The ''Magdeburg Confession'' (officially, the ''Confession, Instruction, and Admonition of the pastors and preachers of the Christian congregations of Magdeburg'') was a

Lutheran Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Cathol ...

statement of faith A creed, also known as a confession of faith, a symbol, or a statement of faith, is a statement of the shared beliefs of a community (often a religious community) in a form which is structured by subjects which summarize its core tenets. The ea ...

. It was written by nine pastors of the city of Magdeburg in 1550 in response to the

Augsburg Interim The Augsburg Interim (full formal title: ''Declaration of His Roman Imperial Majesty on the Observance of Religion Within the Holy Empire Until the Decision of the General Council'') was an imperial decree ordered on 15 May 1548 at the 1548 Diet ...

and the imposition of

Roman Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

. The Confession explains why the leaders of the city refused to obey the imperial law, and were prepared to resist its implementation with force if necessary. The Magdeburg Confession calls for resistance to political tyranny, and argues that the " subordinate powers" in a state, faced with the situation where the "supreme power" is working to destroy true religion, may go further than non-cooperation with the supreme power and assist the faithful to resist. Carter Lindberg calls it "the first Protestant religious justification of the right of defense against unjust higher authorities." John Witte notes that

Theodore Beza Theodore Beza ( la, Theodorus Beza; french: Théodore de Bèze or ''de Besze''; June 24, 1519 – October 13, 1605) was a French Calvinist Protestant theologian, reformer and scholar who played an important role in the Protestant Reformatio ...

saw the Magdeburg Confession as an example of how to respond to political abuse of tyranny, and that it was a "major distillation of the most advanced Lutheran resistance theories of the day, which the Calvinist tradition absorbed."

References

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External links

The Magdeburg Confession
– a site maintained by the American pastor Matthew Trewhella – advertises a modern translation (from the original Latin) by Matthew Colvin, published via Amazon Createspace. 1550 works Reformation in Germany History of Magdeburg Christian statements of faith