2 - 2001
Protestans and Catholics in Germany
Closer Relations mean the End of Polite Phrases
A response to the papal statement Dominus Jesus
by Eberhard Jüngel
The statement Dominus Iesus from the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has started a lively debate in German churches, especially the passages concerning the relationship of the Roman Catholic Church with other churches. The author of this article is one of the most prominent Protestant theologians in Germany.
The papal statement Dominus Iesus has started debates throughout the world, especially those passages having to do with the relationship of the Roman Catholic Church to the other churches. The fact that this controversy can be discussed openly and include the expression of conflicting opinions here in Germany, without putting too much strain on ecumenical relationships, is a sign that the churches have grown closer together.
Dominus Iesus - the title of this strongly criticised statement is a quotation. It is, translated into Latin, the shortest of the ancient confessions of faith in Jesus. The belief of Christians in him whose death and resurrection signified to them the salvation of the world, is expressed in elementary conciseness in these two words: Kyrios Iesus, Jesus is Lord.
Paul says of this early confession of faith that no one can speak so except by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 12.3): "... because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved" (Romans 10.9). The confession that Jesus is Lord therefore is about nothing less than our salvation; that means it is about human beings succeeding in coming together, being together and staying together with God, and therefore with one another.
We need to remember this New Testament origin of the confession of faith Dominus Iesus because the Vatican statement which is so entitled must be, and evidently wishes to be, measured against the Biblical meaning of this title. Thus it will also have to affirm that a confession of faith cannot be forced. A spirit of freedom, the liberating presence of the Spirit, is needed if one is to believe in Jesus Christ and recognise him as Lord. Thus the language in which this faith is articulated must be a liberating language.
This does not exclude the claim of truth. To the contrary: Christian freedom is a child of the truth of the Gospel. The Christian freedom which springs from the truth of the Gospel is a very decided freedom. It implies an either-or. For the earliest Christians, confessing that Jesus is Lord meant that they were also decidedly contradicting all other lords and their totalitarian claims to lordship.
The confession Dominus Iesus, by expressing unconditional trust in God's consummate self-revelation in the history of the man Jesus, implies an uncompromising denial of all principalities and powers which claim ultimate authority over the whole of human life.
It is very much to the credit of the Vatican statement Dominus Iesus that, in this age of pluralism and relativity with regard to every claim to speak the truth, it reminds us in its own way that the claim of truth of the Gospel does not allow for any compromises. The text seeks to comply with Jesus Christ's Great Commission "to proclaim the Gospel to the whole world".
This universal mission of the church will be fulfilled "in the proclamation of the mystery of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and the mystery of the incarnation of the Son, as saving event for all humanity". However, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith sees the fulfilment of this mission as endangered "by relativistic theories which seek to justify religious pluralism, not only de facto but also de jure (or in principle)".
The statement can expect to find Protestant agreement with its categorical distinction between mission and interreligious dialogue. And there will also be agreement that the Christian partner should participate in such dialogue "in obedience to the truth and with respect for freedom".
Obedience to the truth includes affirming the insight that the Gospel is the "definitive Word" of the divine revelation and that "in this definitive Word of his revelation, God has made himself known in the fullest possible way". Such a universal claim to speak the truth does not make the dialogue with other religions any easier. But at least those who take part in the dialogue know what it is in which they are getting involved.
The difficulties within Christianity which the Vatican statement has provoked begin only when one comes to the ecclesiological explanations. Protestants can still fully agree with the assertion that "Christ and the Church can neither be confused nor separated". But the very next phrase already sounds suspicious. Its formulation is also difficult to follow logically, in saying that Christ and the church "constitute the single 'whole Christ'".
The marriage metaphor of Ephesians 5, comparing the church's relationship to Christ to that of the bride to the bridegroom, tempts the writer here to over exalted and problematic assertions about the church. If it takes the church to make Jesus Christ a "whole Christ", it looks as though it is less the church which needs him as an essential constitutive element than the other way around. Is this a misunderstanding?
The entirely justified talk of "the unicity and the unity of the Church" and the trust, expressed in dogmatic formulations, that "everything that belongs to the Church's integrity - will never be lacking", can certainly have a different foundation.
The churches of the Reformation share the certainty that "a holy Christian Church must be and remain for all time". However, in their understanding of the basis of this certainty, it is very important to them that the bride can not be confused with the bridegroom.
When the Pope's most recent statement says that since God is faithful, the integrity of the church continues, despite all the guilt it has incurred, that again touches on the insights of the Reformation. In Martin Luther's words: "It is not we ourselves who are able to sustain the Church, nor could those who went before us do so, nor will those who come after us; instead, it was, is now and ever will be he who said: 'I am with you always, to the end of the age.'" It is simply not comprehensible to claim that God's faithfulness, which is there for the church even amidst its guilt, is reserved exclusively for the Roman Catholic Church.
Anglicans, Orthodox and Protestants will agree with the Dominus Iesus statement, even from an ecclesiological standpoint, to the extent that all confessions see the existence and the unity of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church as founded on the unicity of Jesus Christ. In their worship services they all confess their faith in "una sancta catholica et apostolica ecclesia".
But what is the relationship of this one and only Church of Jesus Christ to the church communities we know, constituted and visible in this world? It is the Vatican's answer to this question which has unleashed this ecumenical whirlwind which is now being regretted in Rome.
The Roman document asserts "that the Church of Jesus Christ ... continues to exist fully only in the Catholic Church", citing the Second Vatican Council. And Cardinal Ratzinger, who had been present at the Council, finds it important to say that the Council no longer meant to insist - as did Pius XII - on the identical sameness of being of the Church of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church, but did mean to say that the Church of Christ "subsists" only in the church governed by the Pope and the Bishops.
The verb "subsistit" was chosen because it makes clear that "there exists only one 'subsistence' of the true Church", and that is in the Roman Catholic Church. According to Ratzinger the Council purposefully sought to exclude the possibility that the one Church of Jesus Christ is really present in the other ecclesial communities as well and has there the character of being a subject on its own. He therefore maintains that the Dominus Iesus statement only repeats the view of the Council, when it claims that the churches of the Reformation "are not Churches in the proper sense".
However, other Catholic theologians who were also present in Rome at the time understood the Second Vatican Council quite differently. And in 1964 even Professor Joseph Ratzinger, as he was then, explained with regard to the Council's decisions "that the Christian communities outside the Catholic Church, though they are not 'the Church', are in truth 'churches'".
However, the differences which are opened up here need to be reconciled among the representatives of the Roman Catholic Church, and probably also between the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Professor Ratzinger. However, when the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith makes a statement to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung [German national newspaper] "that it's completely absurd ... what our Lutheran friends want", namely "that we regard these accidental historical constructions as Church in the same sense as we believe that the ... Catholic Church is the Church", then the Protestant church must meet the challenge to put things straight beyond all misunderstanding.
The churches of the Reformation have never thought of themselves as "new churches". To this extent the "Lutheran friends", even today, simply cannot ask the Roman Catholic Church to give them the seal of approval as being churches in the same sense as the church which is under the - in some circumstances infallible - jurisdiction of the Pope as primate. The supposition that this is what the Protestant churches are seeking is a cardinal misunderstanding of Protestant Christianity's ecumenical intentions.
However, it is necessary for church unity - and here I completely agree with Cardinal Ratzinger - that the differences among the churches which are coming closer together ecumenically be brought out with the greatest possible clarity.
Making distinctions is an elementary part of criticism. And criticism in the service of the truth is one of the ecumenical tasks which are called for at this time. Bishop Karl Lehmann is right - the time for ecumenical polite phrases is past. But, to quote Joseph Ratzinger, anno 1964: "The growth of criticism here is ... also a sign of growing closer together."
Eberhard Jüngel is Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Tübingen. We here publish extracts from an article in the November 2000 issue of the Protestant journal "Zeitzeichen".