Expert: Brad Varvil - 7/16/2009

Question
Hi. I am a Baptist and i plan on possibly going to a Lutheran University. if i do, i have to go to chapel for a year. but i honestly do not know what i am going to be learning when they preach to me. mostly because i know that the Lutheran religion came from the Catholic. now i have never really studied the Catholic religion and i do not want to from some of the things my mother has told me about it. because she was one when she was a child and changed to Baptist when she was an adult. also i do not want to be told that what i believe from my baptist beliefs are wrong.

so my question is, what are the differences and similarities from the Lutherans and Catholics? will i be hearing more of a Catholic view or a Baptist view when i am in chapel?

thank you if you can answer this for me :]

Answer
Dear Spincer,

Grace and peace to you, and congratulations to on your path into college!

I sense that there are many questions underneath and in between the ones you offer here, and I will do my best to answer them.  It's important to remember that while Lutherans, Baptists, and Roman Catholics are all Christians, there are certainly distinctives between them all.  If you want to know what Baptists believe, teach, and confess, you might find their latest Statement of Faith.  For Roman Catholics, you would read their Catechism of the Catholic Church.  For Lutherans, our most basic statements of faith are the Augsburg Confession (1530) and Luther's Small Catechism.  Since you probably know Baptist belief pretty well, I'll focus on the Lutheran distictives.

Lutherans are a lot like Baptists, in that we both teach justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone-- and that our surest witness to these eternal truths are the Holy Scriptures alone.  We are both Trinitarian churches, and have an orthodox understanding of the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Where we differ is in how we understand God to work, or give us grace, through means--especially Baptism, the Lord's Supper, and Confession/Absolution.  We understand these things in their literal sense from the Scriptures, which is how the whole Church understood them for the first 1500 years of her history... Which is why Lutheran teaching on these Sacraments looks very similar to Roman Catholics, who have the same history.  We also remember the same history of Christian worship, so our worship services may look very similar.

Your best best is to read up a bit on us Lutherans.  We were the first wave if the Reformation, and as such, we are a blend of what is good from our common history, and the great truths of the Scriptures.

I hope that helps-- may God's grace keep and preserve you.
Rev. Brad