The Catholic Confession: Book I: General, Volume IV—Part II, Chapter XIII: The Fathers

Johann Gerhard’s The Catholic Confession is one of the great monuments of Lutheran theology: a sustained demonstration that the doctrine confessed by the churches of the Augsburg Confession is catholic, evangelical, and firmly grounded in Holy Scripture. Volume IV presents Chapter XIII of Book I, Gerhard’s extensive treatment of the Church Fathers and their proper place in theological controversy. Roman Catholic polemicists claimed the unanimous consent of the Fathers as an authoritative rule for interpreting Scripture and as a decisive witness against the Lutheran Reformation. Gerhard answers that claim not by dismissing the Fathers, but by examining the testimony of Roman Catholic scholars themselves. Drawing upon Robert Bellarmine, Caesar Baronius, Sixtus of Siena, Antonio Possevino, Erasmus, Melchior Cano, and scores of other patristic, medieval, and early modern authorities, Gerhard documents disagreements among the Fathers, acknowledged errors in their writings, lost and spurious works, interpolations, textual corruption, altered editions, and conflicting interpretations of Scripture. His immense catalog reveals both the value of the patristic inheritance and the impossibility of making an alleged unanimous consensus of the Fathers an infallible rule of faith. Gerhard’s argument remains remarkably important for the study of patristics, the authority of Scripture, textual criticism, and the continuing theological differences between Lutheranism and Roman Catholicism. Translated from the Jena first edition of 1634, this volume includes extensive editorial notes, indexes of persons, works and documents, and Scripture, together with a biographical register of authors and historical persons.