On the Way to the Joint Declaration

Since Luther­ans have said for cen­turies now (to be pre­cise, since Franz Tur­re­tini in 1682) that the doc­trine of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is the doc­trine on which the church stands or falls, it’s not sur­pris­ing that it has been cen­tral to Lutheran-Catholic dis­cus­sions. Four heavy-hitter state­ments deserve notice:

“The Gospel and the Church,” pop­u­larly called the Malta Report (1972)

Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by Faith, a report of the national U.S. Lutheran-Catholic dia­logue (1985)

The Con­dem­na­tions of the Ref­or­ma­tion Era: Do They Still Divide? (1988)

“Church and Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion: Under­stand­ing the Church in the Light of the Doc­trine of the Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion” (1994)

But here’s the funny thing about ecu­meni­cal dia­logues: nobody is required to pay the slight­est atten­tion to them. Much less like them or fol­low their advice. Some receive pop­u­lar acclaim on some level or another; oth­ers are cold-shouldered, per­haps because they’re mov­ing too fast (another Lutheran-Catholic state­ment, “Fac­ing Unity,” was prob­a­bly ignored for exactly this rea­son); and still oth­ers take years before any­thing hap­pens, as was the case with the Leuen­berg Agree­ment between Euro­pean Lutheran and Reformed churches, which sat on a shelf for about 20 years before peo­ple were will­ing to act on it.

How­ever… the Joint Dec­la­ra­tion on the Doc­trine of Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion (1999) is NOT like that. It is actu­ally a mutu­ally bind­ing state­ment. All the mem­ber churches of the Lutheran World Fed­er­a­tion, and the Catholic Church itself, accepted the con­tent of the Joint Dec­la­ra­tion as doc­tri­nal teach­ing. It’s the first time the two churches have ever offi­cially made a doc­tri­nal state­ment together in the whole his­tory, too. It’s not yet the goal, but it’s def­i­nitely a milestone.

Be Socia­ble, Share!

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Johannes Oesch says:
October 7, 2010 at 10:30 am
I can cor­rob­o­rate on the obser­va­tion, that nobody is required to pay atten­tion.
My obser­va­tion within my Würt­tem­berg church body among many clergy and laity is, that most of them are happy with those doc­u­ments paving the way towards more ecu­menism on the one hand, but the same peo­ple are much less inter­ested in read­ing and digest­ing the doc­u­ment, beware of heed­ing its advice. The same with the Leuen­berg agree­ment — it is a hal­lowed token but nobody wants to read the fine print.
There­fore my sus­pi­cion: Are these doc­u­ments sorts of indul­gen­cies? By get­ting the doc­u­ment you can absolve your self from the bur­den of the­o­log­i­cal painstaking.
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Sarah Wilson says:
October 10, 2010 at 6:13 pm
Dear Johannes, this com­ment is a great chal­lenge to us all! “Ecu­menism” that is really just pat­ting our­selves on the back for our progress, but doesn’t involve deeper cat­e­ch­esis, change of heart, and mean­ing­ful fel­low­ship, is just some­thing for show and a case of dis­hon­esty. We need always to be chal­lenged to do bet­ter than that!
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paul sailhamer says:
October 11, 2010 at 5:42 pm
I have always been under the impres­sion the the state­ment ” the doc trine of jus ti fi ca tion is the doc trine on which the church stands or falls” is from Luther him­self. Is that not the case?
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Sarah Wilson says:
October 11, 2010 at 9:13 pm
It’s true–it wasn’t Luther but the Tur­re­tini fel­low who came up with that phrase.
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