Wait, Wait… concluded

So we’ve estab­lished that rec­on­cil­i­a­tion between churches is pos­si­ble if 1) there was a mis­un­der­stand­ing or 2) there were dif­fer­ent tra­di­tions with a church. The third pos­si­bil­ity that lies before us is change.

Change is famously alarm­ing to churches and church peo­ple; but it’s a con­stant of church life and not good or bad in itself. Some change is good, the work of the Holy Spirit who “will guide you into all truth,” as Jesus said in John 16:13. Some change is bad, turn­ing to a “dif­fer­ent gospel” (Gala­tians 1:6). It’s the con­tent of the change that requires assess­ment, not the fact of change.

An exam­ple of a change lead­ing to church rec­on­cil­i­a­tion can be found in the Leuen­berg Agree­ment (1973), which laid out the basic para­me­ters for fel­low­ship between Lutheran and Reformed churches in Europe. One of the three major points it addressed was pre­des­ti­na­tion, which used to be a divid­ing point between Luther­ans and Reformed.

In §25, the Leuen­berg Agree­ment says: “The wit­ness of the Scrip­tures to Christ for­bids us to sup­pose that God has uttered an eter­nal decree for the final con­dem­na­tion of spe­cific indi­vid­u­als or of a par­tic­u­lar people.”

This is, in fact, exactly the oppo­site of what Reformed churches fol­low­ing Calvin taught in the 16th cen­tury. The Reformed churches of today have changed: they no longer believe in “dou­ble pre­des­ti­na­tion,” and thus there is no longer any dis­agree­ment with the Lutherans.

It is inter­est­ing to note that this change of opin­ion was not the result of a “Lutheran” vic­tory, but the influ­ence of the Reformed the­olo­gian Karl Barth in his own church. And it wasn’t a mat­ter of “giv­ing up” some­thing pre­cious to an out­sider but a deep­en­ing and matur­ing in the­o­log­i­cal understanding.

So if there’s been a cleared-up mis­un­der­stand­ing, or a deci­sive choice for one par­tic­u­lar tra­di­tion out of sev­eral com­peti­tors, or a change, it’s pos­si­ble for pre­vi­ously sep­a­rated churches to say:

“[T]he doc­tri­nal con­dem­na­tions expressed in the con­fes­sional doc­u­ments no longer apply to the con­tem­po­rary doc­tri­nal posi­tion of the assent­ing churches” (Leuen­berg Agree­ment §32.b); or

“In light of this con­sen­sus, the cor­re­spond­ing doc­tri­nal con­dem­na­tions of the six­teenth cen­tury do not apply to today’s part­ner” (The Joint Dec­la­ra­tion on the Doc­trine of Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion §2.13).

Guy Almes says:
September 6, 2010 at 5:02 pm
Thanks so much for tak­ing us along on your hike (at least via the net)! The whole idea is interesting.
And shar­ing your thoughts on ecu­menism as you make your way is much appre­ci­ated. The com­ments today on the Leuen­berg Agree­ment are par­tic­u­larly help­ful. But the good work of those work­ing in the ecu­meni­cal field puts a chal­lenge to us lay­folk to receive intel­li­gently. A tough hike with plenty of rain­storms along the way, just as with your hike through Bavaria.
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paul sailhamer says:
September 7, 2010 at 5:10 pm
It seems your jour­ney is not one to dis­cover the ecu­menism, if it exists in the doc­trine of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, between the Luther­ans (and Reformed Churches) and offi­cial Roman Catholic teach­ing but, rather, to cel­e­brate it. What is the offi­cial Lutheran posi­tion today among the var­i­ous syn­ods, etc? It seems we are left to exam­in­ing apples and oranges unless we con­fine our dis­cus­sion to the words of scrip­ture alone.
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Sarah Wilson says:
September 10, 2010 at 10:42 pm
I wouldn’t be walk­ing this far if I didn’t think ecu­menism were some­thing to cel­e­brate! That doesn’t mean every piece is of equal value, but in my expe­ri­ence ecu­menism is not lack­ing in detrac­tors. Its pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tions are less known beyond gener­i­cally over­com­ing prejudice.
I don’t think we can talk about the faith con­fined to words of Scrip­ture alone, in the sense of just repeat­ing them. As the story of Jesus’ temp­ta­tion in the wilder­ness teaches us, even the devil can quote Scrip­ture! It mat­ters what it means and how we under­stand it. Scrip­ture is the source and norm of faith, but not the end of dis­cus­sion, or we are just par­rots repeat­ing, and all our the­ol­ogy, hymns, prayers, etc are pointless.
How­ever the Joint Dec­la­ra­tion does have a very exten­sive first sec­tion on the Scrip­tural wit­ness on jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, and con­tin­u­ally quotes Scrip­ture through­out the doc­u­ment, so you can fol­low the bib­li­cal dis­cus­sion in it that way.
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