The Augsburg Confession will celebrate its 500th anniversary in 2030. For the Lutheran Church, this is an occasion to begin preparations now. Apparently, a strategy is needed to reaffirm its legitimacy after nearly five more years of perceived lack of credibility.
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Anniversary Simulation
The sooner the better – that was perhaps the motto of the German National Committee of the Lutheran World Federation (DNK/LWB) at its meeting on December 2, 2025, chaired by Bishop Christian Kopp of Bavaria. The committee intends to begin preparations for the upcoming anniversary of the Augsburg Confession (Confessio Augustana), which falls in 2030. This year, on June 25, the 500th anniversary of this historically significant and groundbreaking event will be commemorated. A delegation from the still very young Reformation delivered the confession of faith of the Lutheran community to the then 30-year-old Emperor Charles V through the mediator, Elector John of Saxony.
The Augsburg Confession of 1530 simultaneously represented the official separation from the Roman Catholic Church and was presented to the Emperor and the Imperial Diet for their consideration. The aim was the official recognition of the Lutheran faith by Emperor Charles V. The principal author of the confession, presented in both German and Latin, was Philipp Melanchthon. The Augsburg Confession also served as the common foundation and starting point for the worldwide development of the Lutheran Church and was thus historically decisive.
The German National Committee of the Lutheran World Federation (DNK/LWB) is the German representative of the globally active Lutheran World Federation, founded in 1947 in Lund, Sweden. Its motivation is the pursuit of ecumenism. The ecumenical organization considers its own denomination as its foundation and seeks to acknowledge this accordingly. The planned General Assembly of the Federation in 2030 is scheduled to take place in Augsburg. (Source).
Everything was founded on the Augsburg Confession.
In other words, the legitimacy of the Lutheran Church, and essentially of all other Protestant churches, is founded on the Augsburg Confession. This is a fact that is (demonstratively) acknowledged, but which has long since been abandoned in either practicing or living the principles of the confession, especially its theology. It is a shadow to which a fictitious substance is ascribed through special treatment.
It was the Lutheran World Federation that, in agreement with the Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, officially recognized the “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification” by signature on October 31, 1999. To put it mildly, this is an extremely vague, flexible, and open-to-interpretation confession of how human beings are justified. This was followed, almost as a ceremony to bury Protestantism, by the joint(!) celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation by the Lutheran and Roman Catholic Churches on October 31, 2017.
This was accompanied by the further joint declaration “From Conflict to Communion,” a grovel of the once Lutheran Church in a most humble and repentant return to the Mother Church of Rome. (Info).
Obvious contradiction
This is a complete contradiction of Article 4 of the Augsburg Confession, “On Justification”:
“Furthermore, it is taught that we cannot obtain forgiveness of sins and righteousness before God through our merit, works, or acts of atonement, but that we receive forgiveness of sins and are justified before God by grace for Christ’s sake through faith, if we believe that Christ suffered for us, and that for his sake our sins are forgiven and we are given righteousness and eternal life. For God intends to consider and impute this faith as righteousness before him, as St. Paul says in Romans 3 and 4.“
Even artfully sawn off
Justification by the undeserved grace of Jesus Christ is THE central tenet of faith around which the entire Gospel revolves. If this is thrown onto the “theological dung heap” by allowing, in a reformulation, the simplistic interpretation of “works righteousness” so that the Church of Rome can also be “happy,” then one’s own very foundation is literally undermined. Ultimately, it is the primacy of Rome that determines what must be believed. This is then called “truth of faith.”
The spectacle surrounding the anniversary is merely a shadow event, allowing the easily recognizable, by now completely meaningless and therefore superfluous Lutheran Church and Co. to simulate their justification for existence with theatrical expressions.
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
Matthew 7:15
Bible verses from King James Version (1611)
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