John at Confessing Evangelical has a perceptive post comparing certain statements in Lutheran confessional documents with their counterparts in the Heidelberg Catechism. On all of the issues that he list, I am of the opinion that the Lutheran form is far to be preferred over the weaker Reformed form. Whilst the Heidelberg Catechism generally admits the possibility of strong positions on the sacraments, it is weak on this particular point. It should not be forgotten that many early Reformed Christians subscribed to the Augsburg Confession, and a number of them felt quite able to subscribe to the Invariata form.
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I don’t know. I think a lot of this tension exists because the strong covenant theology that presupposes a relationship with Christ and child before the official union w/ Christ in baptism. Knowing this isn’t the Lutheran paradigm, more is given to the act of Baptism because infants in covenant before Baptism isn’t a focus in Lutheranism.
I don’t concede the point that Heidelberg is “weaker”- rather, its focus on the Sacraments is different. Not better, but certainly not worse, than Augsburg. In fact I prefer Heidelberg because, unlike Augsburg, it doesn’t attempt to say too much.