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Index > Interconfessional Dialogues > L-RC > Joint Statement | CONTENTS > ch. 4
 
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The Church as recipient and mediator of Salvation - ch. 4
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4. THE CHURCH AS RECIPIENT AND MEDIATOR OF SALVATION

  1. In the summary of the biblical witness on the abiding origin of the church it was stressed that the proclamation of the gospel by the apostles in the Holy Spirit is the foundation of the church, and that as creatura evangelii the church is committed to serving the gospel.104 Thus the church is the recipient and mediator of salvation. In the great biblical images of the people of God, the body of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit, the church shows itself to be a koinônia founded in the life of the triune God from whom it receives life and salvation, and the church imparts life and salvation in faithfulness to its task of mission, which it has received from God.105


    4.1. The Church as Congregatio Fidelium

  2. A comparison of Lutheran and Catholic views of the church cannot disregard the fact that there are two fundamentally inseparable aspects of being church: on the one hand the church is the place of God's saving activity (the church as an assembly, as the recipient of salvation) and on the other it is God's instrument (the church as ambassador, as mediator of salvation). But it is one and the same church which we speak of as the recipient and mediator of salvation. In the course of the history of theology the emphases have been variously placed. While Lutherans see the church mainly as the recipient of salvation, as the "congregation of the faithful", congregatio fidelium, contemporary Catholic theology emphasizes more the church as the mediator of salvation, as "sacrament" of salvation.106

    4.1.1. The Lutheran View

  3. "The Creed calls the holy Christian church a communio sanctorum, ‘a communion of saints'".107 Luther thus repeats in the Large Catechism what he had already set out in "A Brief Explanation... of the Creed": "I believe that there is on earth, through the whole wide world, no more than one holy, common Christian Church, which is nothing else than the congregation, or assembly of the saints, i.e., the pious, believing men on earth, which is gathered, preserved, and ruled by the Holy Ghost, and daily increased by means of the sacraments of the Word of God".108 Thus the church is not simply the sum of its individual members, for it is founded on the very word of God that faith receives, and individuals belong to it by receiving the word and sacrament in faith. The power of the Holy Spirit is what produces and sustains this assembly of believers among whom the individual is reckoned.

  4. According to the Augsburg Confession the church is "the assembly of all believers among whom the Gospel is preached in its purity and the holy sacraments are administered according to the Gospel".109 The Apology explains this: "the church is... mainly110 an association of faith and of the Holy Spirit in men's hearts. To make it recognizable, this association has outward marks, the pure teaching of the Gospel,111 and the administration of the sacraments in harmony with the Gospel of Christ".112 The context makes clear that "pure doctrine and conformity to the gospel" indicates the message of justification by which the church's life must be evaluated and to which the church as a whole is subordinated. In this the Augsburg Confession restates the teaching of the ancient, but also the medieval church.113 The church receives its whole life and being from Christ, whose body it is, and who "renews, consecrates and governs [it] by his Spirit".114 It can live only on the basis of this promise of the forgiveness of sins and the fellowship of salvation which has been bestowed on it. The church is gift in every respect because it lives by the Spirit of God and from the Lord present in it.

  5. The proclamation of the gospel and the celebration of the sacraments characterize the church as communion of salvation where Christ is present and where we can find him: "Those who are to find Christ must first find the church... But the church is not wood and stone but the mass of people who believe in Christ; one must hold to it and see how they believe and pray and teach; they assuredly have Christ with them".115 Luther emphasizes the necessity of the church for the salvation of individuals so strongly that he can say, "I believe that no one can be saved who is not found in this congregation, holding with it to one faith, word, sacraments, hope and love".116 Similarly the church is highlighted in the Apology as the place of the promise of salvation for children. They are to be baptized, so that they will share Christ's promise, which "does not apply to those who are outside of Christ's church, where there is neither Word nor sacrament, because Christ regenerates through Word and sacrament".117 "For the kingdom of Christ is only where the Word of God and the sacraments are to be found".118 Faith and listening to the voice of the good shepherd, Jesus Christ, distinguish the church as God's people from every other people; for, "thank God, a seven-year-old child knows what the church is, namely, holy believers and sheep who hear the voice of their Shepherd".119 The church is therefore the congregatio fidelium, the congregation of salvation as a faith-congregation, founded by God's word and bound to it: "God's Word cannot be present without God's people, and God's people cannot be without God's Word".120

  6. Faith in the gospel allows believers to place their salvation entirely in God's hands and makes them free to serve God and humanity. The gift of the faith-community becomes the task of acting in line with koinônia; everything is common to everyone in the congregation of salvation. Luther says: "I believe that in this congregation or Church, all things are common [cf. Acts 2:44], that everyone's possessions belong to the others and no one has anything of his own; therefore, all the prayers and good works of the whole congregation must help, assist and strengthen me and every believer at all times, in life and death, and thus each bear the other's burden, as St. Paul teaches" (cf. Gal. 6:2).121 The "communion of believers" communio credentium, finds concrete expression in the general priesthood of all believers. By baptism all believers receive a share in the priesthood of Christ. They can and should therefore witness to the gospel and intercede for each other before God. "Therefore because he [a Christian] is a priest and we are his brothers, all Christians have power and authority and must so act that they preach, and come before God each asking for the other and offering themselves up to God".122 In the general priesthood a representational authority is given; for one is always a priest for others. Understood in this way, being a Christian is a social charisma, a service before God for and to others.

    4.1.2. The Catholic View

  7. Congregatio fidelium was the predominant definition for the church in the late medieval theology. The Catechism of the Council of Trent (Catechismus Romanus) too speaks of the church as "the congregation of the faithful".123 To it belong all "who were called by faith to the light of truth and the knowledge of God, that... they may worship the living and true God piously and holily, and serve him from their whole heart".124 The Catechism also refers to Augustine's words with regard to Psalm 140: "The Church... consists of the faithful people, dispersed throughout the world".125 In reference to the Apostles' Creed, the Catechism sees a statement about the church126 in the words, "communion of saints".127 As communion on the basis of the confession of faith and the sacraments as well as the communion of life, this "communion of saints" is described as mutual love and mutual helping in sorrow and need. For this view the Catechism has recourse above all to the Pauline statements on the church as the body of Christ; the gifts of God are given for the use of the whole church and should benefit everyone.128

  8. The church is the assembly of those who believe in Christ. Vatican II describes the whole church as "all those, who in faith look upon Jesus as the author of salvation"129 and calls the individual congregation the "congregation of the faithful";130 it thus appropriates the terminology of Augustine, who describes the church as redeemed community,131 the "community and society of the saints".132 Communio is the fundamental ecclesiological concept of the Council even if it uses the idea of communio on many levels and nowhere defines it. The church was established by Christ as "fellowship of life, charity and truth"133 and the Holy Spirit "gives her a unity of fellowship and service".134 The entire saving work of Jesus Christ and therefore the church is founded in the mystery of the triune God; "in order to establish peace or communion between sinful human beings and Himself, as well as to fashion them into a fraternal community, God determined to intervene in human history in a way both new and definitive".135 This communion with God and of human beings among themselves is brought about by God's word and the sacraments. "For those who believe in Christ, who are reborn not from a perishable but from an imperishable seed through the Word of the living God (cf. 1 Pet 1:23), not from flesh but from water and the Holy Spirit (cf. Jn 3:5-6), are finally established as a ‘chosen race, a royal priesthood'... (1 Pt 2:9-10)".136 The Council states that in Christ "all the faithful are made a holy and royal priesthood. They offer spiritual sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ, and they proclaim the perfections of Him who has called them out of darkness into His marvelous light, Hence, there is no member who does not have a part in the mission of the whole Body".137 The Council calls this priesthood the "common priesthood"138 to distinguish it from the "ministerial priesthood".139 The eucharist is pre-eminent among the sacraments; "the Eucharistic Action is the very heartbeat of the congregation of the faithful over which the priest presides".140 "Truly partaking of the body of the Lord in the breaking of the Eucharistic bread, we are taken up into communion with Him and with one another".141

  9. The Council states equally clearly that "the People of God finds its unity first of all through the Word of the living God... For through the saving Word the spark of faith is struck in the hearts of unbelievers, and fed in the hearts of the faithful".142 The proclamation of the word is essential for the right administration of the sacraments; "for these are sacraments of faith, and faith is born of the Word and nourished by it".143

  10. The Decree on the Church's Missionary Activity describes pointedly the power of God's word to justify and awaken faith: "The Holy Spirit, who calls all men to Christ by the seeds of the word and by the preaching of the gospel, stirs up in their hearts the obedience of faith. When in the womb of the baptismal font He begets to a new life those who believe in Christ, He gathers them into the one People of God".144 Nor is the judging power of God's word in any way ignored. "The words of Christ are at one and the same time words of judgment and grace, of death and life. For it is only by putting to death what is old that we are able to come to a newness of life. ... By himself and by his own power, no one is freed from sin or raised above himself, or completely rid of his sickness or his solitude or his servitude. On the contrary all stand in need of Christ, their Model, their Mentor, their Liberator, their Savior, their Source of life".145 Thus the church lives as a communion of believers, not by its own strength but entirely from God's gift. This of course becomes its task in passing on the faith and mediating salvation.

    4.1.3 Common Witness

  11. Both Lutherans and Catholics understand the church as the assembly of the faithful or saints which lives from God's word and the sacraments. Seen thus, the church is the fruit of God's saving activity, the community of his truth, his life and his love. Christ who acts in his saving word and sacrament, confronts the church which is the recipient of his and the Holy Spirit's activity. The presence of Christ marks the church as the place where salvation takes place. The gift of salvation however becomes the task and mission of the church as the community which has received salvation. Thus the church is taken by its Lord into the ministry of mediating salvation. That holds good in association and mutual support within the congregation of the faithful itself but also particularly in confronting the world, especially all who still do not believe and still do not belong to the assembly of the faithful.


    4.2. The Church as "Sacrament" of Salvation

    4.2.1. The Church under the Gospel and the Twofold Salvific Mediation of the Gospel

  12. The Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue has stated that the church "stands under the gospel and has the gospel as its superordinate criterion".146 For this one can appeal both to Luther, who sees the church as "creature of the gospel"147 and to Vatican II according to which "the gospel... is for all time the source of all life for the Church".148 The gospel by which the church was created and lives is mediated externally and corporally in dual form: by word and by sacrament. Both modes of mediation however are connected in fundamentally indissoluble fashion without doing away with their specific characteristics. The word proclaimed is an audible sign, the sacraments are a visible word. These are the two modes in which the transmission of the gospel is saving in its effect. Thus not only is attention drawn to salvation or information given about it, but the gospel thus confronts people in their inmost selves as effectual externally and corporally by its presence, bringing them to faith, justifying and sanctifying them.

  13. Because in this way the church lives from the gospel and is taken into the service of the dual mediation of the gospel that effects salvation, Catholic talk of the church as "sacrament" can be described in terms of its purpose: "as the body of Christ and koinônia of the Holy Spirit, the church is the sign and instrument of God's grace, an instrument that of itself can do nothing. The church lives by the word as it lives by the sacraments and at the same time stands in their service".149 The meaning of what is said about the church as the "sacrament" of salvation will be worked out below with reference to the Catholic and Lutheran traditions and their common foundation in the Bible.

    4.2.2. The Catholic View

  14. In the documents of Vatican II the church is referred to as "sacrament" — a sign and instrument of salvation — especially where the nature of the church and its universal mission are explained in considerable detail. At the beginning of the Constitution on the Church there is a programmatic statement "Christ is the light of all nations".150 By the church's proclamation of the gospel to all creatures (cf. Mk 16:15) all people are to be illumined by the radiance of Christ which "brightens the countenance of the Church"; for "by her relationship with Christ , the Church is a kind of sacrament of intimate union with God, and of the unity of all mankind , that is, she is a sign and an instrument of such union and unity".151 The Council underlines very distinctly the Church as centered in Christ, when it sees its "sacramentality" to be completely "in Christ". Catholic theology therefore speaks also of the "primal sacrament" (Ursakrament) which Jesus Christ himself is. The Council takes this direction when it speaks in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of the "Mediator between God and man: ... For His humanity, united with the person of the Word, was the instrument of our salvation. Thus in Christ ‘there came forth the perfect satisfaction needed for our reconciliation, and we received the means for giving worthy worship to God".152

  15. Of the church as the "messianic people" we also read: "Established by Christ as a fellowship of life, charity, and truth, it is also used by Him as an instrument for the redemption of all, and is sent forth into the whole world as the light of the world and the salt of the earth (cf. Mt 5:13-16)".153 The Council sees the establishment of the church as rooted in the whole mystery of Christ154 but links the statement of the church as "sacrament" in a special way with the resurrection of Christ and the sending of the Spirit: "Rising from the dead (cf. Rom 6:9), He sent His life-giving Spirit upon His disciples and through this Spirit has established his body, the Church, as the universal sacrament of salvation. Sitting at the right hand of the Father, He is continually active in the world, leading men to the Church, and through her joining them more closely to Himself...".155

  16. The term "sacrament", as a sign and instrument of salvation, gives expression to the universal mission of the church and its radical dependence on Christ. It thus becomes clear that neither the foundation of the church nor its goal lies in the church itself and that it therefore does not exist by itself or for itself. Only in and through Christ, only in and through the Holy Spirit is the church effectual as a mediator of salvation. That is especially important when theologians speak of the sacraments as self-actualisation of the church, in order to prevent a purely outward understanding of the church as simply the steward of sacraments as means of grace, and instead to set forth an inner affinity, which though is not an identity, between the church and the sacraments, both being signs and instruments of salvation. As a "communion of life, love and truth" on the one hand and as an "instrument for the salvation of everyone" and as "universal sacrament of salvation" on the other hand, the church is the actual place and instrument of the universal saving will of God "who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim 2:4). God's will that all should be saved becomes for the individual a gracious promise when the church testifies to the truth of Christ and celebrates and proffers the sacraments, i.e., when Christ's salvation is present in the witness and sacramental celebration of the church done in and through Christ and thus in and through the Holy Spirit. In the church — his body and his bride — Christ himself remains thus present for all people of the world through his saving acts.

  17. In Catholic thought the concept of "sacrament, is constantly applied to the church analogically.156 Church is not "sacrament" in the same sense as the sacraments of baptism and the eucharist. That is already clear in reference to how they function: the individual sacraments develop their saving efficacy "on the basis of their being celebrated";157 their efficacy is not dependent on the worthiness of the minister or the recipient because it is Christ who effects salvation in the sacraments. That cannot be said about the church as "sacrament" in the same way. Rather, one applies the concept of sacrament to the church to aid in theological reflection, for it clarifies the inner connection between outward, visible structure and hidden, spiritual reality. Just as the sacraments in scholastic thinking are described as visible signs and instruments of invisible grace, so Vatican II sees the church as "one interlocked reality which is comprised of a divine and a human element" in which "the communal structure of the Church serves Christ's Spirit, who vivifies it by way of building up the body (cf. Eph 4:16)".158 But this view of the church as "sacrament" also stands in the context of the effective imparting of salvation to all people: "The one Mediator communicates truth and grace to all "through the church".159 Speaking of the church as "sacrament" in the context of salvation for all people and of mission theology shows especially that Vatican II did not simply take over such earlier theories as "primal sacrament". Rather, the Council's own theological point of departure is a further development of earlier considerations.

  18. Here again we see that although it is his body, the church cannot be simply identified with Christ absolutely. It is taken into his service to mediate salvation to all people and needs the constant vivifying power of the Holy Spirit. In influencing its own members it is Christ who as head grants participation in his Spirit and who thus causes the life and growth of the body.160 It is part of the logic of such a sacramental concept of the church that the church in its human weakness must "incessantly pursue the path of penance and renewal"161 and be called to "continual reformation".162 Even outside the "visible structure" of the church "many elements of sanctification and of truth can be found"163 and God's saving activity is visibly and latently at work at the same time among "those who have not yet received the gospel".164

    4.2.3. The Lutheran View

  19. For Lutheran theology it is of fundamental and crucial importance that God bestows forgiveness, life and the bliss of salvation on every believer through word and sacraments as means of grace165 and that the Church as the "assembly of all believers" is the place "in" which these means of grace are effectual.166 This means that preaching as "the living voice of the gospel"167 itself has "sacramental" character, given that within the audible word lies the power to impart to the faithful that reality of salvation to which the words of the proclamation point. "When I preach, Christ himself preaches in me.168 Thus the "external word",169 as an "effectual word"170 stands alongside the sacraments as means of grace. We "must constantly maintain that God will not deal with us except through his external Word and sacrament".171 The teaching of the Anabaptists "that the Holy Spirit comes to us ... without the external word of the Gospel"172 is therefore expressly condemned as such. The condemnation of the Donatists — for whom the sacraments become useless and ineffectual when administered by "wicked priests" likewise points to the objective efficacy of word and sacrament, which remain "efficacious even if the priests who administer them are wicked men",173 because they are instituted and enjoined by Christ.

  20. But if the church is the place where these means of grace become effectual it follows that the church itself is in a derivative sense an instrument of salvation. On the one hand it is called into being as a congregatio fidelium, a church, through the event of the "means of grace" so that it is itself a creatura evangelii; on the other, it is the place where people participate in salvation — there is no alternative. In this sense it is true for Reformation theology too that there is no salvation outside the church.174

  21. As mediator of word and sacrament the church is the instrument through which the Holy Spirit sanctifies; "it is the mother that begets and bears every Christian through the Word of God",175 but in such a way that Jesus Christ himself is working and becomes salvifically present in its preaching and administration of the sacraments. In other words, however much the mediating activity of the church and the saving activity of God coincide in what happens there, they are nevertheless plainly different in this: while it is true that the church imparts participation in salvation to believers, nevertheless it is Christ alone and not the church who has gained salvation for the world and who bestows on believers participation in this salvation through word and sacrament. In what it does, the church is totally the servant of Christ, its Lord, being called to this service and given authority for it by Christ, its Lord.

  22. Against this background, Lutherans note affinities but also questions regarding the new Catholic understanding of the church as "sacrament". Lutheran thought corresponds more closely to the designation of Jesus Christ as "sacrament" found in Augustine176 and later Roman Catholic theology. Christ is the "single sacrament"177 of God, because he himself is the means par excellence of salvation. The individual sacraments are means of salvation because through them Jesus Christ accomplishes salvation and thus establishes and preserves the church. This means that the church does not actualize its own existence in the sacraments; rather the church receives salvation and its very being from Christ and, only as recipient does it mediate salvation. In this perspective, the individual sacraments are linked with Christ as he faces the church. One should be reticent about language which blurs this distinction. Talk about the church actualizing itself in the sacraments is open to serious misunderstanding and is better avoided. Lutheran theology points to the fact that calling the church "sacrament" must be clearly distinguished from the way "sacrament" is applied to baptism and the Lord's Supper.

  23. The first Lutheran query entails a second: how does the understanding of the church as "sacrament" relate to that of the church as holy and sinful? Differently from baptism and the Lord's Supper which exist wholly in their instrumentality and sign character, the church is instrument and sign of salvation as the community of those who receive salvation. In other words, the church is instrument and sign as the community of believers who as people justified by God are at the same time holy and sinful. Lutherans point out that Catholic references to the church as "sacrament" must not contradict the fact that the church is at the same time holy and sinful.178

  24. There are certainly Lutheran theologians who apply "sacrament" to the church. Yet reservations about references to the church as "sacrament" remain in Lutheran theology, since such references can lead to misunderstandings on both the points just explained. Therefore many confine themselves to speaking of the church as sign and instrument of salvation in the sense already outlined.

    4.2.4. The Unity and Distinctness of Christ and the Church

  25. We can leave it to further theological reflections to determine how Christ and the church are one in sacramental activity without thereby being identified, and how a possible sacramental view of the church therefore has its roots in the fundamental description of Christ as the "primal sacrament" and is limited by that statement. Talk of the church as "sacrament" is in fact foreign to the Lutheran ecclesiological tradition and is acceptable only under the reservations just set forth - reservations which Catholic theologians also take seriously. Nevertheless, harking back to the biblical witness we can together state the following.

  26. The New Testament sees the mystery of the relationship between Christ and the church in unity and diversity. The unity is highlighted in a series of statements, for instance when Paul not only sees baptized believers as "one in Christ" but addresses them as such (Gal 3:28). According to Paul, the community is "one body in Christ""(Rom 12:5), and as "body of Christ" (1 Cor 12:27) is in fact "Christ" (1 Cor 12:12). It becomes clear that this unity in Christ does not imply an undifferentiated identity when Christ is described as "head of the body, the church" (Col 1:18; cf. Eph 1:22 f.; 4:14 ff.; 5:23). We are to distinguish head from body but on no account to separate them, for the "building up [of] the body of Christ" (Eph 4:12-16) proceeds from Christ, the head, who has saved the church as his body (cf. Eph 5:23). "The church is subject to Christ" always (Eph 5:24) and linked to him in love (cf. Eph 4:16). The interlinking of unity and diversity becomes clear especially in the image of the bride and bridegroom (cf. 2 Cor 11:2; Eph 5:22 ff.; Rev 19:7f; 21:2; 22:17).

  27. Of course the personal relation between Christ and church must not obscure the different quality of relations between the two; for from the start the church is the redeemed, receiving church and remains so for ever. Precisely in the light of the doctrine of justification it becomes plain that the church owes its existence and activity solely to the mercy of God in Jesus Christ and to the breath of the Spirit. Only so is Christ able to make salvation effectual through the church in proclamation and the sacraments. Both the Lutheran and Catholic understandings of the church's salvific service through word and sacrament are based on this biblical foundation. We can leave it to theological reflection to explain in greater detail how this works, if only it becomes and remains clear that God's eschatological promise of grace really determines the church's activity and guides it from within, and that salvation thus appears palpably in history. Nevertheless it must be evident that salvation can never be effected by human beings or be at their disposal, but even in the activity of the church it remains the gift of God.

  28. On the basis of the stipulations mentioned, there is agreement among Lutherans and Catholics that the church is instrument and sign of salvation and, in this sense, "sacrament" of salvation. To be sure the reservations are taken seriously by both sides, and one must strive for a theological language that is unambiguous.


    4.3. The Church Visible and Hidden

  29. The view has often been advanced that the terms "visible church" and "invisible church· point to a disagreement between Roman Catholic and Lutheran ecclesiologies. Often one appeals to Luther's saying, the holy church "is invisible, dwelling in the Spirit, in an ‘unapproachable' place".179 Post-Reformation Catholic ecclesiology reacted polemically to such an understanding of the church, and focused almost exclusively on the church as an external, visible entity marked out by creed, sacramental structure and hierarchical leadership. Thus Bellarmine stressed that as an "association"180 the church was "just as visible and palpable as the Republic of Venice".181 In the nineteenth century especially, Lutherans and Catholics both thought that this was the essential difference in their ecclesiologies.

  30. But the assumed disagreement often lost its sharp contours, since each side repeatedly denied that it taught what the other side condemned. Thus Melanchthon in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession utterly rejected the reproach that the church was, in the Lutheran Reformation view, only a kind of "Platonic republic".182 Nor — in the light of the pronouncements of Vatican II — can the reproach be sustained that the one holy church is equated undialectically on the Catholic side with its empirical historical form. For there it is said of the church that while "the visible assembly and the spiritual community" are indeed "not to be considered as two realities", they are nevertheless linked together asymmetrically: "... the communal structure of the Church serves Christ's Spirit, who vivifies it by way of building up the body (cf. Eph 4:16)".183

  31. It seems that oversimplified formulations have led, wrongly, to the view that here the two churches are at odds. In what follows the aim is to examine whether there is ultimately a conflict between the two positions.

  32. On the Lutheran side the Augsburg Confession by no means describes the church as an invisible entity. Rather it describes the church as an "assembly"184 to which a "ministry" constitutively belongs.185 Also, regarding the words of Luther quoted above",186 one must note that they continue, "... therefore its [the Church's] holiness cannot be seen".187 For Luther the word "church" here does not denote an invisible entity. His point is that the church does not display visibly the essential marks that qualify it as church — in this instance "holiness". That the word "church" nevertheless means a visible assembly becomes evident in the fact that there are "marks" of the church, "that is, Word, confession, and sacraments"188 all of which represent extremely visible realities.

  33. The Lutheran view of the church is of course marked by a tension which may easily evoke misunderstanding of the "invisibility" of the church. According to the Apology, "hypocrites and evil men are ... members of the church according to the outward associations of the church's marks ... especially if they have not been excommunicated".189 Thus it might seem as if there were on the one hand the invisible "association of the faith" and on the other the outward association "which is recognizable by marks". But Lutherans have rejected that view ever since the Apology.190

  34. Lutheranism sees the church as an "assembly". An assembly is not as such invisible. Invisible rather is the fact that this assembly really is church, i.e., that this visible body is the "body of Christ", that God really is at work in the word and in the sacraments that are its visible marks and that its ministers are servants of the Holy Spirit. The predicate "invisible" is appropriate for the church in so far as it is an object of faith. This is also shown by the statement of Luther which has been quoted, in which he says "anyone who thinks this way turns the article of the Creed ‘I believe a holy church' upside down; he replaces ‘I believe' with ‘I see'".191 The same purpose is clearly revealed where Luther dissociates himself polemically from abuses of the ambiguous word "church" in ecclesiastical politics. "If these words had been used in the Creed: ‘I believe that there is a holy Christian people', it would have been easy to avoid all the misery that has come in with this blind, obscure word ‘church'".192

  35. In the Lutheran view, certain aspects of the church's visibility are what it makes invisible: only to the eye of faith is an assembly recognizable as the assembly of the people of God, and yet — between the times — the church has to be visible. In this world what makes it a hidden church is the same as what made Christ on the cross a hidden God, i.e., that he was only all too visible in and for this world. The passage often quoted from Luther's Large Commentary on Galatians makes this clear. The crucial section reads: "God conceals and covers [the church] with weaknesses, sins, errors, and various offenses and forms of the cross in such a way that it is not evident to the senses anywhere".193

  36. The tension characteristic of the Lutheran understanding of the hiddenness of the church manifests a recurring problematic which all traditions have wrestled with in understanding the church and which they must continue to deal with. That is why Vatican II says that "possessing the Spirit of Christ" is fundamental to being "fully incorporated into the society of the Church". Those are not saved, however, who do "not persevere in charity", though they remain "indeed in the bosom of the Church" but "only in a ‘bodily' manner and not ‘in their hearts'".194 In its Constitution on the Church, the Council does not solve the problem. The difficulty of the relationship between church membership "according to the heart" and membership only "according to the body", and thus between the church as spiritual and as visible corporeal entity is for us a common difficulty. To be sure, the Lutheran emphasis that the hiddenness of the church corresponds to a specific characteristic of the Christian faith, namely recognizing God at work in that which seems opposed to him, introduces a dimension which goes beyond the problem of the recognition of church membership.

  37. In statements quoted from Vatican II's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lutherans discern important convergences in the way the church is understood. The Constitution sees the church unambiguously in the context of the mystery of the universal bestowal of the saving love of God the Father, as that is revealed in the history of Jesus as the Christ195 and made effective by the Holy Spirit in election, reconciliation and communion, so that "all believers would have access to the Father through Christ in the one Spirit".196 The Constitution resolutely maintains that the church is the "body of Christ". In so doing it follows the Pauline statements, but it avoids precise definition of membership in this body.197

  38. The Constitution on the Church produces a synthesis, which is new for Catholic theology, between the spiritual or transcendent reality of the church and its visible social reality. The spiritual community of faith, hope and love lives on the basis of the Father's gift. Through the one bread which Christ proffers, believers are made into one body, and as temple of the Holy Spirit the church is above all a mystery of communion with the triune God himself.198 At the same time the church is also a historical reality. It began with Jesus' proclamation of the reign of God and the founding of the messianic people of the New Covenant, and this community of disciples has had unmistakable elements of social organization since the apostolic age.199 The visible congregation stands in a complex relation to the mystery of the koinônia in which it has its origin and to which it seeks to give credible shape. Because the Council posits an indissoluble link between the church as a visible assembly and the mystery of life shared in communion with God, it is possible to speak of the church as a "sacrament".200

  39. Crucial here is the analogy between the visible communal structure serving the life-giving Spirit, by which it is vivified, and the assumed human nature of Christ serving the Eternal Word.201 By the very fact of its service, the social community is involved in a constant struggle as it journeys through history. Again and again it is in need of cleansing and renewal;202 and this continuous reform encompasses all the moral, disciplinary and doctrinal witness of the church to God's grace.203

  40. A simple identification of the salvation-community with the empirical church, such as would place the empirical church beyond reform, is clearly labeled by Vatican II as an error which Catholic teaching should avoid.

  41. Catholics and Lutherans are in agreement that the saving activity of the triune God calls and sanctifies believers through audible and visible means of grace which are mediated in an audible and visible ecclesial community. They also agree that in this world the salvation-community of Christ is hidden, because as a spiritual work of God's it is unrecognizable by earthly standards, and because sin, which is also present in the church, makes ascertaining its membership uncertain.


    4.4. Holy Church/sinful Church

  42. With the creeds of the early church we confess in common that the church is "holy". This holiness essentially consists in the fact that the church participates in the triune God, who alone is holy (cf. Rev 15:4), from whom it derives and to whom it is journeying:
    — the church is holy through the gracious election and faithfulness of God. Just as the people of the Old Covenant were a "holy nation" because they had been chosen to be God's "treasured possession"" (Ex 19:5 f.; cf. Lev 11:44 f.; Deut 7:6), so too by virtue of the new covenant of grace the church is God's "holy nation", the people who became his special possession (1 Pet 2:9);
    — the church is holy through the saving work of Christ. Christ sanctified himself for his own, "so that they also may be sanctified in truth" (Jn 17:19); he sacrificed himself for the church, his "bride", "in order to make her holy" (Eph 5:25 f.);
    — the church is holy through the presence of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit dwells in believers as in a temple (cf. 1 Cor 3:16; 6:19; Eph 2:22); they are "sanctified by the Holy Spirit" (Rom 15:16; cf. 1 Cor 6:11); the Holy Spirit builds up the church and equips it by means of the gifts of the Spirit (cf. 1 Cor 12; Eph 4:11 f.); the Holy Spirit gives life to the church and strengthens it through spiritual fruits (cf. Gal 5:22).

  43. In so far as the holiness of the church continues to be rooted in the holiness of the triune God, we make common confession that the church in its holiness is indestructible. Christ has promised his presence to his disciples "to the end of the age" (Mt 28:20) and has promised his church that "the gates of Hades will not prevail against it" (Mt 16:18).

  44. Vatican II's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church states: "The Church... is holy in a way which can never fail. For Christ, the Son of God, ... loved the Church as His Bride, delivering Himself up for her. This He did that He might sanctify her (cf. Eph 5:25-26). He united her to Himself as His own body and crowned her with the gift of the Holy Spirit, for God's glory".204

  45. This belief in the indestructibility and abiding existence of the church as the one holy people of God is an essential element in Luther's ecclesiology and is fundamental for a correct understanding of his struggle for reform. "The Children's Creed [Catechism] teaches us (as was said) that a Christian holy people is to be and to remain on earth until the end of the world. This is an article of faith that cannot be terminated until that which it believes comes, as Christ promises, ‘I am with you always, to the close of the age'".205 In this sense the Augsburg Confession says, "It is also taught ... that one holy Christian church will be and remain forever".206

  46. This belief in the indestructibility of the one holy church includes the idea that in the ultimate sense the church cannot apostatize from the truth and fall into error. In this conviction the Reformation understands itself to be in continuity with the prior theological and ecclesiastical tradition; thus it has always understood the biblical promises in this way (cf. Mt 16:18; 28:20; Jn 16:13). So "the church cannot err"207 repeatedly occurs in the Reformers in this or a similar form208 and the Catholic-Lutheran dialogue has also referred to this shared conviction.209

  47. Of course the confession of the church's holiness has always gone hand in hand with the knowledge that the power of evil and sin, although it will not overcome the church, is nevertheless at work in it. The church "without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind" (Eph 5:27) will appear only at the end of its earthly pilgrimage, when "Christ will present her to Himself in all her glory".210 The holiness of the church therefore exists both "already" and "not yet". It is a "genuine though imperfect holiness".211

  48. It is part of the theological tradition of our churches to apply the biblical pictures and parables of the weeds among the wheat (cf. Mt 13:38), the wise and foolish bridesmaids (cf. Mt 25:1 ff.) or the net and the fish (cf. Mt 13:47 f.), to the church in its visible and temporal reality: the church in its concrete form always includes good and evil people, believers and unbelievers, true and false teachers. The ancient church's condemnation of the Novatian and Donatist views of the church was adopted by the Reformation. The statement in Article 8 of the Augsburg Confession, that in the church, which is "properly speaking nothing else than the assembly of all believers and saints", there are nevertheless still "many false Christians, hypocrites and even open sinners... among the godly",212 expresses a conviction shared equally by Catholics and Lutherans.

  49. As especially the Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue on justification has shown, there is also agreement that all believers as members of the church are involved in a relentless struggle against sin and are in need of daily repentance and the forgiveness of sins. They depend constantly on justifying grace and rely on the promise which is given them in the struggle against evil.

  50. With this in mind, it is not in dispute between us that the church is "holy" and "sinful" at the same time, and that the imperative calling to holiness is always a concomitant of the indicative that holiness has been bestowed (cf. 1 Thess 4:3 f., 7; 2 Cor 7:1). Thus the church is in constant need of repentance and the forgiveness of sins, and of cleansing and renewal. Vatican II stated this repeatedly, even if it does not use the term "sinful" of the church. The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church says: "While Christ, ‘holy, innocent, undefiled' (Heb 7:26) knew nothing of sin (2 Cor 5:21), but came to expiate only the sins of the people (cf. Heb 2:17), the Church, embracing sinners in her bosom, is at the same time holy and always in need of being purified, and incessantly pursues the path of penance and renewal".213 And the Decree on Ecumenism states, "Christ summons the Church, as she goes her pilgrim way, to that continual reformation of which she always has need, insofar as she is an institution of men here on earth".214

  51. Differences between our churches emerge in answering the question, where does the idea of church's need for renewal or of its sinfulness find its necessary limit, by reason of the divine pledge that the church abides in the truth and that error and sin will not overcome it?

  52. The Lutheran Reformation no less emphatically than Roman Catholic theology stresses the fact that there is and must be such a limit. Thus Luther is able to distinguish between "erring" and "remaining in error".215 By this he wishes to show how abiding in the truth, which is promised to the church, is not a reality in peaceful possession, but, under the faithfulness and forgiveness of God, is realized in ongoing struggle against error. Even more important is the distinction he makes between the teaching and the life of the church. Whereas in regard to its life the "holy church is not without sin, as it confesses in the Lord's Prayer ‘Forgive us our sins'",216 the opposite is true of its teaching, i.e., of its obedient proclamation of the gospel, insofar as the gospel is preached, the sacraments are administered and absolution is given "on behalf of Christ" (2 Cor 5:20) 217 and by his authority. "The teaching must be neither sinful nor reprehensible and it does not have its place in the Lord's Prayer in which we say ‘Forgive us our sins'. For it is not our doing, but God's own Word which cannot sin or do wrong".218

  53. In this conception the Lutheran Reformation lies wholly in the realm of what is also maintained on the Catholic side. The conviction that the church's abiding in the truth -its indefectibility is not a reality held in peaceful possession is also shared on the Catholic side. Therefore Catholics and Lutherans can say in common that "the church's abiding in the truth should not be understood in a static way but as a dynamic event which takes place with the aid of the Holy Spirit in ceaseless battle against error and sin in the church as well as in the world".219 Luther's distinction between the life and the teaching of the church corresponds to the Catholic distinction between the "members" of the church, who in their constancy in faith, their life and their deeds are always in need of the forgiveness of sins and of renewal,220 and the church itself, which in teaching and proclamation expounds the unalterable "deposit of faith";221 between the church as an "institution of men here on earth", which "Christ summons ... to ... continual reformation",222 and the church as "enriched with heavenly things", as a divine creation with the "elements of sanctification and of truth" given to it by Christ.223

  54. From the Lutheran standpoint serious questions to the Catholic view first present themselves where the God-given indestructible holiness of the church and God's promise that the church will abide in the truth are so objectivized in specific ecclesial components that they appear to be exempt from critical questioning. Above all this Lutheran query is directed at ecclesial offices and decisions which serve people's salvation and sanctification. The question arises when the Holy Spirit's aid is attributed to them in such a way that, as such, they appear to be immune from the human capacity for error and sinfulness, and therefore from needing to be examined. That will be dealt with in what follows.224 Similar questions are also directed at the institution of the canonization of saints.

  55. These Lutheran questions cannot be regarded as superfluous, even in the light of the fact that in the Catholic view these ecclesial offices and decisions have their historically variable forms and are carried out by sinful human beings. For that reason they continue to be imperfect, can obscure the indestructible holiness of the church225 and therefore are in need of reform.226

  56. In fact these Lutheran queries touch directly on the self-understanding of the Roman Catholic Church at a decisive point; but they suggest conclusions which as such were not there from the beginning.

  57. The Lord's promise that it will abide in the truth is the basis for the Catholic Church's belief that the truth can be articulated in propositions and can lead to forms of expressing the gospel which are inerrant and infallible.227 Further it believes that there are abiding, established ecclesial offices which are willed by God's providence.228 Also that the saints perfected by God are not all anonymous, but are named, by canonization, as those who may be addressed as the perfected of God.229

  58. Thereby very diverse areas are addressed of which the first, inerrant truth, and the last, perfected holiness, have one thing in common: they express the fact that God's activity in this world — in its decisive and definitive quality — is incarnational and anticipates the eschaton. They of course represent such diverse levels that they should not simply be mentioned in one breath. Catholic thinking finds it hard to see why the effects of divine decisiveness should be intrinsically open to criticism and why it is not enough to distinguish between human sinfulness and the divine saving activity in such a way that, although they remain exposed to human inadequacy and sinfulness, God's works are inherently good and cannot be rendered ineffectual.

  59. In spite of the above questions one may, regarding the overarching problematic of the holiness of the church and its need for renewal, speak of common Lutheran-Roman Catholic basic convictions. Taken together they constitute a broad consensus within which remaining differences are neither abolished nor denied. Still only in discussing each of the relevant ecclesiological points in question is it possible to discover their theological and ecumenical importance.


    4.5. The Significance of the Doctrine of Justification for the Understanding of the Church

    4.5.1. The Problem and the Original Consensus

  60. Many of the questions which Catholics and Lutherans address to one another regarding the relation between the doctrine of justification and the understanding of the church emerge from two different concerns, which may be summarized as follows: Catholics ask whether the Lutheran understanding of justification does not diminish the reality of the church; Lutherans ask whether the Catholic understanding of church does not obscure the gospel as the doctrine of justification explicates it. Neither concern is unfounded, but needs to be clarified, especially because the New Testament knows of no opposition between gospel and church.

  61. In dealing with the relationship between the doctrine of justification and the understanding of the church, it is important to note which perspective on justification is employed. It is not primarily a matter of how the saving event can be rightly described and how God communicates his righteousness to the sinner. This indeed stands at the center of Reformation arguments but, as such, has no immediate critical implications for ecclesiology. These emerge only when — as happened especially in the Lutheran Reformation — justification is seen both as center and criterion of all theology. Therefore the doctrine of the church must correspond to justification as criterion. The reciprocal questions of Catholics and Lutherans mentioned above arise only from such a perspective.

  62. The far-reaching consensus in the understanding of justification noted during this and other Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogues leads to testing the consensus on the critical significance of the doctrine of justification for all church doctrine, order and practice. Everything which is believed and taught regarding the nature of the church, the means of grace and the ordained ecclesial ministry must be grounded in the salvation-event itself and bear the mark of justification-faith as reception and appropriation of that event. Correspondingly, all that is believed and taught regarding the nature and effects of justification must be understood in the total context of assertions about the church, the means of grace and the church's ordained ministry. Expressing the Lutheran position, the Malta Report of 1972, "The Gospel and the Church", stated: "... all traditions and institutions of the church are subject to the criterion which asks whether they are enablers of the proper proclamation of the gospel and do not obscure the unconditional character of the gift of salvation".230 In the United States the Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue took over this assertion as its common declaration: "Catholics as well as Lutherans can acknowledge the need to test the practices, structures and theologies of the church by the extent to which they help or hinder ‘the proclamation of God's free and merciful promises in Christ Jesus which can be rightly received only through faith'".231

    4.5.2. Common Basic Convictions

  63. Just as the New Testament does not acknowledge a fundamental contradiction between gospel and church, so we too must beware lest we see justification and the church as being from the outset in conflict with each other, let alone as being incompatible. Three basic convictions, shared by Catholics and Lutherans, and which lead from the doctrine of justification into ecclesiology, prevent that.

  64. First, the gospel, as the Reformation doctrine of justification understands it, is essentially an "external word". That is to say it is always mediated through one or more individuals addressing one or more other individuals. The gospel is not a doctrine that can be internalized as one's own in such a way that thereafter no further address from other persons is needed. It remains a message "from outside" and hearers remain dependent on its communication by one who proclaims it. This is expressed, for instance, in Article 7 of the Augsburg Confession, which describes the church not simply as the "assembly of all believers"232 or congregatio sanctorum but also links this "assembly of all believers "constitutively to the "external" witness of the gospel in preaching and the sacraments, which conversely can have their place only in the church, "the assembly of all believers". On the one hand the church lives from the gospel; on the other the gospel sounds forth in the church and summons into the community of the church.

  65. Second, the gospel which is proclaimed in the Holy Spirit is according to its nature a creative word. If belief in the gospel is our righteousness, then the gospel does not merely inform us about righteousness but makes us through the Holy Spirit into new, justified persons who already "walk in newness of life" (Rom 6:4). This conviction, common to Catholics and Lutherans, leads into the understanding of church. For if we confess in common that the gospel that gathers the church really is God's creative word, then we must also confess in common that the church itself really is God's creation and as such is a social reality that unites people.

  66. Third, God, who creates the church through his word and has promised that it will abide in the truth and will continue to exist, is faithful to his word and his promise. In the interim, until this promise attains its eschatological goal in the consummation of all things, God effects his faithfulness in the historical form of the church also through structures of historical continuity. Previously, Old Testament Israel was a real historical people which lived from God's promises. To them he gave structures of historical continuity. To be sure, the continuity of the church appears especially to Lutherans to be a constant struggling against the dangers of error and apostasy and finally a victory of God's faithfulness over the constantly recurring unfaithfulness of human beings. This view rests on constitutive ecclesial experiences which are not without their ecclesiological relevance. But Lutherans nonetheless hold that the church will continue in existence and that there are structures which contribute to this continuity, without of course being able to guarantee it.

    4.5.3. The Areas of Controversy

  67. The questions which arise regarding the relationship between justification and the church may be presented and discussed in four areas: (1) the institutional continuity of the church, (2) the ordained ministry as ecclesial institution, (3) the teaching function of the church's ministry and (4) the jurisdictional function of the church's ministry. Each of these areas relates to the above mentioned reciprocal questioning by Catholics and Lutherans: whether the Lutheran doctrine of justification diminishes the reality of the church; whether the Catholic understanding of the church obscures the gospel as it is explicated by the doctrine of justification.

    4.5.3.1. Institutional Continuity of the Church

  68. As a creature of the gospel and its proclamation, which is always "external", creative and sustained by God's faithfulness, the church exists continuously through the ages: "one holy Christian church will be and remain forever.233 Just as everything God creates through his word and sustains in faithfulness to his word has its history, so too the church has its history. It is historical like other creatures, though in a unique way: only the church is promised that it will endure and that the gates of hell will not overcome it.

  69. The historicity of the church is most profoundly bound up with that of the gospel which calls it into being and from which it lives. As the proclaimed and transmitted external word the gospel mediates the abiding faithfulness of God in the midst of the history of this world.

  70. The church created by the gospel is more than the total sum of persons who belong to it here and now. The church is "assembly" not only as congregation which gathers for worship at a particular time and in a particular place. At the same time it is "assembly" in a sense transcending time and place, as church of all people and generations, as the church founded in the Christ-event and existing in the preexistent reality of fellowship in the body of Christ. In this sense the church is a communal, social reality of singular character and continuous existence.

  71. If God creates the church as an historical community with a continuous existence by means of the external gospel, this activity of God has its counterpart in the establishment of structural and institutional realities. These serve the continuity of this community, are an expression of it and therefore themselves have a continuous existence. The founding of the church, i.e., its institution in the Christ event and the establishment of such structural and institutional realities, are therefore indissolubly linked together.

  72. Apostolic preaching, which has its precipitate in the New and the Old Testament canons, together with the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper and the divinely empowered "ministry of reconciliation"(2 Cor 5:18), are such God-appointed means and signs of the continuity of the church, which according to Reformation conviction too, remain constantly in the church.234 They are institutions in which God makes his creative grace and sustaining faithfulness visible and effective, and which for their part effect and testify to the permanence of the church by their continuity. Their perpetual continuity and that of the church are inseparable.

  73. These realities, which were established along with the foundation of the church, have taken on specific forms in the course of history or have produced other realities which in turn testify to the continuity of the church and serve it, and which therefore likewise have a long-term purpose or have proven themselves to be enduring. This is particularly true regarding the forms which the "ministry of reconciliation" took on very early in the history of the church. But it also holds good for the creeds, dogmas or confessional writings which have arisen in history as an expression of the apostolic faith, and which have their basis in the biblical writings, especially in the confessions of faith found in the New Testament. Our two churches give in part different and indeed controversial responses to the question of how far and to what degree these ecclesiastical realities which have arisen in history share in the enduring quality of the realities established when the church was founded. The reasons for the differences are certainly theological and ecclesiological, but very often they also reflect different experiences of the church. But it is not in dispute that (1) these realities arose in the history of the church and were not directly and explicitly established when it was founded, (2) they can certainly give expression to the continuity of the church and be of service to it, and (3) they nevertheless remain capable of renewal and in need of renewal.

  74. Above all, however, it is agreed that all institutional or structural elements of church continuity are and remain instruments of the gospel, which alone creates and sustains the church, not in their own right but only insofar and as long as they testify to the continuity of the church and serve that continuity. Their effectiveness as signs and means of the continuity of the church is limited and called in question when and for as long as their relatedness to and transparency for that gospel are diminished or obscured.

  75. This is true regarding how the church deals with the realities which are integral to its foundation and — according to our common conviction — are indispensable to it, such as the word of God available in the canon of Holy Scripture, the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper and the ministry of reconciliation. But this is especially true of the signs and means of continuity in the church which have emerged in history. Here the idea of the indispensable nature of these signs and instruments of institutional continuity for the church, as advocated not only but especially on the Catholic side, may itself evoke the concern, and indeed reproach that the gospel of the radical gratuitousness of the gift of salvation and unconditional nature of the reception of salvation is being obscured. Consequently, special care is needed to see to it that these instruments and signs of institutional continuity in the church do not cease to function as servants of the gospel, not even when one seems obligated to grant them an ecclesially indispensable and binding character.

    4.5.3.2. Ordained Ministry as Institution in the Church

  76. It has already been said in common235 that the "ministry of reconciliation" which proclaims reconciliation with God "on behalf of Christ" (2 Cor 5:18-20) is one of the indispensable institutional realities given to the church from the beginning to express and serve its continuity.236 It was also said in common that these realities built into the church, and also their further configurations in history, do not in themselves testify to the church's continuity or bring it about, except in so far as they serve the gospel through which the Holy Spirit creates and sustains the church. The more these institutional realities are thus subordinated to the justification criterion the less we can say that they as such contradict the doctrine of justification and are condemned by it.

  77. This is true also of the ordained ministry in so far as it is by its nature, according to our churches' view, that "ministry of reconciliation" (2 Cor 5:18). The critical assertion that the ordained ministry as an institution of continuity by its very existence runs counter to the doctrine of justification is thus repudiated fundamentally.

  78. However the fact that the Reformation doctrine of justification and its emphasis on the unconditionality of the gift of salvation has at times been understood as questioning the necessity of the ordained ministry and the legitimacy of its institutional, ecclesial form calls for an even more pointed rejoinder.

  79. First of all it must be stressed, as the previous Roman Catholic-Lutheran dialogue has done, that the Lutheran Reformation knows no such ecclesiological consequence of the doctrine of justification. There is no contradiction between the doctrine of justification and the idea of an ordained ministry instituted by God and necessary for the church. Quite the opposite. The Augsburg Confession already makes this clear, with its characteristic transition from the article on justification237 to that on the church's ministry.238 There justifying faith is grounded in the gospel which the ordained ministry is to proclaim in word and sacraments. Article 14 of the Augsburg Confession excludes the idea, which only arose in the nineteenth century, that "the church's ministry" or the "preaching ministry" could mean anything other than the ecclesiastical institution of the ordained ministry. For Luther and the Lutheran Confessions, the church's ministry and the gospel are so closely united that they can both be spoken of in identical terms239 and can let the church be founded on the ministry.240 In a similar sense Lutheran orthodoxy taught that the triune God is "the primary efficient cause" of the church and that the church's ministry is the "efficient cause which God uses to gather his church".241

  80. In agreement with the Reformation, and without contradicting the Reformation doctrine of justification, we can therefore repeat what has already been said in the Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue on the ministry: "... the existence of a special ministry is abidingly constitutive for the church".242

  81. These points show that Reformation thought provides no basis for fearing that the very existence of an ordained ministry as necessary institution for the church obscures the gospel. Above all it must be seen how the institution of the ministry is positively in line with the gospel and its explication through the doctrine of justification.

  82. If the New Testament — and with it the Lutheran Reformation — sees the special character of the ordained ministry in the fact that ministers are called to preach reconciliation publicly "on behalf of Christ" (2 Cor 5:20),243 and thus stand "over against the community" even while "within the community",244 this corresponds directly to the inmost concern of the doctrine of justification itself. At stake is that God in Christ approaches human beings "from outside" for their salvation notwithstanding everything they know, are capable of and are. Human beings — even believers — cannot say to themselves what God has to say to them and cannot bring themselves to that salvation which God alone has prepared for them. This structural movement "outside us and for us"245is constitutive of the saving revelation of God in Christ. It is continued in the proclamation of the gospel and must continue there if the gospel is not to be obscured. For this, God establishes the ordained ministry, and consequently, from among his many followers, Jesus calls his emissaries, in whom his mission from the Father is continued (cf. Jn 20:21; 17:18), and of whom it is true to say "whoever listens to you listens to me" (Lk 10:16) and "whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me" (Mt 10:40).

  83. Thus not only does the institution of the ordained ministry not contradict the gospel as it is explicated by the doctrine of justification, but corresponds to it and in the last analysis receives its character of indispensability for the church from that correspondence. The Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue on the church's ministry had drawn attention to this also when it stated with the Accra document of that time and with the later BEM statement246 that "the presence of this ministry in the community ‘signifies the priority of divine initiative and authority in the Church's existence'".247

  84. It is no contradiction of the close connection between the ministry and the gospel but is rather in line with it, that for the ministry and for ordained ministers the doctrine of justification as explication of the gospel must be the criterion for their own self-understanding and actions. For although the connection between the ministry and the gospel certainly exists, it is no guarantee against abuse and false doctrine. Just as the New Testament knows of and warns against "false teachers"248 and "false apostles"249 (2 Pt 2:1; 2 Cor 11:13), it is also part of the historical experience of the church that the office, in its bearers and their ministry, may come to contradict the gospel (cf. Gal 1: 6 ff.; 2:14). The way this experience registers in the ecclesiology and church law of our two churches differs in part. The possibility of a conflict between the ministry and the gospel and thus the need for the church to stand guard over the primacy of the gospel are however seen and affirmed on both sides.

  85. The conviction that the doctrine of justification must, as an explication of the gospel, be the critical yardstick for our understanding and exercise of the ministry is applied in the Lutheran Reformation and the Lutheran churches in a special and for them significant way. It relates to the specific forms which the divinely instituted ministry has assumed in the course of history. This is true above all in regard to the specific formation of the ecclesial ministry of leadership (episkopé). The development of the ministry into an episcopate standing in a historic succession, i.e., the continuity of apostolic succession which occurred already very early in history250 was fully affirmed by the Lutheran Reformation and emphatically championed251 just as other church realities were affirmed and conserved which had come into being in the course of history (e.g. the biblical canon, the creeds of the ancient church). For Lutheran thinking too it is entirely possible to acknowledge that the historical development of an episcopate in a historic succession was not something purely within the sphere of history, set in motion only by sociological and political factors, but that it "has taken place with the help of the Holy Spirit" and that it "constitutes something essential for the church".252

  86. However, Lutherans cannot agree when something is seen in this historically developed formation of the ministry whose existence plays a part in determining the very being of the church. The reason is not simply the ecclesial experience of the Reformation, namely that, at least in central Europe, the Reformation struggled for the truth of the gospel not only without the support of the church's episcopate, but even against its resistance. The deeper reason is the concern that putting episcopacy on such a level endangers the unconditional nature of the gift of salvation and its reception. And that is precisely what is at stake in the Reformation doctrine of justification. For this unconditionality necessarily implies that only that may be considered necessary for the church to be church which is already given by Jesus Christ himself as means of salvation. If ecclesial structures, which emerged in history, are elevated to that level, they become pre-conditions for receiving salvation and so, in the Lutheran view, are put illegitimately on the same level with the gospel proclaimed in word and sacrament which alone is necessary for salvation and the church.

  87. Here a clear difference between Catholics and Lutherans reveals itself in the theological and ecclesiological evaluation of the episcopal office in historic succession, a difference which has been repeatedly noted in the Catholic-Lutheran dialogue up to now.253

  88. According to Roman Catholic understanding there is an historic development of the then permanent form of the ordained ministry. This is especially true of its post-apostolic organization into "bishops, priests and other ministers".254 Here of course we have to consider that this post-apostolic organization and identification of distinctions in the ministry is already attested to incipiently in the Bible and was introduced in the transition from the "emerging" to the "developed" church.

  89. The shared Catholic-Lutheran conviction that the historical emergence of the ministry's structure is not simply to be traced back to human — sociological and political — factors but "has taken place with the help of the Holy Spirit"255 is, in the Catholic view, understood and prioritized differently than in Lutheran thought. Unlike the Lutherans, Catholics see a "divine institution" in the organization of the ministry as it has developed through history, i.e., a development led, willed and testified to by divine providence.256 Under the operation of the Holy Spirit within the apostolic tradition, episcopacy and apostolic succession as orderly transmission of the ordained ministry have developed as the expression, means and criterion of the continuity of the tradition in post-apostolic times. Thus in the providence of God the bishops "by divine institution"257 are successors to the apostles. The task of the apostles to tend the church of God continues in the episcopacy and bishops are to exercise it continually.

  90. The episcopate and apostolic succession as the orderly transmission of the ordained ministry in the church are therefore in the Catholic view essential for the church as church, and so are necessary and indispensable. Nevertheless word and sacrament are the two pillars of the church which are necessary for salvation. The episcopate and apostolic succession stand in service as ministry to what is necessary for salvation, so that the word will be authentically preached and the sacraments rightly celebrated. The episcopate and apostolic succession serve to safeguard the apostolic tradition, the content of which is expressed in the rule of faith. The Spirit of God uses the episcopate in order to identify the church in every historical situation with its apostolic origin, to integrate the faithful in the one universal faith of the church and just so through the episcopate to make its liberating force effective. In this sense the episcopate is in the Catholic view a necessary service of the gospel which is itself necessary for salvation.

  91. The difference between the Catholic and Lutheran views on the theological and ecclesiological evaluation of the episcopate is thus not so radical that a Lutheran rejection or even indifference toward this ministry stands in opposition to the Catholic assertion of its ecclesial indispensability. The question is rather one of a clear gradation in the evaluation of this ministry, which can be and has been described on the Catholic side by predicates such as "necessary" or "indispensable" and on the Lutheran side as "important", "meaningful", and thus "desirable".258

  92. For a proper understanding of this Catholic-Lutheran difference in the evaluation of the episcopate, it is necessary to observe that behind it lie two different correlations of salvation and church.

  93. According to the Lutheran doctrine of justification and the Lutheran understanding of the church, it is only through the proclamation of the gospel in word and sacraments, which ordained ministers are called to do, that the Holy Spirit effects justifying faith259 and that the church is created and preserved.260 The church exists in the full sense of the word where this saving gospel proclamation takes place.261

  94. Following this ecclesiological line, nothing good and "profitable"262 for ecclesial communion which exists alongside the gospel proclaimed in word and sacraments may be considered ecclesially necessary, in the strict sense of that word, lest the one thing necessary for salvation — the gospel — be endangered.263

  95. According to the Catholic understanding of faith there is also a stable correlation of church and salvation which cannot be dissolved. Therefore Vatican II calls the church "the universal sacrament of salvation".264 It is sign and instrument of salvation for all humanity so that without the church there is no salvation. Within this context, however, Catholic thinking further differentiates the subjective and personal consideration of human salvation by reason of God's grace and the objective and ecclesiological view of the church as recipient and mediator of salvation. Therefore the Second Vatican Council maintains with regard to non-Catholic Christians that "many elements of sanctification and of truth can be found outside of her visible structure"265 and that the non-Catholic churches and communities are used by Christ's Spirit as "means of salvation".266 In addition Vatican II says in relation to non-Christians that God's saving activity is at once visibly and invisibly at work among those who have not yet received the gospel and that God "can lead those inculpably ignorant of the gospel to that faith without which it is impossible to please Him".267 To this extent there is, according to Catholic understanding, a correlation between salvation and church consisting not only in the church membership of those who hear the word in faith and receive the sacraments fruitfully, but there is also an ordination to the church on the basis of the visible and hidden saving work of God's grace outside the church which can lead to saving faith.

  96. This differentiation is also expressed regarding the ecclesial necessity of the episcopal office in apostolic succession, something which is not necessary for the salvation of individual persons. Because of such a differentiation it is possible for Catholics to assert the necessity of this office without thereby contradicting the doctrine of justification. Thus the episcopal office is understood in the church as a necessary ministry of the gospel which itself is necessary for salvation.

  97. Even so, Catholics will have to take seriously and answer the Lutheran question. If Catholics hold that the Lord's Supper celebrated in Lutheran churches has "because of the lack [defectusl of the sacrament of orders... not preserved the genuine and total reality [substantial of the Eucharistic mystery",268 does that not, after all, show that they regard the episcopal office in historic succession as the regular transmitter of the ordained ministry in the church, and so indirectly as necessary for salvation? Catholics must answer that an ecclesiology focused on the concept of succession, as held in the Catholic Church, need in no way deny the saving presence of the Lord in a eucharist celebrated by Lutherans.

  98. The difference in the theological and ecclesiological evaluation of the episcopal office in historic succession loses its sharpness when Lutherans attribute such a value to the episcopate that regaining full communion in this office seems important and desirable, and when Catholics recognize that "the ministry in the Lutheran churches exercises essential functions of the ministry that Jesus Christ instituted in his church"269 and does not contest the point that the Lutheran churches are church.270 The difference in evaluating the historic episcopate is thereby interpreted in such a way that the doctrine of justification is no longer at stake and consequently it is also possible to advocate theologically the regaining of full communion in the episcopal.271

    4.5.3.3. Binding Church Doctrine and the Teaching Function of the Ministry

  99. The church's abiding in the truth, which is God's promise and also his commission to the church, requires inescapably that the church must distinguish the truth of the gospel from error. That means, however, the church must teach. This does not at all contradict the Reformation doctrine of justification because its own claim is to promote this very distinction between truth and error in a fundamental way.

  100. The commission to continue in the truth, like the promise to bring this about, holds good for the church as a whole. Our churches are agreed on this. We also agree that it is primarily the Spirit of God, promised to the church and dwelling in it272 who enables it so to continue and gives it the authority to distinguish truth and error in a binding way, that is, to teach.273 Finally, we agree that for his activity God in the Holy Spirit makes use of temporal instruments and circumstances which he himself has bestowed upon the church as a temporal and creaturely entity;274 and that the ministry is one of these instruments and circumstances.275 There is no tension between this and the doctrine of justification as criterion for the church's life and activity.

  101. It is in fact true of the Lutheran as much as of the Roman Catholic Church that like the church in every age it is a teaching church which sees itself under the continuing commission to preserve the truth of the gospel and to reject error. Its catechisms, especially Luther's Large Catechism, and most particularly the Confessions with their "teaching" and "rejecting" exemplify this".276

  102. The difference between our churches only begins to surface where the issue is how the church's responsibility for teaching is exercised. When the Roman Catholic Church attributes a special responsibility and authority for teaching to the ministry and in particular to the episcopate, this in itself still does not imply any essential difference from the Lutheran view and practice. For in the Lutheran view too the ministry, along with its mission and authority to preach the gospel and inseparably from them, is given a responsibility for the "purity" of the proclaimed gospel and the "right" administration of the sacraments "according to the Gospel".277 It was also axiomatic for the Reformation that there are ordered ministries in the church such as the teaching office of theologians and faculties who had the right and duty to distinguish truth and error in a special way. Luther was himself able to assert his rights as a theological teacher in face of the ecclesiastical authorities who had themselves appointed him as such.

  103. Following the medieval tradition, it was extremely common for the theological faculties in areas of the Lutheran Reformation to exercise something like an ecclesial teaching function. Nor was it contested on the Reformation side that a special responsibility for teaching belongs to the bishops: they are entitled "according to divine right ... to ... judge doctrine and condemn doctrine that is contrary to the gospel" and congregations are therefore in duty "bound to be obedient to the bishops according to the saying of Christ in Luke 10:16, ‘He who hears you hears me'".278 The episcopal structure was however not preserved in most churches of the Reformation.279 Very early in the German lands (about 1527) there developed within the framework of ecclesial governance by princes an alternative system for supra-parish doctrinal oversight by creating superintendents, visitors or visitation commissions. They exercised the function of a teaching office by seeing to it that parish preaching and the administration of the sacraments were true to the gospel. "Also in our day there is interpretation and development of church doctrine in Lutheran churches through the decisions of the appropriate ecclesial authorities" (bishops synods, church councils) in which office-bearers, church members and theological teachers together play a part.280 Nevertheless significant differences appear here too.

  104. The Reformers thought that the promise and responsibility which held good for the whole church was concentrated to such an extent in the teaching ministry exercised by bishops and the Pope in the Roman church that the inerrancy promised to the church as a whole had shifted to the bishops and the Pope. This, so it was said, revealed the new Roman "definition of the church", which was rejected.281 Regarding the promise and commission to abide in the truth the following principle held good for the Reformation: "Nor should that be transferred to the popes which is the prerogative of the true church: that they are pillars of the truth and that they do not err".282

  105. Here, according to Reformation conviction, the critical function of the doctrine of justification comes into play. In this, the primary question is not that the church as the congregation of the faithful (congregatio fidelium) might take second place to the church as "supreme outward monarchy";283 or that the equality of the people of God might be canceled out. And it certainly is not a question of a modern ideal of freedom or the application to the church of the idea of the sovereignty of the people. The issue is, first and foremost, the primacy of the gospel over the church — the freedom, sovereignty and ultimate binding nature of the gospel as God's word of grace.

  106. The Reformation conviction is that this gospel, even if proclaimed in the church, and by ministers called to serve "in Christ's place and stead"284 cannot without reservations and with no questions asked be consigned to an ecclesiastical ministry to preserve, For in so far as this ministry, like every church institution, is carried out by human beings who are capable of error, not only would the danger of error be increased thereby, because the error would then take on binding force in the church, but also and above all a sovereignty and ultimate binding force would attach to the decisions and stipulations of this ministry and its representatives which are reserved for the gospel alone. That is why what people teach in the church must ultimately be measured against the gospel alone. Only then is it certain that the church relies on God's word and not human words.

  107. For the sake of the gospel, the Reformation doctrine of justification therefore requires that the church's ministry and its decisions should as a matter of principle be open to examination by the whole people of God. As a matter of principle justification debars them from insulating themselves from such an examination. In regard to its decisions the teaching ministry must permit "question or censure",285 as the Apology says, by the church as a whole, for which the promise of abiding in the truth holds good, and which is the people of God, the body of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit. Otherwise it seems doubtful from a Reformation perspective that the teaching ministry serves the word of God and is not above it.286

  108. The binding nature of church teaching is not canceled out by this, but is made subject to a reservation. In the Reformation view the teaching of the church or of a teaching ministry must take place precisely in this dialectical tension between the claim of its binding nature and the reservation relating to that binding nature. This will demonstrate that the teaching ministry respects the independence of the gospel and its ultimate binding nature, which is nothing other than the independence and binding nature of the grace of God. In this church teaching as such demonstrates its own conformity with the gospel.

  109. It is thus clear that the doctrine of justification certainly does not lead Reformation thinking into a depreciation, far less a rejection, of binding church teaching and of a teaching ministry of the church. The churches of the Lutheran Reformation themselves carry out binding teaching and themselves have organs or ministries for the church's teaching. They even have displayed the willingness, and indeed the "deep desire"287 to recognize for themselves the church's teaching ministry in its traditional form.288 What they insist on is solely that this teaching and this teaching ministry be in accordance with the gospel in their self-understanding and exercise, and do not contradict the gospel.289

  110. The problem of a tension between the claim to and the reservation related to binding teaching arises for Catholics too. Admittedly from their point of view the matter has a different weight and value. According to Catholic teaching the church as a whole is "the pillar and bulwark of the truth" (1 Tim 3:15). "The body of the faithful as a whole... cannot err in matters of belief" as it receives the "supernatural sense of the faith" from the Spirit of truth.290 Within the people of God the bishops in communion with the bishop of Rome are the authentic teachers of the faith by virtue of their episcopal ordination as successors in the presiding ministry of a local church.291 But their teaching office remains anchored in the life of faith of the whole people of God, who share in the discovery of and in witnessing to the truth. Thus "the vigilance with regard to the apostolicity of the faith that belongs to the bishop's duty, is bound up with the responsibility for the faith borne by the whole Christian people",292 and thus bishops exercise their teaching ministry "only in community with the whole church" and "in a many-sided exchange regarding faith with believers, priests, and theologians",293 for the whole "People of God shares also in Christ's prophetic office".294

  111. "While it is possible for the individual bishop to fall away from the continuity of the apostolic faith... Catholic tradition holds that the episcopate as a whole is nevertheless kept firm in the truth of the gospel".295 The bishops have to watch over the continuity of the apostolic faith, while being bound to the canon of Scripture and the apostolic tradition: the "teaching office is not above the word of God but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on".296 It has the task of listening reverently to the word of God, preserving it in holiness and expounding it faithfully.297 The same is valid for the priest. "The task of priests is not to teach their own wisdom but God's Word".298 This submission to the canon of the Scriptures and the apostolic tradition is the basic criterion for the response of faith, especially in borderline cases, so that according to Augustine and Thomas Aquinas it can be said: "One must deny one's consent even to bishops when it happens that they err and speak in a manner that contradicts the canonical texts".299

  112. The church can make infallible decisions on doctrine, as happened in the early church at ecumenical councils.300 These decisions explicate the revelation that has taken place once for all, and are made in harmony with the faith of the entire people of God, certainly not against them.301 These decisions, when made under specific conditions, are valid of themselves and do not need any subsequent formal approval, though they of course "depend on extensive reception in order to have living power and spiritual fruitfulness in the church".302

  113. Decisions of the church's teaching ministry are indeed binding — as dogma, even definitively binding. But the church knows it is the pilgrim people of God on the march. Hence recognition of the truth in theology and dogma is fragmentary and often one-sided, since it is frequently a response to errors that have taken an extreme position. Dogma is historically conditioned and therefore open to corrections, deeper understanding and "new expressions".303 The church nevertheless believes that the Holy Spirit guides it into the truth and preserves it from error when solemn definitions are made. When the teaching ministry appeals to the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 15:28), this does not run counter to the criterion of the doctrine of justification. For the question here is not about conditions for salvation, but the criteria of our knowledge of revelation. The message of the radical gratuity of the gift of salvation, and of the unconditionality of the reception of salvation, is not obscured by the institution of councils, because their role is to witness to the truth of revelation and to protect this truth against erroneous opinions.

  114. The Catholic understanding of faith holds that the gospel is interpreted by the consensus of a council and this can therefore in special cases bring forth a definitively binding statement (a dogma in the Catholic view) on which members of the church can rely as an expression of the gospel. Even if faith does not rest in the formulation but in the reality, that is, in the truth of the gospel, it nevertheless needs the formulation in which the gospel is expressed, the wording of which must be very carefully heeded in a critical situation (cf. 1 Cor 15:2; 4:6).

  115. On the other hand, also in Catholic understanding, a dogmatic statement is not simply a given about which no further questions may be asked. "The tradition which comes from the apostles develops in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down. This happens through the contemplation and study made by believers, who treasure these things in their hearts ..., through the intimate understanding of spiritual things they experience, and through the preaching of those who have received through episcopal succession the sure gift of truth. For, as the centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly moves for-ward toward the fullness of divine truth until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her".304 Looked at in this light, the transmission of faith, official doctrinal proclamation and the history of dogma are complex hermeneutical processes in which all the faithful, members of the teaching office and theologians, are participants even if in differing ways.305 Abiding in the truth of the gospel does not exclude the painstaking quest for the truth. It is not carried out alone by one component of the church but is due in the last analysis to the support and guidance of God's Spirit who exercises control through the fellowship of the whole people of God.

  116. This comparison of the Lutheran and Catholic understanding of binding doctrines shows, despite all the different emphases and a fair number of critical questions, that binding teaching need not contradict justification. Catholics and Lutherans agree that binding teaching illuminates the truth of the gospel, on which truth alone members of the church may and should rely in living and dying and which alone sustains their faith. They agree that, for example, in the councils that confess the faith in the Trinity and in Jesus Christ the truth of the gospel is explicated. There are considerable differences, to be sure, as to how the truth of the gospel is affirmed. Even if Catholics cannot in the same way appropriate the Lutheran dialectic in which the claim to a binding character for doctrine contrasts with a reservation as to that binding character, and if they ask whether there is not a danger here that the opinion of individuals will be identified with the truth of the gospel, they too are aware of the provisional nature of human knowledge of the truth, even in the ultimately binding decisions of the teaching office. If Lutherans pose the above mentioned question concerning the Catholic form of binding teaching, they are nevertheless faced with the task of rethinking "the problem of the teaching office and the teaching authority" and of reflecting especially on the council as an institution, that is, as "the locus for the expression of the consensus of all Christendom",306 and of its importance to which the Reformation always firmly held.307

    4.5.3.4. Church Jurisdiction and the Jurisdictional Function of the Ministry

  117. The questions of doctrine and the church's teaching office, and of ecclesial jurisdiction and the jurisdictional function of the ministry are very close to each other and show clear parallels. In part the two questions even overlap, in so far as decisions of the church's teaching ministry are juridically binding.

  118. Catholics and Lutherans together say that God, who establishes institutional entities in his grace and faithfulness, and who uses them to preserve the church in the truth of the gospel, also uses church law and legal ordinances for this purpose.

  119. Thus Lutherans cannot say that gospel and church on one side and ecclesiastical law on the other are mutually exclusive or that the doctrine of justification prohibits the development of binding ecclesial law. The very fact that in Reformation lands legally binding church orders (Kirchenordnungen) came into being at a very early date, and that in their doctrinal sections (corpora doctrinae), which were replaced later by the confessions, the doctrine of justification has a central place, shows that justification itself participated in the juridically binding nature of these church orders. Constitutions of today's Lutheran churches indicate this also.

  120. When, however, it comes to the understanding of church law and its binding nature; when the question is raised to what extent and in what sense the church, and especially the ordained ministry, have the authority to make legally binding decisions and regulations; and when it is asked to what extent such decisions, once taken, can be critically examined on the basis of the gospel — then a difference between Catholics and Lutherans becomes evident, just as it does with the question of doctrine and the teaching ministry.

  121. This difference, however, is to be seen in the context of common basic convictions which have already been highlighted in the Lutheran-Roman Catholic dialogue: in regard to church law as a whole the principle holds good for both churches that "the salvation of souls... must always be the supreme law";308
        — that in turn means that according to common conviction all church law and all development of ecclesial law are related and subordinated to the service of the gospel. "The church is permanently bound in its ordering to the gospel which is irrevocably prior to it"; the gospel is "the criterion for a concrete church order";309
        — even where, in line with the traditional view and terminology, the character of "divine law", a ius divinum, is attributed to church legislation, it has a historical shape and form, and it is therefore both possible and necessary to renew and reshape it.310

  122. These common basic convictions show that church law, notwithstanding its claim to be binding, is by its nature and by definition subject to a reservation as to its binding nature. This is of crucial importance, because it is precisely the critical demand raised by the doctrine of justification regarding all church legislation and so also to all church legal authorities. No church legislation can claim to be binding in such a manner that it is necessary for salvation, thus equaling the ultimate binding nature of the gospel which is itself the binding nature of grace. In so far as this demand is not met, church law becomes subject to criticism from the doctrine of justification. On this our churches agree in principle. It is important that this agreement should also be maintained in church practice; but whether, how and to what extent this happens in our churches must be verified from one case to another.

  123. These basic convictions apply also to the question to what extent and in what way a jurisdictional function is appropriate to the ordained ministry. The Reformation too can in fact attribute a jurisdictional function to the ministry but in so doing it emphasizes the primacy of the gospel and, essentially, those limitations which are recognized in common by Catholics and Lutherans.311

  124. This is the overall intention of Article 28 of the Augsburg Confession.312 It develops a view of the power (potestas) of the bishops, which unequivocally includes jurisdictional functions. At the same time it seeks to guarantee the harmony of this ministry and its exercise with the gospel, doing this essentially in the framework of the basic convictions outlined above.

  125. The proper tasks of the bishop, which appertain basically to the pastor also — because of a theological lack of clarity in the differentiation between bishop and pastor — are, according to CA 28, "to preach the Gospel", "to forgive ... sins", "to administer ... the sacraments", to "condemn doctrine that is contrary to the Gospel" and to "exclude from the Christian community".313 They can be summed up in the terms "power of keys"314 "the office of preaching"315 or "jurisdiction".316 These show that according to the Reformation view the ministry as a pastoral office includes jurisdictional functions, certainly in such a way that these functions do not become autonomous but remain bound up in the total pastoral responsibility of the ministry and so preserve their pastoral character.

  126. Over against these functions of the ordained ministry which are "necessary for salvation"317 and are in this sense by "divine right"318 but which must be exercised "not by human power but by God's word alone",319 the duty of the congregation to obey holds good.320 It is an obligation, however, which is paired with the duty to refuse obedience should the ministry violate the gospel in its exercise of these functions.321

  127. Alongside this the bishops can undoubtedly exercise yet another kind of jurisdiction322 from marriage legislation through ceremonial laws and regulations for worship to decrees for fasts and so on. Such regulations in the last analysis serve the orderly common life of the congregation323 and they may be changed, replaced and even abrogated.324 Here too indeed a duty on the part of the congregation to obey holds good325 but it is fundamentally different in kind. It does not end only where these regulations of the ministry which relate to church law violate the gospel in their content. It already ends where they are imposed as "necessary for salvation"326 and binding on the conscience327 and here changes into a duty to refuse obedience. For these regulations are already contradicting the "teaching concerning faith",328 that is, of the "righteousness of faith" and "Christian liberty", i.e., the freedom of the Christian from the law,329 and they thereby become subject to criticism by the doctrine of justification.

  128. It is a Lutheran conviction that there is a jurisdictional function of the ordained ministry in this context which is defined by the doctrine of justification.

  129. According to the Catholic view the above mentioned common basic convictions also mark the jurisdictional authority of the episcopate.330 The exercise of law and canonical practice is always to be seen in its pastoral intention and within a concern for the salvation of humanity.

  130. The authority and power of bishops is part of their being shepherds and presiders over the church. it is founded in the divine mission that Christ entrusted to the apostles331 to hand on the gospel which "is for all time the source of all life for the Church".332 This power also includes the right and the duty to regulate everything in the church which pertains to the ordering of worship and of the apostolate. But it should be carried out in accordance with the example of the Good Shepherd Jesus Christ.333 Bishops exercise their pastoral and jurisdictional authority in the name of Christ and personally, i.e., as their special, regular and direct power, in communion with the Bishop of Rome.334 In this connection they have always to take into account the fact that every ordering of the church develops from a permanently given basis, namely, that the church is a community of faith and sacraments. The proclamation of the word of God and the celebration of the sacraments constitute the church and determine its nature, because the Lord of the church effects salvation in them. The binding force of a church law therefore presupposes the conviction that the church is a faith and sacramental community. The aim of the law and canons of the church is to serve the church's order and to express its unity while contributing to the good order of the care of souls. Thus church order, with law and canons, arises out of the nature of the church as a faith and sacramental community.

  131. Catholic teaching insists that no one may be coerced into believing nor be "forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs" in religious matters.335 Even the call of God to serve him in spirit and in truth, though it binds human beings in their conscience to obey that call, does not coerce them into doing so.336 And while church norms and laws can indeed be binding in conscience on Christians as members of the church, they cannot "release a member of the church from his direct responsibility to God".337

  132. The Catholic-Lutheran dialogue has stressed that "the church is permanently bound in its ordering to the gospel which is irrevocably prior to it... The gospel, however, can be the criterion for a concrete church order only in living relationship with contemporary social realities. Just as there is a legitimate explication of the gospel in dogmas and confessions, so there also exists a historical actualization of law in the church".338 In this sense the Codex Iuris Canonici of 1983 also attempts a reordering of Catholic Church legislation in the light of Vatican II, in order to correspond better with the church's mission of salvation. In particular the ecclesiological guidelines of the Dogmatic Constitution, Lumen Gentium, and the Pastoral Constitution, Gaudium et Spes, constitute the hermeneutical framework for this. "Over the course of time, the Catholic Church has been wont to revise and renew the laws of its sacred discipline so that, maintaining always fidelity to the Divine Founder, these laws may be truly in accord with the salvific mission entrusted to the Church... This new Code can be viewed as a great effort to translate the conciliar ecclesiological teaching into canonical terms".339

  133. Catholic theology draws attention to the fact that it is God's saving activity, not ecclesiastical lawgivers with their legislation, which establishes the fellowship of believers and therefore brings people into a new social situation with obligations: that of the believers' fellowship with each other and with God. This new social situation is expressed by the ecclesiastical lawgiver in legal ordinances. The point of ecclesiastical legislation is to help believers perceive and fulfill their rights and duties as well as possible in the light of the faith, and thus to contribute to the realization of the saving mission of the church.

  134. Because church legislation can be seen as a normative function of the tradition of faith, and because the binding force of church laws is ultimately founded in the binding force of faith, church law differs from every other law. Because of the binding force of faith, the church legislator addresses the religious conscience, and thus ecclesiastically binding norms presuppose a free decision of faith. Consequently it is possible for a discrepancy, and thus a case of conflict, to arise between the obligation of a church law and the conscience of the individual Christian believer. Catholic theology, of course, does not generally speak of a "reservation" regarding the binding character of church laws, but in individual cases it does take into account the possibility of conflict. The salvation of human beings counts as supreme law. If in a concrete instance the application of the existing canons may prejudice or even endanger a person's salvation, that constitutes a case in which Christian believers who are quite willing to obey church law and have also shown this in practical living may, and even must, nevertheless come to a decision which is against the letter of the law, because on the basis of faith they see themselves entitled or even obliged to make that decision as a matter of conscience.

  135. Despite different ecclesiological starting points and a different frame of reference, fundamental common elements and correspondences do exist between Lutherans and Catholics on the matter of the doctrines of justification and salvation and their relation to the jurisdictional authority of the ordained ministry. The task of church laws is to serve the salvation of the individual.


     
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  136. We may sum up by saying that in regard to all the problem areas discussed here (4.5.3.1-4) we may not speak of a fundamental conflict or even opposition between justification and the church. This is quite compatible with the role of the doctrine of justification in seeing that all the church's institutions, in their self-understanding and exercise, contribute to the church's abiding in the truth of the gospel which alone in the Holy Spirit creates and sustains the church.


    ENDNOTES



    1. See above 2.4.

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    2. See above 3.3.

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    3. See below 4.2.

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    4. LC III, 47; BC 416.

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    5. WA 7, 219; LW Phil. Ed. II, 373.

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    6. CA 7 (and 8); BC 32; BSLK 6 1, 1: "Congregatio sanctorum [et vere credentium], in qua evangelium pure docetur et recte administrantur sacramenta."

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    7. principaliter, cf. CA 8: proprie.

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    8. pura evangelii doctrina.

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    9. Apol 7:5; BC 169.

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    10. Cf. CA 1 and 3.

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    11. Apol 7:5; BC 169.

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    12. WA 10, I/ 1: 140, 8.14.

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    13. WA 7, 219, 6; LW Phil. Ed. II, 373.

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    14. Apol 9:2; BC 178.

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    15. Ibid., German text.

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    16. SA III, 12; BC 315.

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    17. WA 50, 629, 34; LW Phil. Ed. II, 271.

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    18. WA 7, 219, 11; LW Phil. Ed. II, 373.

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    19. WA 12, 308, 4.

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    20. Catechism of the Council of Trent I, 10, 2; Cat. Rom. I, 10, 5: "coetus omnium fidelium."

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    21. Ibid. I, 10, 2.

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    22. Ibid.

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    23. Ibid. I, 10, 24.

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    24. Communio sanctorum.

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    25. Catechism of the Council of Trent I, 10, 23-27.

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    26. LG 9.

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    27. AG 15; 19; PO 4 f.

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    28. Civitas redempta.

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    29. P0 2.

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    30. LG 9.

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    31. LG 4: in communione et ministratione.

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    32. AG 3.

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    33. LG 9.

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    34. P0 2.

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    35. LG 10.

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    36. Ibid.

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    37. P0 5.

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    38. LG 7 referring to 1 Cor 10: 17.

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    39. P0 4.

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    40. ibid.

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    41. AG 15.

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    42. AG 8.

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    43. Malta Report, 48.

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    44. WA 2, 430, 6: creatura... Evangelii.

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    45. LG 20.

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    46. Facing Unity, 85.

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    47. LG 1.

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    48. Ibid.

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    49. SC 5.

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    50. LG 9.

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    51. Cf. LG 2-5.

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    52. LG 48; cf. LG 7; 59.

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    53. Thus the term "sacrament" is always placed within quotation marks when related to the church in order to draw attention to the analogous use of language. This is expressly highlighted in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church when talking of the church as "a kind of [veluti] sacrament... a sign and an instrument..." (LG 1).

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    54. ex opere operato.

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    55. LG 8.

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    56. Ibid.

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    57. Cf. LG 7 referring to 1 Cor 12, Eph1 and Col 2.

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    58. LG 8; cf. 48.

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    59. UR 6.

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    60. LG 8; cf. UR 3 f.

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    61. LG 16; GS 22.

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    62. Cf. CA 5.

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    63. CA 7.

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    64. viva vox evangelii.

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    65. WA 20, 350, 6: "Quando ego praedico, ipse [sc. Christus] praedicat in me".

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    66. verbum externum.

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    67. verbum efficax.

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    68. SA III, 8; BC 313.

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    69. CA 5; BC 3 1.

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    70. CA 8; BC 33.

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    71. extra ecclesiam nulla salus; cf. Apol 9, 2; BC 178.

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    72. LC I, 40 ff.; BC 416.

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    73. AUGUSTINE, Ep. 187, CSEL 57, 113.

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    74. Cf. WA 6.501.37; 86.7f; LW Phil. Ed. II, 177.

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    75. See below 4.4.

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    76. WA 40/II,106,19; LW 27, 84.

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    77. coetus.

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    78. BELLARMINE, Disputatio de conciliis et ecclesia, III, ii.

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    79. Apol 7, 20; BC 171.

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    80. LG 8.

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    81. CA 7; BC 32.

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    82. CA 5 and 14; BC 31 & 36.

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    83. See above 135.

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    84. WA 40/II,106, 20; LW 27, 84.

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    85. Apol 7:3; BC 169.

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    86. Ibid.

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    87. Apol 7,1-22; BC 168 ff.

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    88. WA 40/II, 106, 29; LW 27, 85.

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    89. WA 50.625, 3; LW Phil. Ed. V, 265.

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    90. WA 40/II,106, 21; LW 27, 84; cf. Apol 7:19.

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    91. LG 14.

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    92. LG 1-8.

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    93. LG 4.

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    94. Cf. LG 7.

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    95. Cf. LG 8.

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    96. Cf LG 5; 9.

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    97. See above 4.2.

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    98. Cf. LG 8.

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    99. Ibid.

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    100. Cf. UR 6.

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    101. LG 39.

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    102. WA 50, 628,16; LW 41, 148.

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    103. CA 7; BC 32.

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    104. ecclesia non potest errare.

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    105. Cf. WA 18, 649 f.; 30 111, 408; 51, 513 and 515 f.; Apol 7, 27; BC 173.

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    106. E.g. Malta Report, 22 f.; The Ministry in the Church, 58.

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    107. UR 4, cf. AUGUSTINE, Retract., lib. 11, c. 18. 21

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    108. LG 48.

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    109. CA 8; BC 33.

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    110. LG 8; cf. 40.

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    111. UR 6.

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    112. WA 38, 215f.

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    113. WA 51, 516,15.

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    114. Cf. Apol 7:28; BC 173.

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    115. WA 51, 517, 19; see also 513 ff., especially 516 f.; cf. WA 38, 216.

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    116. Malta Report, 23.

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    117. Cf. LG 8; 40; DS 229 and 1537.

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    118. UR 6.

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    119. Ibid.

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    120. LG 8; cf. UR 3.

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    121. See 4.5.3.1-4.

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    122. Cf. GS 43.

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    123. Cf. UR 6.

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    124. See below 4.5.3.3.

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    125. See below 4.5.3.2.

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    126. See below 5.2.1.

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    127. Malta Report, 29.

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    128. Justification by Faith, 153; cf. 28.

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    129. CA 7; BC 32.

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    130. CA 7; BC 32.

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    131. WA 40 1, 69; cf. 46, 6 f.

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    132. See above 178.

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    133. Cf. The Ministry in the Church, 17.

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    134. CA 4; BC 30.

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    135. CA 3; BC 3 1.

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    136. Apol 7:20; BC 17 1; WA 30 111, 88.

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    137. Tractatus, 25.

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    138. Johann GERHARD, Loci theologici, XXII, V, 37, 40.

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    139. The Ministry in the Church, 18.

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    140. Cf. Apol 7, 28; BC 173.

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    141. The Ministry in the Church, 23.

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    142. extra nos pro nobis.

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    143. Cf. Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, Ministry, 8, 12, 42.

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    144. The Ministry in the Church, 20.

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    145. pseudodidaskaloi.

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    146. pseudoapostoloi.

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    147. Cf. The Ministry in the Church, 40-49; 59-66.

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    148. Cf. Apol 14; BC 214f.

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    149. The Ministry in the Church, 49; cf. 50.

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    150. The Ministry in the Church, 46 f.; especially Facing Unity, 94-98.

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    151. DS 1776.

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    152. The Ministry in the Church, 49.

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    153. Cf. DS 1776: "Hierarchiam divina ordinatione institutam"; cf. LG 28: "Thus the divinely established ecclesiastical ministry is exercised on different levels by those who from antiquity have been called bishops, priests, and deacons."

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    154. LG 20.

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    155. Cf. Apol 14; BC 214 f.; WA 26, 195 f.; The Ministry in the Church, 65f, 49 and 50; Facing Unity, 106, 97.

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    156. Cf. CA 5; BC 3 1.

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    157. Cf. CA 7; BC 32; WA 7, 72 1; see above 36.

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    158. See above 85.

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    159. Apol 7, 34; BC 175.

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    160. Apol 7, 30-37 interprets CA 7: The question in the nec necesse est is not whether what is added in the church to proclaim the gospel is "profitable" and "necessary" for the Church. The main question is rather whether it is "necessary for righteousness" (necessarius ad iustitiam). BC 173 ff.

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    161. LG 48.

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    162. LG 8; cf. UR 3.

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    163. UR 3.

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    164. AG 7.

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    165. UR 22.

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    166. The Ministry in the Church, 77.

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    167. Cf. UR 19-23.

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    168. Cf. Facing Unity, 117-139.

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    169. See above 3.2.3.

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    170. Cf. Malta Report, 18.

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    171. See above 4.5.2.

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    172. See above 4.5.3.1.

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    173. CA 1: "Ecclesiae magno consensu apud nos docent..." "our churches teach with great unanimity..." (BC 27); cf. CA 1-21 (BC 27 ff.), and the conclusion in the first part of the Confessio Augustana which says: "This is just about a summary of the doctrines that are preached and taught in our churches" (BC 47).

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    174. CA 7; BC 32.

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    175. CA 28, 21 f.; BC 84.

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    176. Cf. The Ministry in the Church, 42.

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    177. Cf. ibid. 55.

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    178. Apol 7:23-27, especially 23; BC 172 f.

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    179. Apol 7:27; BC 173.

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    180. Apol 7:23; BC 172.

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    181. Apol 7:28; BC 173.

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    182. Apol 7:23; BC 172.

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    183. Cf. DV 10.

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    184. Apol 14, 1 and 2; BC 214.

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    185. Cf. Malta Report, 66; The Ministry in the Church, 65 f., 73, 80; Facing Unity, 97.

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    186. Cf. Malta Report, 66.

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    187. LG 12.

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    188. Cf. LG 25.

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    189. Facing Unity, 110.

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    190. The Ministry in the Church, 51.

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    191. LG 12.

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    192. The Ministry in the Church, 62; cf. LG 25.

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    193. DV 10; The Ministry in the Church, 50.

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    194. Cf. ibid.; The Ministry in the Church, 50 and 62.

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    195. PO 4.

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    196. Facing Unity, 110 and footnote 157.

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    197. Cf. among others DS 265.

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    198. DS 307 f.

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    199. The Ministry in the Church, 52.

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    200. Cf. Mysterium ecclesiae, 5, Statement by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

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    201. DV 8.

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    202. Cf. DV 10.

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    203. The Ministry in the Church, 56 and 73.

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    204. See above 211-214.

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    205. CIC, Can. 1752: "salus animarum semper suprema lex;" The Code of Canon Law, 1983, London, 310; Malta Report, 32; For church law, "the final decisive viewpoint must be that of the salvation of the individual believer".

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    206. Malta Report, 33.

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    207. Cf. ibid. 31 and 33.

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    208. See above 227.

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    209. CA 28: The Power of Bishops; BC 81 ff.

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    210. CA 28, 5 and 2 1; BC 81 and 84.

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    211. CA 28, 5 and 8; BC 81.

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    212. CA 28, 10; BC 82.

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    213. CA 28, 20 f. and 29; BC 84 f.

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    214. CA 28, 8 f.; BC 82.

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    215. CA 28, 2 1; BC 84.

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    216. Ibid.

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    217. CA 28, 22; ibid.

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    218. CA 28, 23 ff.; ibid.

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    219. CA 28, 29 ff.; BC 85 f.

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    220. CA 28, 53 and 55; BC 89 f.

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    221. CA 28, 29 f. And 73 f.; BC 92 ff.

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    222. CA 28, 55; BC 90.

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    223. CA 28, 43-48; 50; 53 and frequently; BC 88 ff.

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    224. CA 28, 42; 49; 53; 64; 77 and frequently; ibid.

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    225. CA 28, 37; 50; 52; 66 and frequently; BC 86 ff.

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    226. CA 28, 51; 60; 64 and frequently; BC 89 ff.

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    227. See above 227.

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    228. LG 27.

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    229. LG 20.

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    230. LG 27.

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    231. LG 27; CD 3.

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    232. DH 2 (in re religiosa neque aliquis cogatur ad agendum contra suam conscientiam); 12.

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    233. DH 11.

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    234. Malta Report, 32, referring to DH 2; 10-12.

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    235. Malta Report, 33.

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    236. JOHN PAUL II, Apostolic Constitution, Sacrae Disciplinae Leges, promulgating the new Code of 1983; The Code of Canon Law, 1983, London, XI ff.

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