Look at the cornerstone of Our Saviour, and you will find four letters and a date: “U.A.C. 1530.” The letters stand for the Unaltered Augsburg Confession, the statement of faith that the Lutheran princes and cities presented to Emperor Charles V at Augsburg on June 25, 1530. The congregation laid the cornerstone on August 4, 1929, and dedicated the church on September 7, 1930, in the four hundredth year of the Confession. From the start, the building was set on that confession. We take that inscription very seriously. It tells anyone who passes what this congregation believes, and it binds us to believe the same.

When we call ourselves confessional Lutherans, that stone is what we mean.

To confess is to say the same thing

The New Testament word for “confess” (homologeo) means “to say the same thing.” Jesus says, “Everyone who acknowledges Me before men, I also will acknowledge before My Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 10:32). St. Paul writes that “with the mouth one confesses and is saved” (Romans 10:10). A Christian confession says back to God what God has first said to us in His Word, and it says it publicly, before the church and before the world.

The church has always confessed its faith in this way. The Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed are confessions. When false teaching arose, the church answered it by stating clearly what Scripture teaches and rejecting what it does not. The Lutheran Confessions stand in that line.

The Book of Concord

The Lutheran Confessions were gathered into the Book of Concord, published on June 25, 1580, the fiftieth anniversary of the Augsburg Confession. It contains:

• the three ecumenical creeds (the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian)
• the Augsburg Confession (1530) and its Apology, or defense (1531)
• the Smalcald Articles (1537) and the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope (1537)
• Luther’s Small and Large Catechisms (1529)
• the Formula of Concord (1577)

Most Lutherans meet the Book of Concord first through the Small Catechism, which children in our congregation learn before their confirmation. The rest of the book is written at greater length for pastors and teachers, but it confesses the same faith.

Scripture rules; the Confessions agree

Confessional Lutherans do not place the Confessions beside the Bible or above it. Scripture alone is the rule and norm of all teaching. The Formula of Concord says so in its first lines: “the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments” are “the only rule and norm according to which all teachings, together with all teachers, should be evaluated and judged” (FC Ep, Rule and Norm 1). Theologians call Scripture the norma normans, the norm that rules, and the Confessions the norma normata, the norm that is ruled.

The question is how a church holds the Confessions. A church may subscribe to them “insofar as” (quatenus) they agree with Scripture. That form sounds careful, but it commits the church to nothing, since any teacher may decide for himself which parts agree and which do not. A confessional Lutheran subscribes to them “because” (quia) they agree with Scripture. We have tested them against the Word of God and found them faithful, and so we accept them without reservation.

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod requires this subscription of every pastor and every congregation. Its constitution accepts the Scriptures as “the written Word of God and the only rule and norm of faith and of practice,” and it accepts all the confessional writings, including the Unaltered Augsburg Confession, “as a true and unadulterated statement and exposition of the Word of God.” At ordination, every Missouri Synod pastor publicly vows to teach in agreement with them.

Why “unaltered”

The word on our cornerstone matters. In 1540, Philip Melanchthon, the principal author of the Augsburg Confession, published a revised edition. Among other changes, he rewrote Article X on the Lord’s Supper. The original confessed that “the body and blood of Christ are truly present, and are distributed to those who eat the Supper of the Lord,” and it rejected those who taught otherwise. The revision said only that the body and blood of Christ are “truly exhibited” with the bread and wine, and it dropped the rejection. The new wording was loose enough that people who denied Christ’s true presence in the Sacrament could sign it, and some did.

The Formula of Concord settled the matter by pledging the Lutheran churches to “the first, unaltered Augsburg Confession” of 1530. When the builders of Our Saviour carved “U.A.C.” into the stone, they declared that this congregation holds the original confession, including its plain teaching that Christ’s body and blood are present in the Lord’s Supper.

What confessional Lutheranism is not

Confessional Lutheranism is not a separate religion or a Lutheran addition to Christianity. The Augsburg Confession presented itself as the faith of the whole church, and its authors wrote that it contained “nothing that varies from the Scriptures, or from the Church catholic” (AC XXI, Conclusion). The Lutheran reformers did not intend a new church. They intended the church of the apostles, cleansed of errors that had grown up over time.

Confessional Lutheranism also does not claim that only confessional Lutherans are Christians. We confess that the church exists wherever the Gospel is preached and the Sacraments are administered, and that God’s Word does not return empty. Our Confessions speak firmly against false teaching because false teaching harms souls, not because we think ourselves better than other Christians.

What it means on Sunday morning

A confession is not only a document on a shelf. It shapes how a congregation worships, preaches, and lives. At Our Saviour, you will see it in the historic liturgy, which carries God’s gifts to His people in the form the church has received. You will see it in the church year and the historic lectionary, which walk through the life of Christ each year. You will see it at the altar, where we practice closed communion out of love for the Sacrament and for our guests. You will hear it in sermons that preach both the Law that shows us our sin and the Gospel that forgives it.

A summary of our teaching is on our Doctrine page. If you would like to read the Confessions for yourself, begin with the Small Catechism and the Augsburg Confession. Both are short, and the pastor will gladly talk with you about either one.