LUTHERANS, that body of Christians whose system of religious doctrine originated with Luther. They are more nearly allied to the Romanists in point of doctrine than are any of the churches of the Reformation. Luther maintained the doctrine of consubstantiation, or the real simultaneous coexistence of the body and blood with the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper. As to the use of ceremonies and forms, there is considerable license permitted among the Lutherans. They accordingly, differ much in the number and nature of their public rites. The general form of government in the Lutheran church is intermediate between the Episcopal and Presbyterian systems. From a misapplication of the doctrine that Christians are accountable to God alone for their religious sentiments, there is a considerable degree of liberty given to their teachers in relation to the symbolic books. These are the three ancient Creeds, the Augsburg Confession, the Articles of Smalcald, the larger and smaller Catechisms of Luther, and the Form of Concord. The fullest edition is that of Hase, by Francke, entitled Libri Symbolici Eccl. Luther., cum Appendice Quinqueparitita, Leipzig, 1847. The Lutheran church prevails in Germany, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Their existence as a distinct body among the adherents of the Reformed cause dates strictly from the publication of the Formula Concordiae in 1580. This act divided the church of Germany into Lutherans and Calvinists, and each of the two branches began from that time forward to have a separate history. Various efforts were made to heal this division, but in vain, until in 1817, when a somewhat mechanical union was effected on the basis of a declaration promulgated by a synod convened by royal authority at Berlin. Since that time the two confessions have been held within the pale of the same church, and not unfrequently been preached by collegiate ministers within the same walls; and in the perplexity of such virtual
disunion, many of the most gifted minds in Germany have addressed themselves to the task of finding some higher exposition of truth which shall include and combine the two phases of Reformed doctrine. This has led to a keen discussion in regard to the nature of the differentiating element in the two systems; and the simple enumeration of the formulas which Lutherans themselves have given, will tend to show the disturbing force which one anomalous doctrine has exercised in breaking up the common faith of the two great Reformers.
One scheme of difference points to the original dispute. As the first quarrel arose in regard to a passage of Scripture (and Lutheranism has developed itself in a long series of diverging exegetical systems), the disturbing force is traced to a fundamental difference in regard to the relation of reason to Scripture. The Reformed church is charged with exalting reason above the mysteries of revelation, which the Lutheran church receives in their simple and naked antagonism to the apprehensive powers of the human intellect. In this view the controversy between the Lutheran and Reformed systems is the same in kind, although not in intensity, as that which is waged between the Reformed party and the Church of Rome.
A second scheme points to a difference in original purpose. The Lutheran Reformation aimed at counteracting a Jewish element in Catholicism, and in this one-sided purpose unconsciously received a Gnosticizing tone; while the Calvinistic scheme, in combating a purely heathen element in the papacy, unconsciously fell, at least in its ethical creed, into a Judaizing cast of thought. Another formula defines the Lutheran church as the church of theologians, giving prominence to an objective theology, and the Calvinists as the church of collective believers, giving undue prominence to a subjective anthropology. In antagonism to this is another scheme, which defines Lutheranism as an anthro-
pology with only a dwarfed theology, and Calvinism as a theology with a very defective doctrine of man. Calvinism severs God from the fallen creature; Lutheranism regards the creature as existing in God. Calvinism views salvation as a work of God, planned and executed utterly apart from man; Lutheranism, in asserting the resistibility of grace, recognises an element of human will in the redemption of each individual. Calvinism sees in the means of grace an efficacy imposed by God, and powerful only through faith; Lutheranism accords to them an innate power appreciable universally to man.
A brisker formula than any of the preceding defines Lutheranism as rooted in the absolute blessedness of intelligence to be developed, and Calvinism as founded on the absolute merit of fact to be appreciated. Another theory detects a fundamental difference in the doctrine of man's relation to God. The Lutheran sees the Creator immanent in the creature; the Calvinist recognises merely a relation of dependence. This leads to a different estimate of the world's history: Lutheran theology mingles in its doctrine of sin the conception of eternal love; the Reformed theology excludes everything but righteous law: Lutheran divines dwell on the traces of God's love in man's history; the Reformed systems dwell peculiarly on the unfolding of God's attributes.
It seems easier to apprehend that the difference lay in the relation of the two parties to tradition: Calvinism was systematized from Scripture alone; Lutheran theology accorded to tradition a regulative power. Calvinism was a return to the primitive sources of revelation; the Lutheran church was only a new phase of Latin Christianity. (Consult Göpel's Eigenthümlichkeit der Luth. u. Reform. Kirche, 1837; Ullmann's Zur Charak. der Ref. Kirche in the Stud. und Krit. for 1843; and Schneckenburger, Vergleichende Darstellung des Luth. und Ref. Lehrbegriffs, 1855.)