Last Sunday - the final Reformation Sunday of the current millennium - was an appropriate date for the Catholic Church to bury its main difference with the Lutherans - the thorny issue of justification by faith. The day was marked in Augsburg, Germany, by a formal accord signed by representatives of the Catholic Church and the World Lutheran Federation.
It said: "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 do good works." In Ireland, the historic occasion was marked by a special ecumenical service at the Lutheran Church in Dublin's Adelaide Road, at which the guest speaker was Fr Michael Hurley, SJ, co-founder of the Irish School of Ecumenics. It was the 482nd anniversary of the day Martin Luther nailed of his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenberg: October 31st, 1517.
Indulgences
One of these theses argued that any "truly repentant" Christian had the right to full remission of the penalty and guilt accruing for his sins, without indulgences. Another said that Christians were to be taught that anyone who gave to the poor or lent to the needy did a much better deed than the person who "bought" indulgences. Yet another postulated that because love grew by works of love, man thereby became better. Man did not, however, become better by means of indulgences. It will be recalled that it was Luther 's fundamental objection to the selling of indulgences (the proceeds to be put towards the building costs of St Peter's in Rome) that prompted him to "go public" on the church door, thus expediting the Reformation.
As Fr Hurley told his audience, it had taken Rome 30 years of intense study and debate to arrive at the present consensus just in time for the millennial commemoration of the birth of Christ. He was gracious in his comments and apologised for the enthusiasm with which the Society of Jesus had pursued the Counter Reformation. Understatement was the order of the day last Sunday, both in Augsburg and Dublin.
The Catholic Church's emphasis on "good works" as a prerequisite for salvation has long been a major bone of contention among leading post-Vatican II theologians. More than 20 years ago, one of the most controversial of these, the Swiss Hans Kung, was arguing trenchantly in his book On Being a Christian:
"Only theologians who have not understood the Pauline message of justification and who try to adapt themselves to the efficiency-orientated society speak of attending to the `operational' factor `good works' and thus to the epistle of James (2:14-26) with its doctrine of `justification by works'. As if Paul did not understand the `operational' factor very much better than that Hellenistic Jewish Christian, unknown to us, who at the end of the first century in good faith made use of the name of James, the brother of the Lord, in order to defend orthopraxis [practical righteousness] to the best of his knowledge and ability against an inactive orthodoxy. By comparison with him. . .Paul did not merely produce a better defence of orthopraxis. He also understood and substantiated much more comprehensively what is decisively important in being human and being Christian."
Loving God
Luther, as a young monk, apparently had great difficulty in reconciling his image of wrathful divine justice with the notion of a loving God. Eventually he was to find his answer and total conviction in St Paul's Epistle to the Romans (1:17), "because here is revealed God's way of righting wrong, a way that starts from faith and ends in faith." After the service, the congregation in Adelaide Road spilled out into the Lutherhaus next door, where visitors were invited to partake in refreshment on the pastor's solid assurance that "Luther always liked a good party".
The atmosphere was cordial as people debated the ramifications of the accord and whether or not it would herald the unity of the Church of Rome with the 80 million or so members of the World Lutheran Federation. The burning issue on the minds of some of the papists present was indulgences - in the light of the Vatican's recent decision to declare a special indulgence for the year 2000. Another Jesuit - Fr Hurley had yet to arrive - saw no real difficulty: indulgences were still part of the Church's teaching, closely linked to the "intention" of the recipient. But the notion of working up a "credit balance" for oneself - though not for the dead - appeared to be anathema. It is clearly a debate that will run and run, as indicated by the degree of interest evinced by the Catholic faithful in particular on radio programmes such as Marian Finucane's this week. Many people are hopelessly confused over the "Y2K" indulgences announced by Rome; a number of leading German Protestants are particularly upset, apparently, because they say it flies in the face of Sunday's declaration. No such disagreement, however, came to the surface among the revellers in the Lutherhaus in Adelaide Road.
Reconciliation
The Reformation Sunday Augsburg initiative in the dying weeks of this tired old millennium must be seen, to paraphrase Hans Kung, as a challenge to all who think that the use of institutional power is the best policy: "The Christian who lives in this freedom becomes critical of all those - on whatever side - who constantly protest verbally their peaceful intentions, who are always promising friendship and reconciliation for the sake of propaganda, but in practical politics are not prepared for the sake of peace occasionally to give up obsolete positions, to take a first step toward the other person, publicly to struggle for friendship. . .even when this is unpopular."
It is to be hoped that the historic joint confession of Augsburg will help to put Christianity back on the path to unity at the start of the new millennium.