Reformation · 1531

Apology of the Augsburg Confession

Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560)

Melanchthon's defense of the Augsburg Confession is the most extensive and rigorous systematic work to emerge from the Lutheran Reformation, written in 1531 after Catholic theologians rejected the Confession at the Diet of Augsburg. It works through each disputed article of the Confession in turn, pressing the biblical and patristic case for justification by faith, the nature of the church, and the proper use of sacraments and tradition. Its treatment of justification alone, which occupies nearly a third of the text, became the theological foundation for Lutheran doctrine in the centuries that followed. No document from the Reformation period engages the Catholic opposition more directly, or with more scholarly precision.

9 hrs total · 23 chapters