Word: churches
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...ideas about justification by faith, rancor over which was fast splitting Western Christianity in two. Could justification, which all saw as the precondition of salvation, be influenced by human effort, or was it, as Luther had insisted, out of mortal hands? The Regensburg conferees, representing the Roman Catholic Church and the new Protestantism, produced language on the issue they thought might mend the rift...
...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." Half a millennium of strife is not instantly undone; last week's participants, unlike the Regensburgers, didn't imagine they were reuniting the church. But the Declaration does preserve faint hopes of such a reunion. And it is "momentous" in its own right, notes influential Catholic commentator Richard John Neuhaus, for seriously addressing "the root cause of a division that has shaped all of world history...
...grace was his solution to two problems. One was personal: the era's Catholic practice presented divine forgiveness and salvation as earned, a function of one's merit. Like many people, Luther was periodically paralyzed by fear that his merit might fall short. He was also angry that the church, as age-old intermediary between believer and God, was profiting from this fear. For a price, the appropriate cleric would perform merit-building practices like prayer, penance or pilgrimage on one's behalf. The sale of such "indulgences" financed many a medieval cathedral. Retreating to his New Testament, Luther considered...
...grace alone; through faith alone" became the slogan of Luther's followers. In the short run its consequences included his excommunication by a furious church, much of whose power derived from "works"; and the formalization of additional grievances by Catholic and Protestant sides into anathemas, or catalogs of heresies. In the long run differences over justification can be seen as shaping the subsequent divided character of Western Christianity: Catholicism's continuing emphases on hierarchy, communalism and good works, and Protestantism's intense individualism...
Rome's response, however, suggests that Pope John Paul II may see a few contradictions. Without denying that salvation always begins with God's grace, the church refuses to relinquish some cooperative agency on humanity's part through, say, penance or charity. This and several other "divergences" are forcefully enough stated that German Lutheran Harding Meyer, one of the Joint Declaration's drafters, declares, "This is the worst news I've received during my whole career. This is not a basis for continuing the dialogue...