A marker takes the colour of the side it landed on — blue toward the left pole,
orange toward the right. The shape says which tradition; the colour never does.
The rails draw confessional Lutherans, the bodies that still subscribe the whole Book of Concord of 1580, chiefly the Missouri and Wisconsin synods. Reformed means the Presbyterian and Reformed churches bound to the Westminster Confession or to the Heidelberg Catechism and the Canons of Dort. The larger mainline bodies on both sides sit elsewhere on this map.
What they share
Only Scripture is beyond error. Both land in the same band on authority, and both subscribe long confessions, but a confession binds because it is held to say what the Bible says.
Nobody starts it. Both teach that a person contributes nothing to his own conversion, and that faith itself is a gift the Holy Spirit gives through the preached Word. Where that thought leads next is where they divide, below.
Both land in the sacramental band. The children of members are baptised, and something is given at the font and at the Table rather than pictured there.
One people of God, and no rapture. Augsburg XVII ruled out an earthly kingdom before the resurrection in 1530, and Westminster says there are not two covenants of grace but one.
Neither expects tongues or prophecy today. Both land in the cessationist band, and both still pray for the sick.
Where they differ
Both sides below are stated the way people who hold them would state them. Landing in
the same band is not agreeing, and landing in different ones is not a verdict.
Lutherans kept the shape of the Mass and put it into the local language. Confession, Kyrie, Gloria, creed and the words of institution stay in their old places, the church year begins in Advent, and the congregation sings hymns. The principle underneath is that whatever Scripture does not forbid may be kept, and this order was kept because it teaches the faith week by week to people who cannot read a confession.
Reformed
free-leaning in worship
The Reformed reverse that principle: nothing belongs in worship unless Scripture calls for it. The Westminster Assembly replaced the Book of Common Prayer with a Directory, which gives a minister advice rather than words to read aloud, so every prayer is his own and the sermon carries the service. It looks formal from the door and is the freer of the two by the measure this rail uses. Some congregations sing only the psalms, and a few sing them without instruments.
In plain wordsLutherans kept whatever the old service did not contradict. The Reformed kept only what the Bible tells a church to do.
Lutherans are monergist: God alone brings a person to faith, and someone dead in sin cannot raise himself. What Lutherans will not do is complete the pattern. Grace can be resisted and refused, and God has chosen nobody for damnation. If a person is saved, the credit is entirely God's; if a person is lost, the fault is entirely his own. The Formula of Concord lets that unevenness stand rather than tidying it into a system.
Reformed
firmly monergist
Westminster carries the same thought to its end. God chose a people before the world was made, and the grace that raises the spiritually dead makes the unwilling willing; the God Who begins the work is the God Who finishes it. The same chapter speaks of the rest, whom God passes by, while insisting He is not the author of anyone's sin. The comfort a Reformed pastor offers is that a standing God gave does not depend on how tightly a believer holds on.
In plain wordsBoth say God does the saving. Lutherans will not go on to say He also settles who is lost.
Beyond the compass
The Compass measures six things, not everything. These differences are real and
sit outside all six.
What happens at the Supper
The Table rail measures sacramental against memorial, and both of these stand at the sacramental end, so their oldest quarrel never shows on it. Luther held that the body and blood of Christ are truly present in, with and under the bread and wine. Lutherans reject the word consubstantiation, which sounds to them like an explanation, and they hold that the how cannot be explained. Calvin taught a presence that is real but spiritual, received by faith through the work of the Holy Spirit. Underneath sits a question about Christ's humanity: whether it can be present everywhere at once.
Who runs the church
The Reformed answer is in the name: presbyteros is Greek for elder. A session of elders governs each congregation, a presbytery of ministers and elders covers a region, a general assembly sits above that, and there is no bishop. Lutherans never fixed one pattern. Augsburg Confession XIV asks only that nobody preach or administer the sacraments publicly without a proper call, so Lutherans live under bishops in Scandinavia and under elected synod presidents in North America. A Lutheran can treat church government as a matter of good order. For the Reformed it is drawn from Scripture with everything else.
How they came to differ
They were two movements almost from the start. In October 1529 Philip of Hesse brought Luther and Zwingli to Marburg to build a common front against a hostile emperor. The two settled fourteen of the fifteen articles on the table and broke on the fifteenth, which asked whether Christ's body is bodily present in the bread. Protestantism arrived in the world as two families rather than one.
Each then wrote itself down. The Lutheran princes had the Augsburg Confession read aloud in German to Charles V on 25 June 1530. The Reformed line ran from Geneva through John Knox's Scotland: its English-speaking branch produced the Westminster Confession in 1646, its Dutch and German branch the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563 and the Canons of Dort. Lutherans closed their file with the Formula of Concord in 1577, gathered into the Book of Concord in 1580.
Three hundred years later a king tried to put them back together. In 1817 Frederick William III merged the Lutheran and Reformed churches of Prussia into one body, timed to the Reformation's anniversary, and the communion service was the sticking point. Those who would not join were called Old Lutherans, and some left the country rather than share a Table on those terms.
Walking in
In a confessional Lutheran church the service is the Mass in your own language, and a visitor who grew up Catholic will recognise most of it: confession, Kyrie, Gloria, creed, the words of institution, vestments, the colours changing with the season, communion most weeks and hymns sung hard. In a confessional Presbyterian church there is no book in the pew. The minister chooses his own words for every prayer, a long sermon sits at the centre, and communion may come monthly or four times a year, carried along the rows by elders.
Did you know?
Melanchthon revised the Augsburg Confession in 1540 and reworded the article on the Supper in terms Reformed readers could accept. Later Lutherans rejected the revision and kept the 1530 text, which is why their constitutions still name the unaltered Augsburg Confession.
What we read
Lutheran
The Augsburg Confession (1530)
IX on baptism, X on the Supper, XIV on the call to ministry, XVII on the last day.
Lutheran
The Formula of Concord (1577)
Scripture as the only rule and norm; conversion and election.
Lutheran
Luther's Small Catechism (1529)
A few pages, written for a father to teach his household.
Reformed
The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646)
Chapter 1 on authority, chapter 3 on God's decree, chapter 21 on worship.
Reformed
The Heidelberg Catechism (1563)
Questions 65 to 82, on the sacraments.
Reformed
The Westminster Directory for Public Worship (1645)
What replaced the Prayer Book: advice, not a script.
