Travelling again

The stranzblog is about to set out on another journey and not by train but by plane this time (boo hiss!). Tomorrow morning early I shall take the plane to Grand Rapids Michigan USA for the Uniting General Council of the World Alliance of Reformed Churche on its way to becoming the World Communion of Reformed Churches. I shall be interpreting and editing and no doubt doing other things at the assembly.
And guess what this will be the first time in my life I have travelled to the USA ... I can't exactly say I'm looking forward to it but I'm sure it's going to be interesting. By the end of the month of June I shall have spend 5 nights at home ...

Reformation Day from struggle to reconciliation

Throughout this week Simone Sinn who works in the Lutheran World Federation's department of theology and studies has offered powerful times of prayer and reflection at the beginning of each day - always accompanied by a religious painting.
Today we reflected on the story of the reconciliation between Esau and Jacob, which is pictured here at the centre of the Pax Christi Icon of reconciliation from Jerusalem.
But we read the whole of the passage prior to the scene of reconciliation between the two brothers in which Jacob wrestles all night with God and is only let go when wounded in his hip and blessed (Genesis 32.22 - 33). I think it was the first time I had heard either story read aloud with the other in an act of worship. I must check to see how the readings are used in various lectionaries. Suddenly I saw that wrestling with God is clearly set within the context of reconciliation. It's wonderful how you can read the Bible for years and still get fresh insights in this way.
Simone then said that the church is in many ways about offering a space for people to wrestle and struggle with God so as to find the courage for the way forwards to reconciliation.
We also read a strong statement from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Zimbabwe, showing a church seeking clearly to wrestle with the issues of its own context and seek a clear path for justice and reconciliation in the future.

Marking the Reformation in 2017

Dr B. writes: "There's an interesting piece in the latest issue of the Journal of Ecumenical Studies in which Paul Schreck of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America suggests a joint declaration by the Catholic and Lutheran Churches to mark the Reformation in 2017 on the Confessio Augustana (CA, or Augsburg Confession), the primary confessional document of Lutheran churches.* The Augsburg Confession was written in both German and Latin, and was presented by a number of German rulers and free-cities at the Diet of Augsburg on June 25, 1530. As Schreck points out, there was increasing Catholic interest in the 1970s in a Catholic recognition of the statements of faith in the CA. Schreck notes that in 1958, Joseph Ratzinger had already highlighted the importance of the CA, an idea developed further in Ratzinger's Graz lecture of 1967, and in his Principles of Catholic Theology:

Research in recent years has led to the conclusion that it was not just for diplomatic reasons that the Confessio Augustana [henceforth CA] was composed as the fundamental
Lutheran confessional text; it was intended to be interpreted under the law of the empire as a Catholic confession; it was understood with inner conviction as a search for evangelical Catholicity--an effort to filter the seething discontent of the early reform movement in a way that would make it a Catholic
reform. Efforts are being made, accordingly, to bring about a Catholic recognition of the CA--or more accurately, a recognition of the CA as Catholic--that would establish the Catholicity of the churches of the Augsburg Confession and thus make possible a corporate union despite existing differences. Certainly such a recognition of the CA by the Catholic Church would be far more than a theoretical theological action that could be worked out by historians and church politicians. It would be, rather, a
concrete historical step on both sides.

The idea was picked up also by Walter Kasper, who is now president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Unity, who suggested that Catholic recognition of the CA would not mean that it would become a Catholic confessional document, but that it would be seen as one legitimate expression of the Catholic faith.

Schreck's research leads him to the conclusion that at some point a joint Lutheran-Catholic attempt to attest to the Catholic nature of the CA was simply set aside. However, he suggests that with the signing of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification by the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation, there is now the basis for the issue of the CA to be picked up again. Moreover, he suggests, such a step would have significance beyond the LWF:

The ecumenical importance of such a recognition of the CA would not belimited to Lutherans. John Calvin accepted a revised version of the CAin 1541; in 1684 the Peace of Westphalia recognized Calvinists as members of the Augustan community. Thomas Cranmer based many of his forty-two articles upon the CA, so recognition of the CA would presumably have some bearing on the Thirty-nine articles of the Church of England."

* Paul A Schreck, "Under One Christ: Implications of a Roman Catholic Recognition of the Confessio Augustana in CE 1017", Journal of Ecumenical Studies, vol. 43, no. 1, Winter 2008, pp. 90-110.

Martin Luther rehabilitated?

A guest blogger writes:

So, The Times is reporting that Pope Benedict XVI is planning to rehabilitate Martin Luther. A Times beat-up, at first sight, with the only person quoted directly being Cardinal Kasper, and even then without it being clear in exactly what context the good German cardinal was pronouncing these words. The Vatican meanwhile has issued a denial of the story. At least though it has got the blogosphere going.

(PS: Philip Pullella on the Reuters FaithWorld blog has explained the genesis of the Times piece, which then went round the world.)

And yet, it is less than ten years to the 500th anniversary of Luther's 95 theses being nailed, so the story goes, to the door of the Wittenberg Schlosskirche. Back in 1983, at the celebrations in Leipzig of the 500th anniversary of the birth of Luther, the then president of the Secretariat for Christian Unity, Cardinal Willebrands, said the following:

... notwithstanding the contrasts that separate us, it is worthwhile to enter into an open and factual dialogue with Martin Luther. This is a difficult road, but a necessary one. We have to follow it, firstly in an endeavour to obtain a better insight into truth, and also out of love for those of our brothers and sisters who today seek to shape their Christian life in accordance with Luther's fundamental theological insights and convictions of faith; lastly and above all we have to follow it for the sake of the one holy Gospel of Jesus Christ and for the sake of His coming Kingdom. We have to proclaim Christ in all the untimeliness of this world, and we have to do this trusting in all the embracing force of the Holy Spirit and to the greater glory of God.

In 1985, when asked if the Catholic Church would lift the excommunication on Luther, Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) responded, "Luther's excommunication terminated with his death because judgement after death is reserved to God alone. Luther's excommunication does not have to be lifted; it has long ceased to exist." He added, however, "it is an entirely different matter when we ask if Luther's teachings still separate the churches and thus preclude joint communion." Ratzinger himself has in the past shown himself to be interested in a serious, if critical, dialogue with the thought of the Protestant Reformer, and has been credited with rescuing the 1999 Catholic-Lutheran Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, one of the central and contentious issues of Lutheran theology, in which the two sides declared that the condemnations of the past did not apply to the teaching on justification as set down in the document. In his "Principles of Catholic Theology", Ratzinger referred to research that concluded that the fundamental Lutheran confessional text, the Confessio Augustana, "was understood with inner conviction as a search for evangelical Catholicity--an effort to filter the seething discontent of the early reform movement in a way that would make it a Catholic reform".

Yet, looking towards the 2017 anniversary as a Lutheran-Catholic event is perhaps casting the net too narrowly. Luther was not, of course, the first or the last reformer, yet the events of 1517 are symbolic not only of the founding of a denomination but mark a massive break not only in Western Christianity but also in Western culture as a whole: literature, language, politics. economy. Yet it also extended beyond the West, and in the 16th century there were contacts between the Protestant reformation of the West and the Orthodox Church of the East, which was coming to terms with the sack of Constantinople 40 years before the birth of Luther (there was even a translation of the Confessio Augustana into Greek). The Reformers felt a certain kinship with the Orthodox since Rome considered both the Christian East and the Reformers to be heretics.

On the other hand, various anabaptist movements were themselves persecuted by Lutherans, while Lutherans and Calvinists pronounced mutual condemnations that were overcome formally only in 1973 in Europe with the Leuenberg Agreement. Walter Altmann, a Brazilian Lutheran who is moderator of the World Council of Churches, has recently spoken of the anniversary of 1517 serving as an ecumenical opportunity (translated press release here). The German political authorities have already started preparing for 2017, yet the churches worldwide seem not to have caught up (the Evangelical Church in Germany has nominated a "Beauftragter" ). Still, it's not too late for someone to take the initiative to start a process to use the 2017 anniversary for a new look at the Reformation from a genuinely ecumenical perspective - the legacy of the Reformation is too important to be left to Lutherans and Catholics alone!