Theological Trends
WITHOUT JUSTIFICATION? The Catholic-Lutheran Joint Declaration and its Protestant Critics Iain Taylor
W
HAT HAPPENED ON 31 OCTOBER 1999 in Augsburg, Germany, was
full of poignant symbolism. The date was significant: Reformation Day. The venue, too, was meaningful: there in 1530 probably the central document of Lutheranism was drafted, the Augsburg Confession. On that day and in that place, official representatives of the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church, the parties who had seemed so opposed 469 years before, signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification.1 Could it be that the signing of this document represents a genuine resolution to the ecclesiastical divisions that have existed since the Reformation? This was not the first such document to be produced as the fruit of ecumenical endeavours between the two Churches. Earlier works that presage the Joint Declaration include The Gospel and the Church (1972),2 Justification by Faith (1983),3 the German collection published in English as The Condemnations of the Reformation Era—Do They Still Divide? (1986),4 and Church and Justification (1994),5 all of which are
1
The text of the Joint Declaration can be found in Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000) and at http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/ chrstuni. 2 Report of the Joint Lutheran–Roman Catholic Study Commission, published in Growth in Agreement (New York and Geneva: Paulist and WCC, 1984), 168-189. 3 Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue VII (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1985). 4 Edited by Karl Lehmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg, translated by Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990 [1986]). 5 (Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1994). The Way, 43/3 (July 2004), 106-118