Back in 1966, a young German Catholic theologian penned a commentary
on the final session of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), expressing
some fairly strong reservations about what he saw as the overly
optimistic and “French” tone of its concluding document, Gaudium et Spes, the “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World.”
The document’s lofty humanism, this theologian charged, “Prompts the
question of why, exactly, the reasonable and perfectly free human being
described in the first articles was suddenly burdened with the story of
Christ.”
He worried that concepts such as “People of God” and “the
world” were given an uncritically positive spin, reflecting naiveté
about the corrupting effects of sin.
Along the way, this writer offered an arresting aside. Gaudium et Spes,
he opined, breathes the air of Teilhard de Chardin, the French Jesuit,
but not enough of Martin Luther, the German father of the Protestant
Reformation. Saying so required a certain ecumenical chutzpah, given
that Pope Leo X’s 1520 condemnation of Luther’s ideas as “heretical,
scandalous, false, offensive to pious ears and seductive of simple
minds, and against Catholic truth” remained on the books.
That’s an irony worth recalling, given that the young theologian in
question is today Pope Benedict XVI, and that in two weeks he’ll be
heading back to the Land of Luther for his first official state visit.
Benedict XVI may be as Catholic as they come, but he’s also deeply
German, and he obviously feels a streak of affection for his country’s
most celebrated theological son. Part of the drama of the trip,
therefore, is how Benedict may use it to recalibrate relations with
Protestantism heading into the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in
2017.
Ecumenically, the highlight should come with a Sept. 23 visit to an
Augustinian monastery in Erfurt, about two hours by car southwest of
Berlin, where Luther lived from 1501 to 1511 while studying at the local
university. (For the record, Luther’s verdict on his stay was mixed.
He
described Erfurt itself as “the perfect place for a city,” but derided
the university as a “beerhouse and whorehouse.”) It was in Erfurt that
Luther entered the Augustinian order, after vowing to become a monk in
gratitude for surviving a violent lightning storm, and he was ordained
to the priesthood in its cathedral.
Jesuit Fr. Hans Langendoerfer, the secretary for the German bishops’
conference, said this week that Benedict will use the stop in Erfurt to
reshape Catholic perceptions of Luther and his contemporary disciples.
“In Erfurt, Benedict will aim to get further away from the idea that
Protestants are first of all dissenters,” he said. “This broad view of
Christian history could be very fruitful as we approach the anniversary
of the Reformation.”
(Langendoerfer cautioned, however, against overheated expectations:
“Hopes about this visit have gone wild,” he warned. “There’s talk Pope
Benedict could grant the Protestants a new status or could just say ‘OK,
let’s completely change those rules about communion services.’ It
doesn’t work that way.”)
By way of background, it’s worth taking a brief stroll down memory
lane to revisit a little-known episode from Benedict’s biography, one
with bearing on his attitude towards Luther and Lutherans. It involves
the future pope’s role in first sabotaging, then resurrecting, perhaps
the most heralded ecumenical agreement of the 20th century: The 1999
“Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification” between the
Catholic church and the Lutheran World Federation, which purportedly
closed the debate over salvation through faith alone, versus faith plus
works, at the heart of the Protestant Reformation.
* * *
In some ways, the Lutherans are to Benedict what the Orthodox were to
John Paul, the separated brethren he knows best and for whom he has the
greatest natural affinity.
Luther has loomed large in the pontiff’s
thought; after Augustine, there is probably no pre-modern Christian
writer who has exercised more influence on his theological views.
Benedict also openly admires several 20th century Lutheran theologians
and Biblical scholars, such as Wolfhart Pannenberg, Wilfrid Joest, and
Martin Hengel.
At the same time, Benedict XVI has long been a skeptic about the prospects for swift Catholic/Lutheran détente.
First of all, his judgment on Luther himself is mixed. In his 1987 book Church, Ecumenism and Politics,
Ratzinger wrote that there are really two Martin Luthers. First is the
Luther of the catechisms, the great writer of hymns and promoter of
liturgical reform.
This Luther, Ratzinger wrote, anticipated much of the
ressourcement that later surfaced in Catholicism prior to
Vatican II. Yet there is also, Ratzinger asserted, Luther the
polemicist, whose radical view of individual salvation leaves the church
entirely out of view.
Second, Benedict over the years has been ambivalent about what one
might call “bureaucratic ecumenism,” including the joint documents that
official dialogues between different confessions produce. In his view,
such documents often attempt the impossible by trying to reconcile
logically opposed positions of the past.
Three decades ago, Ratzinger
wrote that unity will not be found that way, but rather by taking “new
steps” together.
Third, the water under the bridge during the five centuries since the
Protestant Reformation has created new obstacles to unity, particularly
with mainline Protestant churches. Those developments include changes
in moral teaching and in ecclesiastical structures, as well as
ministries (most pointedly, the ordination of women; a reminder will
come in Erfurt, where Benedict XVI will be hosted by a female Lutheran
bishop, Ilse Junkermann).
All of these forces -- Benedict’s fondness for Luther and Lutheran
thought, coupled with his ambivalence about official ecumenical
agreements and the present realities of Western Protestantism -- were
clearly on display in his reaction to the 1999 “Joint Declaration.”
The fruit of decades of dialogue among Catholic and Lutheran
theologians, the document was designed to address the central
theological dispute of the Reformation: How the fallen human person is
saved. The idea was that although Catholics and Lutherans may have
different accents in answering that question, at heart they are in
substantial agreement.
By saying so out loud, the declaration would also
take the mutual condemnations of the 16th century off the table.
The watershed moment seemed to have arrived on June 25, 1998, when
Australian Cardinal Edward Cassidy, at the time the president of the
Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, held a news
conference in Rome to present the text.
It contained 44 “common
declarations,” summarizing areas of agreement. Each side was able to
offer its own explanation of the reasoning that allowed it to sign the
declaration.
The heart of the agreement was this key sentence: “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 us and calling us to good works.”
Cassidy said the “high level of consensus” allowed both sides to
state that “the condemnations leveled at one another in the sixteenth
century no longer apply to the respective partner today.” He obviously
believed something transcendent had been achieved.
Cassidy said at the
time that when he dies and faces judgment, and God asks what he
accomplished with his life, his answer will be: “I signed the Joint
Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification.”
As it turned out, however, the victory lap was premature. Shortly
after Cassidy’s presentation, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith under Ratzinger issued a “response” to the declaration, which
seemed to suggest that the alleged consensus between Catholics and
Lutherans was artificial.
(Procedurally, it must be said, this was a curious move. Outsiders
fairly wondered what sense it made for the Vatican to issue a “response”
to a document for which it was supposedly one of the authors. If
Vatican officials had problems with the text, they asked, why sign in
the first place?
Alternatively, if the Vatican was going to back away
from its own agreements before the ink was even dry, why invest time and
treasure producing them? It was one of several episodes from the John
Paul years illustrating a chronic lack of communication among the
various Vatican departments, but that’s another story.)
The doctrinal response, issued under Ratzinger’s name and obviously
shaped by his thought, ticked off a number of areas where, it charged,
serious differences remained between Catholic and Lutheran theology:
- The Lutheran understanding of justification, in which the human person remains simul iustus et peccator -- simultaneously justified and a sinner -- is inconsistent with Catholic belief that baptism removes the stain of sin.
- Catholics believe in both salvation through faith and judgment on the basis of works, and it’s not clear Lutherans share that belief.
- The Lutheran understanding of salvation is difficult to reconcile with the Catholic sacrament of penance.
- Lutheran insistence that justification is the cornerstone of the entire Christian faith is overblown; the doctrine of justification has to be incorporated into the organic whole of revelation.
- It was also unclear, according to the response, if the Lutheran signatories could speak for their denomination: “There remains the question of the real authority of such a synodal consensus, today and also tomorrow, in the life and doctrine of the Lutheran community.”
The bottom line was that Trent remains in force: “The level of
agreement is high,” the response said, “but it does not yet allow us to
affirm that all the differences separating Catholics and Lutherans in
the doctrine concerning justification are simply a question of emphasis
or language .... The divergences must, on the contrary, be overcome
before we can affirm, as is done generically, that these points no
longer incur the condemnations of the Council of Trent.”
Many Lutherans were furious. One claimed that the Holy See had
betrayed both the Lutheran and the Roman Catholic theologians who worked
on the document, and that it would take decades to reestablish trust.
In the German press, Ratzinger quickly emerged as the villain of the
story, which brought a rare flash of personal pique. On July 14, 1998,
he published a letter in the Frankfurter Allgemeine calling
reports that he had torpedoed the agreement a “smooth lie,” insisting
that to scuttle dialogue with Lutherans would be to “deny myself.”
Perhaps stung by the backlash, Ratzinger stepped in to put the
dialogue back on track. On November 3, 1998, he quietly invited a small
working group to assemble in Regensburg, Germany, in the home he shared
with his brother Georg.
In addition to Ratzinger, the group consisted of
Lutheran Bishop Johannes Hanselmann, Catholic theologian Heinz
Schuette, and Lutheran theologian Joachim Track.
Track later said, in an interview I conducted with him, that Ratzinger saved the agreement by offering three key concessions.
- First, Ratzinger agreed that the goal of the ecumenical process is unity in diversity, not structural reintegration. “This was important to many Lutherans in Germany, who worried that the final aim of all this was coming back to Rome,” Track said.
- Second, Ratzinger acknowledged the authority of the Lutheran World Federation to reach agreement with the Vatican.
- Third, Ratzinger agreed that while Christians are obliged to do good works, justification and final judgment remain God’s gracious acts.
On that basis, the working group retooled the Joint Declaration to
satisfy concerns on both sides. Bishop George Anderson of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, who was not present in
Regensburg but who was briefed by the Lutheran participants, said
Ratzinger’s role was critical: “It was Ratzinger who untied the knots …
Without him we might not have an agreement.”
One year after his original announcement, Cassidy held a second press
conference to present an agreement -- this time, one that the Vatican’s
doctrinal office did not disown.
The final version came in the form of three documents: the Joint
Declaration itself, an “official common statement” indicating how the
two parties understand the Joint Declaration, and an “annex” in which
the points raised in the response were addressed as well as additional
concerns from the Lutheran side. The statement asserted that “consensus
in basic truths of the doctrine of justification exists between
Lutherans and Catholics.”
The annex offered point-by-point commentary on the issues raised in the 1998 response:
- Baptism really does free humans from the power of sin, “yet we would be wrong to say that we are without sin.”
- “The working of God’s grace does not exclude human action.”
- “In the final judgment, the justified will be judged also on their works.”
- “The doctrine of justification is the measure or touchstone for the Christian faith. No teaching may contradict this criterion.”
- Pointedly, the annex said that “the response of the Catholic church [to the original declaration] does not intend to put in question the authority of Lutheran synods or of the Lutheran World Federation.”
With that, the doctrinal divide opened by the Reformation was, in effect, declared closed.
To be sure, the Joint Declaration has not exactly brought about an
ecumenical New Jerusalem. Some Lutherans have rejected the agreement,
including the International Lutheran Council and the Confessional
Evangelical Lutheran Conference.
On the Catholic side, the Vatican’s
approval remains officially binding, but enthusiasm varies.
All signs suggest that sensitivities remain a bit raw. Recently,
German Lutheran theologian Reinhard Frieling suggested that Benedict XVI
might be declared an “honorary head of Christianity.”
That, of course,
falls far short of the “full, immediate and universal ordinary power in
the church” asserted for the Roman Pontiff in canon law, but even so,
Frieling’s suggestion produced such a backlash in Lutheran circles that
he was forced to clarify that he supports “unity with, but not under,
the pope.”
Yet the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification remains
the ecumenical agreement in which Pope Benedict XVI was most intimately
involved, first as a critic and then as its savior.
As such, it
illustrates both the doubts and the hopes that the first German pope in
500 years will carry with him on his homecoming later this month.