The churches which designate themselves as Lutheran are more correctly called churches of the Augsburg Confession. For to be Lutheran does not mean to accept as authoritative or binding the teachings much less the casual and informal utterances of Martin Luther. It means, rather, to accept as binding and authoritative what Luther himself acknowledged, namely, the Word of God as received in the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures and that affirmation of the Word of God confessed in the declaration of faith made before the emperor and estates of the Holy Roman empire of the German nation at Augsburg on June 25, 1530, by seven electors and princes and by the city councils of the free imperial cities of Nürnberg and Reutlingen. The authors of the Augsburg Confession and of the related Symbolical Books of the Lutheran Church regarded themselves as the heirs of the Catholic Church of every century. And that fact governs the way in which those churches that bear the reformers name look to the Reformation that likewise bears his name. At Augsburg, the princes and cities that had experienced that Reformation declared, “In doctrine and ceremonies nothing has been received on our part against Scripture or the Catholic Church. For it is manifest that we have taken most diligent care lest some new and impious dogmas creep into our Churches.”
A. C. PIEPKORN, PROFILES IN BELIEF, VOL. II, FORUM LETTER VOL. 30, NO. 2, 1
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