ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CUENet AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION DOGMATICS 2 LESSON 92 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> Because I live and work among so many Roman Catholics and frequently rub shoulders with Catholic priests, on several occasions I have been asked about the Lutheran agreement to the joint declaration on the doctrine of justification. Does the new statement actually mean that progress has been made on this issue? Do Lutherans and Catholics now agree on the doctrine of justification? >> DR. DAVID MAXWELL: Well, as Missouri Synod Lutherans, this puts us in a somewhat awkward position. Because as you mention, there is this document, the joint declaration on justification, which was signed by the Roman Catholic Church and by Lutheran Churches who belong to the Lutheran World Federation, including prominently in our country the ELCA. And this document actually claims that there is now substantial agreement on the doctrine of justification between Lutheran and Roman Catholic theology such that the differences that remain are tolerable and that they -- that they are -- in other words, acceptable differences that each side is willing to put up with. Now, the Missouri Synod has not signed this document. And it's -- because the Missouri Synod has -- and both seminaries of the Missouri Synod have offered a critique of the document as not being clear on the doctrine of justification and not clearly representing the Lutheran view. And I want to read to you a couple of passages from the document. I'm not going to go into great depth on this document. But what is the central passage of the entire document is found in Paragraph 15 of the document in which both sides, Lutherans and Catholics say, "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 good works." Now, the statement sounds pretty good. There's a lot in this statement that we can agree with. But there are two items that I would like to call your attention to in this statement. First of all, it says by grace alone. Now, that sounds like a good Lutheran slogan. But the term grace is not actually defined precisely. And you recall in -- earlier in the course we talked about the fact that the term grace can mean different things. In a Lutheran theology it means favor daie, the favor of God. God's gracious attitude towards us. And in Roman Catholic theology it tends to mean gracia infusa or infused grace, the grace that God pours into our hearts and transforms and renews us. And the difference between these two views is sort of like -- it's essentially the difference between Luther and Augustine. If you read Roman Catholic theology in the most positive light possible, that would be Augustinian, that the difference is that the Lutheran concern is that we have saved by God's attitude toward us. And that's a sure foundation because it's outside of our heart rather than having to introspect and look inside of ourselves to see what God wants to do with us. Now, the term grace is not actually defined here. Although in Paragraph 17 we have the following statement that I think is a clue that the word is left intentionally vague. It says that "Justification tells us that as sinners our new life is solely due to a forgiving and renewing mercy that God imparts as a gift and we receive in faith and never can merit in any way." Now, the phrase "forgiving and renewing mercy" could be understood in a way that's consonant with Lutheran theology. That is we could understand that to mean that God's mercy delivers us from sin in two ways. It forgives us, which is justification. And it renews us, which is sanification. However, the phrase "forgiving and renewing mercy" could also be read to mean that justification involves forgiveness and renewal. In that way, it would incorporate the definition of grace as gracia infusa into the doctrine of justification, which is precisely what the Reformation is trying to avoid. And so this is the lack of clarity here the two seminaries of the Missouri Synod have objected to. It's one of the main objections is that grace is never defined. At least not in a clearly Lutheran way. And let me say, too, grace alone, that phrase does not guarantee a Lutheran position. Because Augustine taught grace alone. It's the infused grace. But it is grace alone. Because Augustine's teaching is Monarchistic. And as we saw before, it's different than Luther's teaching. So the document is agreeing on some of the same words. But it is allowing some flexibility in the definition of those words. Which I suppose in the mind of some people may be a good thing because it allows greater unity or at least it's not real greater unity. What it really allows is churches to overlook differences perhaps. But from the perspective of the Missouri Synod, we have historically insisted that doctrinal unity is actual agreement on the Gospel and all its articles. Not just agreement on a formulation that they can define one way and we can define another. So that's one problem that we have seen in the doctrine -- in this document. And the other is -- another one that I would like to point out is in that same central statement in Paragraph 15. It uses the term "In faith in Christ's saving work," which is actually a rather striking formulation. Because Lutheran theology, as we talked about before, views faith instrumentally. It's always by faith or through faith. And it seems that the joint declaration is stepping away from that instrumental understanding of faith by using what I think is a more ambiguous preposition in faith. So you don't get that sense of faith as instrument, receiving Christ's righteousness. I'm not sure what it means. But I think it's striking that they chose to depart from the traditional Lutheran way of understanding faith instrumentally. So for these reasons I think primarily -- I mean, there are others, too, that we could discuss. But I would like to just leave it here. The Lutheran Church of the Missouri Synod has not signed the joint declaration because we don't recognize it as presenting the Lutheran position in a clear enough way that handles the kinds of distinctions that we've been making all throughout the course. So -- and our concern in doing this is not because we don't like Roman Catholics or something like that. But rather the concern here is to always direct the trust of our people towards Christ, not to their own works and not to even what God is doing in them. But rather, to what Christ has done for our salvation on the cross. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***