Sweden and Finland Get Justified Too

The inter­na­tional agree­ment in the Joint Dec­la­ra­tion, with both churches sign­ing at the high­est level, was a huge break­through. The JD is bind­ing and per­ma­nent. But the real­ity is that noth­ing is bind­ing and per­ma­nent unless the whole church receives it and makes it local and even personal.

That’s exactly what’s hap­pened in a Report from the Roman Catholic-Lutheran Dia­logue Group for Swe­den and Fin­land, Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion in the Life of the Church, Swe­den and Fin­land. It high­lights what the inter­na­tional agree­ment could mean on a local level.

Some his­tor­i­cal specifics make this dia­logue unique and uniquely promis­ing. For instance, a church struc­ture with the his­toric suc­ces­sion of bish­ops is vital to Catholic self-understanding, and Swe­den and Fin­land hap­pen to be the two “tra­di­tion­ally” Lutheran coun­tries that con­tin­ued to have bish­ops in suc­ces­sion with­out inter­rup­tion. (Ger­mans couldn’t find sup­port­ing bish­ops, so they had pas­tors ordain new can­di­dates into the min­istry, and were gov­erned by super­in­ten­dents for a long time; Nor­way, Den­mark, and Ice­land all had dis­rup­tions in the line of bish­ops, though they quickly resumed that form of church governance.)

Also, a great deal of the medieval litur­gi­cal tra­di­tion was pre­served in Swe­den and Fin­land, such as prayers, litur­gies, archi­tec­ture, vest­ments for the clergy, and even a cer­tain level of ven­er­a­tion of the saints. It’s not uncom­mon for Catholics and Luther­ans to be a lit­tle uncer­tain of what kind of church they’re in these coun­tries, so sim­i­lar are their wor­ship practices.

Much of this Report is in response to the Joint Dec­la­ra­tion, sort­ing out its claims and assess­ing them. This is essen­tial to the “recep­tion” process, in which all the peo­ple of God con­sider what small ecu­meni­cal teams have done on their behalf. An inter­est­ing obser­va­tion fol­lows the dis­cus­sion of “God’s Grace and Human Response,” not­ing the typ­i­cal Lutheran empha­sis on the all-sufficient act of Christ and the typ­i­cal Catholic empha­sis on the neces­sity of human “coop­er­a­tion.” The Swedish-Finnish report comments:

“Here the Dec­la­ra­tion has not kept an entirely clear bal­ance between both these legit­i­mate aspects. Maybe that can never be done. Maybe the prob­lems of life itself are too com­plex for that. It belongs to a life lived in faith and love of fel­low human beings to oscil­late between these two per­spec­tives. Such an insight prob­a­bly lies behind the fact that Catholics and Luther­ans have nev­er­the­less dis­cov­ered a fun­da­men­tal syn­the­sis here” (p. 21).

Another sec­tion on “Christ our Right­eous­ness” also tries to sort out typ­i­cal Lutheran and Catholic emphases, with their strengths and weak­nesses. First a com­mon affir­ma­tion is made:

“The grace of Christ (Greek charis) is a gift (Greek doron) in a very spe­cial, even unique sense. It springs from the very nature of God him­self, who gives him­self, as man­i­fested in the all-inclusive love of the three divine per­sons. More­over, grace in Christ is not a thing or an object that is given. Grace is by nature a per­sonal real­ity, by which human beings are jus­ti­fied and renewed. It is by nature dis­tinct from the man­i­fold gifts that come through God’s prov­i­dence and even from the gift of life itself” (p. 46).

With that com­mon ground, the report goes on to ask:

“To what extent can this com­mon foun­da­tion unite the dif­fer­ent reli­gious views that have arisen over the cen­turies of the­o­log­i­cal divi­sions and con­tro­ver­sies? His­tor­i­cally, Catholics have linked jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to par­tic­i­pa­tion in the sacra­men­tal life of the church. That posi­tion has led to legit­i­mate ques­tion­ing by the Luther­ans. Is a per­son ‘more jus­ti­fied’ by Christ because of reg­u­lar atten­dance at the Mass?… In the Lutheran tra­di­tion, the dimen­sion of ‘once and for all’ (epha­pax) in the sav­ing work of Christ ahs been strongly empha­sised. This posi­tion has how­ever been ques­tioned by Catholics: Does the con­cept of impu­ta­tive right­eous­ness, i.e. the defin­i­tive abo­li­tion of the divine con­dem­na­tion that was caused by human sin, imply that no spir­i­tual renewal is required dur­ing the life­time of a Chris­t­ian?” (p. 47).

Some­times, even in the face of exten­sive agree­ment, mutual ques­tions have to be left on the table, call­ing each other to account. After all, “A dia­logue is not a process of nego­ti­a­tion, in which com­pro­mises are made in order to achieve agree­ment, but a com­mon search for a deeper under­stand­ing of the truth” (p. 15).