Lutheran vs. Eastern Orthodox: Scripture, Salvation and Communion Compared

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Lutherans and Eastern Orthodox Christians share much of the ancient faith, and they part over authority and salvation. Both say the Nicene Creed, baptize infants and believe Christ’s body and blood are truly present in Communion. Lutherans stand on Scripture alone and justification by faith. The Orthodox read Scripture within Holy Tradition and speak of salvation as union with God.

Topic	Lutheran	Eastern Orthodox
Origins	The Reformation in Germany; Augsburg Confession, 1530	The apostolic churches of the East; separate from Rome since 1054
Size	Over 78 million in Lutheran World Federation churches	Over 200 million (Pew, 2017)
Final authority	Scripture alone, confessed in the Book of Concord	Scripture, first within Holy Tradition
The Holy Spirit in the Creed	Proceeds “from the Father and the Son”	Proceeds from the Father; “and the Son” rejected
Salvation	Justified by grace through faith, for Christ’s sake	Theosis: sharing by grace in God’s life
Sacraments	Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, Absolution; the count left open	Usually seven holy mysteries
Communion	Body and blood truly present; ELCA open, LCMS close	Bread and wine become Christ’s Body and Blood; Orthodox only
Saints and icons	Honored as examples, not invoked	Icons venerated; saints asked to pray
Mary	Mother of God, who remained a virgin	Theotokos (God-bearer), ever-virgin
Clergy	Pastors may marry; ELCA ordains women, LCMS does not	Men only; married priests, unmarried bishops
Confession	Private absolution, counted a sacrament	Penance, one of the holy mysteries

Where Lutherans and Eastern Orthodox Christians differ

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

Creation

Lutheran

We teach that God has created heaven and earth, and that in the manner and in the space of time recorded in the Holy Scriptures, especially Gen. 1 and 2, namely, by His almighty creative word, and in six days.

From Brief Statement of the Doctrinal Position of the Missouri Synod (1932), 5, 'Of Creation'

Eastern Orthodox

The main doctrinal point about creation is that God alone is uncreated and ever-existing. Everything which exists besides God was created by Him. God, however, did not create everything individually and all at once, so to speak.

From Orthodox Church in America, The Orthodox Faith, vol. 1: Creation

The Holy Spirit's origin

Lutheran

And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified; who spake by the Prophets.

From The Nicene Creed, as printed in the Book of Concord

Eastern Orthodox

Orthodox doctrine confesses that God the Father is the eternal origin and source of the Spirit, just as He is the source of the Son.

From The Orthodox Faith (OCA), Vol. I, The Symbol of Faith: The Holy Spirit

Salvation

Lutheran

Also they teach that men cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works, but are freely justified for Christ’s sake, through faith, when they believe that they are received into favor, and that their sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, who, by His death, has made satisfaction for our sins.

From Augsburg Confession, Article IV (Of Justification)

Eastern Orthodox

Man was created with the potential to be a “partaker of the divine nature,” to refer to the Apostle Peter once more (2 Pet 1.4). It is this participation in divinity, called theosis (which literally means deification or divinization) in Orthodox theology, that the ascension of Christ has fulfilled for humanity.

From The Orthodox Faith (OCA), Vol. I, The Symbol of Faith: Ascension

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

Eastern Orthodox

If some men refuse the gift of life in communion with God, the Lord can only honor this refusal and respect the freedom of His creatures which He Himself has given and will not take back.

From Orthodox Church in America, The Orthodox Faith, vol. 1: Judgment

Who takes Communion

Lutheran

Members in good standing of the LCMS and her sister church bodies may commune at LCMS congregations. This practice, known variably as close, closed or close(d) Communion, stands in contrast to open Communion, whereby anyone who desires may commune regardless of profession of faith or member status.

From LCMS, What We Believe, Frequently Asked Questions (lcms.org)

Eastern Orthodox

The eucharist is always given to all members of the Church, including infants who are baptized and confirmed. It is always given in both forms—bread and wine.

From The Orthodox Faith (OCA), Vol. II, The Sacraments: Holy Eucharist

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)

Eastern Orthodox

The sacraments in the Orthodox Church are officially called the “holy mysteries.” Usually seven sacraments are counted: baptism, chrismation (or confirmation), holy eucharist, penance, matrimony, holy orders and the unction of the sick.

From The Orthodox Faith (OCA), Vol. II, The Sacraments

Leadership

Lutheran

Each synod elects a bishop to oversee its ministry and administration. Together with the ELCA’s presiding bishop and secretary, these 65 bishops form the Conference of Bishops, offering leadership, counsel and vision for the whole church.

From ELCA, Church Structure: Synods (the LCMS is led by an elected president)

Eastern Orthodox

The Orthodox Church as a whole is the unity of what are called local autocephalous or autonomous churches. These words mean simply that these churches govern themselves, electing their own bishops and organizing their own lives.

From OCA Questions & Answers: How is the Orthodox Church organized

Praying to saints

Lutheran

But the Scripture teaches not the invocation of saints or to ask help of saints, since it sets before us the one Christ as the Mediator, Propitiation, High Priest, and Intercessor.

From Augsburg Confession, Article XXI (Of the Worship of Saints)

Eastern Orthodox

In the Church we also pray to the saints—not in the same way as we pray to the Persons of the Holy Trinity, but as our helpers, intercessors, and fellow-members of the Church who are already glorified with God in his divine presence.

From The Orthodox Faith (OCA), Vol. II, Daily Cycles of Prayer: Prayer

See all 55 answers for these two churches

They are not yet in communion with each other, so a Lutheran at an Orthodox Divine Liturgy does not come forward to receive. Still, the two have been talking for a long time. Lutheran theologians in Tübingen wrote to the Patriarch of Constantinople in the 1570s, and an international dialogue between the Orthodox churches and the Lutheran World Federation has met since 1981. In 2024 that dialogue suggested saying the Creed without the phrase that has divided East and West for centuries. So the Creed both churches already say on Sunday is also the place where they hope, one day, to say every word together.

“Lutheran” here means the churches that keep the Augsburg Confession of 1530 and the other confessions gathered in the Book of Concord of 1580, among them the Apology (a defense of the Augsburg Confession), the Smalcald Articles and the Formula of Concord, all quoted below. The member churches of the Lutheran World Federation count over 78 million people in 99 countries. In the United States, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) differ on several of the points below. The LCMS voted in 1956 not to join the federation, and the Lutheran synods are not one church.

“Orthodox” means the Eastern Orthodox churches. Pew counted nearly 260 million Orthodox Christians in 2017, more than 100 million of them in Russia. About 80 percent belong to the Eastern Orthodox churches; the rest belong to the Oriental Orthodox churches of Ethiopia, Egypt, Armenia and elsewhere, which this comparison does not cover. In North America the Eastern Orthodox include the Orthodox Church in America (OCA).

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

Much is shared. Both accept the Council of Nicaea’s teaching on the Trinity; the Augsburg Confession opens by calling it “true and to be believed without any doubting.” Both baptize children. The Augsburg Confession teaches “that children are to be baptized,” and at an Orthodox baptism the godparent speaks the Creed on the child’s behalf and receives the child from the water.

Both worship in a liturgy. When opponents accused the Lutherans of abolishing the Mass, the Augsburg Confession answered that “the Mass is retained among us, and celebrated with the highest reverence.” Both keep confession to a pastor: Lutherans teach “that Private Absolution ought to be retained in the churches,” and the Orthodox count penance among their holy mysteries. Both have married clergy, though an Orthodox priest must marry before he is ordained. And both call Mary the Mother of God.

The Missouri Synod states the first difference plainly: “Unlike the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, the LCMS holds to Scripture alone as the final doctrinal authority for the Christian.” Its congregations hold the confessions of the Book of Concord to be “a correct interpretation and presentation of biblical doctrine.”

The Orthodox do not set Scripture against Tradition. The OCA’s handbook says that “the gospels and the other writings of the apostolic church form the heart of the Christian tradition.” Within that Tradition, it says, “the Bible holds the first place,” followed by the liturgy, the councils, the Church Fathers, the lives of the saints, the canons and church art. This was the point that ended the first Lutheran–Orthodox exchange. According to the OCA, the sixteenth-century dialogue “collapsed principally on the issue of the role of the Church Fathers in the proper interpretation of the Holy Scriptures.”

For Lutherans the center is justification. The Augsburg Confession teaches that people “cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merits, or works, but are freely justified for Christ’s sake, through faith.” They hear this in Paul: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9). Good works follow, because “this faith is bound to bring forth good fruits,” but no one should “rely on those works to merit justification before God.”

The Orthodox more often describe salvation as theosis, or deification: sharing by grace in the life of God. They take the language from 2 Peter 1:4, which promises that believers “may become partakers of the divine nature,” and from St. Athanasius, who wrote of Christ, “He was made man that we might be made God.” The OCA’s handbook calls the “deification” of man by the grace of God, “the so-called theosis,” the essence of Christianity, together with “the acquisition of the Holy Spirit.” Fr. John Breck, writing for the OCA, describes deification as “a real and eternal participation in the Life of the Holy Trinity.” He agrees with Protestants that no one gets there alone: “We can never attain holiness, never achieve sanctity, through our own actions or merits.”

Both accounts call salvation God’s gift in Christ. They begin in different places. Lutherans start from God’s verdict of forgiveness, received by faith alone. The Orthodox start from a lifelong transformation in which the believer shares ever more fully, by grace, in the life of God.

Lutherans say the Nicene Creed as the Western churches received it. The Book of Concord confesses the Holy Ghost “who proceedeth from the Father and the Son.” The Orthodox say only “from the Father,” following Jesus’ words about “the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father” (John 15:26). The OCA calls the added phrase, filioque in Latin, “a doctrinal addition unacceptable to Orthodoxy since it is both unscriptural and inconsistent with the Orthodox vision of God.”

The same phrase stands between the Orthodox and Rome, which is why it comes up in every comparison of Catholics and Orthodox as well. The Lutherans kept the Western wording, and when Patriarch Jeremias II answered them in 1576, he faulted it.

In May 2024, meeting in Cairo, the joint commission of the Lutheran World Federation and the Orthodox churches adopted a common statement on the phrase. Both sides “suggest that the translation of the Greek original (without the Filioque) be used,” in the hope that this will “enable us to confess together the faith of the Ecumenical Councils of Nicæa (325) and Constantinople (381).” It is a suggestion, not a rule, and it came from the federation’s dialogue, which the LCMS is not part of.

Both churches believe Christ is truly present in the sacrament. 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.” The Orthodox say the bread and wine become Christ’s Body and Blood, and they decline to explain how. The OCA’s handbook regrets that past explanations “often became too rationalistic and too closely connected with certain human philosophies.”

Who may receive is the sharper difference. The OCA is direct: “Orthodox Christianity does not permit its faithful to receive Holy Communion in non-Orthodox communities, whether they be Roman Catholic, Protestant, or whatever.” The reason it gives is that “the Eucharist is the result of unity, not the means by which unity is achieved.” A Lutheran visiting an Orthodox liturgy therefore does not come forward for Communion. Within the Orthodox Church, Communion is given to every baptized member, infants included, from the day of their baptism and chrismation.

Lutherans disagree among themselves here. The ELCA practices what it calls eucharistic hospitality: “All baptized persons are welcomed to Communion when they are visiting in the congregations of this church.” It also asks its congregations “to be sensitive to the eucharistic practices of the churches from which visitors may come,” and tells its own members visiting other churches to “respect the practices of the host congregation.” The LCMS practices close communion: “Members in good standing of the LCMS and her sister church bodies may commune at LCMS congregations,” and its pastors may “exercise discretion in special cases or emergencies.” So an Orthodox Christian at an ELCA service is invited by the ELCA, and asked by their own church not to receive.

The Apology of the Augsburg Confession names three rites that carry God’s command and promise: “Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and Absolution, which is the Sacrament of Repentance, are truly Sacraments.” It does not insist on the number. Different counts, it says, are not “of any consequence” so long as what Scripture hands down is kept, and it is “not unwilling to call ordination a sacrament” when ordination means the ministry of the Word.

The Orthodox call the sacraments the holy mysteries. “Usually seven sacraments are counted,” the OCA writes: baptism, chrismation, the eucharist, penance, marriage, holy orders and the anointing of the sick. It adds that counting them was “adopted in the Orthodox Church from the Roman Catholics” and that the older practice sees everything in the Church’s life as sacramental. Chrismation, the anointing that gives the gift of the Holy Spirit, follows baptism in the same service.

The Second Council of Nicaea in 787 defended images of Christ, of Mary, of the angels and of the saints, and told the faithful to give them “the tribute of salutation and respectful veneration.” The council drew a line: this is not the adoration “which is properly paid only to the divine nature.” Asking the saints to pray is part of ordinary Orthodox life. Fr. Thomas Hopko, a theologian of the OCA, called it “characteristic of Eastern Orthodox worship, both liturgical and personal,” and gave examples such as “Most-holy Theotokos, intercede for us sinners.”

Lutherans honor the saints differently. The Augsburg Confession says “the memory of saints may be set before us, that we may follow their faith and good works,” but that “the Scripture teaches not the invocation of saints or to ask help of saints, since it sets before us the one Christ as the Mediator.” The Apology grants that the saints in heaven “pray for the Church in general,” as they did on earth. It finds no command, promise or example in Scripture for calling on them, so Lutherans do not.

On Mary the two stand close. The Lutheran Formula of Concord says “she is truly the mother of God, and nevertheless remained a virgin,” and the Apology calls her “most worthy of the most ample honors.” The Second Council of Nicaea confesses her “really and truly the God-bearer” and calls her “Mary the ever-virgin.” The difference is prayer. The Apology grants that Mary prays for the Church, but the Lutheran confessions do not invoke her and warn against making her “equal to Christ,” while the Orthodox ask for her intercession.

Lutheran pastors may marry; the Augsburg Confession defended the marriage of priests in 1530. On who may be ordained, the Lutheran bodies part ways. The ELCA ordains women, and the LCMS lists “a male-only pastoral office” among the matters on which it differs from the ELCA.

In the Orthodox Church “a married man may be ordained to the priesthood,” the OCA explains, but the marriage must be the first for both husband and wife, and a man ordained single may not marry afterward. Bishops are different: “Since the sixth century it has been the rule in the Orthodox Church that the bishops be single men or widowers,” and they are usually monks. The Orthodox ordain only men to the priesthood. An inter-Orthodox consultation at Rhodes in 1988 declared that ordaining women would be a violation of the apostolic faith and the order of the Church, while recommending that the order of deaconesses be revived.

Orthodox Christians pray for the departed from the moment of death. Memorial services, often called the Panikhida, are held before the funeral and on the third, ninth and fortieth days after a death, and at any other time a family asks.

The Lutheran confessions reject purgatory, calling it in the Smalcald Articles “nothing but a specter of the devil,” because only Christ sets souls free. They do not forbid prayer for the dead. The Apology says that “the ancients speak of prayer for the dead, which we do not prohibit.” It also sides with Epiphanius, an ancient Church writer, against Aerius, a teacher condemned in the early Church, who held “that prayers for the dead are useless”: “Neither do we favor Aerius.”

The first real conversation between the two churches took place from about 1575 to 1581. Lutheran theologians at the University of Tübingen sent Patriarch Jeremias II a Greek translation of the Augsburg Confession, hoping for an ally against the papacy. The answer was no. The patriarch’s reply of May 15, 1576, written for him by Theodosios Zygomalas, an official of the patriarchate, gave the Greek Church’s first official verdict on Lutheranism. The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, a Protestant reference work of the early twentieth century, says Lutheranism was “definitely rejected.” The reply praised the Lutheran articles on the church, the ministry, the marriage of priests and the last things. It censured the filioque and what the encyclopedia calls the Lutherans’ “depreciation of good works,” and it defended seven sacraments and monastic vows. Two more rounds of letters followed. The patriarch’s last answer, of June 6, 1581, “was curt and final.”

Talks resumed in the twentieth century. The Protestant Church in Germany began a dialogue with the Moscow Patriarchate in 1959, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland began one with the Russian Orthodox Church in 1970. Official conversations between the Orthodox churches and the Lutheran World Federation began in 1981 in Espoo, Finland, after three years of preparation. The joint commission has studied baptism and chrismation (2004) and the Eucharist (2006), marked its fortieth anniversary in Wittenberg in 2023, and issued its common statement on the filioque in 2024.

Yes to both. The OCA has answered the first question for someone baptized in a Lutheran church. “The general practice throughout the OCA parishes” is that a person baptized “In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” is not baptized again but is received “through the Sacraments of Chrismation, Penance, and the Eucharist, together with a statement of faith.” Someone who was never baptized, or was baptized with another formula, is baptized. That answer describes the OCA’s own parishes, so a Lutheran approaching another Orthodox church should ask its priest how converts are received there.

Marriage is possible too. The Orthodox Church teaches that its sacrament of marriage belongs to its own members, but “an Orthodox may be married in the Church with a baptized non-Orthodox Christian.” The Orthodox partner must be married with the Church’s prayers and blessings, in the Orthodox wedding service, to remain a member of the Orthodox Church. The OCA attaches one condition: that both “sincerely work and pray for their full unity in Christ, without any coercion or forceful domination by either one over the other.” What the two churches have sought for four centuries in letters and commissions, a husband and wife are asked to seek at home, side by side, in prayer.

• Catholic vs Orthodox
• Lutheran vs Roman Catholic: A Comparison
• Calvinism vs Lutheranism
• Baptist vs. Eastern Orthodox Beliefs
• Which Is the Most Conservative Lutheran Synod?
• What Do Lutherans Believe? Grace, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper

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