A declaration from 1550 known as The Magdeburg Confession has been playing a prominent part lately in discussions about Christian involvement in politics, particularly among Lutherans. It was written by the Lutheran leaders of the city of Magdeburg, Germany, in 1550 when the Catholic armies of the Holy Roman Empire under Charles V were laying seige to their city, attempting to capture it and force its churches, as the Emperor had forced many others in Germany, to restore Catholic worship practices they had recently eliminated or replaced with Lutheran forms in the German Reformation. The Magdeburgers wanted to justify their armed resistance in spite of the instruction in Scripture that Christians are to submit to the ruling authorities, unless they are commanded to sin. The Lutherans in the cities that had submitted to the Emperor’s demands maintained that the worship practices in question were matters of indifference—practices known collectively as adiaphora—so it would be OK to submit in this case. The Magdeburgers firmly disagreed, maintaining that in the case of forced compliance, the label of adiaphora no longer applies as it did previously. Failing to defend the Lutheran worship practices was tantamount to failing to defend the Gospel, so it was not only permissible but necessary to disobey the command to give them up. It was out of this conviction that the Magdeburg Confession came. It is said to have established a Lutheran theory of resistance now known as the doctrine of the lesser magistrate, which justifies active resistance by lower officials to higher officials if the higher officials have become tyrannical.

Since first hearing of the Magdeburg Confession four or five years ago, I have become increasingly troubled by its content and by its use in today’s political context. I believe there are several significant problems with it:

(1) It commits a significant logical error in the way it deduces a key argument from Scripture.

(2) It contradicts Article 28 of the Augsburg Confession, which explicitly says church and state should not be mingled.

(3) It seems to me to gloss over the difference between passive disobedience to a command (which is scriptural, if the command in question is to sin) and active resistance to that command using the sword (which is not scriptural). Similarly, it (or at least its modern interpreters) also seems to condemn unjustly as teaching “unlimited obedience to the State” those who choose passive disobedience and eschew active resistance

(4) Much of its reasoning is from natural law, not from Scripture, and it reflects a view of natural law that Luther did not fully share and a view of church and state that is much more aligned with Reformed sensibilities than Lutheran. The Magdeburg Confession claims to establish its position with both Scripture and natural law, but the key Scriptural support it offers is at best shaky, so we’re left with a document appealing mainly to natural law but with no real support in the Scriptures or in Luther and the Lutheran Confessions. Its reasoning, however, has been taken up readily by Reformed theologians and various Enlightenment political philosophers, as Ryan MacPherson notes in the introduction to the latest translation of The Magdeburg Confession.¹

In this article, I am going to look at the first two problems. I plan to get to the other two in the near future.

A Logical Error
The Magdeburg Confession begins with a short section titled “Syllogism Summarizing the Argument of This Book.” This is presented as follows:

“When the higher magistrate is violently persecuting the law itself among his subjects, whether natural law or divine, or the true religion and worship of God, then the lesser magistrate ought to resist him, and this according to God’s command.

“The persecution which is now inflicted on us by higher magistrates is especially directed at the oppression of our true religion, the true worship of God, etc.

“Therefore our magistrate ought to resist this oppression, and this according to God’s command.”²

The major premise—that a lesser magistrate has a command from God to resist a higher magistrate who is unlawfully oppressing his subjects—is established in a part of the book titled “On Defense,” where the Magdeburgers give three arguments to support it. Of these, the first argument is titled “From the Definition of the Terms Involved,” and it seems to be pretty much the key Scriptural argument of the Magdeburg Confesson:

“The office of magistrate is the ordinance of God, instituted for the purpose of praising good work and punishing evil work (Romans 13[:3-4]). Therefore, when the magistrate begins to serve as a terror to good work and for the praise of evil, what he is doing is no longer the ordinance of God but the ordinance of the devil.”³

Note that this argument is not a direct Scriptural statement but is presented as a logical deduction from a Scriptural statement (“Therefore...”). That can be OK in many cases, but in this case the Magdeburgers have made a logical error. Their reasoning is the same as this:

Cars are four-wheel vehicles made for driving on streets and highways. Therefore, if a four-wheel vehicle is not driving on a street or a highway, it isn’t a car.

But that kind of conclusion doesn’t automatically follow from that kind of statement. We can’t confuse statements about the design of something (what it’s intended to be used for) with somebody’s particular use of it. Just because somebody decides to drive their car on a sidewalk doesn’t mean their vehicle isn’t a car anymore. Likewise, because a magistrate starts punishing good work and praising evil work doesn’t mean his office is no longer ordained by God. In the case of magistrates, it is evident from Scripture that though some are evil, these are still the magistrates God expects us to obey, unless they command us to sin; and even then, our duty is not to take up arms against them, but to disobey and bear humbly the evil magistrate’s wrath, trusting God, knowing he is the one who will execute justice in his way and in his time.

Luther himself comments on this:

“From the beginning of the world it has been so, and so it will remain: that spiritual and temporal power is more often given the Pilates, the Herods, the Annases, and the Caiphases than to the pious Peters, the Pauls, and the like. In government, as in all other estates, there are always more of the wicked than of the pious. It is not to be supposed or hoped that we shall ever have an entirely pious government; nay, if good government or a beneficial use of power is to be had at all, it must come as a gift of pure grace or by special prayer and merit. For God punishes wicked subjects by wicked rulers, as He says in Is.3:4: ‘I will give them children for prelates, and their rulers shall be childish men.’ I will take from them every courageous, wise, prudent and strong man. Since, then, incompetent or wicked rulers are a punishment of God and there are so many among us who deserve such a punishment, we must not be surprised if the government wrongs us and abuses its power over us; nay, we must wonder and thank God when it does not wrong us and do us injustice.

“...our age is extraordinarily perilous, and we must act very wisely and see to it that we hold government and power in the highest honor, just as Christ honored the power of Pilate, of Herod, of Annas, of Caiaphas, and even of secular princes. We must not let such grave misuse and childish governing of the prelates move us to despise authority. Otherwise, we despise not only the unworthy persons who rule but their power itself. Rather, we should joyfully bear everything it imposes, or humbly and respectfully refuse to bear it. For God neither likes nor tolerates blasphemous and wanton resistance to authority, as long as it does not drive us to act against God or against his commandment—although it [authority] itself may act as much against God as it wants to, or hurt us as much as it wants to. He himself intends to judge and to condemn those who are great and powerful tyrants, as well as to help those who are oppressed sufferers. That is why we should yield to his will and let the tyrants fall under his sword and judgment. On the other hand, we should let ourselves be helped by him, as St. Paul says in Romans 12[:19], ‘Oh, dearest brethren, do not avenge and protect yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine alone, and I will repay everyone, says the Lord.”’

“These same prelates should be humbly told—especially the preachers should rebuke them, but only in such a way that they show them with the word of God how they are acting against God, and what he expects of them. Furthermore, there should be diligent and serious intercession for them before God, just as Jeremiah wrote to the children of Israel in Babylon [Bar. 1:11; Jer. 29:7] that they should diligently pray for the king of Babylon, who had imprisoned them, destroyed them, strangled them, and done all kinds of evil things to them, as well as for his son and his kingdom.”⁴

So for Luther, who as usual, I think, faithfully reflects the teaching of the Scriptures on the subject, God’s rule through the left-hand kingdom (the State, secular authority) is not negated because of the existence in it of evil rulers; even in that case, the office of magistrate remains of God. Our duty as believers in Christ remains to obey the magistrate unless he commands sin. And then our duty is not to bear arms against the magistrate but to refuse to sin, disobeying the magistrate’s command, and to suffer willingly the earthly consequences, trusting only in the Lord to deliver us. [Ps. 20:7-9; 33:16-21; 37:1-11, 39-40; 40:4; 44:1-8; 60:9-12; 62:5-9; 108:12-13; 118:8-9; 146:3-6; Prov. 21:31; Is. 31:1; John 18:36; 2 Cor. 10:3-5; Eph. 6:12.] God is in control of all things anyway—the rise, duration, and fall of rulers and governments are his business, not ours. Let God choose the time and the means for bringing down an evil ruler. [Ps. 75:2-7; Prov. 21:1, 31; Is. 31:1-3; Dan. 4:17, 25, 34-35; John 3:27; 19:11; Acts 1:6-8.]

AC Article 28
The relevant portion of Article 28 reads,

“...[10] Inasmuch as the power of the church or of bishops bestows eternal gifts and is used and exercised only through the office of preaching, it does not interfere at all with government or temporal authority. [11] Temporal authority is concerned with matters altogether different from the Gospel. Temporal power does not protect the soul, but with the sword and physical penalties it protects body and goods from the power of others.

“[12] Therefore, the two authorities, the spiritual and the temporal, are not to be mingled or confused, for the spiritual power has its commission to preach the Gospel and administer the sacraments. [13] Hence it should not invade the function of the other, should not set up and depose kings, should not annul temporal laws or undermine obedience to government, should not make or prescribe to the temporal power laws concerning worldly matters. [14] Christ himself said, ‘My kingship is not of this world,’ and again, [15] ‘Who made me a judge or divider over you?’ [16] Paul also wrote in Phil. 3:20, “Our commonwealth is in heaven,’ [17] and in 2 Cor. 10:4, 5, ‘The weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God.’”⁵

The Magdeburg Confession, on the other hand, appears to urge Christian leaders to concern themselves actively, perhaps even using the sword, with temporal authority, and thus to mingle and confuse it with spiritual authority:

“From what we have written above in our confession and apology, the observant reader already understands not what we are asking, but what God is demanding from each one of us, both from those who are outside our walls and from all of us in this city and church. This can and should, on the one hand, terrify men from bringing unjust violence against us. On the other hand, it should encourage men to repel this unjust violence. Nevertheless, to place these duties and the reasons for them in plain sight, we will briefly set forth in this epilogue the main points.”⁶

“...the primary reason for publishing this work is that we must fight for the Gospel of Jesus Christ against Satan and his ministers, not only by refuting his lies but also by impeding his slaughters, since it is by both of these tactics that he is now so violently assaulting the true religion.”⁷

“The third aspect of Christian duty arises from the last one. Once supplication has been rendered ineffective, after Christians have made their confession and have insisted on their duty to protect the innocent against unjust persecution, it remains for them to do for the protection of Christ the very things the enemies are insisting on doing for the destruction of Christ, or at least to do something....

“Finally, let us say a little more about our duty to advance God’s glory and the salvation of all people. Think, we beg you, all churches, and especially you leaders in them, you who do not want to knowingly betray and crucify Christ, think now how faithless your actions are, that you are not only abandoning us in our time of need, your own brothers and members of the same body of Christ, but also deserting the true religion and the Lord Christ Himself, so long as you do not openly oppose the papistic, interimistic, and adiaphoristic wolves in fear that you might suffer some harm.” ⁸

The Augsburg Confession is part of the Lutheran Confessions (which all rostered pastors and teachers of the LCMS vow to uphold), but the Magdeburg Confession is not—it was not incorporated into the Book of Concord in 1580 when the leading Lutheran theologians compiled it. Most if not all of them would have been well aware of the Magdeburg Confession, produced in 1550, but yet they chose not to include it. This is, in my mind, anyway, very significant. It shows that its “Lutheran theory of resistance” or “doctrine of the lesser magistrate” is not in reality very Lutheran when you look at it closely. More on all this later...