The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, usually shortened to LCMS, occupies an interesting place in American Protestantism. If the ELCA represents the largest and more progressive stream of American Lutheranism, the Missouri Synod represents a strongly confessional and theologically conservative Lutheranism that believes the best way to remain Lutheran in the modern world is not to revise historic Lutheran doctrine but to keep confessing it.

That doesn’t make the LCMS an evangelical denomination with Lutheran decorations. Missouri Synod Lutherans baptize infants, believe Baptism actually conveys God’s grace, confess that Christ’s true body and blood are present in the Lord’s Supper, practice closed or close Communion, use historic liturgy, subscribe to the Lutheran Confessions, and have a sacramental understanding of Christianity that can seem surprisingly Catholic to someone raised Baptist or Pentecostal. At the same time, they emphatically reject papal authority, salvation by works, transubstantiation, prayers to the saints, and doctrines they believe lack biblical foundation. The result is a church that can look ancient on Sunday morning while insisting that Scripture alone is the final authority for Christian doctrine.

The LCMS was founded in 1847 and today reports nearly two million baptized members in more than 6,000 congregations. Its headquarters are in St. Louis, which explains why Missouri remains in the name even though Missouri Synod congregations are found throughout the country and its mission relationships extend around the world.

Germans, Saxons and a New Lutheran Church

The Missouri Synod grew primarily from German Lutheran immigration during the nineteenth century. Several groups of immigrants came to the United States because they wanted to preserve a strongly confessional form of Lutheran Christianity that they believed was being compromised in Germany by theological rationalism and government-sponsored efforts to combine Lutheran and Reformed churches.

One particularly important group consisted of Saxon Lutherans who arrived in America in 1839 and settled principally around St. Louis and Perry County, Missouri. Their early experience wasn’t exactly the inspirational denominational origin story someone might have wanted to put in the brochure. Their leader, Martin Stephan, had been made their bishop, but accusations of financial and sexual misconduct soon led the colonists to depose him and send him across the Mississippi River.

Suddenly the immigrants faced a theological crisis. If they had followed a corrupt leader out of Germany and separated themselves from the established church, were they even a legitimate church anymore? A young pastor named Carl Ferdinand Wilhelm Walther helped them answer yes. And that brings us to the man who would become the dominant figure in early Missouri Synod Lutheranism.

C. F. W. Walther

C. F. W. Walther was only twenty-seven when he came to America with the Saxon immigrants, but he eventually became one of the most important Lutheran theologians in American history. He argued that the Church doesn’t depend upon bishops, governments, or an elaborate ecclesiastical hierarchy for its legitimacy. Wherever Christians gather around God’s Word and Sacraments, the Church is genuinely present. That conviction helped stabilize the shattered Saxon community.

Walther subsequently became pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in St. Louis, editor of the influential German-language publication Der Lutheraner, president of Concordia Seminary, and eventually the first president of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. He served from 1847–1850 and again from 1864–1878. The LCMS still refers to him as the “Father of the Missouri Synod.”

Walther also became famous for his lectures on the distinction between Law and Gospel, a distinction lying near the heart of Lutheran theology. If Martin Luther is the towering figure standing behind the LCMS, Walther is the theologian who helped translate confessional Lutheranism into an American church body.

The Missouri Synod Is Born

On April 26, 1847, representatives of fourteen congregations met in Chicago and formally established what was originally called the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and Other States. That’s quite a name. Fortunately, they eventually shortened it.

The founding group included twelve pastors representing congregations in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, New York and other areas. That fact also explains why calling it the Missouri Synod has always been slightly misleading. Missouri was extremely important, but this was never simply the Lutheran denomination of Missouri.

In 1947, on its hundredth anniversary, the church adopted the much more manageable name The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod. The initials LCMS have probably saved millions of keystrokes since.

What Does “Synod” Mean?

The word synod comes from Greek roots conveying the idea of walking together. That concept captures the Missouri Synod’s understanding of denominational fellowship particularly well. Congregations aren’t supposed to be loosely associated organizations that happen to share a logo. They’re voluntarily walking together because they confess the same doctrine. That helps explain why doctrinal agreement matters so much within the LCMS. Church fellowship isn’t merely institutional cooperation. Worship, preaching, Communion, and ministry publicly express shared faith.

If two churches disagree substantially about what Scripture teaches, Missouri Synod Lutherans generally don’t believe they should pretend the disagreement disappears when everyone enters the sanctuary. That principle becomes particularly important when we get to Communion.

Scripture Alone

The LCMS teaches that the Bible is the inspired, infallible and inerrant Word of God and the sole authoritative rule for Christian doctrine. Its official doctrinal statements explicitly reject the position that Scripture contains factual or theological errors or that Christians may move beyond apostolic teaching because the contemporary community believes the Holy Spirit is leading the Church somewhere new. That immediately establishes one of the largest differences between the LCMS and ELCA. Both call the Bible God’s Word and both identify themselves with the Lutheran Confessions, but they approach questions of biblical authority differently.

Missouri Synod theologians certainly study literary forms, historical backgrounds, grammar, archaeology and the circumstances in which biblical books were written. What they reject is a method that allows historical criticism or contemporary moral judgment to conclude that Scripture itself teaches error. The LCMS position is essentially this: the culture can correct our interpretation of Scripture, but it can’t correct Scripture. That conviction influences nearly every major contemporary disagreement between the LCMS and ELCA.

The Lutheran Confessions

The LCMS doesn’t mean Scripture alone in the sense of “every Christian with a Bible should reinvent Christianity independently.” It is emphatically a confessional church. Missouri Synod pastors and congregations subscribe to the Book of Concord of 1580, containing the historic Lutheran Confessions. These include the Augsburg Confession, its Apology, Luther’s Small and Large Catechisms, the Smalcald Articles, and the Formula of Concord.

The LCMS doesn’t regard these documents as inspired Scripture. Instead, it believes they faithfully explain what Scripture teaches. Their authority is therefore derivative rather than independent. That’s an important distinction. The Bible is authoritative because it is God’s Word. The Lutheran Confessions are authoritative within the denomination because they correctly confess God’s Word. For the Missouri Synod, being Lutheran therefore means more than admiring Martin Luther and putting a rose on the church bulletin. There is actual theology attached.

Grace Alone

Like all classical Lutheran theology, the center of LCMS teaching is justification by grace through faith because of Christ. Human beings are sinners incapable of rescuing themselves. Good works, religious devotion, moral improvement and church membership can’t earn God’s favor. Christ lived, died and rose for sinners, and God declares the sinner righteous because of Christ.

Even faith itself isn’t treated as a human contribution that completes God’s work. The Holy Spirit creates faith through the means God has appointed, particularly the Word of the Gospel. The LCMS explicitly contrasts this understanding with approaches that describe conversion primarily as a person’s autonomous decision for Christ. That’s an important difference from much of American evangelical language. A Missouri Synod Lutheran may certainly say, “I believe in Jesus.” But the theological emphasis falls on what God did to create and sustain that faith, not upon the wisdom of the believer’s decision.

Law and Gospel

One of Lutheranism’s most useful theological distinctions is between Law and Gospel, and the Missouri Synod places enormous emphasis upon getting that distinction right. The Law reveals what God requires. It exposes sin, restrains evil, and shows human beings their need for salvation. But the Law can’t save us because sinful people don’t perfectly fulfill it. The Gospel is God’s announcement of what he has accomplished through Christ. Christ has borne sin, conquered death and obtained forgiveness. The Gospel doesn’t merely give sinners another set of instructions. It gives them a promise.

Walther considered properly distinguishing Law and Gospel essential to Christian preaching. If the Gospel becomes another law—“Jesus has done his part, now you’d better do yours”—grace has quietly been turned back into works. On the other hand, if the Law disappears, nobody knows what he needs to be saved from. Lutherans have spent five centuries insisting that both belong in the sermon. Just don’t mix them up.

Baptism Actually Does Something

This is where many Baptists and nondenominational Christians discover that conservative Lutheran doesn’t mean conservative Baptist. The Missouri Synod teaches baptismal regeneration. Baptism isn’t merely a public symbol showing that someone has already been saved. It is a means of grace through which God offers forgiveness, gives the Holy Spirit, creates or strengthens faith, and joins the baptized person to Christ. That’s why the LCMS baptizes infants.

The theological logic is almost the opposite of the typical Baptist argument. Baptists commonly say an infant shouldn’t be baptized because the infant can’t make a personal profession of faith. Lutherans answer that Baptism demonstrates precisely that salvation begins with God’s action rather than ours. An infant brings nothing impressive to Baptism. That’s the point. Grace is a gift.

Baptism Isn’t Magic

At the same time, Missouri Synod Lutherans don’t believe Baptism operates like a magical ceremony guaranteeing salvation regardless of subsequent unbelief. Faith and God’s promise belong together. A baptized person can later reject the faith given through God’s means of grace. The LCMS therefore rejects both the Baptist understanding of Baptism as primarily symbolic and the idea that receiving Baptism mechanically guarantees someone’s final salvation.

Luther’s Small Catechism asks what benefits Baptism gives and answers with remarkably strong language concerning forgiveness, deliverance and eternal salvation. Yet Luther also repeatedly directs Christians back toward faith in God’s promise. For Lutherans, Baptism isn’t mainly about what we say to God. It’s about what God says to us.

The Lord’s Supper

The LCMS likewise believes something very real happens in Holy Communion. Christ’s true body and blood are genuinely present with the bread and wine and are received by communicants. Missouri Synod Lutherans take Jesus’ words “This is my body” and “This is my blood” with striking literalness. But they reject the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. The LCMS doesn’t believe philosophical categories explaining a change in the substance of bread and wine are necessary or biblically warranted. Scripture continues to call the elements bread and wine while simultaneously identifying them with Christ’s body and blood.

Lutherans sometimes get irritated when their doctrine is called consubstantiation, because that’s not how they normally describe their own teaching. Their preferred approach is considerably simpler. Jesus said it, and they believe it. They don’t feel obligated to explain the molecular arrangement.

Closed Communion

Now we reach one of the LCMS practices that can surprise visitors. Missouri Synod congregations ordinarily practice closed Communion, sometimes described as close Communion. Communion isn’t understood merely as an individual’s private encounter with Jesus. Receiving the sacrament together publicly expresses a common confession of Christian faith. Consequently, someone who belongs to a church body with substantially different doctrine may be asked not to receive Communion at an LCMS altar.

That can feel unwelcoming to Christians accustomed to churches where virtually any professing believer is invited to participate. Missouri Synod Lutherans understand it differently. If Communion publicly says, among other things, “we confess this faith together,” inviting people who don’t actually confess that faith would make the action say something untrue.

Pastors also believe they have responsibility for the spiritual care of those receiving the sacrament. So when the Missouri Synod says, “We’re glad you’re here, but please talk with the pastor before receiving Communion,” it isn’t necessarily Lutheran code for “Go away.” It’s Lutheran code for “We take Communion very seriously.”

Worship

A traditional LCMS service can look remarkably liturgical to someone coming from an evangelical background. You’ll encounter an altar, cross, vestments, Scripture readings, confession and absolution, creeds, hymns, prayers, preaching and frequently Holy Communion. The church year follows Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost and the other seasons inherited from historic Christianity.

Some congregations incorporate contemporary music and less formal worship, and disagreements about worship style certainly exist within the denomination. But the underlying Lutheran structure remains centered upon Word and Sacrament. That phrase is important.

Lutherans don’t gather primarily to demonstrate their devotion to God. They gather because they believe God comes to serve them through his Word and Sacraments, giving forgiveness and strengthening faith. That’s why Lutheran worship is sometimes called the Divine Service – God acts first.

Confession and Absolution

Another practice that may surprise evangelicals is confession and absolution. A Lutheran pastor may stand before the congregation and pronounce forgiveness upon repentant sinners in Christ’s name. The congregation doesn’t believe the pastor personally possesses some independent power to forgive sins. The authority belongs to Christ. The pastor announces Christ’s promise.

Private confession also exists within Lutheran tradition, although it isn’t ordinarily mandatory in the way sacramental confession has functioned within Roman Catholicism. This is another example of Lutheranism retaining practices associated with historic Christianity while rejecting theological explanations it believes became distorted. Luther didn’t want to eliminate everything Catholics did. He wanted the gospel put back in the middle of it.

Pastors Are Men

Unlike the ELCA, the Missouri Synod doesn’t ordain women to the pastoral office. The LCMS teaches that Scripture reserves the pastoral office to qualified men, drawing particularly upon passages such as 1 Timothy 2, 1 Timothy 3 and 1 Corinthians 14. Women serve extensively throughout the denomination as teachers, missionaries, deaconesses, musicians, administrators, scholars and other church workers, but they aren’t ordained as pastors.

That puts the LCMS in direct disagreement with the ELCA, which has ordained women since the predecessor bodies began doing so in 1970. The difference isn’t primarily over whether women are capable, intelligent or spiritually gifted. Both denominations recognize that they are. The disagreement is hermeneutical: What has Scripture authorized concerning the pastoral office?

The ELCA and LCMS read those passages differently. And because the Missouri Synod believes Scripture can’t be revised by later cultural developments, it doesn’t regard changing social expectations as sufficient reason to change the practice.

Marriage and Sexuality

The LCMS maintains the historic Christian understanding of marriage as the union of one man and one woman and teaches that sexual relations belong within that marriage covenant. It therefore doesn’t perform same-sex marriages or ordain pastors living in same-sex sexual relationships.

Again, this places the Missouri Synod in sharp contrast with the ELCA. The difference became especially visible after the ELCA’s 2009 decisions concerning same-sex relationships and clergy. LCMS teaching also stresses that Christians should treat people experiencing same-sex attraction with dignity and compassion rather than contempt. The denomination distinguishes between temptation or attraction and sexual behavior, just as it does with other forms of sexual temptation.

For Missouri Synod Lutherans, the underlying issue isn’t whether modern society has changed its understanding of sexuality. The question is whether Scripture has changed. Their answer is no.

Creation

The LCMS also maintains a comparatively traditional interpretation of the biblical creation accounts. Its official doctrinal tradition has affirmed God’s direct creation of the world and of Adam and Eve and has resisted evolutionary explanations that it believes conflict with Scripture. This is another area in which Missouri Synod biblical interpretation tends to be considerably more conservative than that of the ELCA.

The deeper issue is once again hermeneutics. If Scripture makes historical claims about creation, Adam, the Fall or other events, can those claims be substantially reinterpreted when contemporary scientific theories point in another direction? Missouri’s instinct is to resist allowing an external authority to become the judge of Scripture. That doesn’t mean every LCMS member has identical opinions about every scientific question. It means the denomination begins with a very high doctrine of biblical reliability.

Evolution and Adam

The historicity of Adam and Eve matters particularly because Lutheran theology connects the Fall with the biblical explanation for sin and death. Paul’s comparison between Adam and Christ in Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 makes Adam more than an incidental character in Genesis. If the second Adam, Christ, is historical, conservative Lutherans argue that Paul’s reasoning appears to treat the first Adam historically as well.

That doesn’t answer every scientific question about the age of the earth, genetics, geology or the mechanisms involved in creation. Individual discussions can become considerably more complicated. But it helps explain why conservative Lutheran objections to evolutionary accounts aren’t merely the result of hostility toward science. They’re connected to a larger theological system involving creation, Fall, sin, death and redemption.

The Seminex Controversy

One of the most dramatic events in modern Missouri Synod history occurred during the 1970s and helps explain why biblical authority remains such a sensitive issue within the denomination. A major conflict developed at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis over biblical interpretation, historical-critical scholarship and the authority of Scripture. Synod president J. A. O. Preus and other conservatives believed portions of the seminary faculty were using methods inconsistent with the LCMS doctrine of biblical inspiration and inerrancy.

The dispute became enormous. In 1974, most of the seminary faculty and many students walked out and formed Seminex, short for Seminary in Exile. The controversy eventually contributed to a denominational realignment, with some congregations and leaders leaving the Missouri Synod and becoming part of other Lutheran bodies that ultimately helped form the ELCA. This wasn’t an obscure faculty dispute. It helped reshape American Lutheranism.

Missouri and the ELCA Take Different Roads

The Seminex controversy helps explain why the differences between the LCMS and ELCA are deeper than contemporary disagreements over sexuality. The fundamental question concerns biblical authority and interpretation. The Missouri Synod emerged from the twentieth-century conflicts determined to preserve biblical inerrancy and a binding subscription to the Lutheran Confessions. The streams eventually contributing to the ELCA became more accepting of historical-critical biblical scholarship and broader theological diversity.

Later disagreements about women pastors, sexuality, ecumenism and other issues developed within those larger approaches. So it would be misleading to say the denominations split because one became conservative and the other became liberal about sex. The theological fault line was visible much earlier. Sexuality eventually revealed how consequential that fault line had become.

Church Fellowship

The Missouri Synod maintains a relatively restrictive understanding of church fellowship. It doesn’t ordinarily participate in joint worship or altar fellowship with churches whose doctrine it believes contradicts Scripture. Formal fellowship between church bodies requires substantial doctrinal agreement rather than merely a willingness to cooperate.

That doesn’t mean Missouri Synod Christians believe everyone outside the LCMS is unsaved. They explicitly recognize Christians in other denominations. The distinction is between Christian recognition and church fellowship. A Baptist can genuinely belong to Christ while being wrong, from the Lutheran perspective, about Baptism and Communion. A Roman Catholic can genuinely trust Christ while belonging to a church whose teachings Missouri Lutherans reject at significant points. An ELCA Lutheran can genuinely be Christian while belonging to a denomination with which the LCMS doesn’t share altar and pulpit fellowship.

That’s an important distinction because otherwise closed Communion and restricted fellowship can look like claims that nobody outside Missouri is going to heaven. That’s not what they’re saying.

The Lutheran School

Education has been part of Missouri Synod identity almost from the beginning. The Saxon immigrants were so concerned about Christian education that they taught their children during the voyage to America and established schools shortly after settling in Missouri. All fourteen founding congregations represented when the Synod was organized in 1847 had Christian day schools. That tradition became enormous.

Today LCMS congregations operate what the denomination describes as the largest Protestant parochial school system in the United States, encompassing early childhood centers, elementary schools and high schools. This isn’t simply an educational sideline. Missouri Synod Lutherans have historically believed Christian education should integrate faith with the entire understanding of reality rather than adding a Bible class to an otherwise secular worldview.

Walther would recognize the concern immediately. He’d probably have opinions about the curriculum too. Walther had opinions about most things.

Concordia

The word Concordia appears everywhere in the Missouri Synod because it means agreement or harmony and recalls the Book of Concord. The LCMS operates two seminaries: Concordia Seminary in St. Louis and Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Its wider university system has also included several Concordia institutions devoted to Lutheran higher education.

Then there’s Concordia Publishing House, founded in St. Louis in the nineteenth century and still one of the major publishing institutions in American Lutheranism. It produces Bibles, catechisms, hymnals, theological books, Sunday-school materials and resources for congregations and schools. Once you’ve spent enough time around the Missouri Synod, you learn an important rule. If something is called Concordia, there’s a pretty good chance Lutherans are nearby.

Music

Music occupies a particularly important place in Lutheran Christianity. That shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with Johann Sebastian Bach, Lutheran chorales, or Martin Luther’s own enthusiasm for congregational singing. The Missouri Synod inherited that tradition enthusiastically.

Walther himself had substantial musical training, and the Saxon immigrants brought musical instruments, church bells and a music library with them when they emigrated. One of the ships carrying part of that equipment was lost at sea, including the pipe organ they had intended to bring to America. The Synod published its first hymnal in 1847, the same year the denomination was organized. That hymnal contained hundreds of hymns along with prayers, Luther’s Small Catechism and the Augsburg Confession.

Apparently Missouri Lutherans weren’t going to establish a denomination without getting the hymnal sorted out.

Missions

Despite its reputation for doctrinal conservatism and German immigrant roots, the LCMS developed a substantial missionary tradition. Early pastors ministered among waves of German immigrants scattered across the American frontier. The Synod subsequently expanded mission work internationally and today reports relationships and active mission work in nearly ninety countries.

The denomination’s stated mission emphasizes making Christ known through Word and deed, and its current mission priorities include church planting, theological education, humanitarian care, schools, youth ministry and international cooperation. That combination reflects classic Lutheran thinking. Humanitarian service matters enormously, but it shouldn’t become detached from proclamation of Christ.

Feed the neighbor because the neighbor needs food. Preach Christ because the neighbor needs Christ. Don’t make either one pretend to be the other.

Mercy

The LCMS frequently uses the categories Witness, Mercy and Life Together to describe dimensions of its work. Witness involves proclaiming the gospel. Mercy involves caring for people in physical, emotional and social need. Life Together involves the shared fellowship of Christians gathered around Christ’s gifts.

This helps correct the impression that doctrinal conservatism necessarily produces indifference toward practical ministry. LCMS congregations and agencies participate in disaster response, international relief, disability ministry, pregnancy support, refugee and immigrant ministry, food programs and numerous other forms of service.

The theological rationale isn’t that social action becomes the gospel. It’s that people who have received God’s mercy should become merciful toward their neighbors. Luther would have recognized that too.

Church Government

Despite the word Synod, the LCMS isn’t governed like the Roman Catholic Church or even like the ELCA’s episcopal structure.Local congregations retain considerable authority and voluntarily associate within the Synod. The denomination is divided into 35 districts, and national conventions meet every three years with representation divided between clergy and lay delegates.

The Synod has a president, currently Matthew C. Harrison, who has served since 2010, but the president isn’t a Lutheran pope. Congregations call their own pastors and conduct much of their own local governance while agreeing to operate within the doctrinal commitments and fellowship of the Synod. That structure reflects an important principle inherited from Walther: the local congregation possesses genuine ecclesiastical authority.

Bishops aren’t required to make the Church the Church. Christ and his Word are.

The LCMS Today

The Missouri Synod today reports nearly two million baptized members, more than 6,000 congregations and about 9,000 pastors. It operates two seminaries, colleges and universities, an extensive school system, publishing and media ministries, and international mission relationships approaching ninety countries. Those numbers make it the second-largest Lutheran denomination in the United States, behind the ELCA. But size doesn’t explain its importance. The LCMS has become one of the most influential institutional expressions of confessional Lutheranism in the English-speaking world.

Its identity remains remarkably consistent with the concerns that produced the denomination in 1847: Scripture, Lutheran doctrine, Word and Sacrament, theological education, Christian schools, missions and confessional unity. The language changed from German to English. The insistence on doctrine didn’t.

The LCMS and the ELCA

Putting the two denominations beside each other makes American Lutheranism much easier to understand. Both affirm the Trinity and ancient creeds. Both baptize infants. Both teach justification by grace through faith. Both celebrate Christ’s real presence in Communion. Both claim the Lutheran Confessions and the heritage of Martin Luther. Yet the differences are substantial.

The ELCA ordains women; the LCMS doesn’t. The ELCA permits same-sex marriage and LGBTQ clergy; the LCMS maintains traditional Christian sexual ethics. The ELCA participates extensively in full-communion relationships with other Protestant denominations; the LCMS requires greater doctrinal agreement for altar and pulpit fellowship. The ELCA permits historical-critical approaches to Scripture that the LCMS believes undermine biblical inerrancy; the LCMS explicitly confesses Scripture as without error.

So these aren’t two denominations disagreeing about whether they’re Lutheran. They’re two denominations disagreeing about what remaining faithfully Lutheran requires. That is a much more interesting disagreement.

Why the Missouri Synod Matters

The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod matters because it represents a form of Protestant conservatism that doesn’t fit neatly into the Baptist-and-nondenominational world most Americans associate with conservative Christianity.

Missouri Lutherans can be strongly conservative about biblical authority, marriage, the pastoral office and Christian doctrine while simultaneously baptizing babies, practicing liturgical worship, confessing baptismal regeneration, pronouncing absolution, wearing vestments, making the sign of the cross, following the historic church calendar, and believing Christ’s actual body and blood are received in Communion.

That combination can confuse American religious categories, but it shouldn’t. The Missouri Synod isn’t trying to be evangelicalism with a German accent. It’s trying to remain confessionally Lutheran. And that means the real comparison isn’t between conservative and liberal American Protestants. It’s between competing answers to the same question we encountered with the ELCA:

What does it mean to remain faithful to the Lutheran Reformation five hundred years later? The ELCA answers partly by allowing the tradition to be reinterpreted as the Church encounters new historical and cultural circumstances. The Missouri Synod answers by insisting that the Church remains free precisely when it stays bound to the apostolic Scriptures and the confession it believes faithfully explains them.