4 - 1998

Joint Declaration on Justification

Editorial

How can "visible unity" among the divided churches come into being? A dispute about this question has been kindled in the past months in the churches and the theological faculties in Germany.

The quarrel was started through the efforts of the Lutheran World Federation and the Vatican to overcome the church division of the 16th century between the Roman Catholic church and the Lutheran churches on a decisive point, namely, the doctrine of justification. It is well known that the question which occupied Martin Luther, "how do I find a gracious God?", led him to the discovery that brought about the upheaval of the Reformation: "I begin to understand the righteousness of God as one by which the justified lives as though by the gift of God, namely, from his faith".

The discovery that what gives meaning to human life and constitutes his dignity is not an achievement to be accomplished by the person, but always a gift of God, had the power to split the church at the time of the Reformation. The ecumenical dialogue of the past decades has shown, in comparison, that the churches today "have come much closer to one another in the study of the doctrine of justification and its meaning for all of Christianity" (former Bishop Eduard Lohse in May 1996).

Thus the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the Vatican had reason to record in a Joint Declaration (JD) what they shared on issues of the justification doctrine. The draft, which was worked out in years of consultations by a negotiation commission, filled equally with members called by the LWF and by the Vatican, was published in February 1997. It came to the conclusion that the understanding of the doctrine of justification set out in the Declaration shows "that between Lutherans and Catholics a consensus in basic truths of the doctrine of justification exists."

This draft was sent to the member churches of the LWF with the request for discussion and acceptance before April 1998. While the worldwide consultation process thereby started led to decisions to agree in many member churches of the LWF, for example in Scandinavia and North America, in Germany critical voices of well-known theologians were raised as well as those of clear agreement from Lutheran churches and their official bodies. Then in January 1998 numerous Protestant professors of theology made public a statement which picked up this criticism and called upon the synods of the Lutheran churches in Germany to "reject the JD in the present form" (see p. 1 of this edition).

The statement of the professors, which in the weeks to follow was signed by more than 160 university teachers of theology, lent, much publicly effective weight to the criticism of the JD. In the dispute which had now broken out, there were of course also well-known supporters of the JD, as for example Wolfhart Pannenberg, whose opinion we print here (see p. 3). Under the impression that the criticism of the theologians made, most of the Lutheran churches in Germany nonetheless did not agree with the JD's conviction that "a consensus in the basic truths of the doctrine of justification" had been reached. Instead, they accepted the Declaration with a "differentiated yes", understanding it as a "first step" in a prolonged process of dialogue in the course of which necessary clarifications and more precise statements would have to be reached.

Similarly, then, the Council of the LWF, which unanimously accepted the JD on June 16,1998, stated that instead of a consensus there was extensive "agreement" by issues which still remained "controverse".

Only a few days later the Vatican expressed itself for the first time to the draft of the JD. A letter from the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity contained, beside a general agreement, the statement that consensus in all the basic truths of the doctrine of justification had not been reached, that the Lutheran churches still held views which did not converge with the decisions of the Council of Trent, and that it was doubtful whether the Lutheran synods even possessed "actual authority" by decisions in doctrinal matters.

The statement of the Vatican led to considerable disappointment and disillusionment on the Protestant side. It induced the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) to a sharp statement in which among other things is said: "irritating defeats cannot deter us from trying to clarify issues of church doctrine". Thus the ecumenical dialogue must and will continue. Perhaps the viewpoints that Heinz Ruegger contributes from an ecumenical perspective (see p. 6) can be helpful here. Not least in this matter we should ponder what Martin Luther wrote to a Catholic colleague about justification in 1521: these questions are "actually to be dealt with and grasped more with the heart than with words".