Apology of the Augsburg Confession (1531)

What it is about

The reasoned defence of the Augsburg Confession that Melanchthon wrote in 1531, when Catholic theologians had refuted it before the emperor.

Context and history

The Confession of 1530 was the document in which the Lutheran princes set out their faith at the imperial diet; the emperor commissioned a refutation and demanded that they accept it, and Melanchthon answered with this text, seven times longer than the original and article by article. The central part is the fourth, on justification by faith, which is the core of the whole dispute and is set out here more carefully than anywhere else. Melanchthon was Luther's collaborator and his opposite in temperament: systematic, conciliatory, humanist — the man who gave orderly doctrinal shape to what Luther had said with fire. The Apology forms part of the Book of Concord, the Lutheran confessional corpus.

Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.