Posted on 06/17/2013 7:31:08 PM PDT by marshmallow
(Reuters) - Senior Roman Catholic and Lutheran officials announced on Monday they would mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017 as a shared event rather than highlight the clash that split Western Christianity.
The Vatican and the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) presented a report in Geneva admitting both were guilty of harming Christian unity in the past and describing a growing consensus between the two churches in recent decades.
The 500th anniversary of Martin Luther's 95 Theses, the doctrinal challenge that launched the Protestant Reformation, will be the first centenary celebration in the age of ecumenism, globalization and the secularization of Western societies.
"The awareness is dawning on Lutherans and Catholics that the struggle of the 16th century is over," the report said. "The reasons for mutually condemning each other's faith have fallen by the wayside."
They now agree belief in Jesus unites them despite lingering differences, it said, and inspires them to cooperate more closely to proclaim the Gospel in increasingly pluralistic societies.
"This is a very important step in a healing process which we all need and we are all praying for," LWF General Secretary Martin Junge said at the report's presentation in Geneva.
(Excerpt) Read more at uk.reuters.com ...
Well, there were certain things that they couldn’t see eye to eye on, and still don’t today. But the reformation revolution certainly served as proof that Christianity could carry on quite well outside of the official modern Roman Catholic organization.
God willing, i’m all for it.
The “Lutheran” World Federation would represent the pseudo-Lutherans.
Thanks for the truth in advertising!
Christianity has worked even in the Oriental, Assyrian churches under islamic persecution, but those had their own organizations that kept the faith firm
See also the Armenian and Georgian Churches and how they survived because they had firm organizations
Post the R, post the peace of Westphalia, the various churches in Europe became allied completely with the state. The Catholic Church in France was only slightly better than the Lutheran one in Prussia because the CC in France could always claim to report to the Pope (in theory, though in reality until the revolution it didn't pay much heed)
For Scandanavia, Germania and the UK, the state religion was the only one allowed -- as was in France and Austria and Muscowy
The only exception was the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth which allowed free practice of religion despite being majority Catholic. This served the Catholic Church well as when the govt fell, it served as the national unifier.
In all the parts of Western and Central Europe where the Church did not stand independently, in all those parts, the Churches have decayed.
But note -- if one takes that as "proof" that separation of church and state is necessary, I give you the contrary proof of the continued Roman Empire (what we call Byzantium). This was one of closely tied Church and state from 389 AD (Theodosius II) to 1453. And it survived well for 1100 years....
Perhaps the problem with the Church-state model in the West was with the theology? Lets take any of the Germanic states -- when the little princeling was in charge and didn't change the workings of the religion, all was well. But when he tried to interfere with the workings, that caused problems (the Prussian compromise)
Even the all-powerful Tsars realized that they could only mess around so far -- Orthodoxy is the ultimate conservative movement with the basic idea "that's the way it has been since apostolic times. If it was good enough for the apostles, it's good enough for me".
the tsardom was also deeply church-state and deeply religious
it collapsed due to it's over-extension in the west getting in a big bunch of non-Orthodox (Jews from the Polish-lithuanian commonwealth and then Catholics, uniates, etc)
It is clear that this condemnation [in Canon XI] is aimed against a purely extrinsic conception of justification (in the Catholic sense of the term) — in other words, the view that the Christian life may begin and continue without any transformation or inner renewal of the sinner. In fact, the canon does not censure any magisterial Protestant account of iustificatio hominis, in that the initial (extrinsic) justification of humans is either understood (as with Melanchthon) to be inextricably linked with their subsequent (intrinsic) sanctification, so that the concepts are notionally distinct, but nothing more; or else both the extrinsic justification and intrinsic sanctification of humanity are understood (as with Calvin) to be contiguous dimensions of the union of the believer with Christ. (Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 3rd ed., p. 343.)
“But the reformation revolution certainly served as proof that Christianity could carry on quite well outside of the official modern Roman Catholic organization......”
Well, we know Christianity can “carry on”, but with new congregations popping up every month with each minister interpreting the bible as he/she likes, I would not characterize the “carrying on” as ‘quite well’.
Well, we know Christianity can “carry on”, but with new congregations popping up every month with each minister interpreting the bible as he/she likes, I would not characterize the “carrying on” as ‘quite well’.
The RCC has "infallibly" defined twelve or so verses. Congratulations
There’s the good, the bad, and the ugly in the evangelical world, but that’s very true for Roman Catholic congregations as dotted all over this earth.
And the most serious Christians largely agree with one another (something that C. S. Lewis also noted) across denominational boundaries (yes even involving Roman Catholic devouts); many denominational-specific hang ups tend to fall away. This is evidence that no it isn’t self centered interpretation that is going on, but the Holy Spirit, and the differences remaining are due to human imperfections.
I gotta get my eyes checked. Westphalia. I thought that was Wikipedia!
Anyhow, this is very true, a faith community that is tight knit is very helpful to stable worship. A come and go as you please church isn’t very serious about it.
Yes, I had a feeling that was so... the less Christianly serious Lutherans. They hope to come to a common niceness with the less serious of the Roman Catholic church, and that will come to a screeching halt when they start to encounter doctrinal questions that they can’t even grok because they never dealt with it. You won’t ever see a summit like there was, say, with Billy Graham and the pope where they clearly respected each other’s faith and yet agreed to disagree on particulars.
That’s another serious roadblock to any kind of reunification. The Lutherans would have to completely discard Luther’s (as well as all the other Reformers AND Scripture itself) doctrine of justification and, if they did that, they could hardly continue to call themselves Lutherans, could they?
They tried (http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_31101999_cath-luth-joint-declaration_en.html), with much carefully nuanced statements, and while real differences remain, this joint declaration resulted in it being condemned by both TRCs and conservative evangelicals.
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