“Quia Confessors” Take Time To Study “Book of Concord” Weekly
Quit Confessors read the “Book of Concord” in comfort. Photo by Janis Wagner.
By Daniel Heitshusen
The Lutheran Confessions found in the Lutheran “Book of Concord” is the focus of the “Quia Confessors” club on campus.
“Quia” is Latin for “because,” according to senior Aaron Ferguson. It is the club name because the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod “holds to a quia subscription of the ‘Book of Concord.’”
“It refers to the idea that we subscribe to the confessions because it’s a faithful explanation of Scripture,” senior Samuel Smith said. “And there’s another term, ‘quatenus,’ and that’s a fancy Latin word that means ‘in so far as,’ and the reason we hold a quia subscription, a ‘because’ subscription, is because we say this is the true and faithful interpretation of Scripture.”
The group started in 2016 after evening prayer one night.
“A couple of us were together in Aaron Ferguson’s dorm room,” senior Joseph Greenmyer said. “And we were just talking about how it would be nice if there was some sort of club where we could get together and read the Confessions together.”
The group is focused on reading the “Book of Concord.”
“What we do is we take a book or a text from the ‘Book of Concord,’ and we read through it,” Ferguson said. “The goal there is that enough of us have a diversified experience in education so that we can look at it and bring different insights into it. … We make it as applicable to our modern day and modern life as possible without losing the fact that this is a historic document.”
The group does not receive funding from Student Senate and was described as an informal group. Anyone who is interested in coming to their meetings is welcome. They currently meet at 10 a.m. on Saturdays in Ruth BC lounge, but that time is subject to change.
“Our goal is definitely not to provide something that replaces reading the Scriptures or is doing something other than doing a Bible study,” Greenmyer said. “But it is kind of our conviction that by studying the Confessions, you have a very good guide to reading the Scriptures and a helpful way to actually dig in deeper to them, no matter what they teach.”
