Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification

The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification is a key document of the Ecumenical Movement, the consensus on basic truths of justification " by grace alone " between the Lutheran World Federation (LWF ), the Roman Catholic Church and the World Methodist Council expresses. On October 31, 1999 ( ie on Reformation ) undersigned Cardinal Edward Idris Cassidy, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and the LWF president Christian Krause in the Evangelical Lutheran St. Anne's Church in Augsburg the declaration of July 23, 2006 signed by the President Bishop Sunday Mbang and the Secretary General George Freeman joined the Methodists.

Content of the declaration

The Declaration states, inter alia:

"We confess together that man is totally dependent in view of his salvation to the saving grace of God. The freedom that he has towards the people and the things of the world, there is no freedom in relation to salvation. That is, as a sinner he stands under the judgment of God and is unable to turn on its own God for salvation. Justification is by grace alone. "

Importance

This Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification and the agreed additional documents ( the Official Common position and the Annex) was announced solemnly that exists between Lutherans and Catholics a consensus in basic truths of the doctrine of justification. They combine the finding that the mutual condemnations of the 16th century, the teaching of the partner about the justification of the sinner before God, as presented in the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification not hit. At the differences on justification and the practice of selling indulgences in the Reformation, the unity of the Western Church was broken. For the first time since the Reformation, it has been possible with the Joint Declaration and the additional documents that since then separated churches joint statements to make that doctrine which was once the starting point for the division of the Western Church. The condemnations related to the doctrine of justification have so lost their church-dividing effect. The thus achieved does not mean, however, the production of church fellowship because, for example, there are still great theological differences between the Roman Church and the Lutheran understanding of the church's ministry.

Public debate

On the letters page of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a theological debate on the Joint Declaration in 1999 for weeks held the doctrine of justification, not least because the inflamed that the church editor Heike Schmoll was an opponent of the declaration. At the debate, inter alia, the Protestant theology professors Johannes Wallmann, Volker Drehsen, Thomas Kaufmann, Reinhard Schwarz, Ingolf U. Dalferth, Karl -Hermann Kandler, Albrecht bag, Ekkehard Muhlenberg and Wilfried Harle and the Protestant church historian Dietrich Blaufuß and the participating LWF General Secretary Ishmael Noko.

Already in 1998, had 160 German Protestant theologians, among whom Eberhard Jüngel, opposed the Joint Declaration, because it dilutes the Lutheran thought. The dogmatist Jüngel called the Joint Declaration contentious subject for a dogmatic Proseminar because of her followed no practical consequences for ecumenism.