COMMENTARY ON THE CATHOLIC-LUTHERAN STUDY DOCUMENT
"BAPTISM AND GROWTH IN COMMUNION"*
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Klausnitzer
Comments
Since Vatican II, the official Lutheran-Catholic dialogue, not only in the Lutheran-Roman Catholic Commission on Unity, had had the two main themes of justification (as a core Lutheran topic) and the Church (as a Catholic concern). The signing of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification on 31 October 1999 in Augsburg (against the massive opposition of the vast majority of German-speaking Protestant theology faculties) marked a certain closure for the treatment of the topic of justification. However, this did not mean that the ecclesiological questions were also largely resolved (an impression that is sometimes given); rather, they remain to be worked on, as shown in the text of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (footnote 9 and para. 43) and also the further work of the Commission on Unity. According to the Catholic understanding (para. 18, Joint Declaration) the doctrine on justification is not the exclusive criterion for coming to ecclesiological results.[1]
The present study document comprises five chapters and a special opinion. The intention is apparently to draw ecclesiological conclusions for Lutherans and Catholics from reflecting on the common baptism (with the Trinitarian formula). The baptismal theology and practice of other Christian churches is not under scrutiny. However, a consideration might be that specific demands and wishes of the study document, if they are then implemented, would naturally have impacts on other bilateral ecumenical dialogues of the Catholic Church, and also on the appraisal of the Catholic Church by other important ecumenical partners (like the Orthodox Church).
Chap. 1 discusses the biblical testimony on baptism. Chap. 2 is concerned with the de facto reception of the biblical findings in baptismal liturgy and practice of Lutheran and Catholic communities. Chap. 3 mounts the thesis - that is prima facie original but in my opinion insufficiently substantiated - that ecclesial communities (as associations of the baptized) and not just baptized individuals are also “members of the Body of Christ” through baptism. This is where I see the main difficulty with the study. This “Body of Christ” is equated with the church (cf. LG 7). However, if the church is really “one complex reality which coalesces from a human and a divine element”, and “by no weak analogy” is “compared” to the incarnation of the divine Word in a human person (Jesus of Nazareth) (LG 8,1), then the person who is baptized is not integrated into a reality comprising all separate Christian churches (heavenly, transcendent, extra-empirical or the like) but – by analogy, of course, but on the same principle of the incarnation – into a very down-to-earth, visible church, that defines itself by “outward” signs and structures. Even if we were to postulate (Platonically) that e.g. a pure idea of the church (be it a local or a universal church) exists before every historical realization and independently of it – perhaps in the divine plan of salvation – such an entity is (also according to LG) only accessible to us human beings in its respective visible form, mediated in history and society. It was Karl Barth who declared that leaping over the existing church divisions by a (downright monophysite) “flight from the visible to the invisible church” (however the latter is then envisaged) was the attempt to explain away the scandal, or “sin”, of the diversity of de facto churches (and the splitting of the church) and to thereby gloss over it.[2] For the same reason, it seems to me that the study document’s repeated classifying of existing churches “as members of the Body of Christ” (wherever this “Body of Christ” is to be located in reality or in history) is neither derivable from the Lutheran confessions or the magisterial statements of the Catholic Church nor is theologically plausible (in view of Paul’s argumentation in 1 Cor; more on that below!). Chap. 4 remarks on the growth in community (or common ground) by the intensifying of sacramental life (although the question of the different number of sacraments in the Catholic Church and in the Lutheran Communion is only touched upon) and speaks of the growth in the “Shared Practice of the Eucharist” (4.3.6). Chap. 5 sets out “Six Common Commitments”, including, amongst other things, the mutual recognition of the two communions as “members of the body of Christ” and the commitment of a growing “recognition” as “churches” (p. 76, line 35f) along with the claimed common “basic understanding of the Eucharist” and therefore the commitment “to increase opportunities for Eucharistic sharing” (p. 76, line 38f).
In detail:
Page 8, line 67f: Through baptism Lutherans and Catholics are “members of the one church of Christ through sacramental incorporation into Christ’s body”. But the “one” church of the creed is (unfortunately) divided in reality. Nevertheless it is, as the Apologia Confessionis Augustanae states, not a purely Platonic idea (Apologia CA VII and VIII, 20: “Neque vero somniamus nos Platonicam civitatem”), since it has “outward signs” (or “marks”). However we want to interpret the “subsistit” in LG 8,2 – the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church also claims in the context of LG 8,1f that the “Body of Christ” only exists in a visible, social form. Baptism integrates a person (de jure and de facto) into a specific church. The function of the (Catholic) god-parents is therefore (according to CIC can. 872-874) to initiate the baptized person into this actual church, so that a non-Catholic can at most be a witness but not a god-parent.
Page 11f, lines 89-94: In Catholic fundamental theology, the faith of which this section speaks can be distinguished into the two aspects “fides qua” (= act of faith) and “fides quae” (= content of faith). “Fides qua” relates to “fides quae” or (in the case of “implicit faith”) at least does not expressly dispute it. Into what church (as “a community of faith”) (p. 11, line 70) will the baptized be integrated in baptism (which is “an expression of faith”) (p. 11, line 91) if two “faith communities” (p. 12, line 93) – like the Lutherans and the Catholics – are set apart by contradictory standpoints e.g. in ecclesiological questions of dogmatic significance such as the “ius divinum” character of the Petrine office (cf. the two papal dogmas of 1870) or the possibility of women’s ordination (cf. the letter “Inter insigniores” by Paul VI and “Ordinatio sacerdotalis” by John Paul II)?
Page 12, lines 96-104: Some early confessions of faith of the early Church had their original place historically in the baptismal liturgy. Instructing catechumens for adult baptism is based on the logical presupposition that baptism has been preceded (cf. Rom 10:14) by prior teaching on the content of faith (“fides quae”).
Page 12, lines 106-123: The text uses “infants” and “children” as synonyms. Can we really say that (older) “children” can have no “personal sins” (p. 12, line 108f)? In view of Martin Luther’s defense of infant baptism against the “Anabaptists” it may perhaps be worthy of note that the Reformer was not unaware of the Catholic idea that church decisions after Easter with no express basis in a saying of Jesus can still create spirit-filled (cf. Acts 15:28), binding church law.
Page 19, lines 422-428: The starting problem of 1 Corinthians is for Paul the existence of different parties (who appeal each to human theologians and teaching authorities) within the one Christian congregation in Corinth (1 Cor 1-3), which in this way forgets that its only central ground is Christ (1 Cor 1:13: “Has Christ been divided?”). In the well-known passage 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 (crystallized again in 1 Cor 12:12-14) Paul refers the baptized to the necessary visible realization of the “elementary hope to find a human (emphasis W. K.) society, which fosters the life of the individual together with that of the other” (Thomas Söding), in the “ecclesia” in Corinth. The baptized individual receives his or her self-understanding and Christian dignity in a charismatic (i.e. characterized by the striving for visible union of the community or, better, aiming for its visible “building up”) interplay and interaction of many diverse, mutually supporting functions. Karl Barth was of the opinion that, with this argument, Paul was opposing, at the very root, the legitimacy of a development towards a host of parallel churches.[3]
Page 19, lines 437-445: In Colossians and Ephesians, the Pauline school means “in a Catholic ecclesiology” (Jürgen Roloff) not a local church but the whole church. This church has ministry structures created by Christ (Eph 4:11f), strives for “the unity of the faith” (Eph 4:13; cf. 4:5), overcomes the antagonism of Jews and Gentiles (Eph 2:14f) – which Paul himself proclaimed as overcome through Jesus’ death on the cross – and in this way gathers the whole of humanity (not spiritually or morally, but in a visible form) in Christ (Col 1:20).
Page 20, lines 455-470, particularly 455f: “Baptism is incorporation into the body of Christ, and the Eucharist is the celebration of this communion in Christ.” This sentence is open to misunderstanding because, here too, it is unclear what “body of Christ” is intended to mean in concrete terms. If this statement is supposed to mean that a reception of communion (for individual salvation) is to be generally possible without distinction for every baptized Christian without prior ecclesial communion, in a Catholic understanding (and probably also according to the intention of the Leuenberg Agreement) it is wrong. Baptism is, indeed “a fundamental requirement for participation in the Eucharist” (line 457), i.e. it is a necessary precondition, but it is not enough. The document mentions grounds for exclusion in the letters of Paul (lines 465-470). One ground for exclusion of the early Church, the Catholic Church (still articulated in UR 8) and the Orthodox Church is also the lack of ecclesial communion. In 1 Corinthians 10:16f Paul criticizes (expressing the whole tone of 1 Cor 1-3) a Eucharistic celebration that – in the unity of the many, expressed in the taking communion together – is not verified in a visible community acting together with one accord after the end of the mass. Proof of the practice of the early church inspired by Paul can be found in Werner Elert, Abendmahl und Kirchengemeinschaft in der alten Kirche hauptsächlich des Ostens, Berlin, 1954 (cf. also Karl Rahner – Heinrich Fries, Einigung der Kirchen – reale Möglichkeit, Freiburg, 21985, 139f). By the way, even Luther excluded a Eucharistic communion without prior ecclesial communion (based on common teaching) in the Marburg Colloquy (1529). Since the congregation of Corinth did not manifest this social concern springing from the celebration of the Eucharist, in Paul’s view they came together “not really to eat the Lord’s supper” (1 Cor 11:20).
Chap. 3 is, in my eyes, the most problematic, as mentioned above. If baptism is “a free action” (p. 11, line 61) and “both personal and ecclesial” (p. 11, line 66) – and “personal” means “personal decision of faith, a personal confession of sins, and a personal reception of forgiveness” (p. 11, line 66f) – in what sense can then not only individuals but also collectives, i.e. “faith communities”, be “members of the body of Christ” (p. 41, line 28) in the sense of an “incorporation into the body of Christ”? The text shows again and again that in ecumenism the same words have differing meanings in the different churches. The Lutheran “local church” (= the parish church) and the Catholic “local church” (= the diocese) are not identical in constitution. That is ignored (or neglected) on page 43, lines 101-113. The two local churches are said to be “a worshipping community in which the Gospel is proclaimed and the sacraments are administered according to the Gospel” (p. 43, lines 104f). That roughly corresponds to Confessio Augustana Art. 7. But exactly which sacraments are each administered “according to the Gospel”?
Page 44, lines 136-147: Perhaps it could have struck the authors of the study that “body of Christ” in an ecclesiological perspective occurs in the NT exclusively (but differently) in three texts of Paul and, further, only in Colossians and Ephesians (in the Pauline school). This finding is not insignificant for the ecclesiological relevance of the concept. Besides the concept (“body of Christ”) which is important in the history of western ecclesiology (which the study document also outlines), but which (according to the traditional objection of Orthodox theology to western ecclesiology with reference to the position of the church in the creed in the context of pneumatology, i.e. statements about the Holy Spirit) does not always avoid the danger of a certain Christocentrism (cf. the titles of the two Constitutions on the Church of the two Vatican Councils), there are also other biblical images that could be helpful in resolving theological issues of today. The likewise Pauline concept “people of God”, which LG chap. 2 places next to the concept “body of Christ”, opens prospects e.g. for dialogue with Judaism. In the context of 1 Corinthians, Paul uses the concept “body of Christ” in order to draw the attention of Corinth’s strife-ridden “ecclesia” to the consequences of taking communion together for a common social life (in the spirit of: “If you eat of one bread and drink of one cup then live as a community in the way this sacramental act has expressed and thus requires”) (1 Cor 10) and to the interaction of the many individuals in a common, visible body (1 Cor 12). The Pauline school (Col and Eph) recalls that Christ, according to the will of God, gathers the whole of humanity (indeed, the cosmos) in a visible universal community. According to this idea of the unity mediated by Christ (first in the Church and then in humanity), it is sinful to, in fact, contradict this divine plan by splitting the Church.
Page 48, lines 305-318: It might be helpful at this point to recall the hermeneutics of magisterial statements that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith presented in the declaration “Mysterium Ecclesiae” on the Catholic Doctrine of the Church and its Defence Against Some Errors of Today (15 February 1975), No. 5. The Congregation speaks of dogmas. But this applies mutatis mutandis and by analogy to other magisterial statements (e.g. in the encyclical “Mystici Corporis” of 1943, or in the Dogmatic Constitution “Lumen Gentium”). Traditional magisterial decisions (e.g. on the Church as a visible legal figure) are not simply rejected or laid aside, particularly at Councils, but at most recontextualised and/or supplemented by reference to their original context and through in-depth biblical, patristic and theological-historical research or studies. Along these lines, John Henry Newman interpreted and received the papal dogmas of Vatican I as requiring supplementing (but not as wrong), which then actually happened in LG chap. 3. A legally defined concept of the Church therefore always still has its (magisterial) right to be claimed and emphasized by the magisterium.
Page 48, lines 320-322: According to LG 16 and GS 22, it is possible for members of other religions and even atheists to achieve eternal salvation if they “moved by divine grace strive to live a good life” (LG 16). If we wanted to take the argument of the study document to an extreme we could ask what claims these different religions could submit to be members of the “body of Christ”. As is known, some theologians (in a misunderstanding of some theses of Karl Rahner) have tried – referring to the above-mentioned Council documents on the possibility of salvation for non-Christians – to draw the conclusion that the respective religions of such people are (sometimes even “ordinary”) “ways to salvation”.
Page 52f, lines 460-474: In response to what he thought was an insufficient definition in Confessio Augustana Art. 7 (“satis est”) of the marks of the unity of the Church and thus of their external visibility, Robert Bellarmin listed three “vincula” of church unity: the “vinculum symbolicum” (the creed), the “vinculum liturgicum” (the administration of the sacraments) and the “vinculum sociale vel hierarchicum” (church leadership through the Episcopal office including the papacy). These three “vincula” are not to be separated from the Episcopal office, i.e. its three “munera”, which are described in LG chap. 3. The three “vincula” were received at Vatican II (LG 14,2; UR 2,4), in CIC can. 205 and in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (paras 815, 830). A Christian community with these three “vincula” is regarded as a church. Other communities that realize these “bonds” partly or incompletely are ecclesial communities (cf. pars pro toto by the positions of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: Declaration “Dominus Iesus”, chap. 4; Responses to Some Questions regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church [2007]).
Section 3.5.5 (= pages 55-57): The identification of the “true” Church of Christ by considering the Spirit-led (“fruits of the Spirit”) or, rather, the saintly life of its members (“via empirica”) is biblically well founded (the study document points, by way of example, to contributions to this effect around the meeting of the Apostles in Acts 15) and, from the 19th century, also used apologetically/fundamental-theologically. John Hick tried, with an adapted form of the “via empirica”, to prove the credibility of the pluralism hypothesis in the theology of religions. But in traditional apologetics/fundamental theology, the “via empirica” is only one path, amongst others, to finding the “true” church.
Page 65, lines 228-234: There is a very slim historical basis for the statement “the tensions between Jewish Christians and Gentile communities were much deeper than the controversies between Lutherans and Catholics”. First, we must note that the first Christians were all Jews. The protagonists of the argument in Antiochia (Gal 2:11-21) and the meeting of the Apostles (Acts 15) were Jewish Christians. The bone of contention was the applicability of the Jewish Torah as binding and the mission to the Gentiles. For outsiders, the Christian congregation in Antiochia was a community of Jews and Gentiles (Acts 11:26). Despite the attempts of the Jew and Apostle Paul to hold Jews and Gentiles together in one Christian community (but on a Jewish foundation) (Rom 9-11), in the subsequent period it was no longer possible to relate Jewish Christians and later increasingly, exclusively Gentile Christian congregations to one another, as e.g. the heretics ̓ list of Epiphanius of Salamis shows. Furthermore, in the NT or in other early sources there is very little information about the demographic composition and the church structure of the early Christian congregations, which (understandably in view of the expectation of the upcoming parousia in the early period) as a whole represented an “evolving church”. Comparisons with specific Christian churches or denominations arising later are therefore generally out of place and distinctly misleading.
Page 69, lines 414-422, is well-meaning but associated with a view simulating a reality that (unfortunately) does not exist. There is no “ecumenical” (or bilateral-denominational) baptism (however important it may be to recall the pan-Christian dimension of baptism through preaching or symbolic actions, e.g. the presence of a clergyperson from the other church). CIC can. 111 §1f is relevant here.
Page 71, lines 484-487: “Bishops in many countries announce that if everyone who is baptized shares the Catholic Eucharist faith and are able to say 'Amen' to the Eucharistic prayer, then they may licitly receive Holy Communion. Any faithful Christian who approaches the altar properly disposed will not be refused communion.” Christoph Cardinal Schönborn made a statement that has become influential in this connection. He said that any Christian who is in a position to say “Amen” to the Eucharistic prayer of the Catholic Mass (with the doctrinal passages expressed explicitly or implicitly there on the unity with the Pope and local bishops or the college of bishops, on a sacramental priesthood, on the prayer for the dead, on the intercession of the saints etc.) can also really receive the body (and blood) of Christ (likewise with an “Amen”). However, this agreement with the faith of the Catholic Church also includes the Catholic belief (mentioned by the study document: lines 480f) that Eucharistic communion is an expression of ecclesial communion is (and vice versa). Josef Freitag (Gemeinsam am Tisch des Herrn? in: Cath[M] 74 [2020] 81-92) recently summarized that in a comprehensive fashion. Given all the exceptional arrangements for individuals in certain situations described in church law and in various magisterial letters, it still remains to be noted that, in the Catholic understanding, the goal of ecumenism is the official common celebration of the Eucharist. The common celebration of the Eucharist between Catholics and Lutherans therefore presupposes that there is ecclesial communion in doctrine and in church structures.
Page 78, lines 102f: “The body of Christ is not only a communion of saints but also a communion of ecclesial communities in communion with Christ and with one another.” The confessional phrase “communio sanctorum” (communion of the “sancti”, the saints) has sometimes also been interpreted in theology as a community in the “sancta” (in the means of salvation). However, so far that has never meant that ecclesial (institutionally constituted) communities are members of the body of Christ (in what sense?). What is this assertion calling for? A mutual recognition of the churches (as they currently are) on the basis of the baptism of their faithful, the model of the Leuenberger Agreement or the model of a church (in the multi-facetted form of its local churches that all possess e.g. Bellarmin’s three “vincula”)?
Page 79, lines 150-159: First we must ask what the episode with Pope Francis in the Lutheran Church in Rome is supposed to contribute to the argument in the study document. The following must perhaps be recalled:
- The statements of this conversation with Pope Francis cannot appeal to the infallibility of the extraordinary papal magisterium. All criteria of an infallible statement are lacking.
- Pope Francis is here replying in a pastoral capacity to the question of a Protestant spouse, the wife, in an interconfessional marriage (with regard to her situation).
- He does not wish, nor is he able, to establish a general rule (which would change canon law).
- He points the questioner to the prayer (with Christ), to biblical texts (Eph 4 speaks in the context of the whole letter implicitly of a universal church), to the (spiritual) discernment of the spirits and thus to her conscientious decision.
- Such a decision of conscience is covered by Paul (1 Cor 8:7-12; Rom 14:13-23) and also by Vatican II (GS 16). However, Catholic theology (since Thomas Aquinas) has always pointed out that, despite all personal commitment of a particular decision of conscience (conscientia) there is also the moral obligation to inform oneself – due to the deep-seated human ability to distinguish between good and bad (synderesis or synteresis) – about the objective facts (e.g. the Catholic preconditions and consequences of receiving communion, such as the interpretation of such an action in the eyes of the Catholic participants present at the Eucharist).
Page 82 – on the Special Opinion:
Prof. Washburn points to the hermeneutics of magisterial documents, to which the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith carefully drew attention in the declaration “Mysterium Ecclesiae” (No. 5). Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has likewise repeatedly highlighted the continuity of church doctrine in his interpretation of Vatican II. In theological history, theological statements and even venerable theologoumena can be screened out as erroneous, obsolete or unhelpful. Conciliar doctrines or teachings approved by other authorities of the ecclesiastical magisterium have, in the Catholic understanding, a lasting truth value, even if they perhaps need to be interpreted in a changed context or according to their intention. That does not make them wrong, but perhaps they are one-sided and open to a better understanding and a greater Catholic truth (cf. Dei Verbum 5; 8.3). When the study document now concludes that, from the baptism of Lutheran Christians, the ecclesial communities in which they live are also “members of the Body of Christ” (“in the sense that they are simply within or a part of the one Church of Christ”) it is the task of the Catholics who helped draft the study document (if they share this thesis) to show how such a claim can be reconciled with the traditional doctrine described in the Special Opinion. In my view, the study document has not (yet) resolved this problem.
[*] [The page numbers differ due to the new formatting of the document "Baptism and Growth in Communion" in the final version.]
[1] Bishop Karl Lehmann, Einig im Verständnis der Rechtfertigungsbotschaft? Erfahrungen und Lehren im Blick auf die gegenwärtige Situation. Eröffnungsreferat bei der Herbstvollversammlung der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz und Dokumente zur Gemeinsamen Erklärung über die Rechtfertigungslehre (One in the understanding of the message of justification? Experiences and lessons with respect to the present situation. Opening address at the autumn plenary of the German Bishops’ Conference and documents on the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification) (21 September 1998) (Chairman of the German Bishops Conference 19), published by the Secretariat of the German Bishops‘ Conference, Bonn 1998, 7-34, 26: “The Catholics are not shy of underlining God‘s unique salvific action but they fear – in the extreme agreement on the doctrine of justification as a criterion for all theological statements and all church phenomena, particularly regarding the Church, the sacraments, and the offices and ministries – that they will be spiritually and theologically emptied in a questionable manner and relativized to the extreme.”
[2] Karl Barth, Die Kirche und die Kirchen (TEH 27), München 1935, 9f.
[3] See footnote 2.