The Joint Declaration and Its Aftermath
By the twentieth century the Roman Catholic Church had begun to throw off some of its earlier triumphalist approaches to move in a direction in which genuine dialogue with Protestant theological traditions could at least now be possible. An important step in this regard occurred at Vatican II, in which key Protestant leaders were invited as observers, including Karl Barth, Oscar Cullmann, and George Lindbeck.
Though Roman Catholic apologists are reluctant to admit it,1 the Vatican is, after all, influenced in some sense by broader cultural and theological changes. In 1959, for example, in calling for the Second Vatican Council, Pope John XXIII, the most ecumenical pope of the century, recognized that the Roman Catholic Church was clearly in need of updating, or what has often been referred to as aggiornamento. By way of contrast, during the nineteenth century Pope Pius IX, in his “Syllabus of Errors,” had railed against a host of errors, eighty to be exact (hardly the climate for ecumenical dialogue). Here is one example of a statement that Pius IX condemns as an “error”: “18. Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church.”2 However, by the mid-twentieth century these older divisive pronouncements, though still held by many traditionalists in the church in the name of keeping “the faith,” were seen as more or less embarrassing to the more ecumenically minded.
As important as Vatican II is and though its judgments did affect Protestants, it nevertheless was largely an internal conversation within the Roman Catholic tradition itself. Moreover, as explained in chapter 17, the crucial doctrine of justification was hardly considered in this groundbreaking venue. That conversation, in which Protestants would indeed be included, took place only in the wake of this historic council. Indeed, it would not be until the closing days of the twentieth century that an agreement on this salient doctrine was eventually hammered out.
The Joint Declaration on Justification by Faith
With much fanfare, though not all were celebrating, the Roman Catholic Church, more specifically its Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and the Lutheran World Federation signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in the historic city of Augsburg, known for the famous Augsburg Confession, on October 31, 1999, the anniversary of the Reformation. Naturally with an event of this magnitude, earlier conversations among a variety of theologians and ecclesiastical figures helped to prepare the way, including the following reports:
Moreover, it will no doubt be helpful for readers, giving them a sense of orientation, to view the basic outline of this Joint Declaration. Its parts, which are not equally weighted in the task of interpretation, are displayed in the following structure:
Preamble
1. Biblical Message of Justification
2. The Doctrine of Justification as Ecumenical Problem
3. The Common Understanding of Justification
4. Explicating the Common Understanding of Justification
5. The Significance and Scope of the Consensus Reached
Sources for the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification
Annex to the Official Common Statement
Embedded in the preamble is both a Roman Catholic understanding of the weight of tradition and its own preferred ecclesiastical judgments in the form of an unerring hierarchy and magisterium. On the one hand, it is stated that “the remaining differences in its explication are no longer the occasion for doctrinal condemnations”4 and, on the other hand, in a very traditional way that “the churches neither take the condemnations [e.g., of the Council of Trent] lightly nor do they disavow their own past.”5 For its part, Rome has dealt with this apparent contradiction, which can strike at its own ecclesiastical authority, by affirming (to cite just one example) the correctness of Trent in its pronouncements (for by definition that “ecumenical council” cannot have erred) but softening the offense (to Protestants) by maintaining that in the present, in a far less polemical context, “new understandings” have emerged in terms of this earlier yet continually affirmed history: “On the contrary, this Declaration is shaped by the conviction that in their respective histories our churches have come to new insights.”6
JD: The Confusion of Justification with Sanctification
Although the theological contributions of the Lutherans expressed in an earlier report supported the appropriateness of “the distinction between justification and sanctification,”7 the Roman Catholic centuries-old habit of mixing these two distinct works of grace became the preferred language of the Joint Declaration itself. Thus paragraph 11 of this historic document observes: “Justification is the forgiveness of sins (cf. Rom. 3:23–25; Acts 13:39; Luke 18:14), liberation from the dominating power of sin and death (Rom. 5:12–21) and from the curse of the law (Gal. 3:10–14).”8 Even more pointedly, paragraph 27 reveals that the Roman Catholic conception of the relation between justification and sanctification brought to bear in this ecumenical setting is utterly in line with the earlier pronouncements of the Catechism and the Council of Trent. Indeed, the Joint Declaration emphasizes that “the justification of sinners is forgiveness of sins and being made righteous by justifying grace, which makes us children of God.”9 When the Lutheran and Roman Catholic voices eventually merged at points in the Joint Declaration, to speak in unison, they evidently spoke with a very Roman Catholic accent: “We confess together. . . . When persons come by faith to share in Christ, God no longer imputes to them their sin and through the Holy Spirit effects in them an active love.”10
Something of a concession on the part of Rome on this critical issue can perhaps be discerned not so much in the formal part of the Joint Declaration itself as in the “Sources Section.” Thus the earlier report The Condemnations of the Reformation Era: Do They Still Divide? expresses the Roman Catholic position in the following manner:
Catholic doctrine knows itself to be at one with the Protestant concern in emphasizing that the renewal of the human being does not “contribute” to justification, and is certainly not a contribution to which he could make any appeal before God. Nevertheless it feels compelled to stress the renewal of the human being through justifying grace, for the sake of acknowledging God’s newly creating power; although this renewal in faith, hope, and love is certainly nothing but a response to God’s unfathomable grace.11
Rome’s concern, demonstrated above, for real, imparted transformation in the form of holiness is undoubtedly important in considering the constitution of the Christian life. It’s just not very helpful to state that “the renewal of the human being [takes place] through justifying grace,”12 thereby mixing the relational and forensic language of Scripture with its participatory and ontological articulation. In effect, and in a way similar to Trent, “the Roman view,” as Robert Preus has aptly pointed out, “subsumes the article of justification under the articles of sanctification, renewal, and grace, and does so by divesting it of its meaning and identifying it with its effects so that cause and effect coalesce in the process.”13 In our judgment it would be far better and much more theologically appropriate—especially in consideration of the larger process of conversion, of which justification is ever a vital part—to distinguish this crucial justifying work of grace from that of sanctification. Again, it is necessary to clearly state that initial sanctification or regeneration, and not justification itself, is that salvific grace that actually makes one holy. Why then balk at this? Why be limited to a single theological idiom when another is so clearly called for, especially when the inclusion of such would go a long way in clearing up theological confusion, especially between Protestants and Roman Catholics? Indeed, having justification do all the heavy lifting here, in what amounts to the larger process of sanctification and conversion, is precisely the problem. What then, in the face of all of this, has become of the Lutheran concern, expressed in the earlier report, to distinguish justification from sanctification? It has fallen away.
JD: Imputation and Impartation?
In a manner that epitomizes the Roman Catholic theological posture toward how λογίζεσθαι (logizesthai) is to be understood in terms of its usage, as for instance found in Romans 4:5 (“God who justifies the ungodly”), the Joint Declaration has but one single statement (as difficult as this is to believe) that expresses a theological understanding of the term “imputation.” It appears, then, that the Lutheran World Federation, once again, has simply acceded to the Roman view, neglecting an important part of its own theological heritage: “We confess together . . . [that] God no longer imputes to them their sin and through the Holy Spirit effects in them an active love.”14 To be sure, the overarching problem here is that such a statement embraces only about half of what’s actually entailed in the theological substance of imputation, a point that Luther himself readily acknowledged. To illustrate, the German Reformer observed in his Lectures on Galatians, “It is not in vain, therefore, that so often and so diligently we inculcate the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins and of the imputation of righteousness for the sake of Christ.”15 More recently Preus has written about the twofold movement of imputation, not simply about the nonimputation of sin, as Rome would have it, but also, and more positively, in terms of what he calls “Christ’s ‘blessed exchange’”16 with us, whereby “He took upon Himself our personal sins and gave to us His personal innocence and victory.”17 In other words, in the Lutheran tradition, from Luther forward, imputation was conceived not in a monological sense but in a twofold way: “1) forgiveness, or the non-imputation of sin, and 2) the imputation of a righteousness outside of us.”18 Simply put, that God no longer imputes sin to sinners is simply not enough. Such a reduction of the blessed nature of imputation cannot even explain all that is theologically present in Paul’s 2 Corinthians: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (5:21).
JD: Synergism or Cooperant Grace
It is in this specific area of the nature of justifying grace—that is, in what sense grace entails synergism, or divine and human cooperation (even if only to be “prepared” to receive justifying grace), and in what sense grace is freely given by God, thereby underscoring the work of God alone—that perhaps the greatest advance has been made in the Joint Declaration beyond both the Catechism and Trent. The Lutherans take pains to articulate their position clearly and to acknowledge Roman Catholic concerns about its implications. Thus, in the section of the document titled “Explicating the Common Understanding of Justification,” they point out first that “a person can only receive (mere passive) justification, . . . thereby . . . exclud[ing] any possibility of contributing to one’s own justification.”19 Second, they assert that “justification remains free from human cooperation and is not dependent on the life-renewing effects of grace in human beings.”20 They caution that these two statements will be properly understood only in light of the following: “The strict emphasis on the passivity of human beings concerning their justification never meant, on the Lutheran side, to contest the full personal participation in believing.”21
In a similar fashion, after the Roman Catholic contributors to the Joint Declaration affirm “that persons ‘cooperate’ in preparing for and accepting justification by consenting to God’s justifying action,” they go on to declare in a later paragraph, and in a helpful manner, that “they do not thereby deny that God’s gift of grace in justification remains independent of human cooperation,”22 something that Luther had insisted upon all along. Does this mean, then, that Roman Catholic theology can actually embrace a full-orbed notion of free grace (operant grace) and the sovereignty of God, in conjunction with cooperant grace, as a part of its larger theological whole? If so, then it would be considerably helpful to state this explicitly.
JD: Sola Fide?
A careful reading of the Joint Declaration shows that the Lutheran and the Roman Catholic statements on the role of faith in salvation are markedly different. On the one hand, the Lutherans affirm that the doctrine of justification by faith is not just any doctrine, but that it “stands in an essential relation to all truths of faith, which are to be seen as internally related to each other. It is an indispensable criterion that constantly serves to orient all the teaching and practice of our churches to Christ.”23 In fact, during the sixteenth century Melanchthon had arranged the articles of faith in the Augsburg Confession around “Article IV on justification and Article XX on ‘Faith and Good Works.’”24
The Roman Catholics, on the other hand, when they do show interest in the doctrine (justification was not directly addressed at Vatican II), consider themselves bound by several criteria and not by one chief orienting concern, though they do admit something of “the special function of the message of justification.”25 Remarkably enough, an earlier draft of the Joint Declaration (the June 1996 version) contained the Lutheran preference on the issue of criterion, but this was eventually overturned by the Roman Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. As Eberhard Jüngel put it at the time: “Cardinal Ratzinger corrected Cardinal Cassidy to the effect that the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity may concede only that ‘the doctrine of justification is an indispensable criterion.’”26 Jüngel went on to observe: “By the addition of the indefinite article ‘an’ justification was demoted from its position of unique, overarching criterion to one among others.”27 Thus it was not the criterion but a criterion.
Moreover, the Joint Declaration reveals that the Lutherans in their contribution to the document readily employed the language of sola fide but that the Roman Catholics did not. Compare the two very different statements: “According to Lutheran understanding, God justifies sinners in faith alone (sola fide). In faith they place their trust wholly in their Creator and Redeemer and thus live in communion with him.”28 This first statement, then, takes into account the two very practical reasons why sola fide was so important to the Lutheran tradition: “First, God wants us to be sure of the forgiveness of our sins (Rom. 4:16). Second, God wants us to glory not in ourselves but in His grace (Eph. 2:9).”29 However, the Roman Catholic affirmation simply considers faith as “fundamental in justification. For without faith, no justification can take place.”30 Yet it never once mentions sola fide. Granted, the idiom sola fide does indeed emerge in the Annex to the Official Common Statement, but even here there is no specific Roman Catholic ownership. And why couldn’t such language have been made a part of the Official Common Statement instead of being pushed off to the side in an Annex? Indeed, if Roman Catholic theologians dislike the language of “alone” or “sola” in this context, then let them, to use the words of Preus, “remove the other exclusive terms from Paul, too, like ‘freely,’ ‘not of works,’ ‘it is a gift,’ etc., for these terms are also exclusive.”31 Moreover, in a concluding observation this Lutheran leader notes: “The whole thrust of the Book of Galatians is to show that justification before God is by faith alone.”32
JD: Merit
Several of the Joint Declaration’s paragraphs go a long way in clearing up any misunderstanding that today Roman Catholicism teaches justification to be merited by the proper use of prevenient grace. For its part, Rome maintains that justification is due to the grace and mercy of God. To illustrate, paragraph 15 of section 3, “The Common Understanding of Justification,” states: “Together we confess: By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works.”33 Again, paragraph 17 affirms that the message of justification “tells us that because we are sinners our new life is solely due to the forgiving and renewing mercy that God imparts as a gift and we receive in faith and never can merit in any way.”34 Beyond this, paragraph 25 declares: “But whatever in the justified precedes or follows the free gift of faith is neither the basis of justification nor merits it.”35
Why, then, has the question of merit remained a contentious issue (see below) even after the pronouncements of the Joint Declaration? For one thing, Rome has insisted on a place for merit, especially in terms of those works that follow justification. Thus, when “Catholics affirm the ‘meritorious’ character of good works, they wish to say that . . . a reward in heaven is promised to these works.”36 However, in a way much more in line with a biblical idiom, the Lutherans, for their part, have declared that they “view the good works of Christians as the fruits and signs of justification and not as one’s own ‘merits.’”37 What compounds this difficulty even further is that the Lutheran sense of the matter had already been specifically condemned by Trent. Recall the language of this council cited earlier: “If any one saith, that the good works of one that is justified are in such manner the gifts of God, that they are not also the good merits of him that is justified . . . [and that he] does not truly merit increase of grace, eternal life, and the attainment of that eternal life, . . . let him be anathema.”38 Since this teaching has not been put aside by the Joint Declaration, because it contains a “salutary warning,” we are now in a better position to understand just why controversy over this terminology yet remains.
Even today Rome contends that by the use of such “meritorious” language it is only underscoring the value of responsibility in the ongoing Christian life—an emphasis that, by the way, goes back to Augustine39—nevertheless such a concern could have been better held in place by an appeal to the necessity of cooperant, responsible grace, if there be time and opportunity, precisely after justification has occurred. This would have been a better, less problematic course to pursue, especially since cooperant, responsible grace is already very much a part of the array of Roman Catholic theological resources. To be sure, the language of merit was, is, and remains burdened with an enormous capacity for misunderstanding. What truth it attempts to preserve can be suitably expressed in far better and less ambiguous language. As Michael Root has so ably revealed in an important article on this very topic, “No matter how one may wish to affirm the reality ‘merit’ seeks to describe, the concept ‘merit’ brings with it more problems than it solves.”40
JD: The “New Perspective” to the Rescue?
The key differences between Roman Catholics and Protestants on the issue of justification turn, in large measure, on a proper interpretation of the writings of the apostle Paul. Some in the church therefore hoped that the “new perspective” on Paul (and on justification)—as found, for example, in the earlier work of E. P. Sanders in his Paul and Palestinian Judaism (1977) and the more recent contributions of N. T. Wright in his Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (2009)—would save the day. But alas, it was not to be. There are many good reflections in Wright’s work on the topic of justification, which we receive in deep appreciation, especially in terms of trying to overcome the Jewish/Christian divide; yet also a few problems are indicated in the following observations: (1) Wright underscores a single covenant, to the loss of the full worth and distinctiveness of the new covenant; (2) he views justification simply as acquittal, a courtroom act, and therefore as “the granting of a status,”41 in terms of this single covenant; and (3) he considers saving faith more along the lines of what medieval theologians referred to as fides (belief or faith) rather than fiducia (confidence or trust).42 In Wright’s interpretive hands, then, redemptive faith is apparently belief that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead. Although the Letter to the Romans does indeed make such a statement (e.g., 10:9), Paul is no doubt assuming that such a belief is emblematic of a much larger whole. In the Pauline context, such usage is actually informed by many things, some of which would imply other dimensions of redemptive faith such as a vibrant personal trust and relation—aspects that, in our judgment, Wright leaves underdeveloped.43
But there is even a far greater problem here, and this constitutes the principal reason why a discussion of the “new perspective” has been relegated, in this present context, simply to a few paragraphs. Consider this: the language, idioms, and basic meanings of justification discussed and at times disputed at Trent and much later by both Roman Catholics and Protestants in the Joint Declaration were nevertheless far more similar to each other (largely Augustinian or Thomistic in approach), despite the differences in play at the time, than the offerings of the new perspective itself were to either the current Roman Catholic perspective or the Protestant one. Many of the terms surrounding justification have been redefined in special new-perspective ways whose meanings were not employed either at Trent or in the context of the Joint Declaration. After all, that’s the whole point of the project of the new perspective, is it not, to celebrate the “new”? Therefore, it is precisely that newness or redefinition that must make up a conversation (and no doubt an interesting one) for another day. It simply does not belong here.44
Is the Common Understanding of Justification Theologically Sufficient?
Section 3 of the Joint Declaration, better known as “The Common Understanding of Justification,” contains a number of joint, ecumenically minded statements made by both the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church that are supposed to express the substance of the teaching on justification as revealed in the following numbered (and slightly edited) paragraphs:
14. This common listening, together with the theological conversations of recent years, has led to a shared understanding of justification. This encompasses a consensus in the basic truths. . . .45
15. In faith we together hold the conviction that justification is the work of the triune God. . . . Justification thus means that Christ himself is our righteousness. . . . Together we confess: By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping and calling us to good works.46
16. All people are called by God to salvation in Christ. Through Christ alone are we justified, when we receive this salvation in faith. Faith is itself God’s gift through the Holy Spirit who works through word and sacrament in the community of believers. . . .47
17. We also share the conviction [that] . . . our new life is solely due to the forgiving and renewing mercy that God imparts as a gift and we receive in faith, and never can merit in any way.48
18. Therefore the doctrine of justification . . . is more than just one part of Christian doctrine. It stands in an essential relation to all truths of faith, which are to be seen . . . as internally related to each other. . . . When Catholics see themselves as bound by several criteria, they do not deny the special function of the message of justification.49
In these numbered paragraphs, observe the following difficulties: (a) the ongoing confusion of justification with the ontological work of heart renewal in the process of sanctification; (b) the absence of a robust, bidirectional sense of imputation as a “blessed exchange”; (c) little room made for free grace: the idiom is by and large displaced by the Roman Catholic preference for synergistic grace; (d) no specific mention of sola fide or faith alone, though the question of merit admittedly is more carefully treated here than elsewhere.
In light of these pointed observations, it should come as no surprise that many, not just a few, theologians from diverse theological backgrounds have found the above common affirmations of the Joint Declaration far from satisfactory. “The JD does have a number of clear and helpful statements of positive consensus,” R. R. Reno observed, “but are they, strictly speaking, statements about justification? Or, are they more accurately statements of trinitarian and christological consensus, affirmations, in a word, of the common Augustinian heritage of western Christianity?”50 Beyond this, Reno, citing Inge Lonning, pointed out that “the positive statements of consensus, both the general statement . . . and the statements pertinent to areas of historical controversy . . . are not formulated in the vocabulary of the Lutheran doctrine of justification or in terms which might be equivalent.”51 In fact, Preus, who was critical of the prior theological conversations that took place in preparation for the Joint Declaration, observed in terms of his own Lutheran tradition that it has become very different from what it was in the sixteenth century. This transformation, not all of it good, was due in large measure to the “intellectual climate [that] took hold in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,”52 in which an “identity crisis”53 along with “doctrinal drift”54 emerged among the Lutheran churches. Even in the wake of such drift, Preus nevertheless concluded that “the differences on the doctrine of justification between the Lutheran Church and the Roman Catholic Church still exist on such topics as original sin, concupiscence, bondage of the will, human passivity in conversion and justification, grace, sola fide and good works, and the assurance of salvation.”55 And yet Roman Catholic theologians themselves complained that “at key points JDDJ appears to favor the Lutheran perspective over that articulated at the Council of Trent.”56 Indeed, the late Avery Cardinal Dulles remarked that there are “two languages of salvation”57 here. Such an observation has led Ted Dorman to conclude: “Specifically, Catholic and Lutheran theological statements differ at many points because they reflect different ‘thought-forms.’”58
Although different theological idioms are clearly present in the Joint Declaration, careful observation reveals that the language employed in section 3, “The Common Understanding of Justification,” is general enough that each tradition can see something of the larger complex of its own theological meaning displayed. Nevertheless general expressions in relation to such a crucial doctrine of the Christian faith—that is, a doctrine like justification, which evidences subtlety and therefore requires careful theological nuance—also raise the specter of ambiguity and even outright equivocation for the sake of the common, ecumenical enterprise. The phrase employed by Gottfried Martens that may capture what is actually at work in these distinct theological contexts that yet seek a common affirmation is “differentiated consensus.”59 For instance, when Lutherans think about justification, do they have the elements of the consensus in mind, or do they have in view the factors that make up the differentiations of their own particular tradition? The same question must also be posed to Roman Catholics in order to unveil this same ambiguity and even possible equivocation.
In light of these significant criticisms, the key question to raise at this juncture and one that was posed in my own earlier work on this topic over a decade ago is “Do the common statements on justification [above] actually reveal a sufficient and full-bodied doctrine, one commensurate with the life and witness of the historic church, or is it a doctrine that unfortunately has been eviscerated due in some measure to the ecumenical enterprise itself?”60 Perhaps the Joint Declaration, in light of this overarching question, is not after all making so much a theological statement, given the general nature and the ambiguity of so much of its language, but an ecumenical statement, one offered to ease the tensions of these two quite different theological traditions. But if in the end an ecumenical document is being offered, then it obviously has not satisfied over two hundred European Lutheran theologians who have argued that the Joint Declaration “promulgates an essentially Catholic view of justification.”61 We heartily agree.
A common mistake of some contemporary theologians, bespeaking the methodical preferences of academia itself, is to become overly analytical in handling any particular theological doctrine. Those who employ such an approach mistakenly believe that they have comprehended the substance of “justification” or some other doctrine simply by analyzing its parts, critically examining the elements that make up that doctrine. Although this analytic work is clearly necessary, a synthetic approach, considering doctrines as parts of a much larger theological whole, must also be employed. Therefore, the doctrine of justification as affirmed by Rome must also be assessed in terms of the larger array of its other doctrinal affirmations, which would include such things as the necessity of confessing one’s sins to a priest in the sacrament of penance, praying to Mary as a mediatrix, the mediation of the saints, the employment of indulgences to diminish the duration of purgatory, the requirement that a temporal satisfaction for sins be made even after they are forgiven, and so on. Thus the chief question becomes, Does the doctrine of justification, carefully explored in terms of its biblical and larger traditional theological context, actually cohere with these other teachings of the Roman Catholic Church just mentioned? Or do such teachings, at least to some extent, undermine the graciousness and freedom entailed in justification itself? Synthetic questions such as these were hardly addressed in the Joint Declaration, and that is indeed part of the ongoing problem. This stubborn fact, then, helps to explain why “no fewer than 255 Protestant professors came out against the signing of the OCS,” the Official Common Statement related to the declaration.62
Though the Methodists, in the form of representatives from the World Methodist Council, were present at the historic signing of the Joint Declaration on October 31, 1999, many of their number, as Geoffrey Wainwright reports, expressed a “desire to explore whether Methodists might in some way become associated with the original achievement and benefit from it.”63 Indeed, as German theologian Christoph Raedel points out, the Methodists “publicly hailed the ecumenical progress of the Joint Declaration.”64 Not surprisingly, given this large ecumenical interest, in July 2006 “the Joint Declaration was affirmed by the executive committee of the World Methodist Council,”65 even though parts of the document clearly departed from the teaching of John Wesley on the doctrine of justification. In fact, Wesley’s own views on the matter were far more in line with those of Wittenberg and Geneva than with those of Rome.66
The Aftermath
A year after the Joint Declaration was promulgated, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Roman Catholic Church issued a declaration titled Dominus Iesus: On the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church. Upon reading this document, the leaders of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (The Protestant Church in Germany, the EKD) were stunned.67 They feared that whatever had been achieved in 1999 was now being squandered away in yet another iteration of Roman triumphalism, buoyed high by a distinct ecclesiology. What was the specific language in Dominus Iesus that had so roiled the German Protestant church? It was the phrasing of paragraph 17, part of which reads as follows: “On the other hand, the ecclesial communities which have not preserved the valid Episcopate and the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery, are not Churches in the proper sense; however, those who are baptized in these communities are, by Baptism, incorporated in Christ and thus are in a certain communion, albeit imperfect, with the Church.”68
Naturally, the EKD responded to Dominus Iesus in its own declaration titled Kirchengemeinschaft nach evangelischem Verständnis (KneV—A Protestant understanding of ecclesial communion),69 in which it befittingly pointed out that “the Roman Catholic understanding of church and ecclesial communion is ‘not compatible’ with the understanding presented in this [current] declaration.”70 Clearly the Lutheran and the Roman Catholic conceptions of the church are and remain very different even after 1999.
In light of such ecclesiastical declarations with weighty, not insignificant, theological implications, we are compelled to connect the dots, so to speak, and thereby to point out that not only is Dominus Iesus not compatible with the Kirchengemeinschaft nach evangelischem Verständnis, but it is also not consonant with the theology of justification expressed in the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification itself. Here then is the analytic/synthetic problem in yet another troubling manifestation. This time, however, it is expressed specifically in terms of the integration (or lack thereof) of theological and ecclesiological frameworks. Viewed another way, in the proclamation of Dominus Iesus Rome has backed away, once more, from some measure of the ecumenical spirit that was present in the JDDJ by separating itself (yet another version of Rome alone) decisively from other theological traditions, especially at the Communion table by barring justified believers from participation. How then is justification rightly understood in the wake of such actions? Such a division has been engineered and put in place by the Roman Catholic magisterium simply because other Christian theological traditions do not affirm (a) an unbroken succession of bishops that supposedly goes back to Peter and (b) the theology of transubstantiation. And though Brad Gregory in his The Unintended Reformation likes to pretend that Protestants are at the heart of all schism71—indeed, his use of the word “fissiparous” is excessive, detracting even from a suitable literary style—the language of Dominus Iesus actually proves otherwise. Perhaps, then, the JDDJ, when all is said and done, is not even an ecumenical document.
Surrounding all such claims as those found in the ecclesiology offered in Dominus Iesus, in which Rome offers itself as “the Church,” around which all the other theological communions are supposedly imperfectly related, there remains an air of unreality, especially in light of the ongoing strength of Eastern Orthodoxy. For what it’s worth, such an ecclesiology appears to pervade everything, as we have observed in earlier chapters, and it may therefore actually be the metanarrative of the Roman Catholic Church, to which virtually all other theological doctrines must conform, including the pivotal doctrine of justification. Clearly the doctrine of justification encompasses such vital, essential teachings of the Christian faith as the atoning work of the Mediator, the reconciliation of God and humanity so freely offered in Christ, the good news of the forgiveness of sins, and the cleansing of consciences along with measures of assurance. All these precious gifts of justification, some of the very staples of salvation itself, are so heartily affirmed by German Lutherans and other Protestants and are lived out in vibrant Christian witness, but not even this vigorous embrace is apparently enough for them to gain admission, in the Spirit of grace and love in which they abide, to a Roman Catholic Communion table. In such a view, in which the Roman Catholic Church is ever at the center, even the precious doctrine of justification by faith, as great and glorious as it is, must bow the knee before the Roman hierarchy; it too must genuflect before the wishes of the magisterium. This is yet another iteration of Rome alone. In the end, ecclesiology trumps everything.
1. For a contemporary, triumphalist, and utterly dogmatic approach to ecumenical “conversation,” see Devin Rose, The Protestant’s Dilemma: How the Reformation’s Shocking Consequences Point to the Truth of Catholicism (San Diego: Catholic Answers Press, 2014). Indeed, in this book Rose starts from the assumption that an unchanging, dogmatic Rome is always correct in any of its many judgments as well as ever being the center of any supposed “dialogue,” as is evidenced in his following observation: “But it is not dialogue for dialogue’s sake. It is dialogue with an end in mind of bringing all involved in the dialogue to the fullness of truth that the Catholic Church alone possesses in fullness. That is what authentic dialogue in the conciliar sense is all about.” Ibid., Kindle edition, locations 55–57.
2. Pope Pius IX, “Syllabus of Errors,” December 8, 1864, Papal Encyclicals Online, http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9syll.htm.
3. Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, English ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 9–10, par. 3.
4. Ibid., 11, par. 5.
5. Ibid., 11, par. 7.
6. Ibid. (emphasis added).
7. Ibid., 33, sources for sec. 4.3.
8. Ibid., 13, par. 11 (emphasis added).
9. Ibid., 20, par. 27 (emphasis added).
10. Ibid., 18, par. 22.
11. Ibid., 33.
12. Ibid.
13. Preus, Justification and Rome (St. Louis: Concordia, 2006), 69–70.
14. Ibid., 18.
15. Martin Luther, Lectures on Galatians, 1535, Chapters 1–4, LW 26:133 (emphasis added).
16. Preus, Justification and Rome, 62 (emphasis added).
17. Ibid. (emphasis added).
18. Ibid., 59 (emphasis added).
19. Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Joint Declaration, 17, par. 21.
20. Ibid., 18, par. 23.
21. Ibid., 31, sources for sec. 4.1.
22. Ibid., 18–19, par. 24 (emphasis added).
23. Ibid., 16, par. 18.
24. Preus, Justification and Rome, 15.
25. Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Joint Declaration, 16, par. 18.
26. David P. Scaer, “Joint Lutheran/Roman Catholic Declaration on Justification: A Response,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 62, no. 2 (April 1998): 88.
27. Ibid.
28. Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Joint Declaration, 19, par. 26.
29. Preus, Justification and Rome, 97.
30. Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Joint Declaration, 20, par. 27.
31. Preus, Justification and Rome, 99.
32. Ibid., 101.
33. Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Joint Declaration, 15, par. 15.
34. Ibid., 16, par. 17.
35. Ibid., 19, par. 25.
36. Ibid., 25, par. 38.
37. Ibid., 25, par. 39 (emphasis added).
38. Canon 32 of the Council of Trent, in Philip Schaff, The Creeds of Christendom, vol. 2, The Greek and Latin Creeds, with Translations (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983), 117–18.
39. Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Joint Declaration, 38, sources for sec. 4.7.
40. Root, “Aquinas, Merit, and Reformation Theology after the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification,” Modern Theology 20, no. 1 (January 2004): 18–19.
41. Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009), 90.
42. Ibid., 251.
43. To be sure, Wright criticizes along the following lines: “It is of course popular to say that, since the language of ‘righteousness’ is essentially ‘relational,’ ‘justification’ actually means ‘the establishment of a personal relationship,’ a mutual knowing, between the believer and God, or the believer and Jesus. But this is extremely misleading.” Ibid., 149.
44. For a book that takes issue with Wright’s “New Perspective” in significant and cogent ways, see John Piper, The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright (Wheaton: Crossway, 2007).
45. Lutheran World Federation and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Joint Declaration, 15, par. 14 (emphasis added).
46. Ibid., 15, par. 13.
47. Ibid., 16, par. 16 (emphasis added).
48. Ibid., 16, par. 17 (emphasis added).
49. Ibid., 16, par. 18 (emphasis added).
50. Reno, “The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification: An Outsider’s View,” Pro Ecclesia 7, no. 4 (Fall 1998): 431.
51. Inge Lonning, “Lifting the Condemnations: Does It Make Sense?,” in By Faith Alone: Essays on Justification in Honor of Gerhard O. Forde, ed. Joseph A. Burgess and Marc Kolden (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 177, cited by Reno, “Joint Declaration,” 434.
52. Preus, Justification and Rome, 104.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid., 24.
56. See the observations of Avery Dulles as found in Ted M. Dorman, “The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification: Retrospect and Prospects,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 44, no. 3 (September 2001): 422.
57. As quoted in Dorman, “Joint Declaration,” 430.
58. Ibid.
59. Martens, “Inconsequential Signatures? The Decade after the Signing of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification,” Lutheran Quarterly 24, no. 3 (Autumn 2010): 320.
60. Kenneth J. Collins, “The Doctrine of Justification: Historic Wesleyan and Contemporary Understandings,” in Justification: What’s at Stake in the Current Debates, ed. Mark Husbands and Daniel J. Treier (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004), 202.
61. Dorman, “Joint Declaration,” 422.
62. Martens, “Inconsequential Signatures?,” 312–13.
63. Wainwright, “The Lutheran–Roman Catholic Agreement on Justification: Its Ecumenical Significance and Scope from a Methodist Point of View,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 38, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 20.
64. Raedel, ed., Als Beschenkte miteinander unterwegs: Methodistisch-Katholische Beziehungen auf Weltebene (Göttingen: Ruprecht, 2011), 110. See also my (Kenneth J. Collins) review of this book in The Wesleyan Theological Journal 46, no. 1 (Spring 2011): 198–201.
65. Ibid., 124.
66. See Kenneth J. Collins, The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace (Nashville: Abingdon, 2007), 160–65, 176–81.
67. Martens, “Inconsequential Signatures?,” 318.
68. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Dominus Iesus, par. 17, the Holy See, 2000, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000806_dominus-iesus_en.html.
69. Martens, “Inconsequential Signatures?,” 318.
70. Ibid. For more on the EKD response, see “Das evangelische Verständnis der Bezeugung der Einheit des Leibes Christi als Kirchengemeinschaft,” Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland, http://www.ekd.de/international/6422.html.
71. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). Though Gregory charges the Reformation with the modern faults of pluralism and secularism, he is about two centuries too late. The status of universals had preoccupied the Middle Ages at least from the time of Anselm, with an ebb and flow of realism, moderate realism, and nominalism in the offing. Then in the fourteenth century William of Ockham led a revival of nominalism that in its emphasis on the individual and the particular prepared the way not only for Martin Luther (who was trained in nominalism) but also for the rise of science. For a better analysis of the same area covered by Gregory, and with much better judgment, see Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).