PRESENTATION OF THE AUGSBURG CONFESSION
1530
The Augsburg Confession is the primary confession of faith of the Lutheran Church and one of the most important documents of the Protestant Reformation. The Augsburg Confession was written in both German and Latin and was presented by a number of German rulers and free-cities at the Diet of Augsburg on 25 June 1530. It is the fourth document contained in the Lutheran Book of Concord.
Philipp Melanchthon, Martin Luther and Justus Jonas had already drafted a statement of their theological views in the Articles of Schwabach in 1529, when on 21 January 1530, Emperor Charles V invited the Imperial Diet to meet in Augsburg on 8 April for the purpose of discussing and deciding various important questions. The Elector John of Saxony directed Martin Luther, Justus Jonas, Johannes Bugenhagen and Philipp Melanchthon to meet in Torgau, and present a summary of the Lutheran faith to be laid before the Holy Roman Emperor at the diet.
This summary has received the name of the "Torgau Articles". On 23 June, the final form of the text was adopted in the presence of the Elector John of Saxony and others.
The Augsburg Confession consists of 28 articles presented by Lutheran princes and representatives of "free cities" at the Diet of Augsburg that set forward what the Lutherans believed, taught and confessed in positive (theses) and negative (antitheses) statements. The theses are 21 Chief Articles of Faith describing the normative principles of Christian faith held by the Lutherans; the antitheses are seven statements describing what they viewed as abuses of the Christian faith present in the Roman Catholic church.
Needless to say, Charles V rejected the Confession. As a result, the Lutheran princes at the diet agreed to a military alliance in the event of action by Charles V known as the Schmalkaldic League. By 1535, the League admitted any city or state to the alliance that gave official assent to the Augsburg Confession and the Apology. Significantly, the Confession was translated into English in 1536, and King Henry VIII was given opportunity to sign the confession and join the league, but theological and political disputes would prevent the English church from joining.
The political tensions between the Schmalkaldic League and the forces of Charles V and the Vatican eventually led to the Schmalkaldic War in 1546–1547, which ended the 1532 Nuremberg Religious Peace and was won convincingly by Charles V. The war did not resolve the religious and political situation. Eight years later, the Lutheran princes and Charles V agreed to the Peace of Augsburg, which granted Lutheranism legal status within the Holy Roman Empire.
Theological disputes within the expanding sphere of Lutheranism to other territories in the latter half of the 16th century led to the compilation of a definitive set of Lutheran Confessions in the Book of Concord in 1580. The Book of Concord includes the Augsburg Confession and the Apology of the Augsburg Confession as the foundational confessions of the Lutheran faith.
The English translation of the Augsburg Confession and German Lutheran theologians would influence the composition of the first of the Anglican articles of faith started in the latter 1530s and culminating with the Thirty-Nine Articles in 1563.
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