Lutheran vs Protestant: Lutherans Were the First Protestants

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Lutherans are Protestants, and they were the first to carry the name, which comes from a protest that reforming princes and cities lodged at the Diet of Speyer in 1529. They part from most later Protestants in what they teach about the sacraments and in how they worship. Lutherans teach that Christ’s body and blood are truly present in the Lord’s Supper and that baptism gives God’s grace to infants, and their worship stays close to the Mass.

Most of the difference turns on four words Jesus spoke at the Last Supper, when he took bread and said, “Take, eat; this is my body” (Matthew 26:26). Lutherans take him at his plain word. Other Protestants hear the same words and understand them another way, and when Luther and Zwingli met at Marburg in 1529, they could not agree. It is a real sorrow that Christians who love the same Lord have been divided over his own meal for nearly five hundred years, though the last fifty years have brought agreements too.

To see what Protestants teach beside what Lutherans teach on 55 questions, open our free tool, Compare Christian Denominations.

They differ mostly over the sacraments. Each Protestant family gives its own answer about the Lord’s Supper and baptism, and the Lutheran answer takes Christ’s words “this is my body” most literally.

How Lutherans and Protestants answer

Each answer is quoted from the church’s own documents or from one of our articles.

Losing salvation

Lutheran

They condemn the Anabaptists, who deny that those once justified can lose the Holy Ghost.

From Augsburg Confession, Article XII (Of Repentance)

Protestant (in general)

They, whom God hath accepted in his Beloved, effectually called, and sanctified by his Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved.

From Westminster Confession of Faith 17.1 (Reformed; text on opc.org)

God's choosing

Lutheran

The predestination or eternal election of God, however, extends only over the godly, beloved children of God, being a cause of their salvation, which He also provides, as well as disposes what belongs thereto.

From Formula of Concord, Epitome, Article XI (Election), 4

Protestant (in general)

God having, out of his mere good pleasure, from all eternity, elected some to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace, to deliver them out of the estate of sin and misery, and to bring them into an estate of salvation by a redeemer.

From Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q. 20 (Reformed; text on opc.org)

Baptism

Lutheran

Of Baptism they teach that it is necessary to salvation, and that through Baptism is offered the grace of God, and that children are to be baptized who, being offered to God through Baptism are received into God’s grace.

From Augsburg Confession, Article IX (Of Baptism)

Protestant (in general)

Not only those that do actually profess faith in and obedience unto Christ, but also the infants of one, or both, believing parents, are to be baptized.

From Westminster Confession of Faith 28.4 (Reformed; text on opc.org)

Communion

Lutheran

We believe, teach, and confess that in the Holy Supper the body and blood of Christ are truly and essentially present, and are truly distributed and received with the bread and wine.

From Formula of Concord, Epitome, Article VII (The Lord's Supper), 1

Protestant (in general)

Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements, in this sacrament, do then also, inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally but spiritually, receive, and feed upon, Christ crucified, and all benefits of his death

From Westminster Confession of Faith 29.7 (Reformed; text on opc.org)

Sacraments

Lutheran

Therefore Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and Absolution, which is the Sacrament of Repentance, are truly Sacraments. For these rites have God’s command and the promise of grace, which is peculiar to the New Testament.

From Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Article XIII (Of the Number and Use of the Sacraments)

Protestant (in general)

There be only two sacraments ordained by Christ our Lord in the Gospel; that is to say, baptism, and the Supper of the Lord: neither of which may be dispensed by any, but by a minister of the Word lawfully ordained.

From Westminster Confession of Faith 27.4 (Reformed; text on opc.org)

Women ministers

Lutheran

We believe that women may participate in offices and activities of the public ministry except where that work involves authority over men (1 Timothy 2:11,12). This means that women may not serve as pastors nor participate in assemblies of the church in ways that exercise authority over men (1 Corinthians 11:3; 14:33-35).

From WELS, This We Believe, Church and Ministry, 10 (the LCMS agrees; the ELCA ordains women)

Protestant (in general)

We recognize that there are different views sincerely held by those who seek to be faithful and obedient to Scripture. Some interpret apostolic teaching to imply that women should not teach or preach, or that they may do so but not in sole authority over men.

From Cape Town Commitment (Lausanne Movement, 2010), part II-F, 3B

Confession

Lutheran

Of Confession they teach that Private Absolution ought to be retained in the churches, although in confession an enumeration of all sins is not necessary.

From Augsburg Confession, Article XI (Of Confession)

Protestant (in general)

Moreover, the prodigal son and the publican in the Gospel, when compared with the Pharisee, present us with the most suitable pattern of how our sins are to be confessed to God.

From Second Helvetic Confession (1566), chapter 14 (CCEL text)

Purgatory

Lutheran

Therefore purgatory, and every solemnity, rite, and commerce connected with it, is to be regarded as nothing but a specter of the devil. For it conflicts with the chief article [which teaches] that only Christ, and not the works of men, are to help [set free] souls.

From Smalcald Articles, Part II, Article II (Of the Mass)

Protestant (in general)

the souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God, in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies. And the souls of the wicked are cast into hell, where they remain in torments and utter darkness, reserved to the judgment of the great day. Besides these two places, for souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledgeth none.

From Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 32.1 (Reformed)

See all 55 answers for these two churches

The name began with them at the second Diet of Speyer, in 1529. There the Emperor Charles V’s brother, Archduke Ferdinand, and the Catholic princes decided to enforce the Edict of Worms, which had condemned Luther and his writings. Six Lutheran princes and the leaders of fourteen free cities refused, and in April they lodged a written protest, and then a formal appeal. The church historian Philip Schaff lists the princes who signed, beginning with “the Elector John of Saxony,” and notes that the cities included “Strassburg and St. Gall of the Zwinglian persuasion.” So even the first Protestants did not agree about the Supper. Schaff records what came of it: “From this protest and appeal the Lutherans were called Protestants.”

The German reformers had another name for themselves. In the sixteenth century, as Christian History magazine puts it, “German reformers called themselves ‘evangelicals,’ French ‘Huguenots,’ and Swiss ‘Reformed.’” The German word lives on, for evangelisch still means Protestant, and the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) is the umbrella of the country’s Lutheran, Reformed and United regional churches.

Twelve years before Speyer, on 31 October 1517, Martin Luther sent his ninety-five theses on indulgences to Archbishop Albrecht of Mainz. He was an Augustinian friar who taught theology at the relatively new University of Wittenberg, and his letter to the archbishop survives with its date. Luther hammering the theses to the door of the Castle Church is the traditional story, and it may not have happened that way. The Reformation historian Timothy Wengert, introducing the first volume of The Annotated Luther, writes of “modern uncertainty about whether and on what day the 95 Theses may have been posted,” and adds that if they were posted, it was the ordinary way a professor invited a university debate. How Luther’s quarrel with Rome unfolded, and where Lutherans and Catholics stand today, is told in Lutheran vs Catholic.

Protestantism is the whole family of churches that came out of the sixteenth-century Reformation in the West, and Lutheranism is one branch of it, the oldest. Two other branches took shape in the same century: the Reformed churches, from Zurich and Geneva, and the Church of England.

Branch	Where it began	Chief confession
Lutheran	Wittenberg, Germany, with Martin Luther	Augsburg Confession (1530)
Reformed	Zurich and Geneva, with Zwingli and Calvin	Several; in English-speaking churches, the Westminster Confession (1646)
Anglican	England, in the break with Rome	Thirty-nine Articles (agreed in 1562)

Presbyterianism, in the words of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), “grew out of the theology and teachings of Protestant reformers such as John Calvin,” whose writings in Geneva “crystallized much of the Reformed thinking that came before him.” The Church of England counts itself among “the churches that broke with Rome” while keeping “a large amount of continuity” with the medieval church in its creeds, ministry and liturgy. Later families grew from these roots: the first Baptist church in England dates from 1612, and Methodists, Pentecostals and many others came afterwards, every one of them Protestant. So to ask how Lutherans differ from Protestants is really to ask how they differ from the other branches.

They share the heart of the Reformation, that a sinner is made right with God by grace, through faith in Christ. Paul put it in one sentence: “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law” (Romans 3:28). The Augsburg Confession, which Elector John of Saxony and other Lutheran princes and cities presented to the Emperor in 1530, says it at more length: people “cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works, but are freely justified for Christ’s sake, through faith.” The Westminster Confession, the Thirty-nine Articles, the Methodist Articles and the Baptist Faith and Message all teach the same in their own words, whatever divides these churches at the Lord’s table.

Lutherans also keep the creeds of the early church. The first article of the Augsburg Confession says that “the decree of the Council of Nicaea concerning the Unity of the Divine Essence and concerning the Three Persons, is true and to be believed without any doubting,” and the Lutheran Book of Concord opens with the Apostles’, Nicene and Athanasian Creeds. That shared ground, the faith Christians have confessed since the first centuries, is the subject of Christianity: What Christians Have Believed for 2,000 Years, a free course in short lessons.

Lutherans believe Christ is truly present, and here runs the clearest line between them and the rest of Protestantism. Article X of the Augsburg Confession teaches “that the Body and Blood of Christ are truly present, and are distributed to those who eat the Supper of the Lord.” Luther’s Small Catechism of 1529 asks, “What is the Sacrament of the Altar?” and answers in one sentence: “It is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, under the bread and wine, for us Christians to eat and to drink, instituted by Christ Himself.”

The Lutheran reason is the plain sense of what Jesus said: “Take, eat; this is my body.” Paul asks, “The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16). The Formula of Concord of 1577 calls this a “sacramental union” of the bread and the body of Christ. It explains that the phrases “under the bread, with the bread, in the bread” are used so that the Catholic teaching of transubstantiation “may be rejected” and the union of “the unchanged essence of the bread and of the body of Christ” affirmed. You will often see the Lutheran view called “consubstantiation,” but that word is not used in the Augsburg Confession or in the Formula’s article on the Supper.

Luther and Zwingli argued the point in person at Marburg in October 1529. They agreed on fourteen articles, and they signed a fifteenth that recorded the one thing they could not settle: whether “the true body and blood of Christ are corporally present in the bread and wine.” The Reformed confessions that followed took a place between the two. The Westminster Confession says that believers “really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally but spiritually, receive, and feed upon, Christ crucified,” whose body and blood are present “not corporally or carnally, in, with, or under the bread and wine” but spiritually, “to the faith of believers.” The Thirty-nine Articles say that the body of Christ “is given, taken, and eaten, in the Supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner,” and the Methodist Articles repeat the sentence almost word for word. The Baptist Faith and Message calls the Supper “a symbolic act of obedience” in which church members “memorialize the death of the Redeemer and anticipate His second coming.” It takes up the other words Jesus spoke that night: “this do in remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians 11:24).

Their confessions teach that baptism gives God’s grace, and that children receive it too. The Augsburg Confession teaches that baptism is “necessary to salvation,” that “through Baptism is offered the grace of God,” and “that children are to be baptized who, being offered to God through Baptism are received into God’s grace.” The Small Catechism says that baptism “works forgiveness of sins, delivers from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this.” It is not the water that does this, the Catechism explains, “but the word of God which is in and with the water, and faith, which trusts such word of God in the water.” It quotes Paul on “the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost” (Titus 3:5), and Christ’s own promise: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved” (Mark 16:16).

Reformed, Anglican and Methodist churches baptize infants too, though they describe baptism differently. The Westminster Confession calls it “a sign and seal of the covenant of grace” and teaches that “the infants of one, or both, believing parents, are to be baptized.” The Thirty-nine Articles call it “a sign of Regeneration or new Birth, whereby, as by an instrument, they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the Church.” The Methodist Articles keep the first half of that sentence and leave out the second. Baptists baptize only those who profess faith: “Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water,” says the Baptist Faith and Message.

Lutheran worship stays close to the Mass in its shape. When Lutherans were charged with abolishing the Mass, the Augsburg Confession answered: “the Mass is retained among us, and celebrated with the highest reverence. Nearly all the usual ceremonies are also preserved, save that the parts sung in Latin are interspersed here and there with German hymns.” Today the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) describes “a basic pattern for worship among Lutherans”: the people gather, hear God’s word “in scripture, preaching and song,” “share a meal at Christ’s table,” and are sent out. Its Sunday readings are set by a three-year lectionary that follows the church year. That is why people sometimes ask whether Lutherans are Protestant or Catholic. They are Protestant in their doctrine, and in their worship they kept much of what came before.

Among other Protestants, worship ranges widely. The Westminster Confession limits worship to what God has appointed and rules out worshipping him in “any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scripture,” which has made Presbyterian services traditionally plainer. Anglicans pray from the Book of Common Prayer. The United Methodist Church follows a “basic pattern” of Word and Table, which its Book of Worship traces to “the Wesleyan revival.” Baptist congregations each govern themselves and order their own services.

Lutherans do believe in predestination, but only to salvation. The Formula of Concord teaches that God’s election “extends only over the godly, beloved children of God, being a cause of their salvation,” and that Christ “calls to Himself all sinners.” It cites Peter’s words that God “is not willing that any should perish.” The Westminster Confession goes further: “By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life; and others foreordained to everlasting death.” That is a hard sentence, and the Lutheran confession stops short of it. Calvinism vs Lutheranism sets the two side by side.

Church	Predestination	Who governs
Lutheran	Election to salvation only; Christ calls all	Synods; in the ELCA, bishops
Reformed and Presbyterian	Some to life, others to death	Elders in presbyteries and synods
Anglican	Predestination to life	Bishops
Methodist	Grace that comes first, freeing the will	Conferences and bishops
Southern Baptist	Election “consistent with the free agency of man”	Each congregation

The Anglican Article XVII speaks of “Predestination to Life” and is silent about a decree to damnation. The Methodist Articles teach that no one can turn to God “without the grace of God by Christ preventing us,” that is, going before us, which United Methodists call prevenient grace. Lutheran churches govern themselves in more than one way. The ELCA had 65 synods in 2026, and “each synod elects a bishop.” The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) is a synod of congregations, 5,767 of them in 2024, led by an elected president.

There are many Lutheran churches, and they do not all agree. In the United States the best-known Lutheran bodies part ways on two practical questions: who may be ordained, and who may receive Communion.

• The ELCA, formed in 1988 from three Lutheran bodies, with 2,588,700 baptized members at the end of 2025. It ordains women. The first woman ordained by a Lutheran church body in North America was ordained in 1970, eighteen years before the ELCA was formed. Its congregations practice what it calls “eucharistic hospitality”: “All baptized persons are welcomed to Communion when they are visiting in the congregations of this church.”
• The LCMS, with 1,674,315 baptized members in 2024. It holds that women “may not serve in the office of pastor,” and it ordinarily gives Communion only to members of church bodies in fellowship with it, which it calls close or closed Communion; its president writes that “close,” “closed” and “close(d)” “all mean the same thing,” and its resolutions leave room for pastoral discretion.
• The Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS), which teaches that “women may not serve as pastors” and whose “normal practice is to commune only members of our congregations and individuals who belong to congregations in fellowship with WELS.”

Worldwide, the Lutheran World Federation had 153 member churches in 2026, representing “over 78 million Christians in the Lutheran tradition in 99 countries.” The LCMS belongs to a separate body, the International Lutheran Council, an association of confessional Lutheran churches. In Germany the Lutheran regional churches belong to the Evangelical Church in Germany alongside Reformed and United churches, and eight of them also form the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany “to preserve Lutheran identity.”

In many churches they can, by formal agreement. In Europe the Leuenberg Agreement of 1973 brought Protestant churches to recognize one another. The Communion of Protestant Churches in Europe, which grew out of it, had 96 Lutheran, Reformed, United and Methodist member churches in 2026, and it sums up what that means: “a Lutheran pastor can preach from a Reformed pulpit and a Reformed believer can receive communion at a Lutheran service.” In the Porvoo Communion, established in 1992, Anglican and Lutheran churches in Europe share full communion.

In the United States the ELCA entered full communion with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Reformed Church in America and the United Church of Christ in 1997, with the Episcopal Church and the Moravian Church in 1999, and with the United Methodist Church in 2009. Full communion, the ELCA explains, “does not require merging”; the churches recognize each other’s baptism, share the Lord’s Supper and may exchange clergy. The 1997 agreement with the Reformed churches admitted plainly that the old quarrel of Marburg remained. It said that remaining differences “must be acknowledged, even to the extent of their irreconcilability,” and still judged them “not church-dividing.” The LCMS and WELS take the opposite view. WELS shares Communion only with churches “whose confession of faith submits to all the teachings of Scripture,” and the LCMS treats the Supper as “a confession of the unity of faith.”

Nearly five hundred years after Marburg, Christians still understand Christ’s words differently, and still come to hear them said over the bread: “Take, eat; this is my body” (Matthew 26:26).

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• Lutheran vs Presbyterian: What Is the Difference?
• Lutheran vs Methodist: Free Will, Baptism and Communion
• Protestant vs Anglican: Do They Have Different Beliefs?
• Reformed vs Protestant: What Is the Difference?
• Protestant vs Baptist: Are Baptists Protestant?
• Lutheran vs Baptist: Two Views of Baptism, Communion and Faith
• What Do Lutherans Believe? Grace, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper

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