9. Protestant Teachings Concerning Justification, Taken from the Formula of Concord

The book that is the source of the following statements is called the Formula of Concord; it was written by people who endorsed the Augsburg Confession. Because I will be giving the page numbers from which these statements were taken, I should mention that what I am citing is the Leipzig edition of 1756.

29. The points just presented illustrate the truths stated in §§19 and 21, that Roman Catholics were the source the leading reformers drew on for their own teachings on the trinity of persons in the Divine, original sin, the assigning of Christ’s merit to us, and our being justified by faith alone.

The purpose of these points has been to show the origin of these key Protestant teachings, especially how the separation of faith from good works and the teaching concerning faith alone came about. Protestants arrived at this for the sole purpose of differentiating themselves from Roman Catholics. Yet this disagreement was more a matter of semantics than of real substance.

The quotations given at the beginning of the book [§§9– 15] clearly reveal the foundation on which the faith of the Protestant churches was built and what inspired the development of that faith.