In 1536, nearly twenty years after Luther posted the 95 Theses on the church door at Wittenberg, Pope Paul III announced a plan to call a general council to deal with the issues raised by Luther and other Reformers.
Despite being excommunicated by the Catholic church a decade earlier, Luther still hoped that a general council that would evaluate his teaching fairly. During the mid-1530s, Martin Luther – then in his fifties – suffered a string of illnesses, including kidney stones, problems breathing, and perhaps some minor heart attacks. He believed he was dying. Because he thought he might die before the council could meet, he published a confession of faith, known as the Schmalkald Articles (1538).
He wrote in the preface: “I have decided to publish these articles so that, if I should die before a council meets (which I fully expect, for those knaves who shun the light and flee from the day take such wretched pains to postpone and prevent the council), those who live after me may have my testimony and confession (in addition to the confession which I have previously given) to show where I have stood until now and where, by God’s grace, I will continue to stand.” And Luther ended the articles with: “These are the articles on which I must stand and on which I will stand, God willing, until my death. I do not know how I can change or concede anything in them. If anybody wishes to make some concessions, let him do so at the peril of his own conscience.”
Luther in fact lived nearly a decade, dying in February 1546. But the Schmalkald Articles still stand as something of a final will and testimony, a summary of the aims and the standards of Luther’s reforming efforts. And they reveal some important features of the Reformation.
Luther begins his articles with a summary of “the sublime articles of the divine majesty.” In that first part, he briefly states the catholic consensus about the Trinity, the incarnation, and the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. He says that there is no dispute or contention concerning these articles, so he doesn’t spend time discussing them. But it is important to see that Luther understood his own teaching to operate within the catholic confession of the church. He did not think he was starting a new church. He understood the Reformation as a catholic movement, a movement for reform within the one church of Jesus Christ.
The whole of Luther’s confession evaluates Roman Catholic theology and practice by the standard of the “first and chief article,” which is the article on Christ and faith”: “Here is the First and Chief Article: That Jesus Christ, our God and Lord, ‘was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification’ (Rom. 4); and he alone is ‘the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world’ (John 1); and ‘the LORD has laid upon him the iniquity of us all’ (Isa. 53); furthermore, ‘All have sinned,’ and ‘they are now justified without merit by his grace, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus . . . by his blood’ (Rom. 3). Now because this must be believed and may not be obtained or grasped otherwise with any work, law, or merit, it is clear and certain that faith alone justifies us. In Romans 3, St. Paul says: ‘For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law’; and also, ‘that God alone is righteous and justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.’”
For Luther, the Mass, invocation of saints, monasteries, the Papacy are not merely governmental issues, but are distortions of the gospel. Confession and Penance are problems because they undermine the first article. Everything turns on getting the first article right, on getting Christ and faith right. “On this article rests all that we teach and practice against the pope, the devil, and the world.”