Lutheranism
Christianity
Overview
Protestant movement founded on the principles of Martin Luther.
Lutheranism arose at the start of the Reformation, after Luther
posted his Ninety-five Theses in Wittenberg. It spread through much of
Germany and into Scandinavia, where it was established by law. It was
brought to the New World by the colonists of New Netherland and New
Sweden and spread through the U.S. Middle Atlantic states in the 18th
century and the Midwest in the 19th century. Its doctrines are contained
in the catechisms of Luther and in the Augsburg Confession. Lutheran
doctrine emphasizes salvation by faith alone and the primacy of the
Bible as the church’s authority. The Lutheran ministry is one of
service—not special status—and is described as the priesthood of all
believers. Lutherans accept two sacraments (baptism and the Eucharist)
and believe in predestination to salvation. The Lutheran World
Federation is based in Geneva. See also Pietism.
Main
the branch of Christianity that traces its interpretation of the
Christian religion to the teachings of Martin Luther and the
16th-century movements that issued from his reforms. Along with
Anglicanism, the Reformed and Presbyterian (Calvinist) churches,
Methodism, and the Baptist churches, Lutheranism is one of the five
major branches of Protestantism. Unlike the Roman Catholic Church,
however, Lutheranism is not a single entity. It is organized in
autonomous regional or national churches, such as the Church of Sweden
or the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Mecklenburg, Ger. Globally, there
are some 140 such Lutheran church bodies; 138 of these are loosely
joined in the Lutheran World Federation, which was established in 1947.
At the beginning of the 21st century, there were more than 65 million
Lutherans worldwide, making Lutheranism the second largest Protestant
denomination, after the Baptist churches.
The term Lutheran, which appeared as early as 1519, was coined by
Luther’s opponents. The self-designation of Luther’s followers was
“evangelical”—that is, centred on the Gospel. After the Diet of Speyer
in 1529, when German rulers sympathetic to Luther’s cause voiced a
protest against the diet’s Catholic majority, which had overturned a
decree of 1526, Luther’s followers came to be known as Protestants.
However, because both evangelical and Protestant proved to be overly
broad designations (before long they also included the Reformed
churches), eventually the name Evangelical Lutheran became standard.
Another name occasionally used is Churches of the Augsburg Confession,
which recalls the Lutheran statement of faith presented to the German
emperor at the Diet of Augsburg in 1530. In the United States several
nomenclatures have been used, all of which, with the exception of the
Evangelical Catholic Church, include the term Lutheran in their titles
(e.g., the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod).
In the 16th century, Lutheranism became formally established in
various principalities by being declared the official religion of the
region by the relevant governmental authority. As early as the 1520s
German principalities and cities adopted Lutheranism, and they were
later followed by Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries. Later,
Lutheran notions found their way to Hungary and Transylvania.
Lutheranism arrived in North America in the middle of the 17th century
in the areas of present-day Delaware and southern Pennsylvania. In the
18th century and increasingly in the 19th, European and North American
Lutherans undertook missions throughout the globe, leading to the
establishment of indigenous Lutheran churches in many countries.
Beginning in the 20th century, ecumenical initiatives affected both
Lutheranism and its relation to other Christian faiths.
Theologically, Lutheranism embraces the standard affirmations of
classic Protestantism—the repudiation of papal and ecclesiastical
authority in favour of the Bible (sola Scriptura), the rejection of five
of the traditional seven sacraments affirmed by the Catholic Church, and
the insistence that human reconciliation with God is effected solely by
divine grace (sola gratia), which is appropriated solely by faith (sola
fide), in contrast to the notion of a convergence of human effort and
divine grace in the process of salvation.
History » German beginnings
In 1517, when Martin Luther probed the church practices surrounding
indulgences (the full or partial grant of the remission of the penalties
of sin) with his Ninety-five Theses (the various propositions that
Luther wished to debate—posted, according to tradition, on the church
doors in Wittenberg), he had no intention of breaking from the Catholic
Church, assuming that his call for theological and ecclesiastical reform
would be heard. Instead, a fierce controversy ensued. Luther and his
followers were subsequently excommunicated, which confronted them with
the alternative of yielding to the ecclesiastical dictum or finding new
ways to live their faith. Since the advocates of reform received the
protection of governmental authorities in many places, new forms of
church life began to emerge in the late 1520s.
Because they were excommunicated and their churches outlawed, Luther,
his followers, and their princely supporters were under threat of
military action by Catholic forces, and in 1546 Emperor Charles V felt
powerful enough to wage war against the major Lutheran territories and
cities. While victorious in the ensuing War of Schmalkald, Charles
overreached himself by adding political goals to his objective of
dismantling Lutheran reforms. At the Diet of Augsburg in 1555, he was
forced to concede formal recognition to the Lutheran churches in the
Holy Roman Empire.
The Peace of Augsburg marked an important turning point in the
history of Lutheranism. After a generation of struggle against Roman
Catholic and imperial authorities, Lutherans gained legal recognition
through the establishment of the principle cuius regio, eius religio,
which meant that the ruler of a principality determined its religion.
From then on, the Lutheran churches in these principalities were free to
develop unhindered by political and military threats.
History » Confessionalization and Orthodoxy
Although their legal existence was assured, the Lutheran churches in
Germany nonetheless found themselves in turmoil. A series of theological
controversies over the authentic understanding of Luther’s thought—some
had already erupted during Luther’s own lifetime—began to divide
Lutheran theologians and churches with increasing intensity. Most of
them pertained to topics on which Luther and his Wittenberg colleague
Philipp Melanchthon had disagreed or on which Luther’s theological views
were not altogether clear. Dominating the Lutheran agenda between 1548
and 1577, the disputes concerned how to resolve matters that were
neither approved nor strictly forbidden by Scripture, whether the
doctrine of faith absolved Christians from following the moral law set
out in the Hebrew Scriptures, and matters connected with justification
and human participation in salvation.
The two factions involved in these debates were the Philippists,
followers of Melanchthon, and the Gnesio-Lutherans (Genuine Lutherans),
led by Matthias Flacius Illyricus, a forceful and uncompromising
theologian who accused the Philippists of “synergism,” the notion that
humans cooperated in their salvation. Flacius and the other Gnesio-Lutherans
also saw in the Philippists’ understanding of the Lord’s Supper the
influence of Calvinism, which stressed the real but spiritual presence
of Christ in the sacrament.
With the aid of theologians Jakob Andreae and Martin Chemnitz,
Lutheran political authorities, notably the elector of Saxony, forced
compromises on the disputed points of theology. Andreae and Chemnitz
prompted a group of Lutheran theologians to draft a document entitled
Formula of Concord in 1576 and 1577. Approved by German Lutheran
political and religious leaders, it was incorporated, together with
several other confessions—the three ancient ecumenical creeds (the
Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed), the
Augsburg Confession, the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Luther’s
tract on papal power, his Schmalkaldic Articles, and his Small and Large
Catechisms—into the Book of Concord in 1580.
The Book of Concord embodied the confessional identity of German
Lutheranism. It reflected a development that was paralleled in other
Christian traditions of the time, each of which jealously guarded its
own identity in opposition to other traditions. The particular
“Lutheran” identity encompassed not only theology but also liturgy,
music, law, and piety. This process of identity formation in the late
16th century is known as confessionalization.
Theological Orthodoxy, which shaped Lutheranism from the late 16th to
the late 17th century, has been much maligned as an overly
intellectualized Christianity that showed little concern for practical
piety. This one-sided perspective (there was much concern for personal
piety in orthodoxy) nonetheless demonstrates the importance of the
practice among 17th-century Lutheran theologians of defining
Christianity in terms of doctrine. Lutheran thinkers utilized categories
from Aristotelian philosophy and logic to articulate Christian theology,
leading to ever-subtler analyses of argument and counterargument. The
tension between reason and revelation, prominent in Luther, was replaced
by the insistence on the harmony of the two, with revelation
representing the ultimate truth. Dogmatic claims were safeguarded
through an emphasis on the divine inspiration of Scripture, a concern
that eventually led Lutheran theologians (even as their Reformed
counterparts) to formulate the notion of the verbally inerrant Bible, a
pivotal point of orthodox theology.
History » Pietism
During the period of orthodox dominance, some Lutheran theologians
argued that Christianity was not so much a system of doctrine as a guide
for practical Christian living. Foremost among them was Johann Arndt
(1555–1621), whose devotional writings were extremely popular in the
17th century. Arndt’s major work, The Four Books of True Christianity
(1605–09), was a guide to the meditative and devotional life. Arndt has
been called the father of Pietism because of his influence on those who
later developed the movement. The Pietist movement was also shaped by
English theologians William Perkins, William Ames, and Richard Baxter.
Pietism had its beginnings in 1675, when the Frankfurt pastor Philipp
Jakob Spener published his book Pious Desires, in which he called for
greater commitment to Christian living and a fundamental reform of
theological education. Stressing the religion of the heart and the piety
of the individual, the movement cultivated “small churches within the
larger church” for prayer, Bible reading, moral scrutiny, and works of
charity. Although Spener gave no thought to leaving the Lutheran Church,
he was deeply aggrieved by what he considered the ignorance of the
clergy and the church’s lack of spiritual vitality.
Spener’s notions were institutionalized in the town of Halle, Ger.,
by August Hermann Francke, who established the Frankesche Stiftungen (“Francke
Foundations”) schools as well as an orphanage, a printing press, and
similar establishments. These Halle Foundations, still in existence
today, put into practice Pietist beliefs regarding sanctified living,
practical education, and concern for the neighbour in need. The Pietists’
emphasis on education in particular influenced the development of the
Enlightenment in Germany.
History » Modernity
In the 18th century, the European Enlightenment, embracing the
insights of the modern scientific revolution, challenged traditional
Christian assumptions concerning miracles, the fulfillment of prophecy,
and divine revelation. Lutheran philosophers and theologians, such as
Christian Wolff (1679–1754) and Johann Salomo Semler (1725–91), defended
the notion of the harmony of reason and revelation. In contrast to
medieval scholasticism, which advocated the use of reason but emphasized
the primacy of revelation, Lutheran theology subordinated revelation and
declared reason to be the key to understanding the will of God. This
sentiment, known as Neology, dominated Lutheranism in the second half of
the 18th century. As a result, liberal and conservative wings began to
form in the 19th century, a division that has continued into the 21st
century. In this way Lutheranism mirrored developments in other
Christian churches, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. Regardless of
denominational differences, the real division increasingly was between
those who embraced the new notions of the Enlightenment—that
Christianity was in effect natural religion—and those who rejected those
notions. For those influenced by the Enlightenment, traditional
theological disputes, such as those between Lutherans and the Reformed
churches, ceased to be fundamentally important.
It was against this background that King Frederick William III of
Prussia in 1817 directed that the Lutheran and Reformed churches in
Prussia use an identical order of worship. The Prussian ruling house had
been Calvinist since the early 17th century; its subjects were Lutheran,
even though the territorial enlargement of Prussia after the Napoleonic
Wars had added a substantial Reformed populace. Frederick William, a
devout individual, was convinced that no substantive theological
differences separated the two churches. Moreover, Prussia had undergone
a comprehensive administrative realignment that greatly centralized the
government, and the king sought the same for the Lutheran and Reformed
churches. While some accepted the king’s dictum, others fiercely opposed
the merger and found themselves suppressed and even persecuted. When the
opponents were finally allowed to emigrate to the United States in the
1840s, they established the conservative Lutheran synods of Missouri and
Buffalo. Continuing opposition eventually led Frederick William IV to
declare in 1852 that the union of Lutherans and Reformed was not
doctrinal but only administrative. Nevertheless, most Prussian regional
churches had by then adopted a uniform church order, taking the name
Churches of the Prussian Union.
In the 19th century Lutheran theology in Germany was bitterly divided
between three schools—a liberal school, represented by Heinrich Eberhard
Gottlob Paulus (1761–1851); a traditional-confessional school,
represented by Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg (1802–69) and Claus Harms
(1778–1855); and a mediating school, which included August Neander
(1789–1850) but was chiefly influenced by Friedrich Daniel Ernst
Schleiermacher (1768–1834). Later in the century Albrecht Ritschl
(1822–89) sought to forge a synthesis between the Christian faith and
modernity, one that did not fit into any particular theological school,
but he was bitterly attacked by both liberals and conservatives, the
supernaturalists and the rationalists.
The surprising vigour of the Lutheran traditionalists, called Old
Lutherans, was related to the religious awakening that swept through
Germany in the middle of the century. Allied with the Old Lutherans were
the New Lutherans, who sought to revive ancient liturgical traditions
and to combine fidelity to the Lutheran confessions with an emphasis on
the importance of the sacraments and the church. Old and New Lutherans
dominated the Lutheran churches and theology from the 1840s to the
1870s.
History » Eastern Europe and Scandinavia
In the 16th century, Lutheran ideas moved into Bohemia, Poland, and
Hungary and Transylvania. Although they were well received by clergy and
laity alike, the lack of support by governmental authorities prevented
the formation of new churches. Eventually the Lutheran congregations in
these lands succumbed to an increasingly dynamic and resurgent
Catholicism.
Traveling merchants and students introduced Lutheran notions to
Scandinavia, which was precariously united under the Danish crown. A
conflict between the Danish king Christian II and the Swedish nobility
in the second decade of the 16th century led to the emergence of Gustav
Eriksson Vasa, who secured Swedish independence and was eventually
elected king of Sweden and Finland. From the outset, Gustav Vasa sought
to diminish the political and financial power of the Catholic Church in
Sweden, and he supported Lutheran preaching and publications. At his
behest, the diet at Västerås in 1527 confiscated the property of the
church, removed the immunity of the clergy from civil courts, and
declared that only the pure Word of God should be preached. Subsequent
legislative measures at first curtailed and then ended Catholicism in
Sweden.
In 1528 Gustav Vasa helped to secure the consecration of three
Swedish bishops of Lutheran commitment, thus ensuring the formal
apostolic succession of the Swedish episcopate. Among them was
Laurentius Petri, who became the first Lutheran archbishop of Uppsala in
1531, and his brother Olaus Petri, who had absorbed Luther’s ideas while
studying in Wittenberg. Both brought deep Protestant convictions—which
Gustav Vasa lacked—to the task of popularizing Lutheranism in Sweden.
Although Olaus Petri was often in conflict with the king, he and his
reformer colleagues eventually carried the day. The Reformation in
Finland was the work of Michael Agricola, another former Wittenberg
student and later bishop of Abo, who translated the New Testament into
Finnish.
By the 17th century Lutheran Sweden had become a significant
political power in Europe. Neutral in the Thirty Years’ War when it
broke out in 1618, King Gustav II Adolf, the “lion of the north,”
entered the war on the side of the struggling German Protestant states
in 1630. Gustav II Adolf’s military victories, especially at Lützen,
where he died on the battlefield, ensured that the Thirty Years’ War
would not bring ruin to Protestantism. The Peace of Westphalia (1648)
gave Catholic, Reformed, and Lutheran Christians equal political and
religious rights in the Empire. Subsequently, the course of Lutheranism
in Scandinavia followed that of Lutheranism in German lands. Pietist
sentiment, meanwhile, made an enormous impact on 19th-century Norway and
Sweden.
History » North America
When Lutheranism was established in small communities in present-day
New York and Delaware in the 17th century, it was heir both to orthodox
Lutheran confessionalism and to Pietism. The first large wave of
Lutheran immigrants arrived in the 1740s, with settlements in New York,
the Carolinas, and Pennsylvania. Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, a German
immigrant pastor, established Lutheran congregations and schools
indefatigably, especially in Pennsylvania. In the 19th century,
Scandinavian Lutherans settled on the prairies of the American Midwest,
establishing synods that retained the forms of the church life of their
native countries.
As immigrants of different national and ethnic backgrounds
encountered American society and each other, conflicts inevitably
developed. Samuel S. Schmucker, professor at the Lutheran seminary at
Gettysburg, advocated adjusting to American ways, by such means as
adopting English hymns and cooperating with the Reformed churches. In
contrast, Charles Porterfield Krauth, a graduate of the seminary at
Gettysburg, emphasized Lutheran distinctiveness. When a new wave of
German immigrants arrived in the middle of the 19th century, they
brought with them the conservative confessional Lutheran orientation
dominant in Germany at the time. Establishing the German Evangelical
Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States in 1847, these
immigrants clung not only to German language and culture but also to a
conservative theology.
History » Global expansion
As did all Protestant churches, Lutheran church bodies in Europe and
North America joined the great 19th-century effort to evangelize the
peoples of Africa and Asia. Missions had been undertaken in the 18th
century but lacked the organization and enthusiasm that characterized
the 19th-century endeavour. The new missionary commitment found
expression in the establishment of numerous missionary societies, such
as those of Berlin (1824), Denmark (1821), and Leipzig (1836). Lutheran
missionaries concentrated on the East Indies, New Guinea, and South West
Africa (now Namibia). Eventually, new Lutheran churches were formed in
all parts of the world. By the middle of the 20th century, many of these
churches showed a vitality and growth that seemed to be missing from the
traditional Lutheran churches of Europe.
As Lutheran evangelization proceeded in Africa and Asia, the Lutheran
churches in Europe in the 19th century also engaged in what they called
“inner mission,” the effort to tend to the physical and spiritual needs
of the poor and downtrodden, especially those who had been marginalized
by the Industrial Revolution. Johann Hinrich Wichern (1808–81) was the
great organizer of this work in Germany. Under his aegis, the inner
mission movement established local branches throughout Germany. Although
the Lutheran churches thus ameliorated some of the excesses of the
Industrial Revolution, they did not adequately address the vast
demographic and social changes it had caused. The common people,
therefore, became increasingly alienated from the church, which they
perceived as being allied with the state and with the socially
conservative establishment.
History » World War I to the present » European Lutheranism
At the beginning of the 20th century, European Lutheranism remained
divided between liberal and conservative wings. It was also marked by
varying degrees of loyalty toward the 16th-century Lutheran confessions.
The experience of World War I, which was widely understood by
theologians as demonstrating the bankruptcy of optimistic theological
liberalism, triggered both a conservative reaction and an interest in
interconfessional cooperation. Most Lutheran theologians followed the
general reorientation of Protestant theology away from liberalism and
toward a synthesis between religion and culture, theology and
philosophy, and faith and science. Known as “dialectic theology” in
Europe and “neoorthodoxy” in North America, this movement emphasized the
“otherness” of God and the pivotal importance of the Word of God. The
key theologian of neoorthodoxy was the Reformed theologian Karl Barth of
Germany and Switzerland. As Barth’s theological premises, which related
all divine revelation to Jesus Christ, became increasingly clear,
however, Lutheran theologians such as Werner Elert and Paul Althaus
developed an analogous conservative Lutheran perspective based on a
traditional understanding of Martin Luther’s thought.
The end of World War I also brought the disestablishment of the
Lutheran churches as state churches in Germany. The constitution of the
Weimar Republic provided for the separation of church and state, though
it granted Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches continued modest
privileges. Unhappiness with the Weimar Republic, along with the
political conservativeness of most Lutheran leaders and Luther’s concept
of the orders of creation (see below Church and state), contributed to
the acceptance of Nazi notions by many Lutherans when Adolf Hitler
became German chancellor in January 1933.
The ensuing crisis in the Lutheran churches in Germany arose as a
result of the efforts of one pro-Nazi church, the German Christians
(Deutsche Christen), to obtain control of the Lutheran regional synods
in Germany. The German Christians propounded a Christianity devoid of
any Jewish influence (they rejected the Old Testament and declared Jesus
to have been Aryan); they also advocated a single, centralized
Protestant church in Germany, an objective that contradicted the
long-standing tradition of autonomous regional synods but was subtly
supported by the Nazi government.
In 1934 Lutheran church leaders and theologians joined Reformed
leaders to form the Pastors’ Emergency League, out of which came the
Barmen Declaration (see Barmen, Synod of). This statement affirmed
traditional Protestant doctrine and led to the formation of the
Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche), which comprised pastors and
congregations loyal to traditional confessional standards. The remainder
of the decade was marked by continued theological and political
confrontation between the confessionally minded camp and the German
Christians. This controversy, known as the German Church Struggle, led a
minority of Lutheran church leaders, such as Martin Niemöller, a
decorated World War I submarine captain, to question the legitimacy of
the Nazi regime; some, including the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
even became active in the anti-Nazi opposition.
By the middle of the 20th century, European Lutheranism continued to
enjoy privileged status in several traditionally Lutheran countries
(Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Germany). Regular church
attendance, however, was declining, and more and more people formally
left the church. The number of church members declined slowly during the
first three decades of the century, dwindled dramatically in Germany
during Nazi rule, and continued to decline through the rest of the
century.
History » World War I to the present » North American Lutheranism
Several important mergers of various American Lutheran churches took
place in the 20th century. The first two occurred in 1917, when three
Norwegian synods formed the Norwegian Lutheran Church of America (NLCA),
and in 1918, when three German-language synods formed the United
Lutheran Church in America (ULCA). In 1930 the Joint Synod of Ohio, the
Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Iowa, and the Buffalo Synod formed the
American Lutheran Church (German). In 1960 the American Lutheran Church
(German) merged with the United Evangelical Lutheran Church (Danish) and
the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Norwegian) to form the American
Lutheran Church (ALC). The Lutheran Free Church (Norwegian), which had
initially dropped out of merger negotiations, joined the ALC in 1963.
Two years after the formation of the ALC, in a parallel development, the
ULCA joined with the Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church (Swedish),
the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Church, and the American Evangelical
Lutheran Church (Danish) to establish the Lutheran Church in America (LCA).
The Missouri and Wisconsin synods chose not to engage in merger
negotiations because of the more liberal stance of the other Lutheran
bodies.
In 1988 the ALC and the LCA—the former prominent in the Midwest, the
latter on the east coast—together with the smaller Association of
Evangelical Lutheran Churches, merged to form the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America (ELCA). This made the ELCA, with more than 5 million
members, the largest Lutheran church body in North America. The
2.5-million-member Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod remained the second
largest Lutheran church. The third major church of North American
Lutheranism was the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, with more than
400,000 baptized members. The ELCA’s constituency is chiefly found in
the Northeast and the upper Midwest; other concentrations of Lutherans
are found in states where Lutherans first settled: Pennsylvania, New
York, Virginia, and the Carolinas. Canadian Lutheranism, about 300,000
strong, is divided into two bodies paralleling the ELCA and the Missouri
Synod in the United States. The larger of the two, the Evangelical
Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC), had about 180,000 members in some 600
congregations by the early 21st century. In 1997 the ELCIC adopted an
“evangelical declaration” as “a guide for its future mission.” Canadian
Lutheranism is strongest in Ontario and the Western provinces.
Teachings
The question “What is Lutheran theology?” is not easily answered.
Martin Luther himself was not a systematic thinker, and his colleague
Philip Melanchthon became for many his authentic interpreter, raising at
once the charge that Melanchthon had distorted Luther’s thought. The
doctrinal controversies in 16th-century Lutheranism are indicative of
the difficulty of defining precisely what it means to be “Lutheran.”
Nonetheless, Luther’s own thought has always been the guiding force in
the delineation of Lutheran theology. The two major Lutheran
confessional statements of the 16th century, the Augsburg Confession of
1530 and the Formula of Concord of 1576, have traditionally been thought
to explicate Luther’s teachings.
Since the introduction of Lutheranism in European countries was not
centrally directed, the emergence of Lutheran theology took place
variously. Thus, not all Lutheran churches formally accepted the Formula
of Concord. Authority in Lutheranism is understood as fidelity to the
confessional documents that constitute authentic exposition of biblical
teaching. Lutheranism has no formal teaching office comparable to that
of the Roman Catholic Church.
Teachings » Scripture and tradition
Foremost among Lutheran teachings is the insistence, shared with all
Protestant traditions, that the Bible is the sole source of religious
authority. Lutherans subscribe to the three ancient ecumenical Christian
creeds together with the 16th-century Lutheran confessional statements.
All Lutheran churches affirm the Augsburg Confession; some, notably
those in Germany and the United States, additionally affirm the
confessional writings found in the Book of Concord. The Formula of
Concord designated the Bible as the “sole and most certain rule” for
judging Christian teachings. This position was in marked contrast to the
Catholic affirmation of both Scripture and tradition. Luther never
accepted the Catholic insistence that church tradition was merely making
explicit what was already found implicitly in Scripture.
The new centrality of the Bible had dramatic consequences. Luther
understood the need for a Bible in the German vernacular, for only if
the Bible was accessible could its teachings be appreciated. Luther’s
example of making available a vernacular Bible was followed by reformers
throughout Europe, such as William Tyndale in England. Catholic
theologians promptly recognized the powerful weapon Luther had created
and undertook to provide vernacular translations of their own. None of
them, however, possessed the literary cogency of Luther’s translation or
of the translation produced early in the 17th century under the
direction of King James I of England.
Teachings » Justification
Following St. Augustine, Western Christian theologians until the
16th century conceived the redemptive act of divine grace as taking
place within the context of willful human collaboration. This
centuries-old consensus of divine and human cooperation was sharply
rejected by Martin Luther, who maintained that the apostle Paul denied
human participation in the process of salvation. Accordingly, the
Augsburg Confession notes, people “are justified freely on account of
Christ through faith when they believe that they are received into grace
and their sins forgiven on account of Christ, who by his death made
satisfaction for our sins”; God “imputes [this faith] as righteousness
in his sight.” This affirmation, on which “the church stands and falls,”
has received a variety of interpretations since the 16th century. In the
19th and 20th centuries, Lutheran theologians sought to express the
teaching in new ways, always insisting that it represented an authentic
interpretation of the apostle Paul. Thus, Paul Tillich interpreted
justification through faith as the condition of being accepted despite
one’s unacceptability.
Teachings » Church, sacraments, and ministry
In a famous definition, the Augsburg Confession speaks of the church
as the “congregation of saints [believers] in which the gospel is purely
taught and the sacraments rightly administered.” Luther regarded the
true church as essentially invisible, which means that its authority is
found not in a formal structure but in fidelity to Scripture. It is in
no way identical to the visible (empirical) church organization.
Although the visible church is prone to be as weak and sinful as any
other human institution, God works in it insofar as it is faithful to
his word. During the periods of orthodoxy and Pietism, the notion of the
invisibility of the church was understood to mean that God alone knows
who among the assembled Christians are true believers. In the 19th
century the relationship of the visible and invisible church received
much attention in Lutheran theology, partly under the influence of a
dynamic Catholicism, with some Lutheran theologians bestowing great
importance on the visible church and the sacraments and ritual. These
tendencies were exemplified in the thought of Wilhelm Löhe. A more
democratic understanding of the church was promulgated in North America
by the Missouri Synod theologian C.F.W. Walther. The most influential
conception of the visible church was the historical-evolutionary
doctrine of the German theologian Albrecht Ritschl, who saw the
institutional church as the actualization of the Kingdom of God
progressively realized in history.
The Lutheran confessions recognize two sacraments, baptism and the
Lord’s Supper. According to Lutheran teaching, the sacraments are acts
instituted by Christ and connected with a divine promise. Faith is
necessary for a salvatory reception of the sacrament. Thus, Lutherans
reject the notion that the sacraments are effective ex opere operato
(operative apart from faith) or that they are only symbolic actions.
The Lutheran affirmation that in the Lord’s Supper Christ is bodily
present “in, with, and under bread and wine” proved to be the great
divisive issue of the 16th century. The Lutheran teaching of the “real”
presence left open the question of whether Christ is present in the
bread and wine because he is present everywhere, ubiquitously, as some
Lutherans contend, or because he promises to be specifically present in
the elements. In either case, Lutherans reject the Roman Catholic
doctrine of transubstantiation, which asserts that the bread and wine
are transformed into the literal body and blood of Christ, as an
inappropriate use of philosophical categories to express biblical truth.
Most Lutheran churches allow participation in the Lord’s Supper to all
baptized Christians who affirm the real presence of Christ in the
elements of the bread and wine. Late 20th-century Lutheran theology,
notably that of Wolfhart Pannenberg, sought to steer away from the
elements of the bread and wine and to emphasize the notion of the Lord’s
Supper as a meal with the resurrected Jesus.
The ministry is understood as preaching and the administration of the
sacraments. Unlike the ministry of the Roman Catholic Church, however,
it does not entail a special status for the minister. Lutherans affirm
the priesthood of all believers, according to which every baptized
Christian may carry out, when properly called, the functions of
ministry. While preaching and administration of the sacraments
ordinarily is done by “rightly called” (ordained) ministers, Lutherans
allow laypersons to carry out these functions when properly authorized.
Lutheran churches have not insisted on uniformity of the liturgy or
even on uniformity of church structure. There have been Lutheran bishops
in Scandinavia ever since the 16th century, whereas in Germany and North
America other designations for such supervisory positions have been
used. The title of bishop is accepted in the ELCA but not in the
Missouri or the Wisconsin synod.
In 1970 both the LCA and the ALC approved the ordination of women, a
practice carried over into the ELCA. The ordination of women is accepted
by all Lutheran churches in Europe and North America except the Missouri
and Wisconsin synods. Women were first ordained in Denmark in 1948. In
Norway the parliament decreed the ordination of women in 1938, an act
fiercely resisted by the overwhelming majority of bishops (the first
woman was not ordained, however, until 1961). Most German Lutheran
churches endorsed the change soon after the Norwegian decree.
Teachings » Church and state
Lutheran theology has understood the relationship between church and
state in terms of God’s two ways of ruling in the world (two “realms” or
“kingdoms”). The distinction is similar to that made by St. Augustine
between the City of God and the City of the World. Luther argued that
God governs the world in two ways: through orders of creation, such as
government and marriage, which stem from God’s desire that all people
everywhere live in peace and harmony, and through his Word and Gospel,
though these apply only to Christians. These two domains of power and
grace are interdependent because the Gospel itself cannot preserve
societal peace and justice, and civil government cannot effect
salvation. Although this conception allowed North American Lutherans to
accept the separation of church and state in the United States and
elsewhere, it also meant that Lutheranism, unlike Calvinism, made little
effort to “Christianize” the social and political order. Historically,
this entailed the autonomy of the secular realm, even a certain
subservience of the religious to the secular. Quite consistently, when
the German peasants staged an uprising in 1524–25, Luther forcefully
argued that social and political demands cannot be justified by the
Gospel.
Lutheran theology stressed obedience to government as a Christian
duty and did not, as did Reformed theology, produce a fully developed
doctrine of resistance against tyrannical governments. Luther advocated
resistance only if the preaching of the Gospel was in jeopardy. This
principle was first put to the test in the middle of the 16th century,
when the Lutheran city of Magdeburg successfully resisted Emperor
Charles V’s reintroduction of Catholicism.
Nazi totalitarianism caught German Lutheranism unprepared to offer a
clear rationale for opposing tyranny. The weakness of Lutheran theology
on this point became evident during the period of Nazi rule. Thus, when
the government decreed racially exclusionary laws, which had
implications for the churches, most Lutheran theologians conceded that
it had the authority to do so under the divine order. The impact of Nazi
Germany and other totalitarian regimes led some Lutheran church leaders,
such as the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Norwegian
bishop Eivind Berggrav, to reconsider the traditional Lutheran view.
Teachings » Ethics
Lutheran ethical teaching has been described as centring on faith
active in love, which means that the believer makes moral choices in
freedom, without preset rules and laws. Lutheranism has thus eschewed
the notion of a specifically Christian ethos but has insisted that the
place of ethical endeavour is the common ordinary life, in which
Christian believers are called upon to serve their neighbours. This
ethical teaching, therefore, emphasized the sacredness of all human
activities and maintained that an ethical life should be pursued apart
from legalistic rules in what Martin Luther called “Christian freedom.”
Worship and organization » Liturgy and music
Although Luther retained the basic structure of the mass and
liturgy, he introduced significant changes in the worship service,
primarily of a theological nature, in writings such as the German Mass
of 1526. The emphasis in the traditional mass on the reiteration of the
sacrifice of Jesus was replaced by an emphasis on thanksgiving. Luther
saw the sacrament of the altar (the Lord’s Supper) not as an autonomous
form of the Gospel but as a proclamation of it. Therefore, he retained
only the recitation of the words of institution (“In the night in which
he was betrayed, Jesus…”) from the prayer of thanksgiving. Because of
the importance placed on the Bible, the sermon occupied the pivotal
place in worship.
In the early 21st century, most Lutheran churches followed
essentially the same order of worship. It consisted of two main parts,
Word (Liturgy of the Word) and the Lord’s Supper, both understood as the
proclamation of the Gospel. The liturgical movement in the 20th century,
which sought to restore the active role of the laity in church services,
affected Lutheranism by deemphasizing the didactic sermon and increasing
the frequency of the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Other liturgical
revisions (in Sweden in 1942, in Germany in 1954, and in North America
in 1941, 1958, and 1978) increased the uniformity of Lutheran worship
beyond national boundaries. Although traditionally only confirmed
members received the Communion elements, in 1970 both the Lutheran
Church in America and the American Lutheran Church endorsed
participation in the Lord’s Supper for baptized younger children, even
for those who have not been confirmed. In the decades following the
reform, a tendency emerged in the ELCA to allow even young children to
receive the bread and wine.
Other rites of the Lutheran churches are baptism, confirmation,
ordination, marriage, and burial. Lutherans practice infant baptism. In
confirmation (which usually occurs between the ages of 10 and 15), the
individual publicly professes the faith received in baptism.
Lutheranism made an important contribution to Protestant hymnody,
which not only conveyed the evangelical teaching but also allowed for
increased popular participation in worship. Many of the well-known
Lutheran hymns come from the 16th and 17th centuries, notably A Mighty
Fortress Is Our God, by Martin Luther, O Sacred Head Now Wounded, by
Paul Gerhardt, and Wake, Awake, for Night Is Flying, by Philipp Nicolai.
American Lutherans have been heir to this heritage, but since the 19th
century they have also embraced the hymnody of Anglo-Saxon
Protestantism. Hymns from the 20th century, such as those by the German
composer Hugo Distler, have been adopted somewhat more sparingly, though
in the early 21st century, as evidenced by the new ELCA hymnal and
worship book, Evangelical Worship, a persistent effort was under way to
make Lutheran hymnody contemporary and multicultural.
Worship and organization » Organization
The polity of the Lutheran churches differs between Scandinavia and
Germany, with North American Lutheranism and Lutheran churches on other
continents reflecting both traditions. The Church of Sweden, which ended
its status as a state church in 2000, has maintained the episcopal
office (and with it episcopal succession), and its local congregations
have considerable freedom to appoint their own pastors. The Danish
Church first rejected then reintroduced the episcopal office. In Norway
the ties between church and state had traditionally been closer than in
the other Scandinavian countries, with the parliament exercising a major
voice in church affairs, but in 2006 the General Synod of the Church of
Norway agreed that church and state should separate in Norway. Since
1869 the Finnish Church has been independent of state control but is
supported by public funds.
Until the end of World War I, the administrative affairs of the
Lutheran churches in Germany were handled by government offices, with
the ruler exercising important power as summepiskopus, or presiding
bishop, a system of church governance that emerged from the Reformation.
With the establishment of the Weimar Republic, the regional Lutheran
churches (Landeskirchen) adopted new constitutions that in some
provinces placed the congregations under a superintendent and a general
synod while in others they were placed under a bishop. These
Landeskirchen consisted of 15 Lutheran and 12 Prussian Union synods
along with one Reformed synod. These churches were united in 1922 in the
German Evangelical Church Federation (Deutscher Evangelischer
Kirchenbund). For Lutherans the concurrent existence of both Lutheran
churches and churches of the Prussian Union in the federation was highly
problematic, since it posed the question of the federation’s theological
viability. Confessional Lutherans insisted on the creation of an
Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (ELKD;
Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands).
After the end of World War II, the Lutheran, Prussian Union, and
Reformed Landeskirchen organized the Evangelical Church in Germany (Evangelische
Kirche in Deutschland, EKD), under the leadership of bishops Theophil
Wurm and Hans Meiser and Pastor Martin Niemöller. The member churches of
the EKD adopted the Declaration of Barmen, with its expression of the
communalities of the Lutheran and Reformed traditions, as a foundational
statement. To safeguard Lutheran confessional concerns, the United
Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany (Vereinigte
Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirche Deutschlands, VELKD) was established in
1948 as the federation of Lutheran regional churches. By the late 20th
and early 21st century, efforts had begun to integrate the VELKD more
fully into the EKD.
Despite the division of Germany into four Allied zones of occupation
at the end of World War II, the EKD encompassed both East and West
Germany. The creation of the East German and West German states in 1949
initially did not mean the end of the EKD. In 1968 pressure from the
East German government forced the East German churches to leave the EKD
and establish their own East German Evangelical federation (United
Evangelical Lutheran Church in the German Democratic Republic).
East German Lutherans, living in a society that was hostile to
Christianity and intermittently persecuted Christians, sought to avoid
confrontations with the state, even when it decreed an all but mandatory
“youth consecration,” which was to replace confirmation. In contrast to
communist Poland, where the Catholic Church did not shy from outright
confrontation with the regime, East German Lutherans were determined to
cooperate with the state whenever possible while at the same time
affirming the need for the church to be the church. This strategy was
expressed in the slogan “church within socialism.” By the late 1970s a
rapprochement with the communist regime had begun to take place.
Nonetheless, membership in the Lutheran churches declined significantly
in the roughly half-century of communist rule in East Germany. When the
German Democratic Republic began to experience a series of human rights
demonstrations in 1988 and 1989, Lutheran pastors and churches were in
the forefront of the demand for greater civil liberties, thus playing an
important role in the eventual disintegration of the East German state.
The unification of Germany in 1990, however, had little impact on church
membership, as the downward trend begun during communist rule continued.
In the early 21st century less than 20 percent of the population of the
former German Democratic Republic belonged to a Christian church.
In the United States the polity of the Lutheran churches is
congregational, but in a complex form in which congregations yield some
authority to synods on regional and national levels. Elected heads are
called presidents in some Lutheran bodies, such as the Lutheran Church–
Missouri Synod and the Wisconsin Synod Lutheran Church, while the
Evangelical Lutheran Church of America uses the term bishop for its 65
synodical leaders. It also has a “presiding bishop,” elected to a
six-year term, who guides churchwide activities and initiatives. An
assembly of all member churches meets every two years and is the
legislative body of the ELCA. Besides these larger Lutheran church
bodies, there are a number of smaller Lutheran churches both in Europe
(e.g., the Evangelical Lutheran [Old Lutheran] Church in Germany) and in
the United States (e.g., the Church of the Lutheran Confession or the
Apostolic Lutheran Church), which have greater congregational autonomy.
A global association of Lutheran churches was first established in
the Lutheran World Conventions, which met at Eisenach in 1923 and in
Copenhagen in 1929. In 1947 it assumed permanent form as the Lutheran
World Federation (LWF), an umbrella organization of the various national
Lutheran churches. The LWF has no authority to speak for worldwide
Lutheranism and mainly serves as a forum for intra-Lutheran discussion
and ecumenical consultation with other churches. The LWF took the lead
in ecumenical conversations with the Roman Catholic Church, which led to
a Joint Declaration on justification, signed by representatives of the
Roman Catholic Church and the LWF in 1999. The document declared that no
substantive theological differences exist between the positions of the
two churches on the topic. However, among Lutheran theologians,
especially in Germany, the “Joint Declaration” evoked intense criticism
for being unfaithful to the Lutheran tradition, even as the Roman curia
also recorded reservations about the document, which nonetheless is
understood as a milestone in Lutheran-Catholic relations.
The most exciting development of the 20th century was the dramatic
expansion of Lutheranism beyond its European (and North American)
homelands. Of the 65 million Lutherans who belonged to the LWF at the
beginning of the 21st century, there were roughly 39 million in Europe,
5 million in North America, and 20 million in Asia and Africa. This new
geographical diversity has created the same challenge for Lutheranism as
it has for other global but originally European churches: that of
maintaining traditional European and North American leadership in
thought and practice as more and more adherents are found in other parts
of the world. In the early 21st century there were about 30 Lutheran
church bodies, with some 15 million members altogether, in Africa and
more than 40 churches, with some 8 million members, in Asia.
Hans J. Hillerbrand
