One of the many ways unity in the church is envisioned. See here for a Lutheran perspective.
About one week ago, there was an interesting discussion promoted by the journal First Things at Biola University (watch it here) where theologians Peter Leithart, Fred Sanders, and Carl Trueman discussed “The Future of Protestantism”. Among the many interesting topics discussed were efforts towards unity among Protestants as well as how Protestants should relate to Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. After the event Trueman, shared a reflection on the discussion and brought up the practical concerns he had.
In any case, this talk about efforts towards unity and practical matters (Trueman mentioned some of these in the discussion as well) put me in mind of the things that my pastor, Paul Strawn, had recently said at a conference of Confessional Lutherans in a very well-received paper. It’s title is “The Elephant in the Confessional Lutheran Room: When Considerations Other Than Theology Hamper Theological Concord”, and you can read the whole thing here.
He begins his paper with a fascinating but little known [back]story about the much trumpeted Joint Declaration on Justification. According to the Wikipedia article (which I know provides a good summary [note from Nathan as librarian: citing from Wikipedia is usually not advisable]):
“The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ) is a document created, and agreed to, by the Catholic Church’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU) and the Lutheran World Federation in 1999, as a result of extensive ecumenical dialogue. It states that the churches now share “a common understanding of our justification by God’s grace through faith in Christ.”[1] To the parties involved, this essentially resolves the conflict over the nature of justification which was at the root of the Protestant Reformation.”
Here is the insightful beginning to Strawn’s paper:
Church history is full of instances of theological agreements being reached as a result of non-theological factors being brought to bear upon a given situation. One recent example was brought to light in a scarcely noticed article appearing in English translation first in 1994[1], by Wolfgang Bienert, professor of patristic studies at Marburg University and participant in the ecumenical dialog between representatives of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU) of the Roman Catholic church. There Bienert sketched the enigmatic methodologies, the ecclesiastical politics, deployed to achieve some sort of ecumenical agreement in the afterglow of Pope John Paul II’s visit to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1980.[2] At that time, a commission was established, comprised of representatives of the Roman Catholic conference of German bishops, the Vatican Secretariat for the Unity of Christendom, and the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany and, in the giddiness of the moment, given this curious mandate:
“…to express in a binding fashion, that the condemnations of the sixteenth century do not confront the contemporary partner, since its doctrine is not determined by the same error that the condemnation was meant to renounce.”[3]
According to Bienert, the idea that the reciprocal condemnations of the sixteenth century[4] no longer were applicable to the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches respectively, was simply assumed to be true by those issuing the mandate. All that was needed was some sort official declaration of that predetermined reality.[5] To its credit, the Ecumenical Study Group assigned this task, a group founded in 1946 by then Cardinal Lorenz Jäger (1892-1975) and Lutheran Bishop D. Wilhelm Stählin (1883-1975), returned a report entitled: “The Condemnations of the Reformation Confessional Documents and in the Doctrinal Decisions of the Council of Trent: Do They Still [emphasis mine] Confront the Contemporary Partner?”[6] There they noted that simply declaring that the condemnations of the sixteenth century void was problematic, not the least because at a minimum, the condemnations could not all be weighted equally:
“About some of the condemnations of the sixteenth century, we must say today, that they are based on a misunderstanding of the opposite position. Others no longer address the contemporary partner. Concerning still others, new insights have led to a wide degree of understanding. About some statements of condemnations, however, even today no adequate consensus can be discovered.”
It was the condemnations, over which “no adequate consensus [could] be discovered” which proved to be most problematic. Why? The Study Group realized that such reciprocal doctrinal condemnations could not be lifted, because “that would mean that at the same time the existing confessions would have to be annulled.”[7] In other words, since the condemnation statements of the Book of Concord and the Council of Trent flowed from and were a part of the theologies contained in both confessions respectively, declaring the former null and void negated the latter. That could not be done.
So how then was the enigmatic Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ) signed by the parties involved in 1999? By declaring that the reciprocal condemnations of each other’s doctrine of justification, did not apply to the doctrine as it was expressed in the JDDJ:
“41.Thus the doctrinal condemnations of the 16th century, in so far as they
relate to the doctrine of justification, appear in a new light: The teaching of
the Lutheran churches presented in this Declaration [emphasis added] does not fall under the
condemnations from the Council of Trent. The condemnations in the Lutheran
Confessions do not apply to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church presented
in this Declaration [Emphasis added]”[8]
Where there is a will, there is a way. The reciprocal condemnations of the doctrines of Justification of the Roman Catholic and Lutheran confessions are considered no longer to apply to today’s ecumenical partner, even though priests in the Roman Catholic church at their ordination are still obligated to the doctrine as found in Trent, and Lutheran pastors in their ordination to the doctrine as it is found in the Lutheran Confessions. So in fact, the reciprocal condemnations are still very much in effect.
So why all of the effort? The desired outcome of the Joint Ecumenical Commission years before that the respective churches “express in a binding fashion, that the condemnations of the sixteenth century do not confront the contemporary partner” demanded it. The pope’s visit, the 50th anniversary in 1996 of the “Jäger-Stählin-Circle”, and the advent of the new millennium undoubtedly also played a role. And how exactly such a command was eventually obeyed provides a salutary warning, a modern example, of how so often within the history of the church, factors beyond theology drive discussions toward theological agreements, church unions and communions.
Here clever ecclesiastical politics are not the only methods to bring to light. Factors beyond theology, beyond the church, have often caused the church to act, to move toward theological union, sometimes in a salutary fashion, and other times not….
(end quote from Strawn’s paper, bold mine)
The paper goes on to talk about the practical issues that kept confessional Lutherans of the 19th century apart, and the practical issues that might hinder the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LC-MS) in its efforts to promote concord and harmony in its own house (it efforts like the Koinonia Project), much less among other Lutheran groups like the WELS and ELS.
Again, the full paper is here, for those who are interested in exploring these matters further.
FIN
[1] Wolfgang A. Bienert. “Do the Condemnations of the Reformation Era Still Confront the Contemporary Ecumenical Partner?” Lutheran Quarterly VIII (1994), pp. 53-70.
[2] Ibid., p. 55.
[3] Ibid., p. 53.
[4] For a general description of the use of such condemnations in 16th century by Luther and others see: Hans-Werner Gensichen, Damnamus (Berlin-Grunewald: Herbert Renner, 1955), English edition: We Condemn. How Luther and 16th-Century Lutheranism Condemned False Doctrine, Trans. By Herbert J. A. Bouman (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1967).
[5] Bienert, p. 54f.; cf. p. 66.
[6] Ibid., p. 55. F. Karl Lehmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg, eds. The Condemnations of the Reformation Era. Do They Still Divide? Trans. By Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990).
[7] Ibid.
[8] http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_31101999 _cath-luth-joint-declaration_en.html.
theology like a child 