Mediator(s) and Saints

The Lutheran-Roman Catholic dia­logue in the U.S. has been par­tic­u­larly pro­duc­tive and impres­sive in its out­put. One of its best works is the col­lec­tion The One Medi­a­tor, the Saints, and Mary, which exam­ines this obvi­ous point of dis­pute between the two churches with a com­mon state­ment as well as a num­ber of sup­port­ing papers by promi­nent the­olo­gians from both sides.

After care­fully sort­ing through the his­tory and the dis­putes, the com­mon state­ments asks where the diver­gences between us need to be church-dividing:

“The goal of ecu­meni­cal dia­logue is not to elim­i­nate all dif­fer­ences, but to make cer­tain that the remain­ing dif­fer­ences are con­so­nant with a fun­da­men­tal con­sen­sus in the apos­tolic faith and there­fore legit­i­mate or at least tol­er­a­ble. Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion is a process admit­ting of many degrees, lead­ing up to full fel­low­ship in faith, in sacra­men­tal wor­ship, and in a struc­tured eccle­sial life” (§90).

It then goes on to dis­cuss remain­ing dif­fer­ences on the term “saint,” the inter­ces­sion of the saints, the invo­ca­tion of the saints, and mar­ian doctrine.

Finally there are some “church-uniting con­ver­gences” (§103):

“1. We reit­er­ate the basic affir­ma­tion that ‘our entire hope of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion and sal­va­tion rests on Christ Jesus and the gospel whereby the good news of God’s mer­ci­ful action in Christ is made known; we do not place our trust in any­thing other than God’s promise and sav­ing work in Christ.’

“2. We now fur­ther assert together that Jesus Christ is the sole Medi­a­tor in God’s plan of sal­va­tion (I Tim. 2:5). Christ’s sav­ing work and role in God’s design thus deter­mine not only the con­tent of the gospel and its com­mu­ni­ca­tion but also all Chris­t­ian life, includ­ing our own and that of Mary and the saints who are now in heaven…

“8. The term ‘saint’ is used in both our tra­di­tions for all those jus­ti­fied by the grace of Christ, and, to one degree or another, for cer­tain indi­vid­u­als among them, marked by holi­ness, who live the life of faith in devo­tion toward God and love toward the neigh­bor in exem­plary ways, call­ing forth praise to God…

“10. The fel­low­ship of those sanc­ti­fied, the ‘holy ones’ or saints, includes believ­ers both liv­ing and dead. There is thus a sol­i­dar­ity of the church through­out the world with the church triumphant…

“13. In the fel­low­ship of the liv­ing and departed saints, believ­ers are inspired by oth­ers, as exam­ples of God’s grace, to greater faith, to good works, and to thanks­giv­ing for one another.

“14. Chris­tians honor saints in at least three ways: by thank­ing God for them; by hav­ing faith strength­ened as a result of the saints’ response to God’s grace; and by imi­tat­ing in var­i­ous sit­u­a­tions their faith and other virtues.

“15. Among the saints who have played a role in God’s plan of sal­va­tion for human­ity, Mary, who bore Christ, is in par­tic­u­lar to be hon­ored, as ‘God-bearer’ (theotokos) and as the pure, holy, and ‘most blessed Vir­gin’ (lau­datis­sima virgo)…

“17. Saints on earth ask one another to pray to God for each other through Christ. They are nei­ther com­manded nor for­bid­den to ask departed saints to pray for them.

“18. Devo­tion to the saints and Mary should not be prac­ticed in ways that detract from the ulti­mate trust that is to be placed in Christ alone as Mediator.”

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Russel Murray, OFM says:
September 29, 2010 at 12:42 am
Thirty-seven days on the road… While my own trav­els dur­ing this time have been nei­ther con­tin­u­ous nor on foot, they’ve been fre­quent enough to make me long for home, not to men­tion look­ing for­ward to catch­ing up with your daily posts. They’ve all been won­der­ful, and I join all your “fel­low trav­el­ers” in thank­ing you for them. Your pho­tos and posts about life on the road wel­come your read­ers to join you along the way – vir­tu­ally speak­ing, of course. What’s more, your thought­ful reflec­tions on the Scrip­tures and ecu­meni­cal dia­logue have ensured that those trav­el­ing with you do so mind­fully – mind­ful of why you’re on the road from Erfurt to Rome and what that can mean for us all. That’s quite a gift!
Among the top­ics you’ve cov­ered (so far), one that’s cap­tured my atten­tion and has held my thoughts is an early post on Luther hav­ing been a friar, not a monk. It’s a dis­tinc­tion all too often lost to stu­dents of the Ref­or­ma­tion, or sim­ply ignored by a great many schol­ars as irrel­e­vant to the reform­ing move­ment that Luther would launch within the Church. Nev­er­the­less, it’s a dis­tinc­tion worth remem­ber­ing, not to men­tion explor­ing. For while the monk’s life is one pur­pose­fully with­drawn from “the world,” the friar’s is one pur­pose­fully lived in the mar­ket­place where the care and con­cerns of “ordi­nary” men and women can­not but imprint them­selves upon his mind and heart, and cause him to con­sider what may be needed for the Gospel to become a liv­ing Word of hope for their lives. Could the fact that Luther was a friar and not a monk have played a deter­mi­na­tive role in kind of reform he would even­tu­ally pur­sue: a reform con­cerned not prin­ci­pally with eccle­sial struc­tures, but with the very faith those struc­tures were sup­posed to sup­port – and all too often were failing.
At the risk of read­ing my own expe­ri­ence into that of Luther, I have to admit that this has been my own expe­ri­ence of life as a friar. (For the record, I’m a Fran­cis­can Friar.) The ways in which I hear the Scrip­tures, lec­ture on the­ol­ogy (I’m also a sem­i­nary pro­fes­sor), and engage the world I’m fre­quently trav­el­ing through are very much effected by the cares and con­cerns, the hopes and dreams of the men and women with whom I’m con­stantly rub­bing shoul­ders – espe­cially in the mar­ket­place. (Yes, I do the food shop­ping for my local fra­ter­nity.) How dif­fer­ent could Luther’s expe­ri­ence have been, at least with respect to the effect it may have had upon him in his later devo­tion to the reform of the Church – the neces­sity of which he would have seen writ­ten on the faces if his fel­low pil­grims on the road to Rome? It’s a ques­tion worth ask­ing, I believe. Thank you for the post that engen­dered it.
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