Theology of Lutheran Confessio

A book on the Lutheran confessions (or any confessional corpus) can go wrong in one of 2 directions. Such a book can be an unvarnished tribute, that sees no difficulties and no challenges in the confessions. Or a book can be slam on the confessions, a slash and burn coverage. Schlink walks a via media, managing to provide a critical (in the best sense of the word) overview of the confessions while at the same time standing under the confessions as a faithful student, learning, questioning, and helping the reader to do so at the same time. This is a challenging, engaging read, and was helpful both personally and ecclesiastically. I highly recommend it. I'd especially recommend the appendix, where Schlink works through some of the tough questions about the confessions and their engagement with the scriptures and the church fathers.

This is a good summary of Lutheran theology as found in the Book of Concord (Lutheran Confessions). I found it helpful to have read this before I tried reading the Book of Concord. It does not much go into any historical background for the Reformation era documents.