TheApology of the Augsburg Confession (German:Apologie des Augsburger Bekenntnisses) was written byPhilipp Melanchthon during and after the 1530Diet of Augsburg as a response to thePontifical Confutation of the Augsburg Confession,Charles V's commissioned official Roman Catholic response to the LutheranAugsburg Confession of 25 June 1530. It was intended to be a defense of theAugsburg Confession and a refutation of theConfutation. It was signed as a confession of faith by leading Lutheran magnates and clergy at the meeting of theSmalkaldic League in February, 1537,[1] and subsequently included in theGerman [1580] andLatin [1584]Book of Concord. As the longest document in theBook of Concord it offers the most detailed Lutheran response to theRoman Catholicism of that day as well as an extensive Lutheran exposition of the doctrine of Justification.
He also refers to some of the other articles in the Augsburg Confession which did not require an extensive defense. These articles are I, III, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX.
The first edition of theApology of the Augsburg Confession was published in late April-early May 1531[2] inquarto format. Melanchthon continued to revise it, especially the article on justification, and issued a second edition in September 1531, which was published inoctavo format. Some scholars believe the second edition is the better edition of the Apology.[3] The Lutheran Church's formal collection of confessions in theBook of Concord refer to the first edition of the Apology when it is quoted in the Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord. The 1580 German edition of theBook of Concord used the translation of the Apology prepared byJustus Jonas, who rendered it freely based on Melanchthon's further editing. The 1584 Latin edition of theBook of Concord uses the first edition ("editio princeps") of theApology, following the decision made by the Lutheran estates and rulers at the Diet of Naumburg in 1560 to use only this edition.
The question of which is the "official text" of theApology arises in connection with the English translation of the text in the 2000 "Kolb-Wengert Edition" ofThe Book of Concord. The translators and editors of this edition made the octavo edition the main source for their English translation because they believe it to be the "official version" ofThe Apology.[4] They included English translations of variant readings of the quarto edition in italics. Other scholars question whether this text could be the actual Lutheran confession, especially since it was the quarto edition that was deliberately included in the 1584 official LatinBook of Concord to the exclusion of the octavo edition.[5] All other English translations ofThe Book of Concord utilize the quarto edition.
Concordia Triglotta: Die symbolischen Bücher der evanglish-lutherischen Kirche. St. Louis:Concordia Publishing House. 1921. This book contains the first edition (the Quarto edition) and translates it from the Latin 1584Book of Concord, putting in brackets the translation of material found in the Jonas German translation.
Corpus Reformatorum (in Latin). Vol. XXVII. Braunschweig: C.A. Schwetschke. 1859. pp. 419ff. Contains the best text of the quarto Latin Apology of May 1531, with variants from the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th editions in the footnotes.
"Die Apologie der Augsburgischen Konfession".Die Bekenntnisschriften der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche (in German) (12th ed.). Göttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 1998. pp. xxii–xxiii.
Die Bekenntnisschriften Der Evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche. Herausgegeben Im Gedenkjahr Der Augsburgischen Konfession 1930 (in German).Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 1998.ISBN3525521014. TheBekenntnisschriften is the critical edition of the Lutheran Confessions, offering the latest academic opinions of the various textual forms of the Lutheran Confessions.
Peters, Christian (1997).Apologia Confessionis Augustanae: Untersuchungen zur Textgeschichte einer lutherischen Bekenntnisschrift (1530–1584) (in German). Stuttgart: Calwer.
^The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Theodore G. Tappert, trans. and ed., (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959), 97-98, 287-88, 334-35.
^The Book of Concord" The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 108.
^Christian Peters,Apologia Confessionis Augustanae. Untersuchungen zur Textgeschichte einer lutherischen Bekenntnisschrift (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1997); Christian Peters, "'Er hats immer wollen besser machen [. . .].' Melanchthons fortgesetzte Arbeit am Text der lateinischen Apologie auf und nach dem Augsburger Reichstag von 1530,"Im schatten der Confessio Augustana. Die Religionsverhandlungen des Augeburer Reichstages 1530 im historischen Kontext, H. Immenkötter and G. Wenz, eds., (Münster: Aschendorff, 1997), 98-126; cf. Roland F. Ziegler, "The New Translation of the Book of Concord: Closing the barn door after ....",Concordia Theological Quarterly 66 (April 2002) 2:150.
^The Book of Concord" The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 107-09.
^Roland F. Ziegler, "The New Translation of the Book of Concord: Closing the barn door after ....",Concordia Theological Quarterly 66 (April 2002) 2:150-51.
The Defense of the Augsburg Confession public domain audiobook atLibriVox
