Jonathan Mumme is an associate professor of theology at Hillsdale College. Courtesy | Hillsdale College

Associate Professor of Theology Jonathan Mumme visited the Vatican this February as part of a group studying the “Augsburg Confession”, a statement professing Lutheran beliefs and disagreements with the Catholic Church from the 1500s. 

The International Lutheran Council and a group from the Vatican created the Concordia Lutheran-Catholic Augustana Working Group, a 10-member study group of Roman Catholics and Lutherans focused on studying the “Augsburg Confession.” 

“The working group is not an official dialogue commission. The aim is not to produce a document of churchly consensus. However, the publication of the results of the joint research is intended to enrich the ecumenical discussion in an indirect way,” said Matthew Block, communications manager for the International Lutheran Council.

According to Mumme, a Lutheran, the confession was not considered Lutheran when it was made in 1530, as Lutheranism was a derogatory label at that point. Rather, it was a confession presented by Philip Melanchthon to the Imperial Diet of the Holy Roman Empire to give an account of the faith as it existed in certain territories that had been implementing reform of the church. However, it still deeply shaped the Lutheran church of today. 

“Anywhere you find a Lutheran church in the world they will say the “Augsburg Confession” is part of how we understand and present the faith,” Mumme said. “The “Augsburg Confession” very much presents itself as a confession of the one true faith.” 

The confession itself has been studied previously, specifically in 1980 around its 450th anniversary. Mumme said his group has worked on the document for five years and hopes to meet semi-annually up to the 500th anniversary in 2030. 

“The working group is looking at how this foundational Lutheran document attempted to preserve, not disrupt, the unity of the church in a time when denominational divides had not yet been hardened,” said Thomas Winger, professor of theology at Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary and another Lutheran working on the document. 

According to Mumme, the group is hoping to do a very specific and focused study, looking at how the “Augsburg Confession” reflected the beliefs of Christians living at the time. 

“We would call our approach not confessional, but confessorial. Meaning it takes a position within its day, within the recognized parameters of what was believed, taught and lived within Western Christianity at that time,” Mumme said.  

Mumme said the study is meant to reveal both similarities as well as differences in what Catholics and Lutherans confess as the truth. 

“Our hope is to produce some kind of document on the basis of the Augsburg Confession that says, ‘This is what we can say together about salvation or justification. Here are things we need to examine more, because we see some differences, and here are things where we just disagree,’” Mumme said. “Then we are going to attempt to do the same thing in that document in relation to issues of church, ministry, episcopacy and the like.” 

Ecumenical theology is both a difficult and a necessary area of study, one which has an entire institute devoted to it. In that specific academic pursuit, there is an important truth. 

“But underlying that study, is the recognition that the church is one. Somehow, we can say that Christ desires that,” Mumme said. “The differences are things that we can’t just be indefinitely content about.” 

However, according to Mumme differences cannot be resolved easily but take a great deal of time and effort. 

“The 300 years after the Reformation have convinced us that we are not going to overcome these differences by polemically bludgeoning one another in our rightness,” Mumme said. 

Through the group’s approach, there is an attempt to understand other denominations’ theology from the inside with respect and honesty about distinctions, disagreements, and agreements. 

“You can approach it by recognizing these people as followers of Jesus Christ,” Mumme said. “We claim to have the same Lord. We claim to be interested in the same things, and yet there are differences and we are not one in the way we want to be one.”