Are Lutherans Catholic?

This may be a strange question, and one that you may think you know the answer to. Of course Lutherans aren't Catholic, they're two separate denominations! How could they possibly be Catholic? And you are right, to a point.

To begin, we must first define what the word "catholic" means. The English word "catholic" comes from the Greek word katholikos (καθολικός), meaning "universal". So the catholic Church is simply the "universal" church. For something to be catholic simply means it is something that the church in all the world holds as true, regardless of nationality. There's a great article written by Mathew Block (Are Lutherans Catholic) that I'll be referencing here about this same subject.

Mark Dever delves into just that question in a recent Christianity Today article subtitled What we mean when we say "One Holy Catholic Church" In his article, Dever, a Baptist minister, traces the history of the word “catholic,” briefly outlining its evolution as the word gained additional meanings in the history of the Church. The catholic faith is authentic. It is orthodox. And it is also global.

Block defines catholicity in these terms: "To be catholic, then, is to be heirs of the apostolic faith. It is to be rooted firmly in the Apostles teaching as recorded for us in Scripture, the unchanging Word of God. But while this Word is unchanging, it does not follow that it is static. The history of the Church in the world is the history of Christians meditating upon Scripture. We must look to this history as our own guide in understanding Scripture. To be sure, the Church’s tradition of interpretation has erred from time to time—we find, for example, that the Fathers and Councils sometimes disagree with one another—but it is dangerous to discount those interpretations of Scripture which have been held unanimously from the very beginning of the Church."

He also adds this: "This tradition of meditation, of course, cannot invent new dogma—it is “not a source of dogma qua dogma,” as Hearth R. Curtis explains well in a 2005 Lutheran Forum article entitled “The Relation between the Biblical and Catholic Principles.” But it is nevertheless, “the source of apostolic interpretation which norms our interpretation of the apostolic Scriptures.” In other words, Scripture is the sole source of dogma for the Church, but the Church’s tradition of meditation “establishes how that source is to be interpreted.” It is in this sense that the three ecumenical creeds are understood to be authoritative: not because they invented new doctrine (they didn’t), but because they carefully codified truths already present in the Scriptures. In this way the Church’s tradition of meditation guides us into a proper understanding of Scripture. No Christian denomination, therefore, can reject interpretations of Scripture universally acknowledged by the early Church without impairing its commitment to being the one holy catholic and apostolic Church. For the Church’s tradition of meditation, as a faithful interpretation of the Scriptures, itself becomes a standard to which subsequent interpretations can be measured. And yes, this catholic interpretation extends to doctrines now considered denominational distinctives (for example, the doctrine of the Real Presence). Denominations which reject such catholic teaching therefore, in essence, reject part of what it means to be catholic."

"On the other hand, that church body which accepts the Scriptures as the sole source of authority in the Church and further acknowledges the tradition of the Church as a norming interpretive principle in understanding the Scriptures may rightly call itself catholic. It is in this sense then, finally, that Lutherans confess themselves to be heirs of the catholic tradition. “The churches among us do not dissent from the catholic church in any article of faith,” Melanchthon declares in the Augsburg Confession. “There is nothing here that departs from the Scriptures or the catholic church, or from the Roman Church, insofar as we can tell from its writers.” Centuries later, Herman Sasse could assert the same: “It was no mere ecclesiastico-political diplomacy which dictated the emphatic assertion in the Augsburg Confession that the teachings of the Evangelicals were identical with those of the orthodox Catholic Church of all ages,” he writes. “The Lutheran theologian acknowledges that he belongs to the same visible church to which Thomas Aquinas and Bernard of Clairvaux, Augustine and Tertullian, Athanasius and Ireneaus once belonged.”

So are Lutherans catholic? Yes. And we always will be, so long as we hold fast to the traditions of the Apostles, written in the Scriptures and faithfully passed down to us by the Church.

God bless,
Manny