The One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church: Reflections on the Understanding of the Church in an Ecumenical Horizon

I am working on a paper for a Lutheran World Federation international conference hosted by the Department for Theology and Studies that will meet at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey, Switzerland, June 12-16, 2008. The topic is "The One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church." Theologians from around the globe have been invited to offer various perspectives on this topic. Interestingly, very little scholarship has been done on the creedal marks of the church from a Lutheran perspective.

The conference is organized into three sections:

I. Historical Perspectives: The soteriological relevance of the Church
II. Denominational Perspectives on the Church
III. Global Perspectives

I am speaking in the third section to offer a North American Lutheran perspective on the Nicene marks of the church. The other global perspectives will be from Ethiopia, Malaysia and Southeast Asia, Southern Africa and South America. My paper will 1) relate the Nicene marks to the classic Lutheran marks of the church as "word and sacrament;" and 2) suggest reading the Nicene marks in a reverse order as proposed by Darrell Guder (see his paper, "The Nicene Marks in a Post-Christendom Church") for a North American context "in order to restore missional purpose to our theology of the church."

Krister Stendahl, 1921-2008

Krister Stendahl, "ecumenical bishop," died on Tuesday, April 15, 2008. We heard the news during one of the LERN plenaries at the National Workshop on Christian Unity. Bishop Stendahl served the church in many capacities: as a biblical scholar, professor, dean, and campus pastor at Harvard Divinity School, as bishop of Stockholm, and as an ecumenist. He was one of the early progenitors of the "new perspective on Paul" and an early advocate for women's ordination and the full participation of gays and lesbians in the church. He was a pioneer in both ecumenical and interreligious work.

I had the chance to interview Krister Stendahl in 1983 for the Wittenberg Torch. He was on campus to give one of the series of lectures scheduled to celebrate the quincentennial of Martin Luther's birthday. I remember being struck by his complete humility and graciousness. Another giant in the ecumenical movement is gone.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord. And let perpetual light shine upon him. Amen.

National Workshop on Christian Unity

This week I attended the National Workshop on Christian Unity, which ironically (or not?) met this year at the same time as the first Papal Visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the United States. The division of the churches and the need for a more united witness was addressed by Pope Benedict during his homily at an ecumenical service at St. Joseph's on Friday. While the Second Vatican Council would commit the Roman Catholic Church to ecumenical work, the NWCU was founded in 1963--before the council concluded--by a group of Roman Catholics to begin educating themselves about ecumenism. In 1969, they invited other Christians to join them and since then, an annual workshop has been held to provide educational opportunities for local ecumenical leaders. Various denominational ecumenical networks, such as the Lutheran Ecumenical Representative Network (LERN), also meet during the NWCU.

The theme for this year's workshop was "Pray without ceasing." Sister Dr. Lorelei Fuchs preached at the opening worship and the new general secretary of the National Council of Churches, Dr. Michael Kinnamon, gave the keynote address. Workshop seminars were held on topics that ranged from specific bilateral dialogues to the Emerging Church movement. I was unaware of this Workshop until I was invited to be part of a panel for one of the seminars (I was part of a panel on "Beyond Bilaterals"that discussed the significance of the United Methodist Church signing onto the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification).

My purpose in writing this brief post is to draw more attention to this event in hopes that some of my current and former students might consider attending and becoming more involved in ecumenical work!

William H. Lazareth, 1929-2008

The Rev. Dr. William H. Lazareth, Lutheran theologian and ethicist, former ELCA Bishop, and ecumenist, died on February 23, 2008. He was 79 years old. ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson said of him: "Dr. Lazareth was a teacher of the Church. The ecclesial, theological and ecumenical legacy that he leaves will bless the people of the Church for generations to come," he said.

As the director the World Council of Churches Faith and Order Secretariat, he oversaw the drafting of one of the most important ecumenical documents of the 20th century: "Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry" (1982), also known as the Lima Text. He was well-known for his work in Lutheran theology and social ethics [for an excerpt from his last major work, Christians in Society: Luther, the Bible, and Social Ethics, click here and here]. In his final years, he served as the Jerald C. Brauer Distinguished Professor of Lutheran Studies at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin and co-founded the on-line Augustine Institute while there.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord. And let perpetual light shine upon him.

Vatican joins historic talks to end 950-year rift with Orthodox church

Thanks to Bob Abrams for notifying me of this important story, which incidentally appeared in the New York Times on the day I was en route to the American Academy of Religion and various pre-meetings in San Diego--surprisingly, no one at the meeting mentioned this!!

Click here for the English text of the Ravenna document.

Jared Wicks on the Vatican Document

Yesterday I received two articles addressing the "CDF intervention" in June. The articles were written by my colleague on the U.S. Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue, Jared Wicks, SJ and were published last month. Wicks taught for many years at the Gregorian University in Rome and is currently at John Carroll University in Cleveland, Ohio. He began his academic career as a Luther scholar but is perhaps now best known as an ecumenist. He is one of two members of the U.S. Dialogue who also serve on the International Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue. The articles are helpful and clarifying in terms of the Roman Catholic position and the specifically the disputes within Roman Catholicism that the Vatican document intended to address. Both articles are available on-line so I am posting the links here:

• "Not-so-fully church" in Christian Century (Note: Jared's original title was: "Once More, the Vatican on the Church and the Churches")
• "Questions and Answers on the New Responses of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith" in Ecumenical Trends

Bishop Sklba on the Vatican Document

The Most Rev. Richard J. Sklba, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee of the Roman Catholic Church, was one of several distinguished guests who spoke in honor of Secretary Lowell Almen when he received the Servus Dei Medal at the recent ELCA Assembly. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel interviewed him on August 3, 2007, noting that just one month after the publication of the recent Vatican document asserting that the Catholic Church is the one true church, Sklba "is about to find himself in what some might assume would be an uncomfortable position - addressing more than 1,000 Lutherans. Bishop Sklba, who is the co-chair of the U.S. Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue, noted that the tenth round of the dialogue (The Church as Koinonia of Salvation, 2004) proposed that "Catholic judgment on the authenticity of Lutheran ministry need not be all or nothing." The report quoted a 1993 letter from then Cardinal Ratzinger: "I count among the most important results of the ecumenical dialogues the insight that the issue of the Eucharist cannot be narrowed to the problem of validity. Even a theology oriented to the concept of succession . . . need not in any way deny the salvation granting presence of the Lord in the Lutheran Lord's Supper."

George Tavard, 1922-2007

George Tavard, a giant in the ecumenical movement, died expectedly on Monday, August 13, 2007. He was named by Pope John XXIII to attend Vatican Council II as a "peritus conciliaris" and he served on the U.S. Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue from the beginning. Many of my colleagues from Trinity will remember George from his tenure at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio here in central Ohio, from where he retired in 1990. I was privileged to serve with him on the latest round of the dialogue ("The Hope of Eternal Life"). His gentle spirit and deep wisdom will be missed by all who knew him.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord. And let perpetual light shine upon him.

Vatican Document on the Nature of the Church

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) of the Roman Catholic Church recently issued a document entitled "Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine of the Church." This document has elicited strong reactions from many Protestant communions, including the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Lutheran World Federation. ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson, in his response to the CDF document, reaffirmed the ELCA's commitment to on-going dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church particularly with regard to the difficult questions of ecclesiology and ministry.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the Pontifical Council on Christian Unity, in a Vatican Radio address, sought to reassure Protestants that the Roman Catholic Church is still committed to ecumenical dialogue. He stated that the "declaration is not taking back anything of the ecumenical progress already reached, but drawing attention to the ecumenical task that still lies ahead." Ann Riggs of the National Council of Churches, in her official response to the statement, reminds Protestants that this was an "in-house" document, i.e. written for Catholics, not for Protestants. Even so, she argued that "it affords us all an opportunity for more dialogue and more insight. This reaffirms that the ecumenical nature and purpose of the Second Vatican Council is still very much alive within and outside Catholic circles."

John Allen, of the National Catholic Reporter, offers a less sanguine perspective in this piece: "Struggle to Reassert Traditional Catholic Identity Scores Two Wins." The Catholic News Service, in its story on the document, also raised the question of why it was released at this particular moment. "The Vatican said it was because of possible confusion in theological and ecumenical circles. Those who see a grand design in Vatican actions, however, suspected it may have been another olive branch to the breakaway traditionalist followers of the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre -- just three days after the Tridentine Mass decree. In this reading, the Vatican has delivered a double demonstration, liturgical and doctrinal, that answers some of the Lefebvrites' strongest objections about the modern church."

As a newly appointed member of the U.S. Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue (which is now in Round XI), my first reaction to the release of the CDF document was one of frustration even though it did not state anything new. Mostly, I was frustrated with the way in which the document was presented. Although it was written to Catholics, it was not written in a spirit of ecumenical sensitivity nor in a way that emphasized the real -- though imperfect -- communion that Catholics claim to have with other Christians in spite of our on-going differences in how we each understand "the church."

Bishops in the Church

This was the theme of the 2007 Convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA) which I joined a couple of years ago. In spite of the name, membership in this professional organization is open to Protestant as well as Catholic theologians. Although the flavor of the conversation is decidedly Catholic, there is also a clear commitment to ecumenical theology and dialogue (not to mention reform and renewal--which has not always been appreciated by all members of the church hierarchy. Click here for an anti-CTSA editorial written in June 1997 by Cardinal Bernard Law and here for a forum on the Cardinal's criticism.) For an idea of what topics were addressed at the 2007 convention, check out John Allen's "Daily Column" at the National Catholic Reporter.

One of the plenary addresses was given by Michael Root, Professor of Systematic Theology and Dean of Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary and fellow member of the U.S. Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue. His presentation was entitled: “Bishops, Ministry, and the Unity of the Church in Ecumenical Dialogue: Deadlock, Breakthrough, or Both?” [As an aside, the person who introduced him quoted Bishop Richard Sklba (Auxiliary Bishop of Milwaukee and co-chair of the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue) who quipped to her that "Professor Root knows more about indulgences than most Catholics do." For those interested in a primer, check out Root's article, "Indulgences, Again."]