The Augsburg Confession
Confessio Augustana · Philipp Melanchthon, 1530
In June 1530, a small group of German princes stood before the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Augsburg and read this document aloud. It took two hours. It was meant as an olive branch — a demonstration that the reformers were not heretics, just Christians asking the church to fix specific problems.
Melanchthon wrote it, drawing heavily on Luther's earlier work, in a deliberately conciliatory tone. The first twenty-one articles state what the reformers actually believe: God, sin, Christ, justification, the church, the sacraments. The final seven address specific practices under dispute — clerical marriage, communion in both kinds, monastic vows.
That single line, near the center of Article IV, is the hinge the entire Reformation turns on. Everything else in Lutheran theology is commentary on what that sentence means and what follows from it.
Where to start
Articles I through IV cover God, original sin, Christ, and justification — the theological core, in about fifteen minutes. The rest can wait.
Read alongside
The library tracks which works answer which. This is the conversation this text belongs to.
The Small Catechism
The same faith, in plainer words — written a year earlier for anyone just starting out, not an emperor.
The Freedom of a Christian
Luther's own earlier statement of what Article IV would later formalize.
Glossary
Justification, defined plainly — the term the whole document turns on.