Son became Man, born of the pure virgin Mary, and that the two natures, divine and human, are so inseparably united in one person that there is one Christ” (CA 3). This one Jesus Christ, true God and Man, is the subject of all the doings and sufferings narrated in the Creed. The Lord of glory was crucified (1 Cor 2.8) and the Son of Man descended from heaven (Jn 3.13) because the Person concerned in both cases is the unicus filius dei, the rabbi who told the angry crowd: “Before Abraham was, I am” (Jn 8.58).

In my judgement the historic differences between Lutheran and Reformed should not be church dividing; mutatis mutandis, the same probably holds for ancient Armenian, Egyptian, Syriac, and Assyrian churches that rejected the Chalcedonian Definition but probably did not reject the inseparable union of the two natures in the one person of Christ. Cyril of Alexandria and Leo the Great, Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Severus of Antioch, Calvin and Luther, Chemnitz and Hooker, all confessed the one Lord Jesus Christ. Some better than others, to be sure. But nonetheless, the one Christ.

Many too are the “spirits” — to stick with St John, 1 Jn 4.1ff — who balk at the blood of the Lamb, who ridicule the wrath-bearing sacrifice that Jesus offered for us poor sinners upon the Cross: “a sacrifice not only for original sin but also for all other sins and to propitiate God’s wrath” (CA 3). Such “even deny the Master who bought them,” as St Peter puts it, and bring upon themselves "swift destruction (2 Pet 2.1). Even many evangelicals have succumbed to this. The Roman church has not officially, though good Bishop Barron — a man to be admired in many respects — all but speaks against the word of the Cross (an Abelardian via Gerard). If the Eastern churches stuck to St Philaret’s Longer Catechism, they’d be fine. Best I can tell, the felt need to maintain distinctiveness over against the “juridical” Latin West seems to have buried the strikingly substitutionary atonement-theology found in that little book. For such — and this includes many Anglicans — I commend close readings of Athanasius’ On the Incarnation and Orations against the Arians. True, he who is the eternal Son of God by nature became the Son of Man by grace, that in him the natural sons and daughters of Adam might become by grace the children of God: even — through the precious promises of the gospel — “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1.4). Let no Western Christian, in his zeal for the Cross, downplay or deny the deeply biblical connection between the Incarnation and theosis. But let no Eastern Christian, in his zeal for life in God, downplay or deny the strange glory of his Son’s saving Cross.

There are also those who reject the truth of Christ’s resurrection on the third day. “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Cor 15.14). We all owe a great debt to the prodigious labors of N.T. Wright in the defense of this absolutely essential doctrine of the apostolic gospel. Thanks be to God: “In fact” — as a matter of historical fact — “Christ has been raised from the dead” (1 Cor 15.20). And the resurrection of the Lord is not a one-off event but the beginning of the new creation in the rubble of the old. Kingdom-big as Easter is, we’ll leave things here for now, because there’ll be much to say on this point in part 2 on apostolic mission.

Incarnation, atonement by propitiation, and resurrection triumph. The glorious realities in this part of the teaching make up the heart and soul of the gospel. For this reason they enjoy a priority among the rest; as Luther put it in the Smalkald Articles (II.1): “The first and chief article is this: that Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, was put to death for our trespasses and raised again for our justification.”

4. Justification by faith alone

The apostolic doctrine of free justification is also essential to true preaching of the apostolic gospel. It is non-negotiable, Gal 1.6-9. CA 4:

We cannot obtain forgiveness of sin and righteousness before God by our own merits, works, or satisfactions, but we receive forgiveness of sins and become righteous before God by grace, for Christ’s sake, through faith.

Read Galatians, in one sitting, and let it say what it says precisely when it offends your sensibilities. How adamant the apostle Paul is about the article by which the church stands or falls! “You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law: you have fallen away from grace” (Gal 5.4). “I wish that those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves” (Gal 5.12). And after him, Luther: “If the doctrine of justification is lost, the whole of Christian doctrine is lost.”

These were fighting words then and they remain fighting words now. The East is notoriously weak on this point; given their reverence for councils, their disregard for the dogmatic definition of the apostolic council of Jerusalem is perplexing. St Peter settled it long ago: “God made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. Now therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will” (Acts 15.9ff). As for Rome: were she only to preach the doctrine of the Joint Declaration, she just might experience global evangelical revival. I’ve met one Roman priest who preaches it (and he a Jesuit! deus mirabilis in sanctis). The odds that the next pope reads this substack are admittedly low, but just in case: reverend brother, might you consider ordering priests to preach verse-by-verse through the letter to the Romans during the first year of your pontificate? You could call it “The Year of St Paul” or “The Year of Grace.” Imagine it!

Then there are the “new perspectives on Paul,” long in gestation in the guild and now beginning to show their influence on the churches (esp. through Wright’s influence; as John Stott once had it, Tom is strong on the resurrection but weak on the cross). Stephen Westerholm, John Barclay (an old student of Wright’s), and Jonathan Linebaugh are showing the way forward, harvesting the historical and social/ecclesial insights of the NPP — in sum: the church and her catholicity are ingredient to the saving purpose of God revealed in the gospel; Jews and Greeks may eat at one table — while powerfully defending a recognizably “Lutheran” interpretation of justification by faith alone.

In our time, the real energy in this article is with the “gospel-centered” movement among the Reformed (the late Tim Keller, Don Carson, John Piper, Kevin DeYoung). Not a few Anglicans have jumped on this bandwagon. But where are the Lutherans? Billy Graham called the Lutheran churches of America a “sleeping giant.” Too many Augsburg men confess the doctrine in their sleep but preach the gospel so sotto voce that to sleep is where they put their parishioners. Others collapse the lively tension in Scripture between faith in Christ on the one hand and baptism into Christ on the other, and succumb to sacramental automatic-ism (ex opere operato!). Still others so isolate and exaggerate justification that they fall into the antinomian corruption of the gospel that St Paul, Luther, the Confessions and Bonhoeffer fought against. Grateful as I am for the renewed emphasis on the depth of sin and the power of grace in authors like Gerhard Forde or Paul Zahl and institutions like Mockingbird or 1517, they typically tend and sometimes rush headlong toward this cliff edge. (I have Simeon Zahl’s book on my workbench and plan to comment on it here in due time; my friends tell me he has improved upon his father’s position in significant ways and I hope that is the case.)

Some take umbrage with the doctrine itself, some with its massive ecclesiological implications. They are sides of the same coin. Paul opposed St Peter to his face in Antioch because he stood condemned, having withdrawn from table-fellowship with non-Jewish Christians. Even Barnabas was led astray by his hypocrisy. But their churchmanship was not in step with the truth of the gospel. “True,” Paul confessed, “we — yes I mean you, Rocky, plus James, John and the son of encouragement here who I thought I could count on — why, we’re Jews by birth and not ‘Gentile sinners.’ Yet we of all people know that a child of Adam is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ. Remember the servant-girl by the charcoal fire, and the rooster’s cry? I remember the shouts and stones and the way the dust on my sandals turned to mud when they got spattered with Stephen’s blood. Flesh, Peter, flesh of Adam’s flesh: that’s what we Jews are too! So we too, just like the dirty pagans, have believed in Messiah Jesus in order to be justified by faith in him and not by works of the law. For by works of the law no flesh will be justified: yours and mine, least of all” (Gal 2.11-16).

If your church does not welcome justified sinners to eat and drink with you at the Lord’s Table, is your churchmanship in step with the truth of the gospel? Might be time for your theology of grace to get a check-up with the least of the apostles, that ex-saint of the tribe of Benjamin. After all, it was of him that King David prophesied the primacy among the apostles in the messianic triumph of his Son: “There is Benjamin, the least of them, in the lead” (Ps 68.27).

5. The gift and struggle of holiness

The justified sinner, righteous by faith alone, is a new creature. Born again by water and the Spirit, he is no longer merely “flesh” of Adam’s flesh, but also “spirit” born of the Spirit in union with the Second Adam (Jn 3.3-8). Though he is justified by faith alone, apart from works, the faith that justifies is never alone. The receptive, “passive” gift of faith (donum fidei) — produced by the Spirit through preaching and sacrament where and when God wishes (CA 5) — is accompanied by the active gifts of love for God and neighbor and hope in the promise of the coming Kingdom. Freed by faith from compulsion and dread, performance anxiety and pride, the Christian busies herself with works of love, battles the remnants of original sin that remain after baptism, suffers her share in the holy cross, and resolutely hopes in God alone.

The critical articles in the CA are 6 on the new obedience, 18 on the freedom of the will, 20 on faith and good works, and 21 on the cult (Nein!) and example (Ja!) of the saints.

In general, I think the evangelical churches have a lot to learn here — theologically, yes, but also in terms of the inner life of the heart, detachment, desire, prayer, lived discipleship, virtue, works of love — from Scripture, from our own confessions and teachers, Martin Luther included, and from the saints of the orthodox East and catholic West. (For starters: Part 3 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, on “life in Christ,” or Victorino Osende’s Fruits of Contemplation, or Josef Pieper’s The Four Cardinal Virtues, or the novels of Michael O’Brien.) On the other hand: Christian perfection is to be rejected firmly on the basis of Scripture, for the humbling of proud saints, the strengthening of weary sinners, and above all the glory of Jesus Christ alone. “For there is only one single reconciler and mediator between God and humanity, Jesus Christ (1 Tim 2.5). He is the only Savior, the only high priest, the mercy seat, and intercessor before God” (CA 21).

6. The church and office of the gospel and sacrament

The next two big-ticket items in the CA — the office of the ministry and the doctrine of the church — are too big to take up here. I’ll circle back to ecclesiology (CA 7-8) in part 2 on apostolic mission, and to the pastoral ministry (CA 5, 11-12, 14, 28) in part 3 on apostolic office. For now, let portions of the texts themselves suffice. First, from CA 5, which in the original confession presented at Augsburg was not a separate article but a continuation of CA 4 on justification by faith:

To obtain such faith God instituted the office of the ministry, that is, provided the Gospel and the sacraments. Through these, as through means, he gives the Holy Spirit, who works faith, when and where he pleases, in those who hear the gospel.

And from CA 7, on the church:

It is also taught among us that one holy Christian church will be and remain forever. This is the assembly of all believers among whom the gospel is preached in its purity and the holy sacraments are administered according to the gospel. For it is sufficient for the true unity of the Christian church that the gospel be preached in conformity with a pure understanding of it and that the sacraments be administered in accordance with the divine Word.

7. Baptism

The core contention of CA 9 is brief, but lapidary:

Our churches teach that baptism is necessary for salvation, that the grace of God is offered through baptism, and that children should be baptized, for being offered to God through baptism they are received into his grace.

For teaching the contrary, Anabaptists are summarily rejected. Here it is important to recall art. 2: original sin, being truly sin, condemns all who are not born again through baptism and the Holy Spirit. “Truly, truly, I say to you: unless a person is born again by water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God” (Jn 3.5). This is pure Augustine, against the Pelagians. And there lies the rub.

Three churches uphold this doctrine: the Lutheran, the Anglican, and Rome. Zwingli and subsequent Reformed theologians attenuated it and, while retaining the practice of infant baptism, explained it in novel ways using covenant theology, the biblical analogy between baptism and circumcision, and a rather forced reading of 1 Cor 7.14. The upshot is the theory that the children of believers are already holy prior to baptism, because of their inclusion in the covenant. If that’s so, it’s hard to see why the baptism of children matters much. That implication has been normalized into a pervasive assumption not only among Baptists but also in many Reformed and Presbyterian churches. I’m not sure matters are all that different in the average Anglican parish, or even many Lutheran churches (at least in the South).

While I don’t know how you’d prove it, my sense is that wherever baptism for the forgiveness of original sin has been denied, the doctrine of original sin itself has faired pretty poorly. Lex orandi, lex credendi: the way a church worships has a way of shaping what it believes. In ancient North Africa, the practice of infant baptism proved to be a powerful argument in Augustine’s defense of the doctrine of original sin. The argument was simple: the catholic church baptizes babies; baptism is for the forgiveness of sins; infants have no sins of their own; therefore, the only sin that could be washed away in their baptism is the original sin inherited from Adam. Then, infant baptism helped defeat Pelagius’ denial of original sin. My hunch is that in modern America the reverse has taken place: our complacency in regards to the baptism of small original sinners has aided and abetted a pervasive embrace of Pelagian self-salvation that our national can-do spirit probably made inevitable anyway.

The Eastern church baptizes babies, of course, but I’m not sure why. The ancient Augustinian question resurfaces: granted that we have received from the apostles the practice of baptizing babies, do we baptize them for the forgiveness of sins? I recall passages in fathers like John Chrysostom where other benefits of infant baptism are itemized to explain why babies are baptized despite their innocence: entrance to the Kingdom, eternal life, etc. In St Philaret’s Catechism, the rationale given is the same as the Reformed: the analogy between circumcision in the Old Testament and baptism in the New (q. 293). Perhaps a big-“O” brother or sister can elucidate this for me.

Baptist brothers and sisters, please hear me: I admit there are problems in the catholic practice and even in aspects of the doctrine. The fate of unbaptized children, for example, or the “cheap grace” practice of baptizing grandchildren of believers whose adult kids have left the faith, or folk Lutheran I-was-baptized-so-I’m-good-to-go piety (which CA 13, on the “use” of the sacraments by faith in the promise given through them, makes quick work of). There is also a great deal more in the NT about baptism than CA 9’s sparseness might suggest. That material, much of it exposited powerfully in the Large Catechism, is vital for the life of discipleship that flows from our baptismal union with Christ in his death and resurrection (see Rom 6.1-14).

Despite its flaws, I still think CA 9 gives us a good start. Jesus came to seek and save the little ones too, as Augustine never tired of saying; and not only Augustine. Here’s Irenaeus: “Christ came to save all by means of himself — all, I say, who through him are born again to God (renascuntur in deum): infants, and children, and boys, and youths, and old men” (Against Heresies 2.22.4). Infant baptism is good news, such a powerful sign of grace that — had it not been received from the apostles — we may have had to invent it (said Luther, somewhere).

When I baptize a child, I include a few lines from a 20th-century French Reformed liturgy; they are spoken immediately before the baptism itself:

N., for you Jesus Christ came into the world; for you he died and conquered death. All this was done for you, little one, though you do not know any of this yet. We love because he first loved us. N., I baptize you in the Name …

So simple. So beautiful. So deeply biblical. “Let the children come to Me, and do not hinder them, for to such belong the Kingdom of God” (Mk 10.14). Indeed, the Lord’s next word makes me wonder if the shoe isn’t on the other foot: “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Mk 10.15). The question isn’t: “Is this child competent to be baptized?” The question is: “Is this brilliant woman incompetent enough to trust in Jesus and enter his Kingdom through baptism like a child?”

If this simple teaching is to find broader welcome in the churches, it will be as one part of a bigger Augustinian revival around the doctrines of original sin, the bondage of the fallen will prior to the advent of grace, and the sheer power of that grace in the salvation of lost, sinful, wretched, and dead men, women and yes, children. It has happened before. Let’s pray it happens again.

8. Eucharist

Article 10 on the Lord’s Supper is even briefer:

It is taught among us that the true body and blood of Christ are really present in the Supper of our Lord under the form of bread and wine and are there distributed and received.

The Roman theologians at Augsburg had as little trouble with art. 10 as they did with art. 9. This realism would receive a similarly warm welcome in the East. And in fact, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession cites Cyril of Alexandria, Theophylact, and the divine liturgy of the Eastern church in support of the Lutheran doctrine. Many Anglicans, and by no means only Anglo-Catholics, would likewise embrace the Lutheran confession of the Real Presence (as I explained here, and as I learned as a young confirmand from my mentor Father Ben). For me, 1 Cor 10.16 is the smoking gun: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” The cup itself, the bread itself — after the blessing, but prior to reception — is a participation in the outpoured blood and broken body of the risen Jesus.

Zwingli rejected this outright; most evangelicals have followed his lead.

First Martin Bucer, then John Calvin, and finally Melanchthon himself — years after he wrote CA 10 — attempted to chart a middle way between Luther and Zwingli. The doctrine of a mystical, though not quite “real” presence in the Supper is the doctrine of the sixteenth-century Reformed confessions, including Anglican articles 28 and especially 29. Though some of my Presbyterian brothers might disagree, I detect a Zwinglianizing tendency in the Westminster Standards; in any case, apart from a few followers of John Williamson Nevin, real “Calvinists” on the Supper are few and far between (this is the standard bearer). Anglicans, as usual, are all over the map, but my impression is that Reformation Anglicans — like Cranmer himself — tend toward Zurich, while catholic-leaning Anglicans tend to be Lutherans without knowing it.

As I noted in part 1a, a young Calvin subscribed the original version of the Augsburg Confession (the “invariata”). My hunch is that he was able to do that, not because of the two-facedness imputed to him by pugilistic Lutherans, but because of his sincere desire and intention to maintain a real communion with the flesh and blood of Christ — by the Spirit, through the Word — in the Supper. I repeat: the flesh and blood of Christ. Not merely with the Spirit or the divine nature of the Son, but with the true and life-giving flesh of Jesus Christ. Whether or not he succeeded is an open question. But it really is a legitimate question. It ought not be an object of derision from the Lutheran side.

Zwinglian memorialism is beyond the pale; it destroys the essence of the sacrament. But I do not think the same should be said about the high Reformed doctrine of the later Melanchthon, of Calvin, of the Anglican Articles and Prayer Book, or for that matter of the 1560 Scots Confession. Consider this extract from chp. 21):

And yet, notwithstanding the far distance of place, which is betwix his body now glorified in the heaven, and us now mortal in this earth, yet we most assuredly believe, that the bread which we break is the communion of Christ’s body, and the cup which we bless is the communion of his blood. So that we confess, and undoubtedly believe, that the faithful, in the right use of the Lord’s Table, so do eat the body, and drink the blood of the Lord Jesus, that He remaineth in them and they in Him: yea, that they are so made flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bones, that as the Eternal Godhead hath given to the flesh of Christ Jesus (which of its own condition and nature was mortal and corruptible) life and immortality, so doth Christ Jesus his flesh and blood eaten and drunken by us, give to us the same prerogatives.

That’s the high Reformed doctrine, straight from the intrepid pen of John Knox. Notice the importance of 1 Cor 10.16, and the flesh-and-bone union of the faithful with the Lord Jesus, and the life-giving power of his flesh and blood.

Is that beyond the pale of apostolic teaching?

It depends on whether the “mode” of Christ’s presence — in/with/under the bread and wine into the body-soul of the receiver, or in the heart by the Spirit, with thanksgiving — is itself part of the teaching, or whether participation in the flesh and blood of the Lord is the substance of the doctrine regardless of one’s theory of the mode. Historically, Lutherans adopt the first position, while Reformed and Anglicans — I learned it from Hooker and Taylor — take the second. While I’m hesitant to write off the high Reformed view, I will say this: at least this much, the real participation in the Lord’s flesh and blood in the Supper, is an integral part of the apostolic teaching.

Incorrigible ecumenical tendencies aside, my hunch is that the mode is part of the apostolic teaching. He’s really here, for you and me, through this bread and this cup. Partly because, given enough time, the Calvinist balancing act tends either to inch up into Catholic/Orthodox/Lutheran “real presence” or to disintegrate into Zwinglianism. Partly for the pastoral reason that poor sinners, and above all despair-prone depressive sinners bereft of a sense of God’s presence or favor, need to know where Christ has promised to meet them. Mainly, because of 1 Cor 10.16. The cup is a participation in the blood, the bread a participation in his body. That tells me that when the Lord said: “This is my body, this is my blood” — he meant it. How, I confess I don’t know; that, I believe through the Word. Throw in John 6.51-58, so earthy that Bultmann had to dispose of it by way of form criticism, and the received doctrine of art. 10 seems downright straightforward.

On top of this you have the confirming testimony of the earliest fathers. The heroic Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, martyr of Rome:

The eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, which suffered on behalf of our sins and which the Father raised in his kindness (Smyr. 6.2-7.1).

Justin, bold intellectual evangelist, also martyred in Rome:

Not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Savior, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of his word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh (1 Apology 66).

Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, scourge of the gnostics, who sat at the feet of that Polycarp who had himself sat at the feet of St John:

If the flesh is not saved, the Lord did not redeem us by his blood, the cup of the Eucharist is not communion in his blood, and the bread we break is not communion in his body … If the mixed cup and the handmade bread receive the Word of God and become the Eucharist, that is to say, the body and blood of Christ, which fortify and build up the substance of our flesh, how can these people claim that the flesh is incapable of receiving God’s gift of eternal life, when it is nourished by Christ’s blood and body and is his member? (Against Heresies 5.2).

That sure ain’t Zwingli, but I’m not confident Calvin can confess it either. (In the years I served in the Reformed tradition, first as an Anglican, then in a Reformed church, these testimonia patrum gave me pause.)

Yet despite the sacramental realism of Ignatius, Justin and Irenaeus — who all lived, served, and suffered in the second century — on the whole one gets the impression that for the fathers the bread and wine remain after the mystical blessing:

For just as the bread which comes from the earth, having received the invocation of God, is no longer ordinary bread but Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly, so our bodies, having received the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, because they have the hope of the resurrection (AH 4.18).

As in 1 Cor 10.16 and 11.27, the bread is the body and the cup is the blood of the Lord. Both realities are present in the Eucharist, bound by the Spirit through the promise in a “sacramental union” which — as Justin teaches in the passage above — in some way mirrors the hypostatic union of divine and human natures in the Word made flesh.

In sum: the Lutheran doctrine, which is also the Eastern, hews nearest to the teaching of Scripture. While the Roman church’s doctrine of transubstantiation is not biblical, her faith in the Real Presence is genuinely apostolic. As Luther put it: “I would rather have pure blood with the Pope than drink mere wine with the enthusiasts.” And as for Calvin — let me put it like this: if evangelical, Reformed/Presbyterian, and Anglican churches agreed to reject Zwingli and begin to celebrate the mystical feast as Bucer, Calvin, Knox, Nevin would have it, there is at least once Lutheran in the world who would smile.

9. Political theology: two cities

The Lutheran teaching about the “two kingdoms” (CA 16) is a modulation of the older Augustinian doctrine of the two cities. As the Nazified churches of Germany during the Third Reich painfully attest, it can go terribly wrong if extracted from its biblical and Augustinian roots. The church must never forget that her republic is in heaven, that from it she awaits a Savior (Phil 3.20), and that meanwhile she makes her pilgrim way in Babylon (Jer 29.7, 1 Pet 5.13). Here, we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come (Heb 13.14).

In America we’ve too often confused the place of our exile with the promised land, and forgotten the difference between the two cities. A shot in the arm from CA 16 could do us some good. If the day comes when the soft Christendom of the “positive world” or the hospitable Babylon of the “neutral world” (Aaron Renn) give way to the idolatrous Beast, major reconsiderations will be in order. The Benedict Option will no longer be an option. When the state forgets it is a creature, a servant responsible to the justice of God (Rom 13), and exchanges its real but limited goodness for the lie of totalitarian power (Rev 13), the Christian can no longer bear the sword in its service. Whether or not resistance is justified is another matter; more plausibly Lutheran, I think, is the path of suffering. As far as imitation of the early Christians goes, it is certainly the more apostolic.

10. Eschatology

In the last place, the last things:

It is also taught among us that our Lord Jesus Christ will return on the last day for judgment and will raise up all the dead, to give eternal life and everlasting joy to believers and the elect but to condemn ungodly men and the devil to hell and eternal punishment (CA 17).

Jesus the Messiah will return. The dead will rise; the nations will gather before his throne. The King will render judgment, separating his sheep to his right but putting the goats on his left. To his own sheep he will give eternal life and joy; but the wicked, including the demons, will go away into eternal punishment (Matt 25.31-46).

There follow two clarifications, as important now as then. First, the doctrine of universal salvation — floated by Origen and Nyssa, revived by some Anabaptists — is stoutly condemned. In the twentieth century, Barth and von Balthasar lent an air of respectability to this ancient heresy and it has made deep inroads in every part of the church in the West. I toyed with it myself in my youth. But about 10 years ago, I heard Ben Kwashi (Jos, Nigeria) preach against it at a diocesan synod in the Midwest. He told us that we were all guilty of at least soft universalism, and called us to repent. In fact, the archbishop made an altar call. I was the first to go up. Pretty soon, most of the priests were up front kneeling, confessing, and praying for boldness to preach the gospel of salvation in Christ alone. Have I always lived up to that summons? No. But it was a turning point in my ministry. I share this story because you can probably identify with it. Perhaps you, too, are being summoned to repentance.

There is a fate worse than death. The King is coming back. He will raise and judge the dead. You have never met a mere mortal. One way or another, every person you know will live forever, either in the eternal suffering of death that doesn’t die or the endless bliss of eternal life in the Kingdom of God.

The second clarification in CA 16 touches on thorny debates between pre-, post-, and a-millennial eschatologies. In historical context, it is specific to the threat to political stability posed by revolutionary Anabaptists. For us today, the clarification raises the broader question of the millennium, rapture theology, the Antichrist, and such. My sense is that provided a church affirms the five points of apostolic eschatology — the return of the King, the resurrection of the dead, the final judgment, the terrible fate of eternal death in hell, and the blessed hope of eternal life in the Kingdom of God — we are wise to bear with one another in the peace of Christ, despite our disagreements. And yet …

Have you noticed that both pre- and post-millennial theologies have a way of shielding the believer from suffering? In the first case, by way of a “rapture” that snatches up the faithful before the tribulation begins. In the second, by anticipating the progressive Christianization of society, thus averting the possibility of intense clashes between culture and church of the sort that lead to martyrdom. I find this suspicious. And, I worry over the way both eschatologies misinform our approach to culture/nation and so misshape our discipleship. As it is all too easy for the pre-millennialist to withdraw from the evil world to await her rapture out of it, so for the post-millennialist it is frightfully easy to identify the spirit of the age with the Spirit of God, to embrace the world with open arms, and to fall under the sway of “the spirit of the antichrist” (1 Jn 4.3).

So on this article of faith, the last word goes to the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

675 Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh …

677 The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection. The kingdom will be fulfilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God’s victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven. God’s triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgment after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.

Here is a call for the endurance of the saints: the apostolic teaching about the great apostasy, the rise of Antichrist, the suffering of the church and her triumph through suffering, and at the last — when all hope is lost, or seems to be lost — the return and triumph of the King. “They will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful” (Rev 17.14).

This, I submit, is a faithful summary of the apostolic teaching drawn from the evangelical and catholic Augsburg Confession. In the next post, I’ll point out a few doctrines — each cherished in one tradition but disdained by others — that didn’t make the cut (part 1c). Then in part 1d I’ll make the case that the church on all sides is riven by strife over the “homoousios” of our time: the doctrine of Man. This necessitates a new confession of the apostolic faith. That’ll position us to wrap up part 1, completing with what is new the treasure of apostolic teaching already drawn out of what is old.