Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Good News! The Reformation is over! Says Francis

From the Catholic Herald:

Somewhere in Pope Francis’s office is a document that could alter the course of Christian history. It declares an end to hostilities between Catholics and Evangelicals and says the two traditions are now “united in mission because we are declaring the same Gospel”. The Holy Father is thinking of signing the text in 2017, the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, alongside Evangelical leaders representing roughly one in four Christians in the world today.

Francis is convinced that the Reformation is already over. He believes it ended in 1999, the year the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation issued a joint declaration on justification, the doctrine at the heart of Luther’s protest.

The German firebrand had accused the Catholic Church of teaching that man was saved by faith and good works, rather than “by faith alone”. 

In 1999, after extensive talks, Catholic and Lutheran theologians concluded that the two communions now shared “a common understanding of our justification by God’s grace through faith in Christ”.

There are certainly many who wish that Luther's protest was, indeed, over.  It appears Francis is one of them.  It appears he has decided to arbitrarily end the protest from his side of things.  As Pope, Francis has shown a propensity to punt in theological disputes. Unlike Benedict XVI, Francis does not speak so much theologically as he does practically and pastorally.  So he is more inclined to defer to others the great theological divide and declare hostilities ended while leaving it to the the theologians to figure out what this means.

Francis hasn’t given any public sign of whether he will sign the declaration. But he has taken steps that seem to prepare the ground for it. Days after his friend’s death he became the first pope to visit a Pentecostal church, offering an apology for Catholic persecution of the movement in Italy. Last month he asked forgiveness of the Waldensians, a communion regarded as the world’s oldest Evangelical church.

Any spouse who has declared to husband or wife that their argument is now over and resolved knows the danger of declaring something that has yet to be agreed upon.  Francis may or may not decide to try to take the wind from the Protestant sails and declare the Reformation done and the warring parties reconciled but Protestantism is not homogenous and the true heirs of the Reformation (Confessional Lutherans) do not exactly fit into those ready to say it is done.  I personally do not see how this would actually have much impact upon the LCMS or Protestants in general.  A few will applaud.  Some will get angry.  Most will continue as if the Pope had said or done nothing relevant to them at all.

As one who wishes the Reformation were over, I can hardly believe that the issues on which Luther and his heirs stood could ever be resolved by papal fiat.  They were not trivial or superficial but go to the heart and core of what the Gospel is.  The JDDJ concord ended up less with a reconciled doctrine of justification than an agreement to words on a page while Rome continued to write out indulgences and Lutherans quietly continued to stick by the term anti-Christ for any and all who refuse justification by grace through faith alone.

Francis may wish to end everything with a few generous gestures and his own personal declaration that hostilities are over but the great divide is too great for most Protestants and too deep for Confessional Lutherans to be papered over and then punted to others to figure out what this means. 

9 comments:

Unknown said...

"Francis does not speak so much theologically as he does practically and pastorally"
Is that wrong?

Dr.D said...

It is too much to ask a Marxist communist like Frances to also be a Christian theologian. No ordinary person can pull that off, and neither can Frances. He is all about winning the world for communism, and cares nothing at all for Christ or the Church.

Fr.D+

ErnestO said...

I would pray for Pope Francis in purgatory as much I would pray that Harrison would shepherd us, by leading, that we might know his voice and follow him.

Carl Vehse said...

What?!

When did the Antichrist recant the Canon and Decrees of the Council of Trent, particularly Canons 9, 11, 12, 14, 18, 24, and 32?!?

Jason said...

I miss Benedict. He was an intellectual, but I didn't find him to be off-putting personality wise. Being German, he really got Lutherans, insofar as knowing we had differences and kinda why.

Francis just seems in way over his head. While I like he cares for the poor and wants to reach out, he';s way too touchy-feely. He appears like a lightweight who has little clue to deeper theological challenges.

Francis reminds me of Jerry "I'm not a theologian" Kieshnick.

Robert Placer said...

Francis the Bishop of Rome needs some distraction from all the attention in 2017 over why we had a Reformation and the meaning of Justification by Faith alone. He need not fear the attention paid to the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. Most Liberal Protestants care more about feminism, same sex marriage, and the natural environment than doctrine then or now. The Jews will attack Martin Luther as an anti Semite even though Luther quotes extensively from the Old Testament prophets. Only Confessional Lutherans really care about the Reformation.

Carl Vehse said...

"Only Confessional Lutherans really care about the Reformation."

But there will be plenty of Lufauxrans trying to hog the scene.

Dunne said...

The crux of the matter is found in Ephesians 2:1 thru 9 (NIV)

2 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh[a] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. 4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.

Dunne said...

For what it's worth, the Reformation wasn't composed of JUST the Lutherans in northern Germany and parts of Scandinavia. A larger and more powerful group of CALVINISTS led the war against the papist Counter-Reformation and spark-plugged the American Revolution.. Failure to mention the effects of Calvin on the over-all story of the Reformation is just sloppy history...