Reforming Together: What We've Learned in 500 Years

What does October 25^th, the year 2017, a completely unnoticed document released in 2013, and a trip to a local junior high school have in common? Certainly more than meets the eye.

On October 25^th, just ten days from today, many churches around the world will be observing “Reformation Sunday,” a day commemorating ninety-five theses nailed to a church door in Germany, a day also considered by many to be the birthplace of Protestantism.[1] At the center of the fracas? One Catholic priest and Augustinian monk known as Martin Luther.

The year 2017, just three years from today, will commemorate the 500^th anniversary of this fateful event and the ensuing matrix of forces we commonly call the Protestant Reformation which has dramatically altered the course of Western Christianity ever since. What is interesting about this anniversary is that the Reformation story will be told, perhaps for the first time in history, by both Protestants and Catholics together.

That’s where the unheralded 2013 document comes in. “Today,” notes the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity, “we are able to tell the story of the Lutheran Reformation together.”[2] Inspired by and building upon the landmark ecumenical advances of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999), Protestants and Catholics recently released a new document, “From Conflict to Communion,” which champions even more ecumenical progress.

In 2017, on the 500^th anniversary of the Reformation, Protestants and Catholics will come together to tell a story that has two sides: what binds us together and what still separates us. “The first is reason for gratitude and joy,” notes the documents signatories, “the second is reason for pain and lament.”[3] Both parties acknowledge their hand in the mess, “We must confess openly that we have been guilty before Christ of damaging the unity of the church.”[4]

In a beautiful note of perspective, the document’s Lutherans profess:

In 2017, when Lutheran Christians celebrate the anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation, they are not thereby celebrating the division of the Western church. No one who is theologically responsible can celebrate the division of Christians from one another.[5]

The document outlines four major themes at the center of the conflict (justification, eucharist, ministry, and Scripture and tradition), and the remarkable consensus that has been established, by humble and attentive dialogue, in this ecumenical age. Fascinating stuff, all of it, but what caught my attention today was the way the document ended. The document concludes by offering 5 fundamental imperatives for Protestants and Catholics moving forward:

1.  Catholics and Lutherans should always begin from the perspective of unity and not from the point of view of division in order to strengthen what is held in common even though the differences are more easily seen and experienced.

2. Lutherans and Catholics must let themselves continuously be transformed by the encounter with the other and by the mutual witness of faith.

3. Catholics and Lutherans should again commit themselves to seek visible unity, to elaborate together what this means in concrete steps, and to strive repeatedly toward this goal.

4. Lutherans and Catholics should jointly rediscover the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ for our time.

5. Catholics and Lutherans should witness together to the mercy of God in proclamation and service to the world.

And then it hit me. These imperatives strike a curious chord with a laminated poster I observed earlier today in the office of a friend and local junior high administrator[6]:

1.      Respect for Others

2.     Humility and Self Discipline

3.     Daily Effort and Commitment to Healthy Relationships

4.     Personal Responsibility and

5.     Overcoming Fear with Courage

It seems that everything we have learned in the 500 years of Reformation history boils down to the same basic skills we teach adolescents. Maybe the future is not lost after all?

“Lutherans and Catholics share the goal of confessing Christ in all things, who alone is to be trusted above all things as the one Mediator (1 Tim. 2:5f) through whom God in the Holy Spirit gives himself and pours out his renewing gifts”[7]

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[1] Interestingly, most scholars agree that the iconic posting of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses at Castle church was less a defiant and doctrinaire line drawn in the sand of late Medieval theocracy, and more an informational announcement of an upcoming scholarly examination of church action. In all likelihood, it was not even posted by Luther himself but a student at the University of Wittenberg where Luther was on faculty. Mark Noll, a Protestant scholar and Reformation expert notes, “The Ninety-Five Theses played virtually no role in early Protestant historical consciousness. . . Only in 1817 did the image of the Ninety-Five Theses being posted on the Castle church door in Wittenberg go viral, as we might say today.” See Thomas Albert Howard and Mark A. Noll, “The Reformation at Five Hundred,” First Things (November 2014), 44-45.

[2] Joint publication of the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation, “From Conflict to Communion: Lutheran-Catholic Common Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017,” 2013; accessed October 15, 2014 at: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/lutheran-fed-docs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_2013_dal-conflitto-alla-comunione_en.html#top

[3] “From Conflict to Communion,” 223.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid, 224.

[6] Special thanks to good friend and fellow disciple, Ben Driscoll, Associate Principal of Smart Junior High School, who gave me a gracious inside look at his life and work today.

[7] Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, 18.