The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification: So Much More Exciting Than It Sounds

This bulk­ily named dec­la­ra­tion is excit­ing, first of all, because it’s the first time ever that the Lutheran and Catholic churches mutu­ally com­mit­ted to a state­ment about the Chris­t­ian faith. Given the range and depth of their accu­sa­tions against each other all these cen­turies, the JD is noth­ing short of miraculous.

It’s also excit­ing because it means that ecu­menism doesn’t require absolutely iden­ti­cal views of absolutely every­thing. The JD doesn’t claim that Luther­ans and Catholics are at every point in absolute agreee­ment about jus­ti­fi­ca­tion and its impli­ca­tions. Which means that ecu­menism is not the flat­ten­ing out of every church tra­di­tion into one monot­one blob.

The JD basi­cally lays out three things: 1) the com­mon ground that Luther­ans and Catholics believe together, even if they habit­u­ally express it in dif­fer­ent ways; 2) the areas where they retain the­o­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences, but dif­fer­ences that exist inside this com­mon ground and can mutu­ally enrich and chal­lenge each other; and 3) what this means about the past and the future.

Here’s the com­mon ground part:

“15. In faith we together hold the con­vic­tion that jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is the work of the tri­une God. The Father sent his Son into the world to save sin­ners. The foun­da­tion and pre­sup­po­si­tion of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion is the incar­na­tion, death, and res­ur­rec­tion of Christ. Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion thus means that Christ him­self is our right­eous­ness, in which we share through the Holy Spirit in accord with the will of the Father. 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.

“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 and who, at the same time, leads believ­ers into that renewal of life which God will bring to com­ple­tion in eter­nal life.

“17. We also share the con­vic­tion that the mes­sage of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion directs us in a spe­cial way towards the heart of the New Tes­ta­ment wit­ness to God’s sav­ing action in Christ: it tells us that as 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.

“18. There­fore the doc­trine of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, which takes up this mes­sage and expli­cates it, 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. It is an indis­pens­able cri­te­rion which con­stantly serves to ori­ent all the teach­ing and prac­tice of our churches to Christ. When Luther­ans empha­size the unique sig­nif­i­cance of this cri­te­rion, they do not deny the inter­re­la­tion and sig­nif­i­cance of all truths of faith. When Catholics see them­selves as bound by sev­eral cri­te­ria, they do not deny the spe­cial func­tion of the mes­sage of justification.”

At the end here, in §18, you can see the entry­way into the dis­tinc­tive Lutheran and Catholic emphases. The JD goes on to dis­cuss the dis­tinc­tives in 7 areas: Human Pow­er­less­ness and Sin in Rela­tion to Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion; Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion as For­give­ness of Sins and Mak­ing Right­eous; Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by Faith and through Grace; The Jus­ti­fied as Sin­ner; Law and Gospel; Assur­ance of Sal­va­tion; and The Good Works of the Justified.

The dif­fer­ences are allowed to stand, but they are no longer con­sid­ered “church-dividing”:

“40. The under­stand­ing of the doc­trine of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion set forth in this Dec­la­ra­tion shows that a con­sen­sus in basic truths of the doc­trine of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion exists between Luther­ans and Catholics. In light of this con­sen­sus the remain­ing dif­fer­ences of lan­guage, the­o­log­i­cal elab­o­ra­tion, and empha­sis in the under­stand­ing of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion described in paras. 18 to 39 are accept­able. There­fore the Lutheran and the Catholic expli­ca­tions of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion are in their dif­fer­ence open to one another and do not destroy the con­sen­sus regard­ing the basic truths.

“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 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.”

Nearly 500 years after the Ref­or­ma­tion, Luther­ans and Catholics have decided there is no longer any need to con­demn each other on the cen­tral doc­trine of justification.