Journeys Home (39 page)

Now we've reached the common ground. Recall that many English
translations render the "love" of 1 Corinthians 13:13 ("So faith,
hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love")
as "charity" (in Greek,
agape
; in Latin,
caritas
). Charity is
an
active
love of both God above all things and our neighbor as
ourselves; as such, it's considered by Catholics as the greatest
of the "theological virtues" (which also include faith and hope).
This is what following through on our faith -- the Catholic concept,
much maligned by Lutherans, of "faith fashioned by love" -- is
all about.

Lutherans speak of these issues under another name: the "third
use of the Law," as found in the 1580 Formula of Concord:

The
law has been given to men for three reasons: (1) to maintain external
discipline against unruly and disobedient men, (2) to lead men
to a knowledge of their sin, (3) after they are reborn, and although
the flesh still inheres in them, to give them on that account
a definite rule according to which they should pattern and regulate
their entire life. ...

We believe, teach and confess that the preaching of the law is
to be diligently applied not only to unbelievers and the impenitent
but also to people who are genuinely believing, truly converted,
regenerated, and justified through faith.

For although they are
indeed reborn and have been renewed in the spirit of their mind,
such regeneration and renewal is incomplete in this world. In
fact, it has only begun, and in the spirit of their mind the believers
are in a constant war against their flesh (that is, their corrupt
nature and kind), which clings to them until death. (
Formula of
Concord,
Epitome, VI, 1, 3 - 4a)

Put another way: The Law -- loving God with all your heart, soul,
and mind, and your neighbor as yourself -- doesn't cease to apply
to you once you're saved. The commandments of the Law tell believers
what they ought to be doing
as a matter of course.
If Christians
aren't doing good works and don't care, how can anyone tell they
are Christians? Indeed, how can they themselves expect to see
heaven with such an attitude?

That's
what James was getting at when he wrote that "faith without
works is dead" (Jas 2:26). But it's also what Catholics mean when
they speak of justification as a process -- one that lasts until
God calls us home. If we freely sin and don't care, we fall into
the category of those who "have made shipwreck of their faith"
(1 Tim 1:19). But we have the sure promise in 2 Timothy 2:12 - 13 that "if we endure, we shall also reign with Him" and that
"if we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny
Himself"!

This is the common ground of the
Joint Declaration on the Doctrine
of Justification,
the breakthrough agreement between Catholics
and many Lutherans (though not the Missouri Synod) signed in Augsburg,
Germany, on Reformation Day 1999. It declares that the signatories
consider its contents to "encompass a consensus on
basic truths
of the doctrine of justification."

Its key passage answers both of our key questions of the Christian
life: "Together we confess: 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 and calling us to good works" (
Joint Declaration on
the Doctrine of Justification,
15).

Does that seem familiar? It should. It's anchored not only in
Ephesians 2:8 - 9 -- the "justification in a nutshell" passage
that Lutherans cite so often -- but also verses 10 and 11, which
Catholics insist must not be forgotten: "For by grace you have
been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is
the gift of God -- not because of works, lest any man should boast.
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,
which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them"
(emphasis
added).

One must emphasize that the
Joint Declaration
speaks of shared
"
basic
truths," not total agreement. The two faith traditions
are still seeking common ground on
how
we live out our faith,
how
we know what God expects us to do and
how
He gives us the
grace to do it through Word and Sacrament: in essence, all the
remaining points at issue between Lutherans and Catholics.

But it's clear that Catholics and Lutherans -- in two different
ways, just as Blessed John Paul II perceived -- agree on what
one might call "the circle of eternal life," one that begins and
ends with God.

The circle works like this: God, through Christ's death for our
sins, alone makes our salvation possible. But we have to accept
His gift of faith, and we absolutely must live that faith by following
God's commands, lest we lose the Holy Spirit and the salvation
that Christ earned for us.

Nevertheless, we
cannot
follow through and we cannot accept the
gift of faith -- or, put in the passive form that Lutherans prefer,
the reception of faith by us cannot take place -- unless God alone
gives us the ability to do so. So, in the end,
we are totally
dependent on God!

The belief that Catholics and Lutherans somehow disagreed on that
was, and is, the cornerstone of the typical Lutheran's mighty
fortress against Rome. Once the cornerstone was removed from my
wall, the other bricks began to collapse.

I began to perceive other similarities between Catholics and Lutherans
that hadn't occurred to me before, most notably in the two key
ingredients of the Church's authority: the relationship between
Scripture and Tradition and the question of infallibility. Luther,
of course, set the tone for Protestants everywhere with his emphasis
on
sola scriptura
-- the Bible as the sole authority. But Blessed
John Paul II changed the tone of the debate in
Ut Unum Sint,
defining
the question in dispute as "the relationship between Sacred Scripture,
as the highest authority in matters of faith,
and Sacred Tradition,
as indispensable to the interpretation of the Word of God."

Compare that to Article II of the LCMS Constitution, quoted earlier.
It's the same order of primacy! Catholics indeed look first to
the Scriptures -- but they interpret those Scriptures in the light
of the teaching they uphold as directly passed on from the Apostles,
the Church Fathers, and the ecumenical councils. And in Missouri's
universe, at any rate, the Lutheran Confessions have the same
relationship to Scripture. They define how the LCMS reads and
lives its faith.

That harmonizes well with the simple definition of Tradition as
"the living and lived faith of the Church" -- even more simply,
the teachings of the Church. In that light,
sola scriptura
is
nothing more than a phrase or slogan. It can't be anything else
as long as a group of Christians follows a particular set of teachings,
whether it comes from Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, or John
Wesley.

In that case ... which side has the better case for its tradition?
Lutherans, who kept much of the Catholic tradition but based the
rest of their teachings on the interpretations of a handful of
sixteenth-century men? Or the Catholic Church, which can do what
Luther cannot: cite the Scriptures in defense of its authority
to pass on and interpret the faith?

It isn't that the LCMS
in practice
denies the connection between
Scripture and tradition. It's a question of which tradition it
accepts. The issue of infallibility is much the same. The LCMS
believes the Holy Spirit guides its officers and pastors (its
Magisterium, if you will) and its triennial conventions (its ecumenical
councils) in deciding doctrinal issues.

Again, which has the better scriptural case for its authority?
I concluded that Rome had a convincing case -- and Missouri, by
its own preferred standard, had none. Once I realized that, the
other issues between Lutherans and Catholics were much easier
to deal with.

There were other areas in which it appeared that Lutheran practice
mimicked Catholic reality. Luther may have reduced seven sacraments
to two by his own definition. Yet Lutherans hold confirmation,
marriage, ordination, confession and absolution (in the corporate
sense, anyway) and pastoral care of the sick (parallel to the
Catholic sacrament of Anointing of the Sick) in high esteem.

In each, they believe God blesses His people as the pastor proclaims
God's Word. And isn't that the essence of the "means of grace"
that explains the basic act of both Baptism and the Eucharist -- the application of God's Word to visible elements to impart
His grace?

Coupled with my new scriptural proofs and my conclusions on Catholic
authority, the sacraments proved easier to deal with than I had
thought. I had viewed the flow all wrong. The sacraments weren't
obstacles to our reaching God. They were means for God to reach
us!

Much the same may be said of Mary and the saints. I didn't expect
those issues to fall as easily as they did. But both are linked
to one question: Do Lutherans believe the "communion of saints"
unites the saints in heaven and on earth in one body of Christ?
And if it does, why would we not seek the aid of the Christians
who have gone before?

Lutherans will admit that the saints in heaven, including Mary,
pray for the saints on earth. Unfortunately, they don't believe
we can pray to
them
, asking them to pray for us. But that ignores
Paul's observation that "the eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have
no need of you'" (1 Cor 12:21).

We ask our fellow living Christians to pray for us in time of
trouble. The Catholic Church invites us, without demanding it,
likewise to seek the prayers of the blessed dead. Christ remains
the one Mediator, but He makes use of whatever media He wishes
to draw us to Himself -- including our fellow members of the Body
of Christ.

As for Mary, I found the case for Catholic dogma bolstered by
a most unexpected source: Luther himself. Evidence can be found
in his writings that he believed in all the Marian dogmas of the
Catholic Church: Mary was Mother of God, was perpetually a virgin,
was immaculately conceived and assumed into heaven. Most astonishingly,
the founder of this tradition that disdains praying to Mary invokes
her intercession at the beginning and the end of his commentary
on the Magnificat in 1521 -- the year he was excommunicated!

It's quite another thing to equate Mary or the saints with God.
Luther was adamant in opposing that thinking -- but so is the
Catholic Church. Pope Paul VI clarified the point for Catholics
when he cautioned that veneration of Mary and the saints must
be done within the context of "a rightly ordered faith," one that
looks to Christ as the sole source of salvation and grace.

This space, of course, is too limited to cover all the Catholic-Lutheran
issues, let alone all the evidence I found for the Catholic position.
But one more subject needs to be covered. Ultimately for me, it
came down to the Eucharist. The dispute over the sacrifice of
the Mass wasn't the obstacle I expected it to be. The Church does
not see it as a repetition of Christ's sacrifice, as Luther and
the Reformers perceived their position. Rather, the Church speaks
of the
one single sacrifice
presented again to us, a re-enactment
of Calvary every time we "do this in remembrance" of our Lord.
(The late LCMS theology professor Arthur Carl Piepkorn, a key
player in the first U.S. Lutheran-Catholic dialogues in the 1960s,
wrote of the Eucharist in similar terms.)

That understanding brought me to the transubstantiation issue,
the fate of the bread and wine after the Words of Institution.
I had come a long way by following the Pope's advice. I had had
to give up very little of my Lutheran way of thinking. But transubstantiation
couldn't be resolved as two different approaches to a common belief.
I was back to the diagram my pastor had put on the chalkboard
twenty years before: Either the bread and wine are still there -- or they aren't.

So I went to Luther's 1520 treatise
The Babylonian Captivity of
the Church,
the work that defined his views on transubstantiation
and redefined the sacraments. I had been struck by an oddity:
Catholics and Lutherans appealed to the same Scripture passages
and emphasized a plain, literal reading of the text. There must
be something more to Luther's position.

There was. Luther wrote:

Does not Christ appear to have anticipated this curiosity admirably
by saying of the wine, not
Hoc est sanguis meus,
but
Hic est sanguis
meus?
... That the pronoun "this," in both Greek and Latin, is
referred to "body," is due to the fact that in both of these languages
the two words are of the same gender.
In Hebrew, however, which
has no neuter gender, "this" is referred to "bread,"
so that it
would be proper to say
Hic
[bread]
est corpus meum.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, Luther bases his theology on
the original Bible languages: Greek and Hebrew, not Latin.
But
not here.
He's objecting to the Latin translation -- the translation
of the Church whose authority he was rejecting. He was dismissing
the original translation, the Greek, because it agrees with the
Latin. And he's appealing to a different language entirely -- Hebrew, which he assumes Christ spoke at the Last Supper (modern
scholars believe it more likely was Aramaic) -- to undermine the
transubstantiation doctrine that he associated with Rome's supposed
corruptions of the faith.

My hands shook as I read that passage for the first time. I thought:
But that's wrong!
He can't do that!