Eight teachingsLutherans hold differently

Start with what is true in it. Most of the Baptisms we read about in Acts are of adults hearing the Gospel for the first time. That is the situation a missionary meets today, and Lutherans baptize such converts on their confession of faith too.

But Acts also records whole households baptized: Cornelius (Acts 10), Lydia (16:15), the Philippian jailer (16:33), Crispus (18:8) and Stephanas (1 Cor. 1:16). A household in the ancient world was an extended family. Jesus commanded his church to baptize “all nations,” and children are part of the nations.

Scholars have fought over the history for decades. Joachim Jeremias argued that the early church baptized infants, and Kurt Aland argued that it did not. Scaer points out that Aland himself warned that abolishing infant Baptism could have terrible consequences, and defended the practice from original sin (Baptism, Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics XI, ch. 8). The evidence can be read more than one way, so the Baptist case rests in the end on a theological claim: babies cannot believe.

Jesus does not talk that way. He speaks of “little ones who believe in me” (Matt. 18:6) and takes praise from the mouths of infants (Matt. 21:16). A definition of faith that shuts them out is narrower than his.

Lutheran teachers describe infant faith as real faith that lays hold of Christ, though it is not reflective faith (Pieper, Christian Dogmatics, vol. 2, “The Faith of Infants”). Gerhard held that infants truly believe and that we need not explain how, and Quenstedt called it the internal faith of the Spirit, not the active faith of adults (Schmid, Doctrinal Theology, “Of the Sacraments”). Chemnitz adds that the ancients appealed to apostolic custom but did not rest on it. They showed from Scripture that Christ wants infants brought to him (Luke 18:15-16), that infants are born in sin, and that God applies his grace through appointed means (Examination of the Council of Trent, Part II, Second Topic, Section X).

Lutherans agree that nothing saves apart from faith. The Large Catechism says Baptism is of no use without it (LC IV 34). The disagreement is about what faith holds on to.

Peter writes that “baptism now saves you” (1 Pet. 3:21, NASB 1995). Jesus puts the two together: “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved” (Mark 16:16). Notice that the verse ends with a warning about unbelief. It does not say the unbaptized are lost.

Here is the picture. Faith does not make a Baptism valid, because the promise stands on God’s word. Faith is the hand that takes what is given. Scaer notes that for Luther faith receives Baptism’s gifts without being part of the definition of Baptism. When the Reformed and Baptists put faith inside the definition, the meaning of the rite changes (CLD XI, ch. 4). Pieper adds two points. Baptism is a work God does to us, and not one we offer him (Ap XXIV 18). It also differs from the spoken Gospel by being a visible Word, a promise given to one named person (Christian Dogmatics, vol. 3, “Baptism a True Means of Grace”).

He did. And Peter baptized him anyway: “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” (Acts 10:47).

Two things follow. The Spirit fell as Peter was preaching (10:44), so Cornelius’s faith came by the Word, just as Lutherans teach. And the command to baptize followed at once. Peter did not treat the Spirit’s coming as a reason to skip the water.

Lutherans do not say an unbaptized believer is lost. They say no believer should despise what Christ gave. Gerhard and Hollaz call Baptism necessary by Christ’s command and as the ordinary means, and they deny that the necessity is absolute (Schmid, “Of the Sacraments”). Scaer reads the signs in Acts as evidence for the church that these believers stood within it, and he points to 1 Corinthians 6:11 as the place where Baptism gives certainty to the believer (CLD XI, ch. 7).

Lutherans grant the fact and deny the conclusion. A gift can be thrown away. Simon the magician was baptized and was still outside the faith (Acts 8:13, 21).

The Solid Declaration says baptized persons who sin against conscience and grieve the Spirit must be converted again, though they are not rebaptized (SD II 69). Chemnitz states both sides. The baptized who sin against conscience cast out faith and the Spirit unless they repent. Yet Lutherans are not Novatians, an early sect that refused to restore the fallen, because God receives the fallen again whenever they turn (Examination of the Council of Trent, Part II, Seventh Topic). Gerberding adds that God keeps his side of the covenant even when the person breaks his, and calls him back through the Word (The Way of Salvation, chs. 4, 5 and 20).

That is why Luther sent the baptized back to their Baptism every day (LC IV 74-86). Scaer shows this was his reply to the medieval idea that repentance is a second plank after the ship has sunk (CLD XI, ch. 4).

Evangelicals face the same problem with adult decisions. Many who walked an aisle also fall away.

Presbyterians and most Reformed churches baptize infants on the covenant principle, so Lutherans and Reformed agree on the subject. They differ on the gift.

The Westminster Confession says the grace promised is conferred by the Holy Spirit on those to whom it belongs, in God’s appointed time (WCF 28.6). That ties the benefit to election and not to the water. Cooper observes that this follows from Calvin’s view of election. If saving grace cannot be resisted or lost, Baptism cannot give it to every baptized child, and a gap opens between the sign and the gift. Gerhard sums up the Reformed position from their own writers. Infants of Christians are in the covenant before Baptism, only the elect among them are regenerated, and Baptism is a sign and not a means (On Baptism, §§117 and 118, citing Zwingli, Calvin, Beza and the Montbéliard colloquy). Reformed teachers have since divided into a Zwinglian view, a presumptive-regeneration view and a view close to the Lutheran, and the last is often thought inconsistent with the Calvinist tradition (The Great Divide, ch. 5).

Lutherans answer in four points.

First, Titus 3:5, John 3:5 and 1 Peter 3:21 are addressed to congregations. None is addressed to a list of the elect.

Second, children of believers are by nature children of wrath (Eph. 2:3), so they are not already in the covenant of grace by birth. Peter urges his hearers to be baptized because the promise is to them and their children (Acts 2:39, Gerhard, On Baptism §122).

Third, calling water a means of regeneration does not put a hidden power in the water. Faith is required for the saving use of Baptism, and the work belongs wholly to the Holy Spirit, who acts through water joined to the Word. Infants do not resist him and so receive faith. Adults who obstinately resist are not helped, and Baptism turns to their judgment (Gerhard, On Baptism §120).

Fourth, because Lutherans teach that a baptized person can fall away, they do not need to read those texts as promises that apply only to the secretly chosen.

Lutherans also grant that God can save an unbaptized infant in need. That does not make Baptism any less the ordinary means.

Rome and the Lutherans agree on regeneration and on infants. Two disagreements follow. The first concerns sin after Baptism. Rome teaches that it is dealt with through penance, which Jerome called the second plank after shipwreck. Lutherans teach that the first plank never sinks. The baptized person returns to the promise made to him in the water, and absolution applies that same promise (LC IV 65-86). The second concerns the Latin phrase ex opere operato, “by the work performed.” Rome uses it to say that a sacrament works by the act itself. Gerhard answers Bellarmine that if the phrase is set against faith, Lutherans deny it, because Baptism profits no one without faith. If it only means that Baptism is a real means and not a bare sign, he tells Rome to keep the meaning and mend the wording (Theological Commonplaces, On Baptism, in his reply to Bellarmine).

The Orthodox agree on rebirth and infants. They administer chrismation, an anointing with oil, at the same service as a separate mystery, and Lutherans see the Spirit’s gift in Baptism itself (Acts 2:38). On the mode, Lutherans accept immersion, pouring or sprinkling. The Didache, probably from the first century, allows pouring water three times when there is not enough for immersion (Didache 7).

Both statements are true, and Lutherans confess directly to God every day (Ps. 32:5, 1 John 1:9). The Scripture adds that God has given the Keys to the church, and that his word spoken by a man is his word (Luke 10:16, John 20:23, Matt. 9:8). The priesthood of all believers (1 Pet. 2:9) means every Christian may console a neighbor with the Gospel, and Luther encouraged it (SA III IV). The public Absolution belongs to the called pastor, as public preaching does, so that no one needs to wonder who has authority to speak.

Christ is the only mediator (1 Tim. 2:5), and no Lutheran pastor pretends to be another. The pastor delivers what the mediator won, as an ambassador delivers the king’s message (2 Cor. 5:18-20). The objection applies equally to preaching, since a preacher also stands between Christ and the hearer with words. If Christ’s promise can come through a sermon, it can come through a sentence spoken to one person. The Apology is willing to call Absolution a sacrament in the sense of a rite carrying God’s promise (Ap XIII 4). Scaer notes that private absolution fell into disuse among Lutherans during the age of Rationalism, which explains why many Lutherans today rarely use it (Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace, Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics VIII, ch. 8).

It would, and Lutherans do not require it. The Augsburg Confession keeps private absolution and rejects the demand to list every sin, since no one can (AC XI, XXV). Luther’s Large Catechism says plainly that he will compel no one, and the Small Catechism asks only for the sins that trouble us. Confession is a gift that the burdened may use whenever they need it. The medieval church made it a law, and the Reformation took the law away and kept the Gospel.

Because feelings change, and prayers can be doubted. Many a believer lies awake asking whether he prayed sincerely enough or meant it. Absolution answers that question from outside him. The pastor speaks Christ’s word to him by name, and the forgiveness depends on Christ’s promise and not on his sincerity (Wolfmueller, Has American Christianity Failed?, ch. 5). Lutherans point the troubled sinner to the place where Christ put his assurance, in the word spoken to him. Pieper notes that Absolution is the Gospel told to one person, and he cites Luther, Melanchthon and Bugenhagen, who point to Christ absolving the paralytic and Mary Magdalene (Christian Dogmatics, vol. 3, “The Means of Grace in the Form of Absolution” and SA III VIII 1). Walther calls it a confusion of Law and Gospel when terrified sinners are sent to their own prayers and struggles in place of the Word and Sacraments (The Proper Distinction between Law and Gospel, Thesis IX).

Calvin commended private confession to a pastor and said it was useful for troubled consciences (Institutes III.4.12). Reformed worship often includes an assurance of pardon after the confession of sin. Lutherans differ on how the words are received. They take Absolution as an actual forgiving by Christ’s authority. The Reformed more often take it as a declaration of what God has already done for the elect. Hollaz calls Absolution ministerial and delegated, effective and not merely declarative (Schmid, “Of the Church”).

This is where Lutherans and Rome are closest, and Lutherans retain more of the medieval practice than most Protestants do. The differences are specific. Trent requires the penitent to confess every mortal sin he can remember, to perform satisfactions (acts of penance that make up for sin), and to settle the temporal punishment still owed through purgatory and indulgences. Augsburg XII rejects all three, since forgiveness comes by faith for Christ’s sake and Christ’s satisfaction is complete. Absolution does not wait on the length of the penitent’s list or on his works. It waits on faith alone. Chemnitz also answers Trent’s claim that John 20:23 is not about proclaiming the Gospel. The power of remitting sins that Christ gave consists in the ministry of the Gospel, whether spoken generally or privately (Examination of the Council of Trent, Part II, Seventh Topic).

The Orthodox hold confession before a priest as a mystery, and Lutherans agree on its seriousness. The Greek form of Absolution has traditionally been a prayer, “May God forgive you.” The Lutheran form is indicative, “I forgive you,” following John 20:23. Both traditions hold that the forgiveness comes from God and is delivered through the priestly office.

Lutherans hold the same high view of the Bible and add two cautions. First, private revelation is outside Scripture, and God has not promised it (Heb. 1:1-2). The question “What does this mean to you?” assumes the text has no settled sense. Second, every church has a creed, written or unwritten, so the honest course is to write it down and test it by Scripture. That is what the Book of Concord does. The Bereans were praised for checking what the apostle said against the Scriptures (Acts 17:11), and each Lutheran is invited to do likewise with the Confessions.

No verse says it in those words, and no verse says “Trinity” either. The question is whether Scripture’s own claims support the principle, and four of them do. Paul says Scripture is God-breathed and makes the man of God complete for every good work (2 Tim. 3:16-17). Jesus rebuked leaders who set aside God’s commandment for the sake of their tradition (Mark 7:6-13). The Bereans tested an apostle’s preaching against the Scriptures (Acts 17:11). John and Luke wrote so that their readers might believe and know the certainty of what they had been taught (John 20:31, Luke 1:4). Kurt Marquart’s argument ties these together. The apostles’ authoritative testimony was written down so that every later generation would have an objective source and standard (The Saving Truth, chapter on Holy Scripture). Sola scriptura then says that what the apostles taught is now found in what they wrote.

Clarity does not mean that every verse is easy, and Peter admits that some of Paul is hard to understand (2 Pet. 3:16). It means that what we need for salvation is plainly stated and that ordinary readers can grasp it by ordinary means. Many disagreements concern whether to accept the plain sense. At Marburg, Luther had one answer for the Supper, “This is my body,” and his opponents had a reasoned argument for why it could not mean what it says (Cooper, The Great Divide, ch. 6). A dispute can show that a text is clear and unwelcome as easily as it can show that the text is obscure. Lutherans also do not leave the reader alone. Pastors teach, the creeds summarize, and the Confessions state what the church believes Scripture says (FC Ep, “Rule and Norm”).

Lutherans use these things as witnesses and not as sources. The Formula of Concord calls Scripture the only rule and norm and treats the creeds and Confessions as summaries that testify to what the church believes, with no power to judge Scripture (FC Ep, “Rule and Norm”). The older term is norma normata, a norm that is itself norm-ed. The liturgy is mostly Scripture arranged for worship, which is why Lutherans keep it.

The church recognized the books and did not confer authority on them, just as a person recognizes a voice. Lutherans have a candid history here. The early church doubted a few books for a time, and Luther himself voiced doubts about Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation. Robert Preus reports that Chemnitz and Hunnius kept the distinction between books received by all and books once disputed, while later dogmaticians such as Gerhard and Quenstedt called the disputed books second-rank canonical books whose human authorship was doubted at times and whose divine authority was not (The Inspiration of Scripture). Lutheran churches today receive all twenty-seven. J. A. O. Preus’s essay on the canon in the Lutheran dogmaticians is the place to start for a full account.

On this article Lutherans and the Reformed stand together, and the arguments about Baptism, the Supper and election are fought out on the text of Scripture. The Reformed Westminster Confession lets “good and necessary consequence” bind the conscience (WCF 1.6). Lutherans use deduction too, and they are slower to bind a conscience on what Scripture does not say. That caution appears in the Lutheran treatment of the Supper and of worship.

Rome teaches that Scripture and Tradition together make one deposit of faith, received with equal reverence (Trent, Session 4), and that the magisterium, the church’s teaching office, alone interprets authoritatively (Vatican II, Dei Verbum 10). Rome points to 2 Thessalonians 2:15, where Paul tells the church to hold the traditions it was taught by word or by letter. Lutherans reply in four steps. First, the apostolic message, which was first preached, is now in the written word, and Rome has to show that its later teachings were part of that message. Those teachings are the Immaculate Conception (1854), papal infallibility (1870) and the Assumption (1950). The Fathers do not agree on them, and Jesus rebuked traditions that voided God’s commandment (Mark 7:13). Second, Rome asks who interprets, if everyone does. Rome has to interpret too, when it decides which texts support its claim, and its theologians dispute those readings as Protestants dispute theirs. Third, Chemnitz documents how Trent treats the Vulgate as authentic and reserves authentic interpretation to Rome, so that Rome’s reading counts as God’s word even where it does not fit the text. He also sets the Roman claim of an unbroken unwritten tradition beside the rabbis’ claim of an oral tradition from Moses, and finds the two strikingly alike (Examination of the Council of Trent, Part I). Gerhard’s Confessio Catholica carries the argument further. Fourth, Quenstedt answered the claim that the Church is older than Scripture by saying that the Church may precede the writing but never the Word, and that Scripture is her foundation (Eph. 2:20) (Schmid, “Of the Holy Scriptures”).

The Orthodox treat Scripture as part of Holy Tradition, read inside the life of the church and clarified by the seven councils. Lutherans receive the creeds and the christological councils because they read Scripture rightly (AC I confesses Nicaea). They do not treat later decrees as binding when Scripture does not support them. The Fathers named above also say the church tests its councils against the text.

Jesus does give commands to his disciples, and Lutherans do not tear them out of the Bible. They hear the Sermon on the Mount in two ways. First, it shows what God requires. When Jesus says “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48), the hearer finds he cannot do it, and that drives him to the Savior. Second, it shows the shape of a life that belongs to Christ. That second use guides the believer once he is there, and the Confessions call it the third use of the Law (FC SD VI). Preaching the Sermon only as a manual produces two kinds of hearer, the proud who think they are keeping it and the despairing who know they are not. Walther rejected the Pietist habit of reading the Beatitudes as stages in an order of salvation. “Poor in spirit,” he said, describes a heart not attached to its possessions, and a rich man may have it as easily as a beggar (The Proper Distinction between Law and Gospel, Thesis VII). Scaer’s discussion of the third use gives the fuller treatment (Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace, ch. 4).

Antinomian means “against law,” the view that Christians have no use for God’s commands. The charge is common and the Confessions answer it directly. They teach that the law stays in force for the Christian as a rule of life and as a mirror, and that believers are to do good works as the fruit of faith (FC SD VI, AC VI). What Lutherans refuse is any use of the law as a way to earn or keep standing with God. Paul draws the same line in Galatians 2:16 and then in 5:13-14 calls believers to serve one another in love. The old Adam in the believer still needs the law’s threat and its demand, since he does not obey willingly. The new man in Christ needs no coercion and delights in God’s will (Rom. 7:22, FC SD VI). Both are true of the same Christian at the same moment, and that is why preachers use both words. Hollaz lists a use of the Law for guiding the regenerate beside its other uses, and the dogmaticians answered the Antinomians by holding that the Law continues to guide believers (Schmid, “Of the Word of God”).

Paul wrote to believers when he said he was eager to preach the gospel to them in Rome (Rom. 1:15). He told the Corinthians that they were saved by the gospel “if you hold fast” to it (1 Cor. 15:1-2). The Christian life does not graduate from the gospel. It is lived in it. Gerberding warns that a church which treats the gospel as the doorway and the law as the house will end up with legalism in the pews, and he blames this for the revivalist cycle of exhaustion and recommitment (The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church, chs. 23-28). Cooper makes the matching point about sanctification. New obedience grows from justification and cannot be separated from it (The Great Divide, chs. 7-8).

The words differ, but the pattern is in the text. Jesus proclaimed, “Repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). The risen Christ tells the disciples that repentance and forgiveness of sins are to be preached in his name to all nations (Luke 24:47). At Pentecost Peter’s sermon cut the hearers to the heart, and then he told them to be baptized for the forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:37-38). Paul says the law brings knowledge of sin (Rom. 3:20) and that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes (Rom. 10:4). Contrition and faith are the two parts of repentance in the Apology (Ap XII), and the law and the gospel are the two words that produce them.

Paul faced the same objection in Romans 6:1, and he did not respond by adding conditions to grace. He answered that those who died to sin cannot go on living in it (Rom. 6:2-4). Titus 2:11-12 says the grace of God that brings salvation also trains us to renounce ungodliness. Lutherans believe that a person who truly receives forgiveness is changed by it. Where a hearer treats grace as permission, Lutherans preach the law to him, because he is not repenting and is using the gospel as a cover (FC SD V). The cure for abuse of the gospel is the law preached to the impenitent, and not a gospel diluted for everyone.

The Reformed tradition knows the distinction. Ursinus, who wrote the Heidelberg Catechism, listed differences between Law and Gospel in his commentary, and the Heidelberg Catechism itself starts with the misery that the Law reveals. The disagreement lies in the frame. Reformed theology reads the Bible through a covenant of works and a covenant of grace, and it tends to treat the Law as the believer’s main rule of life. Lutherans keep the promise and command distinction at the center of preaching and pastoral care. The Reformed also number the uses differently, treating the mirror as the first use.

Rome teaches that the Gospel is a “new law,” chiefly the grace of the Spirit that enables obedience (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II q. 106). Trent condemns anyone who says that Christ was given only as a redeemer to trust and not also as a lawgiver to obey (Session 6, canon 21). Lutherans agree that Christ is Lord and command obedience. They deny that this makes the Gospel a law, because the Gospel announces what Christ has done and is received by faith (Rom. 3:21-22, 4:5).

The Orthodox do not use the pair as an interpretive key. They emphasize healing, the struggle against the passions, and the commandments as a way of life. Lutherans agree that sin is a sickness and still insist that it is guilt before a Judge. A conscience under accusation needs a verdict as well as a medicine, and the Gospel supplies it.