LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2001, Page 420

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420 ADDITIONAL THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS AND REPORTS—OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT

6. Justification: Beyond “Law and Gospel” and Faith

Our response has taken advantage of critiques including the one
offered by six Luther Seminary (ELCA) professors. They rightly
point to the incompatibility between the Declaration’s understand-
ing of justification as an inner process of transformation and the
Lutheran view of justification through faith alone (sola fide). But
their stress on faith as “relational,” especially without a clear affir-
mation of the incarnation and atonement, is itself misleading. Their
polemic against “some contemporary Finnish Luther scholars” who
“align justification with theosis through the idea that faith ‘re-
ceives’ Christ, and so divine life itself is ‘imparted’ to the person in
justification” is valid, if it targets the mingling of justification and
sanctification in that approach. On the other hand, we could hardly
disagree that God through Christ dwells in believers, especially
through the Sacrament. Faith to be sure is “relational” but not as
though in justification this faith were more than pure receptivity—
the empty hand filled by the Person and Work of the God-Man.

It is acommon Protestant error that faith justifies somehow also
because of its own inherent value. Seeing faith as a substantive
cause of the believer’s justification is hardly different from the
characteristic Roman fusion of justification with sanctification.
Without Christ, faith is nothing. Listen to Luther in his Galatians
Commentary.

But where they speak of love, we speak of faith. And while they say
that faith is the mere outline, but love is its living colors and completion,
we say in opposition that faith takes hold of Christ and that He is the
form that adorns and informs faith as color does the wall. Therefore,
Christian faith is not an idle quality or an empty husk in the heart... . .
But if it is true faith, it is a sure trust and firm acceptance in the heart. It
takes hold of Christ in such a way that Christ is the object of faith, or
rather not the object but, so to speak, the One who is present in the faith
itself |in ipsa fide Christus adest]. ... Therefore, faith justifies because
it takes hold of and possesses this treasure, the present Christ. . . . There-
fore, the Christ who is grasped by faith and who lives in the heart is the
true Christian righteousness, on account of which God counts us right-
eous and grants us eternal life.“

Whereas the six ELCA theologians do not relate faith and justi-
fication to the atonement, Kting and several other Roman Catholic
theologians recognize justification as an effect of Christ’s universal
atonement. For instance Meinertz, ‘““The objective fact of justifica-
tion is accomplished in the redemptive death of Christ, in connec-
tion, of course, with the resurrection. And so Rom. 5:9 can insist
that we are justified in His blood, and by way of complement, in
Rom. 4:25, that Christ was raised up for our justification.”*> Kiing
himself puts it like this:

On the one hand, the justification accomplished on the cross must
not be separated from the process which reaches down to the individual
man; this would in one way or another lead to apokatastasis. On the
other hand, personal justification must not be separated from the general
act of justification on the cross; this would in one way or another lead to
predestinationism. Rather both must be seen as the two sides of a single
truth: All men are justified in Jesus Christ and only the faithful are jus-
tified in Jesus Christ.*°
Kiting previously offered: “In reading texts which speak of jus-

tification in connection with the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ, it is striking to note that all of them referred emphatically to
faith as well (for example, Rom. 4.5, 20-25).”*’ The Joint Declara-
tion fails not simply in this or that detail of justification, but in
terms of the “big picture.”

7. Flawed Ecumenical Methodology

Tuomo Mannermaa traces the Leuenberg Concord to a falla-
cious distinction between a common “ground” or basis and differ-
ing modes of “expression.” This approach is similar but not identi-
cal to G. Ebeling’s scheme of distinguishing fides justificans from
fides dogmatica.*® Mannermaa sees a similar faulty pattern at work
in the Ecumenical Working Group’s 1986 The Condemnations of
the Reformation Era—Do They Still Divide ?, which is “not the only

2001 Convention Workbook

text in which the distinction of ground and expression, center and
periphery, concern and formulation [Anliegen und Ausgestaltung]
serves as hermeneutical key to the solution of the ecumenical prob-
lem.””

The Joint Declaration follows a similar pattern in distinguish-
ing between the basic “concerns” or “intentions” and the actual
doctrinal positions and formulations of Trent and the Book of Con-
cord. First, terms like grace, faith, and justification are identified,
but precise meanings give way to equivocations. Then the Decla-
ration takes these ambiguities as proof of a “consensus on basic
truths concerning the doctrine of justification,” of which the differ-
ing theologies of the two churches are merely complementary and
not contradictory expressions.”

Setting aside the past condemnations on such grounds amounts
simply to wishing them away. Understandably, the Declaration can-
not say that the past condemnations were simply wrong. Paragraph
42 puts it like this: “Nothing is thereby taken away from the seri-
ousness of the condemnations related to the doctrine of justification.
Some were not simply pointless. They remain for us ‘salutary warn-
ings’ to which we must attend in our teaching and practice.”

If “some” of the condemnations were “not simply pointless,”
were many or most of them “simply pointless” then? An earlier
version of the Declaration had put it like this: “Nothing is thereby
taken away from the seriousness of the condemnations related to
the doctrine of justification. They did not simply or altogether miss
the point. Where the basic consensus is not adhered to they still
apply today. In this respect the mutual] doctrinal condemnations re-
main ‘important as salutary warnings.’”

The Church of Finland’s response asked pointedly: “What does
the formulation ‘where the basic consensus is not adhered to’ mean
in concrete terms?” The final form of this point evidently follows
the maxim: the less said the better.

Having referred to unresolved issues such as purgatory, indul-
gences, merit, satisfaction, sacrifice of the Mass, invocation of
saints, and monastic vows, Avery Dulles asks what it would mean
to say that such matters are no longer church-divisive: “Does it
imply that Lutherans may today teach and hold the doctrine of
Trent and that Catholics are free to teach and hold the positions of
the Book of Concord on the disputed points? If such freedom does
not exist, the issues appear to stand in the way of full commu-
nion.”"' He adds this eloquent plea:

In the present atmosphere, Christians find it all too easy to declare
that the doctrinal disagreements of the past have Jost their church-divi-
sive character. Pervasive though the present climate of agnosticism and
relativism may be, Lutherans and Catholics must resist it. One of the
most precious things we have in common may be our conviction that
pure doctrine is crucially important and that ecclesial unity should not
be purchased at the expense of truth. I sincerely hope that we can con-
tinue to learn from one another, appropriate one another’s insights, and
correct one another’s oversights.”

Though some have pointed out that the “mutual condemna-
tions” in the Council of Trent and the Book of Concord are differ-
ent, these differences must not be exaggerated. Gottfried Martens in
his Die Rechtfertigung des Stinders-Rettungshandeln Gottes oder
historisches Interpretament criticizes the various justification dia-
logues precisely for reducing everything to historically variable ex-
pressions and interpretations. In fact, the booklet Ecumenism: The
Vision of the ELCA. A Guide for Synods and Congregations, cap-
tures the prevailing approach perfectly: “As Lutherans seek to enter
into fellowship without insisting on doctrinal or ecclesiastical uni-
formity, they place an ecumenical emphasis on common formula-
tion and expression of theological consensus on the Gospel."
When Dulles observes that “Trent made no mention whatever of
Luther or Lutherans,” he is technically correct.* The fact is, how-
ever, as Jedin puts it, “The Tridentine decree on justification is the
Church’s authoritative answer to the teaching of Luther and the
Augsburg Confession on grace and justification. The reformed doc-