Confession for Lutherans

Without doubt, wrote Martin Luther, ";confession of sins is necessary, and in accordance with the divine commandments" But Luther was dead set against the Roman Catholic obligation to confess before receiving Communion. Confession, he felt, should be voluntary, and Christians must be clear that their absolution comes only from God; otherwise, he argued, confession becomes an instrument of oppression in the hands of the church. Luther's own formula for absolution: "Dost thou believe that my forgiveness is God's forgiveness?" (Penitent answers yes). "As thou believest, so shall it come to pass. By command of our Lord Jesus Christ I forgive thee thy sins in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Go in peace."/- Despite Luther; the practice of confession became increasingly stereotyped, was finally abandoned in the 17th century. Last week its revival was a major topic in Lutheran Germany. The occasion was this year's Kirchentag in Munich (TIME, Aug. 24), where no fewer than 2,000 Protestants went to confession in the two churches designated for the purpose. Says Pastor Hans Jacob of Bensheim, who heard many of them: "For 90% of them, confession was a new experience, and all of them felt it opened a new way to God."

Ministers feel that the new popularity of confession is a response to the anxieties of the modern world, and a symptom of the growing Protestant shift from services and sermons to personal pastoral care. "We do not emphasize the form," says one pastor. "It must not become a routine." Many ministers hear confessions in their offices, others in the sacristy of the church. Often, pastor and penitent kneel side by side, their eyes on the cross.

Some Lutherans, concerned that the trend to confession represents a risky rise in clerical power that is incompatible with Protestant principles, minimize it as a flash in the pan that flares in the fervor of a Kirchentag and subsides in the cooler air of everyday life. Yet a growing number of clergymen, like Munich's Pastor Adolf Sommerauer, see a strong and rising tide. "There are those who worry that confession could become a sort of fad. There is no need to propagate it. Now that it is known throughout the church that it is available, those who need it can make use of it."

/- Roman Catholic formula: "May our Lord Jesus Christ absolve thee; and I, by His authority, absolve thee . . . inasmuch as in my power lieth, and thou standest in need. Finally, I absolve thee from thy sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."

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