The Confessing Lutheran blog is a resource for Lutheran apologetics and historic theology from a Lutheran perspective. Its goal is to bring Lutheran doctrine to the Protestant layman in a thorough, yet digestible manner. Blog posts emphasize the authority of scripture, the church fathers, and the Lutheran confessions.
Is there support for denying the traditional view on hell in Anglican orthodoxy?
This post is outside of my usual purview, being about Anglicanism, though I have written about other traditions in the past. I am engaging this topic not because it is weighty to me personally but because prominent Anglican YouTuber Paul Facey denies the traditional view on hell (TVH)1 in favor of annihilationism (AKA conditional immortality).…
Consistent Illiberalism and Private Property: A Reply to Dr. Cooper
Jordan Cooper recently made a post on X about inconsistency in application of adopting ideas contrary to enlightenment liberalism. I don’t intend to reply to the whole post (this would require much more time and effort), but I do want to reply to this section (emphasis mine, for portions to which I will reply): I…
Augustine’s story of two shipwrecked laymen
In the Treatise on the Primacy and Power of the Pope, Melanchthon cites Augustine in paragraph 67 (Triglot edition): For wherever the Church is, there is the authority [command] to administer the Gospel. Therefore it is necessary for the Church to retain the authority to call, elect, and ordain ministers. And this authority is a…
Towards a Theological Taxonomy
Scholars have written various works on denominational taxonomy (Backman 1983, Smith 1990, etc.). While categorization by theology has been attempted by some of these scholars, I found them lacking in terms of preparation for this post. Most academic work on the subject is engaging the topic from a sociological perspective, considering American demographics, church polities…
Three Golden Ages in the Church
I recently finished Bengt Hagglund’s History of Theology. It’s a shoddy work, but it did remind me of something I have read in Chemnitz (and heard from other theologians as well): Nearly all the greatest fathers of the church come from a single age. This is not to exclude the excellence of other men, but…
Introduction to Soteriology: Single Predestination – a Scriptural and Patristic Apology
Note: For all Biblical quotations, the NKJV is used, unless I am citing the Greek Old Testament (LXX), for which the NETS is used. The italics in Biblical quotations are from the translators to note words added for clarity that are not present in the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. A distinct aspect of Calvinist…
1 Corinthians 11:2-16 an interpolation?
This post is a little different than what I typically discuss on this blog and is very niche. I’ve been listening through Mike Winger’s series on Women in Ministry recently in order to understand the evangelical landscape and also to hear what contemporary egalitarian scholarship says about the topic. The second longest video in the…
On Great Books
In 1952 Encyclopaedia Britannica published Great Books of the Western World in 54 volumes. The series is probably the most famous collection of “Great Books.” The series sought to promote liberal education, give readers familiarity with the Western canon, and engage them in “the great conversation” (the history of the development of ideas). With the…
List of Lutheran Orthodox Works in English
Vic. Nicholas Totenhagen and I worked together to compile works from the era of Lutheran orthodoxy (roughly from the time of the reformation up through the early 1700s) available in English (and a handful of modern reprints in Latin and German). This list does not include small translations online such as those on Studium or…
Five Arguments Against Transubstantiation
In this post I make five arguments against transubstantiation as the mechanism for the real presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. These arguments are not exhaustive, but they are the five I typically bring up when discussing this topic. Specifically I am arguing that the substance of the bread and substance of the wine…
Translation of Hugh Metel on Augustine’s doctrine of the real presence
This post is a translation using Claude AI of Migne’s Patrologia Latina Vol. 188 Cols. 1270-1275 (PLL 188:1270-1275). This consists of the notes on Hugh Metel, the titles of three of his epistles and where you can find them in the PLL series and a translation of a fourth epistle. The notes indicate that there…
Liturgical colors
A friend asked me about the meaning of liturgical colors recently. A lot of resources online on this topic are either overly brief or are based on post-Vatican II/Lutheran Worship material, which included a lot of unprecedented liturgical revision. This post is indeed brief but hopefully provides some information that is useful to readers in…
A Short Timeline of the Filioque in Councils and Liturgical Use
There’s a lot of misinformation on the Filioque online. This is a short post trying to clear up the timeline of events and clarify some of the misinformation. I’m not going into theology or individual fathers here. 325: Nicaea I makes the Nicene Creed.380: Either the Synod of Saragossa or Pope Damasus, in an attempt…
How much scripture is in the liturgy?
I’d like to dispel the myth that the traditional liturgy is lacking in scripture. The fact is rather the opposite.
The Sign of the Cross – An Apostolic Practice
In Luther’s Small Catechism, he says that every Christian should make the sign of the cross in the morning and evening before praying: In the morning, when you rise, you shall bless yourself with the holy cross and say:In the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen. In the evening, when you…
Johann Gerhard on Dionysius the Areopagite
The Life of Saint Dionysius the Areopagite by Michael Syncellus was recently published by Scriptorum Press. In this volume Syncellus contends that the writings attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite are authentic, as opposed to the work of a later hand. This runs against the prevailing scholarship, though not without some detractors, primarily from traditional Eastern…
Who are the saints of the high and late middle ages?
A friend recently asked me if Lutherans carried on with celebrating saints of the post-Great schism era. The answer is, “Yes.” Here are the saint days from people who died after 1054 and before 1517 from St. Wilhelm Löhe’s (d. 1872, feast on 1/2) Sanctoral Calendar: 3/7: Thomas Aquinas (1275)3/22: Nicholas of Flüe (1487)4/1: Hugo…
Early church fathers every theologian should read
I made two posts earlier this year on theologians I recommend Lutherans read. The first focused on the middle ages and the second focused on theologians from the Reformation to the present. Here I’d like to make a list of material that theologians leading up to Augustine that theologians should read. This is perhaps the…
A list of orthodox Lutheran theologians worth your time
I was discussing Heinrich Schmid’s Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church with a Reformed friend recently and thought it would be useful to produce a list of orthodox Lutheran theologians that would interest him and others in the Discord server in which we were talking. Because that server is specifically for discussing Reformed Scholasticism,…
On the fate of unbaptized infants
I have been reading through The Lives and Writings of the Great Fathers of the Lutheran Church and Georg Dedekenn has a treatment of the topic of the fate of unbaptized infants at death in which he contends that children born to Christian parents are all saved. In this post I will dissent, though only…
The Descent of Christ into Hell by soul only or body and soul? A survey of the Lutheran dogmaticians and commentators
Note: this post was heavily revised in March 2025 This topic was brought up on Facebook and X in the past, so I did a thorough write up here. The status controversiae on this is not whether the descent merely refers to earthly burial or suffering on the cross, for this is denied, nor is…
Lutheran Scholastic Accolades
It was common in the middle ages and renaissance to give titles to renown figures. Perhaps most famous are “Doctor Angelicus” for Thomas Aquinas and “The Philosopher” for Aristotle, but numerous other figures had titles, including Martin Luther, who was called “Doctor Hyperbolicus,” the Hyperbolic Doctor. He was also called simply “Reformator,” The Reformer. Those…
My First Book!
You can purchase my first book through Lulu! The book is title Against the Invocation of Saints: An Apology for the Protestant Doctrine of Prayer over and against the Doctrine of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Description: It has not gone unnoticed by many of our clergy in the Missouri Synod that the draw to “go…
Did the Reformation Cause Modernism? Where did everything go wrong?
A frequent argument in traditional Christian circles is the dispute over the cause of modernism. The standard approach from Roman Catholic and Eastern Christians is to say that the Reformation was the cause of modernism. In this context, this is a condemning argument for Protestantism. For the traditionalist, modernism is a root of many evils,…
On Reading the Medievals
I had a friend recently ask me “Does anyone know any good medieval works in English? In terms of topics, just anything that would be influential that my Lutheran seminary deems unimportant behind Luther.” Finally, someone was speaking my language. When the medieval period begins and ends is debated. The general principle is that it…
On Identifying and Choosing Denominations: Church Bodies, Traditions, and Movements
I’ve wanted to write a blog post on the numbering of denominations for awhile. When I was a non-denominational evangelical looking into denominations, I struggled to find good resources outlining the exact beliefs of each denomination. Part of my struggle was that I did not have a good understanding of that which I needed to…
I Read the Entire Socratic Corpus in 7 Months
The title says it all. I read all of Plato, including his apocryphal works, and the relevant works by Xenophon and Aristophanes in 7 months. That’s 51 books in all– some very short, some very long. Here are my reflections… Why? I’m something of a “completionist” at heart. I like to start at the beginning…
A Brief Argument Against the Epistemological Primacy of the Church with Respect to Scripture
A common argument raised against Protestantism is that Scripture is somehow dependent on the Church, and thus, the Church must be causally prior to Scripture, so the authority of Scripture is derived from the authority of the Church, making the Church infallible, which is a violation of the principle of sola scriptura. This argument can…
Another Blog Update
I haven’t posted since June of 2021. It has been a busy time. I’ve spent a lot of time reading, plenty of theology. This is where much of my time has gone, hence the lack of blog posts. I did revise some of the old blog posts slightly, as I mentioned in the last post,…
YouTube, Revisions, and new Audiobooks – Blog update
It has been some time since my last blog post. I’ve been occupied with other projects. Some of that work has been for future blog updates. I started a YouTube channel for this blog, which will host the same audiobooks I’ve hosted on this blog, and maybe some original content if I find the time…
Romans 13 and the U.S. Revolution Clause
On January 6, 2021 a group of protesters broke into the United States capitol building. Some on Facebook, including pastors in the LCMS, spoke out against this act. Certainly, men are entitled to their political opinions; this post handles only the theology of the act, not its political implications. This is being written as the…
On the Differences Between the Continental (Dutch) and Presbyterian (Scottish) Reformed Traditions
The nomenclature among the Reformed tradition is often confusing. “Presbyterian” refers to a sub-tradition of the broader Reformed tradition and a church polity (structure). “Reformed” refers to the broad theological tradition as well as the Continental Reformed churches, most often the Dutch Reformed. This post clarifies the use of these terms and explains the differences…
Introduction to Soteriology: Universal Atonement – a Scriptural and Patristic Apology
A key pin in soteriology debates is atonement doctrine. Atonement theories address the question of how Christ’s life, death, and resurrection play into the salvation of men (or perhaps the entirety of creation). There are a number of popular atonement theories. Some include Christus Victor, Penal Substitutionary Atonement, Satisfaction Theory, and Governmental Theory. Lutherans often…
Introduction to Soteriology: Resistible Grace – a Scriptural Apology
Among Protestants, debate surrounding Calvinism and Arminianism is generally focused on a presumed monergistic, irresistible, and final election until salvation vs a synergistic (though Arminians disagree with this term), prevenient, and contingent election. Lutheranism, rejects this paradigm. While Lutherans agree with Calvin, loosely speaking, on monergistic election and agree with Arminius on apostasy being possible,…
High Church Wedding Liturgy for a Low Church Setting
I recently got married in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and had the privilege of freely working on the liturgy for the ceremony. I thought this would be a useful post for those who want a low church service that is still proper. Those who attended my ceremony were mostly Protestants from evangelical and reformed…
Wine, Water, and Grape Juice in the Eucharist – A Historical Introduction
In many protestant traditions grape juice rather than wine is used in communion. A number of arguments are used to support this practice, but historical and pragmatic analysis renders such arguments entirely invalid. On the other hand, the mixing of water and wine in communion is a historic practice of the church.
Introduction to Sacramentology: The Office of the Keys – a Scriptural and Patristic Apology
The practice of confession and absolution is absent, if not rejected outright, in much of the protestant tradition. Coming out of Roman Catholicism in the 1500s, this is understandable in some respects. Reformers spoke against the medieval practice of confession many times, criticizing it for it’s absuses: the requirement of the enumeration of all sins,…
Introduction to Sacramentology: Real Presence in the Eucharist – a Scriptural Apology
In modern Christianity, a variety of Eucharistic traditions are seen. The Roman Catholic and Eastern churches hold to a doctrine of Transubstantiation/Metoousios, in which Aristotelian metaphysics are use to explain that the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ in substance, but the accidents of bread and wine remain. The Reformed tradition…
Introduction to Soteriology: Apostasy and Perseverance – a Scriptural and Patristic Apology
Debate surrounding apostasy and perseverance has been around since the early days of Protestantism. As the magisterial reformation came about, the Reformed tradition came to embrace a doctrine known as Perseverance of the Saints, which teaches that those whom God elects cannot fall away from the faith, IE the saints will persevere. The Lutheran tradition…
Introduction to Sacramentology: Baptismal Regeneration – a Scriptural Apology
It would be a surprise to many Protestants today that Luther and the Lutheran tradition as a whole affirm that baptism brings salvation to the recipient. This should not, however, be a shocking statement to Protestants. Rather, they should look no further than their own fathers in the faith to see that many of them…
Introduction to Soteriology: Monergistic Election – a Scriptural Apology
The doctrine of election is usually associated with Calvinism in protestant circles and often Augustine or even Aquinas at times in studies of historical theology. On the Protestant side of theology, two broad umbrellas are generally cast onto people, that of “Calvinism” AKA “Reformed” theology or that of “Arminianism*” AKA “Remonstrant” theology. Further subcategories are…
Introduction to Soteriology: Entire Depravity and Original Sin – a Scriptural and Patristic Apology
Many New Wesleyan Arminians (including many evangelicals) and Eastern churches deny the doctrine of entire depravity and original sin, either in degree or in their entirety. This doctrine has been present, however, since the scriptures and has been maintained through the entire history of the church. Notable reformers and spearheads of Protestant theology Luther, Calvin,…
The Confessing Lutheran 