The Role of the Augsburg Confession
McDonnell, Kilian
Returning to Augsburg TIE BOLE OF TIE AUGSBURG CONFESSIOl CATHOLIC AND LUTHERAN VIEWS Joseph A. Burgess, ed. Fortress, $13.95, 203 pp. Kilicm McDonnell IF TOE Augsburg Confession (CA)...
...His books include The Other America, The Twilight of Capitalism and Decade of Decision...
...The doctrine of the CA on justification cannot be harmonized with Luther's teaching from the years 1520-21, but is compatible with his position as it had developed by 1530...
...Written by Philip Melanchthon within a church which was badly shaken but essentially united, it was not originally a REVIEWERS MICHAEL HARRINGTON, an activist in social movements for more than 25 years, is the National Chairman of the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee...
...Works of faith could be called meritorious...
...This book is a symposium of twelve European and Norm American scholars in honor of the 450th anniversary of its presentation by the Lutherans to the Diet of Augsburg in 1530...
...My own more recent contact with Lutheran theologians would indicate there there is a significant group who think that justification is still churchdividing...
...After the first two drafts of the Confutation two successive committees, with equal Lutheran/Catholic representation, met at Augsburg...
...The Catholic church could not recognize a reforming ecumenical document as received today by Lutherans and then refuse to allow it to function as such for Catholics...
...McSorley conCommonweal: 730 tends that this measure of agreement "shatters completely long-standing myths perpetrated by both Lutherans and Catholics from the 16th century to the present about the 'radical opposition' or the 'unbridgeable chasm' that allegedly separated Lutheranism and Catholicism from 1530 onward...
...The difficulties are formidable...
...Lutherans agreed to abandon the use of the word "alone" in the phrase "faith alone" to avoid a false security about one's own salvation as well as the misunderstanding that faith "alone" justifies in such a way that neither grace nor good works are necessary...
...The hermeneutic situation in which they are received and interpreted today is vastly different...
...But even the Lutherans could not agree among themselves...
...Though Luther would have much to protest against in the Roman church of 1980, it is generally admitted that the occasions, especially those of popular piety, which riled him are no longer living actualities...
...Lutherans have a right to expect that were the CA recognized by Rome, Catholics would also allow the CA, granting legitimate differences within unity, to critique their proclamation of the Gospel and sacramental practice...
...This volume will make the return easier...
...So says Vinzenz Pfnur...
...confession but a statement seeking toleration for Lutheran theological culture within existing ecclesiastical structures...
...The Catholics conceded that good works could only be called meritorious in and through God's grace...
...Once justification is agreed on one can let it pass at the theological level because the strictures are so historically determined...
...Pastorally this and other issues are very embarrassing and will take a lot of footnotes...
...As Pannenberg points out, the new interpretive framework in which the CA is read also embraces the difference between the Catholic church then and now...
...Kilicm McDonnell IF TOE Augsburg Confession (CA) intends to be catholic, ecumenical and reforming, then those who reject it must demonstrate that the intention is not effectively translated into fact...
...To speak only of the major Reformation issue, justification by faith alone, there is a broad ecumenical agreement that it is no longer a church-dividing issue...
...Why not go back...
...This has to be faced...
...Is the CA's claim to catholicity still valid after the accumulated burden of subsequent history, including Trent, two Vatican councils and the Marian dogmas (the lat19 December 1980: 729 ter, I think, being more divisive from a methodological point of view than is generally recognized...
...These accords never received a fair hearing for a variety of reasons, many of them non-theological...
...Today it exists within a divided church and is the Lutherans' central though not only confession...
...Agreement was reached on all but two of the nineteen articles discussed and on those two considerable, but not full accord was attained...
...So there are new dimensions to the discussion and to the possibility of Roman Catholic recognition...
...Melanchthon went a long way toward overcoming difficulties concerning merit by stressing that the article on justification does not universally exclude the biblical ideas of reward (and merit) but only the abuse of making them grounds for justification...
...Something of the spectrum of argumentation, Lutheran and Catholic, concerning the possibility of the Roman church recognizing the CA as a legitimate expression of Christian truth is represented...
...Even before a greater consensus had been reached after the second draft of the Confutation, Luther and Melanchthon indicated that they saw basic agreement had been reached...
...Elsewhere Harding Meyer has called attention to the limited results one can reasonably expect from such recognition...
...The continuing discussion will have to go further beyond the CA to that larger context of ecumenical discussion which took place before dialogue was cut off in 1546, namely Leipzig 1534, 1539, Hagenau/ Worms/Regensburg 1540-41...
...The difference between a statement and a confession is like the difference between Jefferson's papers and the Declaration of Independence...
...While very helpful to opening up fellowship between two communions as sister churches, it would not fill the need for a common confession of faith today...
...The possibility of giving expression to the reality of justification using other New Testament themes such as reconciliation, freedom, redemption, new life, new creation was discussed at the 1963 Helsinki Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation...
...As a Benedictine I blanch at the CA's contempt for monasticism...
...A few years after the Diet of Augsburg Luther unwittingly prophesied: "I fear that we shall never again get as close together as we did at Augsburg...
...In varying degrees Catholics such as Vinzenz Pfnur, James McCue, Harry McSorley and Richard Pensakovic are saying "yes...
...The Malta report of the international Lutheran/Catholic dialogue concluded that there is a "far-reaching consensus" on this matter...
...No recognition is possible unless the CA is interpreted in the context of the other Lutheran confessions, not as they were interpreted by the Lutherans of the 16th century but as they are received by Lutherans today...
...John Eck, who is usually cast as the hard-nosed Catholic heavy on the committee, said that a consensus on justification was achieved "in the thing itself," not merely on the level of concepts...
...19 December 1980: 731...
...The 16th century Catholic response to the CA was the Confutation...
...Even so, what function would recognition by Rome serve...
...What was reprobated at Trent is not taught in the CA...
...In February of 1980 the international Lutheran/Catholic dialogue issued a statement on the Augsburg Confession witnessing to the unity in reconciled diversity which has been achieved...
...Cardinal Willebrands has not actually suggested recognition but has encouraged the discussion...
...This is still a preliminary document...
...watch out for that hidden trap...
...After Melanchthon's concession on reward about all that was left was the invocation of the saints, certainly not a major obstacle...
...More attention needs to be paid to the minutes of the two successive committees which met at Augsburg, Herbert Immenkotter is publishing these minutes which are not alluded to in the essays of this book...
...The uncompromising Eck thought full accord possible...
...Curiously, it is, with notable exceptions, the persuadable Catholics who are pushing for recognition while it is the reluctant protesting Lutherans who are saying "Don't forget this obstacle...
...Trent's condemnations are pertinent to Luther's earlier teaching, not to his later understanding...
...KIUAN McDonnell, O.S.B., is the president of the Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research in Collegeville, Minnesota...
Vol. 107 • December 1980 • No. 23
