Introduction

We, the congregations of the Orthodox Lutheran Lutheran Confessional Conference, believe in the forgiveness of sins which comes to us in our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true Man, Who by His perfect life kept the Law of God in our place, Who by His perfect suffering and death upon the Cross atoned for the sins of the whole world, and Who by His resurrection from the dead declared the whole world righteous. All who believe this are justified before God entirely apart from any work of their own. By faith they are accounted free from all sin, and have eternal life. This is the Gospel, the good news which sets men free from the power of sin, death, and the devil.

This Apostolic faith has been delivered to us in the Holy Scriptures. By His Holy Spirit Who always is working in and through the Scriptures wherever they are faithfully preached and taught, God has preserved this Gospel against all assaults of the devil, the world and our flesh. Throughout the ages, faithful men have defended this truth against heretics and errorists by publicly confessing the Gospel in the form of written confessions. These confessions direct us back to Christ in His Word and Sacraments, unite us in a single understanding of Christ’s Word, and defend the truth of the Gospel against errors of all kinds which threaten to rob us of Christ and the forgiveness of sins.

We wholeheartedly subscribe to those confessions as they were published together in the The Apostles Creed; The Nicene Creed; The Athanasian Creed; The Unaltered Augsburg Confession; The Defense (Apology) of the Augsburg Confession; The Large and Small Catechisms of Martin Luther; the Smalcald Articles; the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope; and the Formula of Concord. We accept all doctrinal content of these confessions to be the doctrine which the Holy Scriptures themselves teach, and we vow to continue in this confession unto death.

Because the Christian faith is ever under assault by the devil, no confession, however complete can anticipate and answer every error which may arise. Therefore confessional subscription alone cannot account for all the doctrine which a church teaches. It is necessary for the unity of the Church, and faithfulness to the Holy Scriptures to confess the truth concerning those articles of theology which come under controversy in our time, and which may or may not have been sufficiently addressed in the past.

We offer the following articles to address the specific controverted issues of our day, not as new or additional confessions, but that our understanding of Christian doctrine might be known by all, and that our we might express our agreement with one another in a public and open manner.

These articles are by no means exhaustive, and we intend to add to and refine them as necessary.

Doctrinal Articles