Salvation & Justification
We
Do Not Stand Alone
Todd von Kampen
From
the Editor
Marcus Grodi
Returning
Home
Rick Ricciardi
One
Saving Action
Dwight Longnecker
A
Voice From A Catholic Pulpit
Fr. Michael DeTemple, O.P.
How
ARE Catholics Saved?
Catechism
The
Early Church Fathers on Salvation
Chris Erickson
Did
Paul Teach Justification by Faith ALONE?
Robert Sungenis
Not
By Faith Alone
James Akin
Or
Is There Something Else?
Marcus Grodi
Justification
By Faith
Dr. William Marshner
Before
You Object...
Fr. Ray Ryland
Other Journals
We Do Not Stand Alone
Todd von Kampen
Well, this is going to be a great story, I thought.
I was in Denver’s Mile High Stadium, and it was August 12, 1993.
Ninety thousand young people from all across the globe, worked up to a
fever pitch, erupted with thunderous cheers as they first spotted their
hero: Pope John Paul II, just arrived to officially open World Youth Day.
My wife, Joan, was nearby with a group of Catholic young people from Scottsbluff
and Gering, Nebraska, where we lived and worked at the daily newspaper.
She was there as a participant, a cradle Catholic taking advantage of
a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see her spiritual leader. I was plying
my trade.
I jotted down impressions in my notebook as John Paul toured the stadium,
then began his greetings to the numerous nations represented in Denver.
Nothing unexpected for a world leader, I thought, as the pope began greeting
the non-Catholic Christians in the audience.
“Most of you are members of the Catholic Church, but others are
from other Christian Churches and Communities, and I greet each one with
sincere friendship,” he said. “In spite of divisions among
Christians, ‘all those justified by faith through baptism are incorporated
into Christ … brothers and sisters in the Lord.’ ”
The Holy Father shook up my life in that moment. It may be difficult to
understand why … unless you’ve grown up Lutheran.
I had just heard a statement echoing the key battle cry of the Reformation,
the one cited by Martin Luther and all Lutherans after him as the doctrine
on which the Church stands or falls: “For it is by grace you have
been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is
the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast”
(Ephesians 2:8-9, NIV).
And it had come from the pope – the successor of the man who excommunicated
Luther nearly 500 years before. Well-versed Catholics will recognize that
John Paul merely quoted Unitatis Redintegratio, the Decree on Ecumenism
from Vatican II. But I didn’t know that. It was one of many things
I didn’t know – one of many things I wouldn’t have believed
only a few years before.
My mind raced back nearly six years to the day, back to the rectory at
St. Agnes Catholic Church in Scottsbluff. I thought I wanted to marry
Joan, but I had to be sure. I asked my most burning question point-blank
to her pastor, Fr. Robert Karnish: “What is the way salvation is
obtained?”
Without hesitation, Father Bob answered: “Faith in Jesus Christ,
which is totally unmerited by us.”
His answer backed up what Joan had been telling me – that she believed
what I did when it came to justification. Because he answered that way,
I stood before him to marry Joan a few months later.
And because the Holy Father said what he said at that moment in Denver,
God eventually led me into the Catholic Church.
Scenes From a Journey
Every life’s journey has its key scenes, its watershed events that
set the course for all that follow them. Mine were placed roughly at five-year
intervals from my confirmation in my native denomination, the Lutheran
Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS), on April 2, 1978, to my reconciliation with
Rome on March 29, 1998.
To be specific, just five scenes form the backbone of my journey into
the Catholic Church. My heart and mind are full of thoughts, my bookcase
bulging with books and magazine articles that multiplied as the journey
went on. I could easily fill a special newspaper section – if not
a full-length book – with the things that seem absolutely essential
to understand how this born, bred and convicted conservative Lutheran
ended up in the Roman Catholic Church!
But throughout these five scenes, the issue of justification was there
all the time. If you grow up in the LCMS and really believe what it teaches,
it can’t be otherwise. Of all the thousands of Protestant denominations,
few are more dedicated than the Missouri Synod to preserving the original
arguments with Rome – especially when it comes to justification,
the article on which Luther said the church stands or falls.
To Catholics then and now, the key issue in the Reformation is authority
– Luther’s rejection of the doctrinal authority of the pope
and the Magisterium of the Church. And, indeed, the continuing rejection
of that authority is very important to Lutherans. But it’s not the
first issue they talk about.
Justification comes first – for Luther and the Reformers couched
every disagreement in terms of their conviction that the Catholic Church
doesn’t believe that salvation comes through Christ’s free
gift, but from performing this sacrament, that rite, this prayer to Mary,
that indulgence.
Almost any spiritual journey from Wittenberg to Rome – especially
if it detours through Missouri – hinges totally on that conviction.
Unless Lutherans perceive common ground with Catholics on justification,
Catholics can’t hope to get Lutherans to listen to the Church’s
views on authority, Mary and the saints, purgatory and indulgences and
the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. Unless the cornerstone of Lutherans’
mighty fortress against Rome is removed, the rest of the wall won’t
fall.
Let’s go back to the place where my fortress was built.
Scene 1, 1978: “We Knew What Was Right”
I was in a classroom in a Lutheran school in western Nebraska, not too
long before my confirmation. My pastor drew a diagram on a chalkboard
to outline the differing beliefs on what happens when the Words of Institution
are spoken in the Eucharist.
The Catholic section of the diagram said only “body” and “blood”;
the Protestant section, “bread” and “wine.” The
Lutheran one linked “bread” to “body” and “wine”
to “blood,” showing Luther’s belief in Christ’s
Real Presence “in, with and under” the bread and wine. Catholics
believe in transubstantiation, Pastor said; Protestants believe the Eucharist
is only a symbol. Both were wrong; Luther was right. This is where our
Synod stands.
Missouri’s big on taking stands. The Synod’s founders were
Saxon Germans who emigrated to America in 1839 rather than submit to the
forced union of Germany’s Lutheran and Reformed (Calvinist) state
churches. The first LCMS president, the Rev. C.F.W. Walther, firmly believed
in the doctrines espoused by Luther and his fellow German Reformers, especially
as expressed in the Lutheran Confessions – the doctrinal statements
adopted by Lutherans in the 1580 Book of Concord.
Walther’s beliefs have been enshrined in the Missouri Synod since
its founding in 1847. Article II of the LCMS Constitution makes it crystal-clear
what every member congregation must uphold: “the Scriptures of the
Old and the New Testament as the written Word of God and the only rule
and norm of faith and of practice” and the Lutheran Confessions
“as a true and unadulterated statement and exposition of the Word
of God.”
That constrains Missouri’s members to stand firm against all who
believe otherwise – even if they’re in another Lutheran church
body, even if they’re part of the LCMS itself. During my childhood
(I knew nothing of this before college), most of the faculty and students
of the Synod’s flagship seminary in St. Louis walked out in 1974
after a majority of delegates to the previous year’s LCMS convention
declared they were drifting too far from Missouri’s historic course
and too close to liberal theology and its denial of Scriptural authority.
(A number of congregations followed them out and eventually joined two
larger church bodies in the 1988 formation of the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America.)
These beliefs also commit the LCMS to the German Reformers’ litany
of objections to the Catholic Church’s teachings: Catholics believe
salvation depends on your works; they place the pope above the Bible;
they pray to Mary and the saints; they believe in purgatory; they accept
seven sacraments, not two; and, of course, they insist on this magic show
called transubstantiation.
I absorbed all the objections, along with the absolute emphasis on justification
by grace through faith as the chief cornerstone of Christianity. Christ
died on the cross to save us from our sins. We’re born sinful; there’s
nothing we can do to earn salvation. We are saved only through God’s
free gift of faith through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. And
we need that free gift throughout our lives, for the Christian is both
saint and sinner – always prone to fall into the trap of believing
he or she can make it to heaven without God’s help.
There was no doubt whatever in my mind about it – indeed, no one
in our family doubted it. My Danish maternal grandmother summarized it
best when recalling her own childhood a century ago: “We knew what
was right, and it never occurred to us to do otherwise.”
Which only more strongly poses the question: Given my background, how
on earth could I end up Catholic?
On one level, the answer is easy: It was God’s grace. More to the
point, He preserved me from the depth and intensity of the Missouri Synod’s
official feelings regarding the Catholic Church. For if you believe the
Confessions are drawn from God’s Word, you also commit yourself
to believing “the Pope of Rome and his dominion” (to quote
a 1932 LCMS doctrinal statement) are the Antichrist – Luther’s
incendiary charge against those who threw him out of the Church.
That simply wasn’t part of my training. Young Missouri Synod Lutherans
aren’t taught the entire content of the Lutheran Confessions. They
are expected to read and master Luther’s Small Catechism, which
certainly includes the key elements of Lutheranism – the stress
on justification, the views on the Real Presence. But you won’t
find the word “Antichrist” – or any anti-Catholic polemics
– anywhere in it.
Though my pastor taught the theological differences with Rome, he didn’t
teach the polemics, and I don’t recall him teaching the Antichrist.
And the standard LCMS confirmation vow requires a new member to confess
belief in Lutheran teachings “as you have learned to know it in
the Small Catechism” – not the Confessions as a whole.
So I didn’t carry all the anti-Catholic baggage into life as an
adult Lutheran. But I believed the Missouri Synod’s take on Rome’s
beliefs as firmly as Luther ever did.
Scene 2, 1983: Once Saved, Always Saved?
Fast-forward a few years. I was alone in a hotel room in Germany on the
Fourth of July, the last day of a five-week tour with my LCMS college
choir in honor of Martin Luther’s 500th birthday. I was paging through
my Bible, writing in my diary, looking for answers to reconcile what I
believed about justification with what I’d witnessed among our group.
I had entered that school a year before with the intention of becoming
a music teacher in LCMS high schools. The European tour changed my life.
We sang in beautiful cathedrals, drank in the sights of our ancestral
land and even sang a surreptitiously scheduled concert behind the Iron
Curtain in a tiny, embattled church in Leipzig in what was then East Germany.
Those were the high points. They weren’t why I was in that room.
Several of the choir members – people planning to be pastors, teachers,
church musicians – largely abandoned the pretense of consistently
living their faith while they were so far from home. Some of them drank
to excess, which didn’t help. But they also ridiculed those who
suggested they weren’t setting a good example.
And the leadership of the choir, all too often, sided with them.
We were all young; I know I didn’t handle my own reactions as well
as I should have. But the experience shattered my beliefs about who we
were and what we were supposed to be doing. It wasn’t that I expected
people not to sin; I learned my confirmation lessons too well for that.
But these ministers-in-training not only were sinning … they didn’t
seem to care.
So there I was, trying to make sense of what had happened, asking myself:
Was I wrong? I found myself in Paul’s letter to the Romans, the
epistle Luther used more than any other in building his theology of justification.
“What shall we say, then?” Paul wrote in Romans 6:1-2 (NIV).
“Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means!
We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” He emphasizes
and expands on the point in Romans 8:9: “You, however, are controlled
not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives
in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not
belong to Christ.”
Then, in Romans 8:12-14, Paul lays it on the table for Christians who
are tempted not to live the life to which Christ has called them:
Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation – but it is not to the
sinful nature, to live according to it. For if you live according to the
sinful nature, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the
misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the
Spirit of God are sons of God.
I wasn’t wrong. Here was the proof in the Scriptures. We can’t
sin without consequences, even after we’ve been justified by grace
through faith. God expects His people to shine their lights all the time,
not just during the concert – to live their faith at all times,
not put it away when it’s time to have fun. To do otherwise –
to sin and not care – is to throw away that undeserved gift of grace
through faith in Christ.
At the time, that discovery saved me from total disillusionment in my
Lutheran faith. It also started me down the road toward the Catholic Church
– though it would be years before I understood how important, both
personally and theologically, that moment would be.
I came home deeply conflicted about God’s plan for me. I didn’t
think I could function in a ministry that appeared to tolerate such a
gap between belief and practice. Then, quite unexpectedly, I got a call
from the publisher of my hometown newspaper, for which I had written a
column on high school activities. He wanted me to fill in for the rest
of the summer for a sports editor who had suddenly quit.
I enjoyed it and found my niche. And after I returned to college that
fall, opportunities in journalism kept coming my way without my asking
for them. After a month, I decided God was giving me a different mission.
I transferred at semester’s end to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln,
home to one of the nation’s best journalism programs. I’ve
been a journalist ever since.
Scene 3, 1988: That All May Be One
Less than five years later, on May 28, 1988, I stood before a Catholic
altar on my wedding day. Not only had God yanked my professional life
in a different direction – He had sent me my life’s partner
from the most unexpected of directions.
My three years at UNL had been everything I hoped for – in every
area but one. I was fortunate to land in an LCMS campus ministry full
of young people who lived their faith amid the admittedly more hostile
atmosphere of a secular university. I wrote for and eventually edited
the monthly newsletter when I wasn’t studying or writing for the
main UNL campus newspaper, the Daily Nebraskan.
But I had hoped for, tried for, and frankly embarrassed myself in the
quest to find a woman to share my life. Simply put, I crashed and burned.
My last hope among the girls I met at UNL faded for good soon after I
left for my first job in North Platte, Nebraska.
Or so I thought.
Quite unexpectedly, a friendship with my copy desk chief at the Daily
Nebraskan – Joan Rezac – began to blossom. I nearly missed
the signals when she started hinting she was interested in something more
– but I came to my senses just in time. On April 5, 1987, I asked
her on the phone: “Are we moving beyond a friendship?”
“I’m glad you called,” she said. “The thought
had crossed my mind!”
Right then, I knew – absolutely knew – the search was over.
I can’t explain why, and I didn’t tell Joan until much later.
But the phone calls and trips back to Lincoln for dates proved it. Here
was a fellow journalist who loved music and seemed to understand me better
than anyone ever had.
I can’t do justice in this short space to how perfectly Joan fit
into my life – other than to say I’ve never doubted in the
years since that phone call that she was, and is, God’s precious
gift to me.
But she was Catholic. Catholic. Why, God – why did you send me a
CATHOLIC? This surely can’t work – can it?
We started working on the answer only a few weeks into our relationship.
I gave her a copy of Luther’s Small Catechism, while she gave me
a U.S. Catholic catechism she had studied from in her confirmation class.
Naturally, as a good Missouri Synod Lutheran who knew Catholics were wrong,
I figured I had the tools to wake Joan up. If we were to have a future
as a couple, I had to.
And I tried hard and long during those first few months. There was only
one problem: It made her a stronger Catholic. And I was the one who had
to adjust.
I attended church with her occasionally, heard the Mass in the vernacular,
saw Communion given in both kinds. She told me how Vatican II had broadened
the Church’s approach to other faiths. I read a passage in her catechism
that said Catholics were finding Luther’s teachings weren’t
as un-Catholic as they had thought. And on justification? Joan said she
believed that works, while they don’t save you, let our faith shine
through.
In other words, this Catholic Church was … so to speak … more
Lutheran than I imagined. It was my first clue that I had been viewing
Rome through a distorted mirror – the one held up by my confirmation
instruction. Though Vatican II had happened a decade before that, the
Rome that I was taught as a young Lutheran was the Rome of 1517 –
at least in the way Rome presented itself at that long-ago time. Something
was different.
I couldn’t escape that fact as Joan and I debated the spiritual
issues that summer of 1987. It wasn’t an easy ride, to be sure.
Sometimes it seemed that Joan and I were speaking different languages.
I certainly didn’t believe all that stuff about Mary, the saints,
purgatory and the sacrifice of the Mass, though I was hearing things here
and there that gave me pause.
But we came through that time closer than ever. And Fr. Karnish’s
straight answer to my straight question about justification helped convince
me that Joan and I could function as a Christian couple. If the priest
who helped form Joan’s faith was saying the same thing she was,
we could grow in faith together as husband and wife.
But finding some points of agreement with Catholics wasn’t enough
for me to become one – though we did get married at St. Agnes. We
resolved to attend each other’s churches regularly, minister together
where we could and let God tell us whether He wanted us to join one or
the other or remain in both. I needed more proof that the Catholic Church
I was hearing about from Joan and Fr. Karnish was the Church that really
existed.
It took me 10 years to be convinced.
Scene 4, 1993: The Surprising Pope from Poland
The moment in Denver when I heard those astonishing words from the pope
happened almost halfway in between those ten years. It came at a time
when our marriage was full of spiritual blessings and professional challenges
– but it seemed that we were destined to be a two-faith couple.
Joan had taken Lutheran confirmation classes in Des Moines, where we moved
after our marriage. But she just wasn’t inspired to join. Something
would be missing, she said – something she couldn’t put into
words. So after we moved to Scottsbluff in 1991, I entered an RCIA (Rite
of Christian Initiation for Adults) class at St. Agnes, intending to stop
before the point that I would have to commit myself to join.
Again, I was surprised at the level of agreement I was finding between
the two faith traditions. I remember thinking that I could be comfortable
at St. Agnes – but something kept gnawing at me. You see, I had
started RCIA instruction in Des Moines, but left after two weeks. That
priest seemed to doubt the essence of Christian faith – Catholic,
Lutheran or otherwise.
So I asked St. Agnes’ new pastor, Fr. Charles Torpey: Could he guarantee
me that I would hear the same message about Catholicism in another parish
or another diocese?
No, he said.
He was merely reflecting the varying interpretations of Vatican II that
have plagued the Church for most of the 35 years since the Council. But
for me, at that time, Fr. Torpey’s answer stopped me cold. I was
used to hearing pretty much the same Lutheran doctrines from one Missouri
Synod congregation to the next. Even though I was comfortable with what
Joan believed, her family believed and her parish believed, without the
guarantee I sought, I simply assumed the Catholic Church as a whole couldn’t
possibly believe as they did.
A year later, John Paul II shook up that assumption in Denver.
As we had our second child and then moved back to North Platte, the pope
kept doing things I couldn’t ignore. The year after World Youth
Day, the Vatican released the English translation of the Catechism of
the Catholic Church. Though I didn’t read it cover to cover until
after I joined the Church, its release was a profound event – the
beginning of order from the chaos of the varying interpretations of Vatican
II.
Then John Paul issued Ut Unum Sint, the great 1995 encyclical on ecumenism
in which he urged Protestants and Eastern Orthodox alike to join Catholics
in restoring the Church’s unity. A year later, the Holy Father went
to Paderborn, Germany, and directly urged Lutherans and Catholics to look
at the complete picture of Luther and the Reformation and approach their
500-year feud in a different way:
Luther's thinking was characterized by considerable emphasis on the individual,
which meant that the awareness of the requirements of society became weaker.
Luther's original intention in his call for reform in the Church was a
call to repentance and renewal to begin in the life of every individual.
There are many reasons why these beginnings nevertheless led to division.
One is the failure of the Catholic Church … and the intrusion of
political and economic interest, as well as Luther's own passion, which
drove him far beyond what he originally intended into radical criticism
of the Catholic Church, of its way of teaching.
We all bear the guilt. That is why we are called upon to repent and must
all allow the Lord to cleanse us over and over.
After nearly a decade of study and close observation of Catholicism,
I could take the pope’s words and sentiment for what they were.
The messages I first heard in 1987 had been confirmed week in and week
out from Catholic pulpits. I had absorbed the wonderful liturgical music
coming from Catholic Church musicians like John Michael Talbot, David
Haas and Marty Haugen (the last himself a Lutheran writing for Catholics!)
I prayed for unity in God’s Church more strongly than ever.
And yet … I remained confirmed in my Lutheran thinking. When it
came to Mary, the saints, purgatory and so on, I had searched in vain
for a response to Luther’s ancient challenge: Prove it to me from
Scripture!
In mid-1997, we moved to Omaha. As always, I started looking for an LCMS
congregation to join. I found one I thought I liked – one that did
contemporary music, one that had people I had known from other parts of
Nebraska. But something wasn’t right. Something kept gnawing at
me, preventing me from becoming an official member of the congregation.
I didn’t know what it was.
That Christmas, we got a gift from Sr. Mariette Melmer, a distant cousin
of Joan’s mother and a Notre Dame Sister based not far from our
new home. (The Lord called her home in August 1999.) She told Joan she
thought we would find it interesting. Joan read it, then passed it on
to me. It was Rome Sweet Home, Scott and Kimberly Hahn’s story of
their journeys from Presbyterianism into the Catholic Church.
It wasn’t a perfect fit; I was a Lutheran reading an ex-Calvinist’s
conception of what Luther believed. And yet … here were all these
Scripture passages addressing the differences between Lutherans and Catholics.
Hahn was pointing to Scripture. And he was making sense – for instance,
his connection of purgatory to passages I had never paid attention to
before, like 1 Corinthians 3:12-15:
If any man builds on this foundation [of Christ]using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.
As so many ex-Protestant converts have said … I knew I was in trouble. It was time to answer the questions once and for all. I was driven by something the pope had written in Ut Unum Sint:
In the first place, with regard to doctrinal formulations which differ
from those normally in use in the community to which one belongs, it is
certainly right to determine whether the words involved say the same thing.
…
In this regard, ecumenical dialogue, which prompts the parties involved
to question each other, to understand each other and to explain their
positions to each other, makes surprising discoveries possible. Intolerant
polemics and controversies have made incompatible assertions out of what
was really the result of two different ways of looking at the same reality.
I couldn’t pass up that challenge. It called on skills I use all
the time as a journalist – the translation of the jargon of doctors,
lawyers, school administrators, etc., into language common people can
use. After 10 years of virtual dual membership in the Catholic Church
and the LCMS, I believed I knew both sides’ theological languages
well enough to test it.
The 20-year journey was entering its final phase.
Scene 5, 1998 – Amid the Crumbled Fortress
Just over a month later, on Feb. 1, I stood over the dishes, looking out
at the winter night. The tears kept coming. I knew I had run out of arguments.
The walls of my mighty Lutheran fortress lay in ruins around my feet.
I knew I had to become Catholic.
I was nearing the end of the second draft of what had become a 40-page
paper, a conversation with myself about my journey. I had pored through
Internet pages, haunted the libraries of our city and a nearby Catholic
university and raided bookstores in my quest.
The pope had been right. On several critical issues, Lutherans and Catholics
indeed said the same thing in different ways. With others, it had been
less a matter of giving up Lutheran beliefs than coming to understand
how Catholic they really were. And with the rest – Catholics simply
had the more convincing case.
Naturally, justification was the first issue. As I sorted through a decade’s
worth of evidence, I found I had no doubts left: On this most important
issue, Lutherans and Catholics were arguing over style – not substance.
And after 500 years of diatribes by both sides, both faith traditions
are beginning to understand that at last!
Over time, I had come to understand that two questions govern our lives
as Christian believers: “How are you saved?” and “OK,
you’re saved – now what?” The first refers to the moment
and means of salvation; the second, to our spiritual journey from the
moment of salvation until death. Just as Paul did throughout Romans, we
must ask and answer both questions together to understand the entire picture
of salvation.
Lutheran sermons typically focus on the first question, while Catholics
concentrate on the second. Consequently, each thinks the other doesn’t
answer the key question. Lutherans assume Catholics believe our totally
undeserved gift of God’s grace is not the sole means of our salvation
– but the very beginning of the Council of Trent’s Decree
on Justification freely confesses our utter dependence on God:
If anyone shall say that man can be justified before God by his own works
which are done either by his own natural powers, or through the teaching
of the Law, and without divine grace through Christ Jesus: let him be
anathema. (Canon 1)
If anyone shall say that without the anticipatory inspiration of the Holy
Spirit and without His assistance man can believe, hope and love or be
repentant, as he ought, so that the grace of justification may be conferred
upon him: let him be anathema. (Canon 3)
For their part, Catholics assume that “faith alone” means
Lutherans believe that “once saved, always saved.” Paul didn’t
believe that, as we have seen. Christ didn’t teach it, either, as
we see in Matthew 7:21: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord,
Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the
will of my Father who is in heaven.”
We are totally dependent on God for our salvation, Catholics teach, but
we can throw it away. How? By willfully returning to a life of sin and
assuming we’re saved anyway! Thus the Catechism of the Catholic
Church teaches: “Mortal sin … results in the loss of charity
and the privation of sanctifying grace, that is, of the state of grace.
If it is not redeemed by repentance and God’s forgiveness, it causes
exclusion from Christ’s kingdom and the eternal death of hell”
(CCC, No. 1861).
So … do Lutherans believe you can throw your salvation away? The
Lutheran Confessions say: Yes! One of the most unequivocal statements
to that effect can be found in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession,
where Luther’s right-hand man, Philip Melanchthon, writes about
Paul’s statement that “if I have a faith that can move mountains,
but have not love, I am nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:2):
In this text Paul requires love. We require it, too. We have said above that we should be renewed and begin to keep the law, according to the statement (Jeremiah 31:33), “I will put my law within their hearts.” Whoever casts away love will not keep his faith, be it ever so great, because he will not keep the Holy Spirit. (Apology, IV, 219)*
Now we’ve reached the common ground. Recall that many English translations
render the “love” of 1 Corinthians 13:13 (“And now these
three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love”)
as “charity” (in Greek, agape; in Latin, caritas). Charity
is an active love of both God above all things and our neighbor as ourselves;
as such, it’s considered by Catholics as the greatest of the “theological
virtues” (which also include faith and hope). It’s what following
through on our faith – the Catholic concept, much maligned by Lutherans,
of “faith fashioned by love” – is all about.
Lutherans speak of these issues under another name: the “third use
of the Law,” as found in the 1580 Formula of Concord:
The law has been given to men for three reasons: (1) to maintain external
discipline against unruly and disobedient men, (2) to lead men to a knowledge
of their sin, (3) after they are reborn, and although the flesh still
inheres in them, to give them on that account a definite rule according
to which they should pattern and regulate their entire life. …
We believe, teach and confess that the preaching of the law is to be diligently
applied not only to unbelievers and the impenitent but also to people
who are genuinely believing, truly converted, regenerated, and justified
through faith.
For although they are indeed reborn and have been renewed in the spirit
of their mind, such regeneration and renewal is incomplete in this world.
In fact, it has only begun, and in the spirit of their mind the believers
are in a constant war against their flesh (that is, their corrupt nature
and kind), which clings to them until death. (Formula of Concord, Epitome,
VI, 1, 3-4a)
Put another way: The Law – loving God with all your heart, soul
and mind and your neighbor as yourself – doesn’t cease to
apply to you once you’re saved. The commandments of the Law tell
believers what they ought to be doing as a matter of course. If Christians
aren’t doing good works and don’t care, how can anyone tell
they are saved? Indeed, how can they themselves expect to see heaven with
such an attitude?
That’s what James was getting at when he wrote that “faith
without works is dead” (James 2:26). But it’s also what Catholics
mean when they speak of justification as a process – one that lasts
until God calls us home. If we freely sin and don’t care, we fall
into the category of those who “have shipwrecked their faith”
(1 Timothy 1:19). But we have the sure promise in 2 Timothy 2:11-13 that
“if we endure, we will also reign with Him” and that “if
we are faithless, He will remain faithful, for He cannot disown Himself”!
This is the common ground of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of
Justification, the breakthrough agreement between Catholics and many Lutherans
(though not the Missouri Synod) signed in Augsburg, Germany, on Reformation
Day 1999. It declares that the signatories consider its contents to “encompass
a consensus on basic truths of the doctrine of justification.” (For
the text of the Joint Declaration and related documents, see the appendixes
at the back of this book.)
Its key passage answers both of our key questions of the Christian life:
“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” (Joint Declaration on the Doctrine
of Justification, No. 15).
Does that seem familiar? It should. It’s anchored not only in Ephesians
2:8-9 – the “justification in a nutshell” passage that
Lutherans cite so often – but also verses 10 and 11, which Catholics
insist must not be forgotten: “For it is by grace you have been
saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift
of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared
in advance for us to do.”
One must emphasize that the Joint Declaration speaks of shared “basic
truths,” not total agreement. The two faith traditions are still
seeking common ground on how we live out our faith, how we know what God
expects us to do and how He gives us the grace to do it through Word and
Sacrament – in essence, all the remaining points at issue between
Lutherans and Catholics.
But it’s clear that Catholics and Lutherans – in two different
ways, just as John Paul II perceived – agree on what one might call
“the circle of eternal life,” one that begins and ends with
God.
The circle works like this: God, through Christ’s death for our
sins, alone makes our salvation possible – but we have to accept
His gift of faith, and we absolutely must live that faith by following
God’s commands, lest we lose the Holy Spirit and the salvation that
Christ earned for us. But … we cannot follow through and we cannot
accept the gift of faith – or, put in the passive form that Lutherans
prefer, the reception of faith by us cannot take place – unless
God alone gives us the ability to do so. So, in the end, we are totally
dependent on God!
The belief that Catholics and Lutherans somehow disagreed on that was,
and is, the cornerstone of the typical Lutheran’s mighty fortress
against Rome. Once the cornerstone was removed from my wall, the other
bricks began to collapse.
I began to perceive other similarities between Catholics and Lutherans
that hadn’t occurred to me before – most notably on the two
key ingredients of the Church’s authority: the relationship between
Scripture and Tradition and the question of infallibility.
Luther, of course, set the tone for Protestants everywhere with his emphasis
on sola Scriptura – the Bible as the sole authority. But John Paul
changed the tone of the debate in Ut Unum Sint, defining the question
in dispute as “the relationship between Sacred Scripture, as the
highest authority in matters of faith, and Sacred Tradition, as indispensable
to the interpretation of the Word of God.”
Compare that to Article II of the LCMS Constitution. It’s the same
order of primacy! Catholics indeed look first to the Scriptures –
but they interpret those Scriptures in the light of the teaching they
uphold as directly passed on from the apostles, the Church Fathers, and
the ecumenical councils. And in Missouri’s universe, at any rate,
the Lutheran Confessions have the same relationship to Scripture. They
define how the LCMS reads and lives its faith.
That harmonizes well with the simple definition of Tradition as “the
living and lived faith of the Church” – even more simply,
the teachings of the Church. In that light, sola Scriptura is nothing
more than a phrase or slogan. It can’t be anything else as long
as a group of Christians follows a particular set of teachings, whether
it comes from Luther, John Calvin, John Knox or John Wesley.
In that case … which side has the better case for its Tradition?
Lutherans – who kept much of the Catholic Tradition, but based the
rest of their teachings on the interpretations of a handful of 16th-century
men? Or the Catholic Church, which can do what Luther cannot – cite
the Scriptures in defense of its authority to pass on and interpret the
faith?
It isn’t that the LCMS in practice denies the connection between
Scripture and Tradition. It’s a question of which Tradition it accepts.
The issue of infallibility is much the same. The LCMS believes the Holy
Spirit guides its officers and pastors (its Magisterium, if you will)
and its triennial conventions (its ecumenical councils) in deciding doctrinal
issues.
Again, which has the better Scriptural case for its authority? I concluded
that Rome had a convincing case – and Missouri, by its own preferred
standard, had none. Once I realized that, the other issues between Lutherans
and Catholics were much easier to deal with.
There were other areas in which it appeared that Lutheran practice mimicked
Catholic reality. Luther may have reduced seven sacraments to two by his
own definition – and yet Lutherans hold confirmation, marriage,
ordination, confession and absolution (in the corporate sense, anyway)
and pastoral care of the sick (parallel to Anointing of the Sick) in high
esteem. In each, they believe God blesses His people as the pastor proclaims
God’s Word. And isn’t that the essence of the “means
of grace” that explains the basic act of both baptism and the Eucharist
– the application of God’s Word to visible elements to impart
His grace?
Coupled with my new Scriptural proofs and my conclusions on Catholic authority,
the sacraments proved easier to deal with than I thought. I had had the
flow all wrong. The sacraments weren’t obstacles to us reaching
God. They were means for God to reach us!
Much the same may be said of Mary and the saints. I didn’t expect
those issues to fall as easily as they did. But both are linked to one
question: Do Lutherans believe the “communion of saints” unites
the saints in heaven and on earth in one body of Christ? And if it does,
why would we not seek the aid of the Christians who have gone before?
Lutherans will admit that the saints in heaven, including Mary, pray for
the saints on earth. Unfortunately, they don’t believe we can pray
to them, asking them to pray for us. But that ignores Paul’s observation
that “the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need
you!’ ” (1 Corinthians 12:21a, NIV).
We ask our fellow living Christians to pray for us in time of trouble.
The Catholic Church invites us – though it doesn’t demand
– to likewise seek the prayers of the blessed dead. Christ remains
the one Mediator, but He makes use of whatever mediums He wishes to draw
us to Himself – including our fellow members of the Body of Christ.
As for Mary, I found the case for Catholic dogma bolstered by a most unexpected
source: Luther himself. Evidence can be found in his writings that he
believed in all the Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church -- Mary was Mother
of God, was perpetually a virgin, was immaculately conceived and assumed
into heaven. Most astonishingly, the founder of this church that disdains
praying to Mary invokes her intercession at the beginning and the end
of his 1521 commentary on the Magnificat!
It’s quite another thing to equate Mary or the saints with God or
to expect them to accomplish specific things for you. Luther was adamant
in opposing that thinking – but so is the Catholic Church. Pope
Paul VI clarified the point for Catholics when he cautioned that veneration
of Mary and the saints must be done within the context of “a rightly
ordered faith” – one that looks to Christ as the sole source
of salvation and grace.
This space, of course, is too limited to cover all the Catholic-Lutheran
issues, let alone all the evidence I found for the Catholic position.
But one more subject needs to be covered. Ultimately for me, it came down
to the Eucharist.
The dispute over the sacrifice of the Mass wasn’t the obstacle I
expected it to be. The Church does not see it as a repetition of Christ’s
sacrifice – as Luther and the Reformers perceived their position
– but as the one single sacrifice presented again to us, a re-enactment
of Calvary every time we “do this in remembrance of Me.” (The
late LCMS theology professor Arthur Carl Piepkorn – a key player
in the first U.S. Lutheran-Catholic dialogues in the 1960s – wrote
of the Eucharist in eerily similar terms.)
That brought me to the transubstantiation issue, the fate of the bread
and wine after the Words of Institution. I had come a long way by following
the pope’s advice. I had had to give up very little of my Lutheran
way of thinking. But transubstantiation couldn’t be resolved as
two different approaches to a common belief. I was back to the diagram
Pastor had put on the chalkboard 20 years before: Either the bread and
wine are still there – or they aren’t.
So I went to Luther’s 1520 treatise The Babylonian Captivity of
the Church, the work that defined his views on transubstantiation and
redefined the sacraments. I had been struck by an oddity: Catholics and
Lutherans appealed to the same Scripture passages and emphasized a plain,
literal reading of the text. There must be something more to Luther’s
position.
There was. Luther wrote:
Does not Christ appear to have anticipated this curiosity admirably by saying of the wine, not Hoc est sanguis meus, but Hic est sanguis meus? … That the pronoun “this,” in both Greek and Latin, is referred to “body,” is due to the fact that in both of these languages the two words are of the same gender. In Hebrew, however, which has no neuter gender, “this” is referred to “bread,” so that it would be proper to say Hic [bread] est corpus meum.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, Luther bases his theology on the original
Bible languages – Greek and Hebrew, not Latin. But not here. He’s
objecting to the Latin translation – the translation of the Church
whose authority he was rejecting. He was dismissing the original translation,
the Greek, because it agrees with the Latin. And he’s appealing
to a different language entirely – Hebrew, which he assumes Christ
spoke at the Last Supper (modern scholars believe it more likely was Aramaic)
– to undermine the transubstantiation doctrine which he associated
with Rome’s supposed corruptions of the faith.
My hands shook as I read that passage for the first time. I thought: But
that’s wrong! He can’t do that!
I was back in my professional realm. I don’t know Greek …
but I’m a writer, and I can research. I spent the next day ransacking
the library and the Internet, finding the exact Greek words and learning
how the Greek language treats pronouns. When I was done, the evidence
was overwhelming: In the language used by the New Testament’s divinely
inspired authors, Christ’s “this” cannot refer to anything
other than “body.” (A straight-across reading of the Greek
in an interlinear New Testament reinforces the point: “This is the
body of Me.”)
In other words … Rome was right, and Luther was wrong. I no longer
had a case against joining the Catholic Church.
Prayer for Unity
I took Communion with my wife for the first time less than two months
later. Our oldest son, Jonathan, made his first Communion in December
1998 and was confirmed in 2004. Our second son, Joshua, made first Communion
in 2001, and we have been joined by two little ones, Benjamin and Annetta
– our first children born with us all united in the Catholic Church.
I can’t begin to express the joy of being fully spiritually united
with my wife and children – not to mention all the Catholics whose
quiet witnesses and utter lack of pressure unquestionably were God’s
instruments on the way to Rome.
There has been pain, too, and that isn’t an unfamiliar story to
Christians who have reconciled with Rome. It’s one thing for Catholics
to ask forgiveness for the events of centuries ago. It’s another
for Eastern Orthodox and Protestants of all stripes to grant it and to
issue their own apologies – to put aside the pain and the polemics
and humbly, sincerely, thoroughly explore how it all happened, how the
other side thinks and what God is saying to His people in these increasingly
faithless days.
Pope John Paul and now Pope Benedict XVI (his longtime aide, Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger) have called on Catholics to work for the unity of the
Church – to join Christ’s high-priestly prayer that we all
may be one. I pray that Rome and Missouri in particular may be led to
forgive each other, to look toward God and His Word with truly unbiased
eyes and ask whether they’re meant to remain divided. They share
far, far more than they know.
After John Paul spoke his astonishing words in Denver, I heard Irish recording
artist Dana sing the World Youth Day 1993 theme song for the first time.
It quickly took root in my heart because of its echo – whether intended
or not, I don’t know – of Luther’s alleged “Here
I stand” statement at the Diet of Worms. It seems an appropriate
way to end this tale:
We are one body, one body in Christ,
And we do not stand alone,
We are one body, one body in Christ,
And He came that we might have life …
Before beginning his journalism career, Todd von Kampen played piano and
sang in high school music groups in western Nebraska. He and his wife,
Joan, work together in music ministry at Church of the Blessed Sacrament
in Omaha, Neb., where they song-lead, play piano and organ at Sunday Mass
and direct seasonal choirs. They have four children, a cat and a house
full of books and recordings.
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