ELCA Lutherans confidently proclaim with all Christians that the authority of the Bible rests in God. We believe that God inspired the Bible’s many writers, editors and compilers. As they heard God speaking and discerned God’s activity in events around them in their own times and places, the Bible’s content took shape. Among other things, the literature they produced includes history, legal code, parables, letters of instruction, persuasion and encouragement, tales of heroism, love poetry and hymns of praise. The varying types and styles of literature found here all testify to faith in a God who acts by personally engaging men and women in human history.

The Christian church is made up of those who have been baptized and thus have received Christ as the Son of God and Savior of the world. Sometimes it is referred to as "the Body of Christ." Lutherans believe that they are a part of a community of faith that began with the gift of the Holy Spirit, God's presence with his people, on the day of Pentecost. The church, regardless of the external form it takes, is the fellowship of those who have been restored to God by Christ. Indeed, to be called into fellowship with Christ is also to be called into community with other believers.

"I believe that by my own reason or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him, but the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified and preserved me in the true faith."

For hundreds of years, Lutheran children have learned and often been asked to recite these words which introduce Martin Luther’s explanation of the third article of the Apostles' Creed (Luther's Small Catechism). ELCA Lutherans believe that the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies us in the faith, and that all of this flows from what we understand to be the Holy Spirit’s paramount work -- to reveal and glorify Christ, and to strengthen the believer’s faith.

"When the church, on the basis of the prophetic and apostolic witness, confesses one God it confesses its faith that the creator at the beginning of time and the re-creator at the end and the redeemer at the center of time is one God. And again, when the church, in obedience to the same witness, worships this one God by three distinct names, it recognizes and acknowledges the difference between creation, reconciliation, and redemption, and it confesses in the one God the three distinct persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit"
(Encyclopedia of the Lutheran Church).

ELCA theologian, Carl Braaten, writes: "(Jesus) is clearly depicted as the Messiah of Israel, God’s only Son, the Lord of creation, the Savior of all humanity. The New Testament abounds with titles which identify the uniqueness of Jesus. It is simply not possible to ... subtract these titles from the picture of the Man and have any real Jesus at all. We have no picture of Jesus as merely Jesus, to interpret as we please. The only Jesus we know is Jesus as the Christ, Son of God, Logos, Lord, Savior — all titles of highest possible honor, putting him in the place which Israel had reserved for God alone, so much so that ultimately the church’s "trinitarian formula (Father, Son and Holy Spirit)" (becomes) the only sound way to speak about the identity and meaning of Jesus. If we rightly read the New Testament, we learn that Jesus is not a son of God, but the only Son, not a savior, but the only Savior, not a Lord, but the Lord of lords, etc." Braaten goes on to say: "The special quality of Jesus’ uniqueness is best grasped in terms of his universal meaning. The concrete person, Jesus of Nazareth, is unique because of his unequaled universal significance. The point of his uniqueness underlines his universality. If Jesus is the Lord and Savior, he is the universal Lord and Savior, not merely my personal Lord and Savior."