Tag Archives: Augsburg Confession

I once wrote that Luther tossed the saints off of the church calendar and thus removed an important spiritual tool from Protestantism. Now I am reminded by the “Here I Walk” blogger(s) that I should have qualified that statement. The document cited in the following is Lutheranism’s primary confessional document, the Augsburg Confession.

Melanchthon gives an account of why Chris­tians should not invoke the saints in prayer (Apol­ogy to the Augs­burg Con­fes­sion, Arti­cle xxi). But he and Luther both allowed for the pos­si­bil­ity that the saints pray for us, and nei­ther of them denied the des­ig­na­tion of some believ­ers as saints in the sense of “extra­or­di­nary wit­nesses to Christ.” In fact, Melanchthon lays out three extremely impor­tant things that saints do for believ­ers that makes “giv­ing honor” to them per­fectly appropriate: Continue reading →