Abstract
The 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017 represents a challenge as well as an opportunity for contemporary ecumenism. The challenge is how to remember the Reformation in a way that neither entrenches the divisions of the past nor denies the seriousness of the issues that lay at its heart. Responding to that challenge might begin by identifying within the Reformation a striving for renewal and unity in the gospel. That would underline the importance of repentance in seeking Christian unity. It would emphasize the need to address the current distance between ecumenical ecclesiology on the one hand and the theology and practice of mission on the other. Finally, it would point to the centrality of the person of Jesus Christ for ecumenical thinking about gospel and Church. Together, these points could form a significant agenda for contemporary ecumenism.
It is difficult to predict, at the time of writing this article, how much awareness there will be when it appears on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. Readers of Theology with links to church life in Germany will know that there has been sustained and intense attention there. The main German Protestant church, the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKD), has spent a decade preparing for this anniversary, with events, church reports and extensive resources. 1 It will be a major focus for the annual Kirchentag in May, culminating in a special service in Wittenberg itself, where Martin Luther published his 95 theses on 31 October 1517. In this country, those living in Cambridge, Liverpool or London may have noticed the presence of a team from the ‘European Roadmap of the Reformation’ initiative during February 2017 and associated events, or be aware of the statement from the presidents of Churches Together in England last year and activities following from that. 2 Some may know about the substantial theological resources produced by the Lutheran World Federation and its plans for a global event on 31 October, of which a service at Westminster Abbey will form an integral part. 3 Historians may already be booked to speak at or attend conferences linked to this theme. 4
Historians may also, of course, raise a sceptical eyebrow at the notion of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, and not just because of doubts about the legend of the Wittenberg door. It has for some time been commonplace in academic studies to speak of a number of ‘reformations’ in the sixteenth century, not just one. Nor was the idea of reforming the Church invented then; it already had deep roots in the Western Catholicism of the Middle Ages and beyond. 5 Luther was not the only Catholic with a burning sense of the need for change in the Church in the opening decades of the sixteenth century, nor did everyone we now call ‘Protestant’ follow his lead in all respects. Scholarship has increasingly stressed the distinctive character of the various national reformations, including the one in England, for which Luther’s own writings had only limited significance. The notion of the Reformation as a popular movement across Europe against the corruptions of Rome and the weight of authoritarian tradition, paving the way for the modern world with its cherished individual freedoms, has been largely deprived of historical foundation, for all its tenacious hold on the popular imagination. 6 The very concept of ‘the Reformation’ as a historical period originated from the polemics of this time, not as some neutral academic description.
There lies the root of the challenge for the aspiration, expressed by the EKD, the Lutheran World Federation, the presidents of Churches Together in England and many others, that this should be the first truly ecumenical centenary of the Reformation: one that brings together Protestants of various kinds with Anglicans and, crucially, Roman Catholics, as well as reaching out to Christians, for instance Orthodox or Pentecostal, who may not see the Reformation as having a place in their own history. Is not the very concept of ‘the Reformation’ an irredeemably polemical one? Remembering the Reformation can certainly serve the cause of sustaining the oppositional identities between different churches: an opportunity to thank God that we are Reformed and not Catholics, or Catholics and not Lutherans, or Anglicans and therefore neither Catholics nor Protestants. Moreover, the way Christians narrate the Reformation continues to frame accounts of the divisions between churches. If we regard the Protestant Reformation as a providential work of God that many sadly refused to acknowledge, then the greatest fault for Christian disunity lies with those who opposed it then and those who even today will not accept its vital insights. Or the very fact of the enduring divisions stemming from the Reformation may be taken as proof of both the error and the futility of rejecting the authority of the Pope and the traditions of the Catholic Church. Certain versions of the Anglican via media need both Roman Catholics and Protestants to be equally if differently wrong in their responses to the Reformation. Narrations of the Reformation play a crucial role in legitimizing ‘our’ church and legitimizing too its continuing separations from other churches.
It might seem that the best way to make this anniversary a properly ecumenical occasion, engaging all churches and serving the cause of Christian unity, is to tell the story instead as one about unity lost with responsibility shared on all sides, the result of a collective failure to obey the Lord’s commandment to love one another. The regrettable failings of the sixteenth century in this regard can then be contrasted with the noble efforts of ecumenists over the past century to heal its legacy of sinful division. Yet however well-intentioned, this may also be a divisive way to remember the Reformation, if it relegates the concerns of Luther and Calvin on the one hand and the Council of Trent on the other as matters of secondary importance only. Neither faithful remembrance of the past nor the cause of unity here and now are served by seeking to forget what mattered most to our forebears who were caught up the Reformation, i.e. the theological ideas and the spiritual passions that were integral to it, or by assuming an attitude of relativizing superiority that disdains to take them seriously.
The challenge, then, for a truly ecumenical 500th anniversary of the Reformation is to remember it truthfully without recapitulating its polemics or evading its concerns. That must involve finding a way to describe what the Reformation was about that neither feeds into oppositional ecclesial identities nor diminishes the seriousness of its theological priorities. One way to characterize the various reforming movements in Western Europe in the early sixteenth century, Catholic as well as what we now call Protestant, might be to say that they were seeking for renewal and unity in the gospel. Indeed, some historians would prefer to speak of Luther and other associated figures as ‘Evangelicals’, people whose self-conscious focus was the gospel, rather than ‘Protestants’ (a somewhat later term) or even ‘Reformers’ – reform being a word that Luther himself in fact used somewhat sparingly. 7 The proposal made in this article is that we should remember the Reformation as driven in part – only in part – by a desire that should also be the desire of those committed to ecumenism 500 years later: to be renewed and united in the gospel. 8
Several points flow from this that are significant for where the ecumenical movement finds itself at present. The first is that such remembrance is bound to lead to repentance. It was because of human sinfulness that the godly desire of reformers for renewal and unity in the gospel became bound up with actions that resulted in separation between churches. The assertion of a direct connection between sin and disunity was a vital strand in the origins of modern ecumenism, as expressed very powerfully for instance in the ‘Appeal to All Christian People’ adopted at the 1920 Lambeth Conference: The causes of division lie deep in the past, and are by no means simple or wholly blameworthy. Yet none can doubt that self-will, ambition, and lack of charity among Christians have been principal factors in the mingled process, and that these, together with blindness to the sin of disunion, are still mainly responsible for the breaches of Christendom. We acknowledge this condition of broken fellowship to be contrary to God’s will, and we desire frankly to confess our share in the guilt of thus crippling the Body of Christ and hindering the activity of his Spirit.
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The Reformation anniversary might then serve as a prompt for renewed attention within ecumenism to questions about the relationship between sin and division. As the passage quoted above from the ‘Appeal to all Christian People’ indicates, the complexity of the issues at stake must be acknowledged without using that as a pretext for avoiding the naming of sin and the taking of due responsibility. How do we identify the boundary between the missional diversity of churches and sinful separation between churches, not just in the abstract but in concrete situations, both of long-standing bilateral dialogue and of the proliferation and planting of churches in contexts of mission? What kind of ‘penance’ – reparative action – might flow from the confession of sins of ecclesial division? Unless ecumenists engage with such questions, calls for repentance for the sin of disunity will continue to be treated by many, perhaps most, Christians as anachronistic if pious rhetoric devoid of any serious purchase.
Repentance also implies a determination to address what has gone wrong in the past. The desire to be renewed and united in the gospel seemed to some Christians in the sixteenth century ultimately to force a choice between the imperative of proclaiming the gospel and the imperative to ‘maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace’ (Eph. 4.3). No Christian theology can set either of these aside, however, and therefore those involved were pushed towards the judgement either that the gospel of the Protestant Reformers was a heretical distortion of the good news of Christ, or that the Church under the authority of the Pope was actually not the Church of Christ at all.
Remembering the Reformation as a quest for the Church’s renewal and unity in the gospel underlines the point that the healing of divisions between churches will require moving beyond this apparent tension between the gospel message on the one hand and the unity and catholicity of the Church on the other. The message of the gospel cannot be received or proclaimed in its wholeness by a divided Church, and the Church can only be united on the foundation of the gospel and not on some other basis. The perceived need to deepen partnership in mission by addressing ecclesiological differences around sacraments, ordained ministry generally and the ministry of oversight in particular lies at the origins of the modern ecumenical movement more than a century ago, with Anglicans holding a key role within that process. 14 Its partial successes since then in re-describing such differences as variations on the same fundamental themes have not, however, had the transformative effects on mission that our ecumenical forebears might have hoped for. 15 Moreover, missionary activity in many contexts is unlikely to feel much need to attend to the sizeable body of ecumenical ecclesiology that has now been accumulated, for all the central place that may be given to the missio Dei within it. 16
This split between ecumenical work and missionary activity cannot be overcome without sustained dialogue between ecumenists and missionaries. Ecumenists may like to stress the importance of unity for effective witness, but without shared commitment to the task of costly witness there is no truly effective or fruitful unity. Of course, that is not to deny the importance of the painstaking work that has been done in seeking convergence on doctrinal questions, but it is to underline that the purpose of such convergence is not primarily so that Christians can be more friendly towards one another, or enjoy worshipping at one another’s services, but so that their unity can be visible to the world in mission. The historic significance of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification between the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation is not just in dealing with the disputes of the past, important as that is, but in establishing that what Roman Catholics and Lutherans mean by the gospel is substantially the same. 17 That confidence in shared meaning, enabling confidence in shared activities of evangelization, can now extend to Methodists, since the World Methodist Council affirmed the Joint Declaration in 2006, and to Anglicans, with Resolution 16.17 of the Anglican Consultative Council in 2016. 18 At the time of writing, the World Communion of Reformed Churches was also considering whether it might, like the Anglican Communion, express support for the Joint Declaration as one way to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation ecumenically, that is, as churches coming together and as churches growing together in unity.
Remembering the Reformation together might also prompt a fresh focus in ecumenical theology on the relationship between gospel and Church. Archbishop Ramsey’s classic text on Anglican ecclesiology, The Gospel and the Catholic Church, is a plea both for a thoroughly evangelical ecclesiology and for a consistently ecclesial gospel. Though written in a different key and drawing on different sources, the same might be said of Pope Francis’s much more recent text, Evangelii gaudium. 19 Pope Francis brings out the dynamism of receiving and passing on the gospel as the heartbeat of the Church’s life, so that there can be no road to the renewal of the Church that does not draw the Church more deeply into the dynamics of evangelization. At the same time, this understanding of the interconnectedness of gospel and Church also resists the presumption that we can share the gospel first and then decide what to do about the Church as a secondary series of questions. This is territory that deserves continuing exploration in ecumenical dialogue.
Ultimately, Church and gospel are inseparable because these are not two separated abstractions to be somehow coordinated but concern a single reality, indeed a single person, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. 20 The gospel we share is his gospel, the invitation that comes from him to follow him and to be one with him. The Church of which we are part is his body, and the unity we pray for and strive for is union with him, no more and no less: Jesus prays ‘that they may be one, as we are one,I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me’ (John 17.22–23). Yet institutional ecumenism since the 1970s has been marked by a self-conscious distancing on the part of some from the ‘Christocentrism’ of the ecumenical movement of the mid twentieth century. 21 The argument has been that a broader focus is needed to encompass due attention to the Holy Spirit, or the Trinity, or the doctrine of creation, or the imperatives of social justice, or understanding of other religions. Any claim, however, that more attention to these things must mean less attention to the mystery of Jesus Christ suggests a profoundly defective Christology that is ultimately incompatible with Christian orthodoxy. Moreover, this tendency has certainly not helped with the urgent task of enabling fruitful dialogue between the burgeoning global family of Pentecostal churches and the mainstream of the ecumenical movement.
In conclusion, then, the aim of a truly ecumenical commemoration of the Reformation in 2017 deserves support, without evasion of the challenges that must come with it. Remembering the Reformation as an intersecting series of movements for renewal and unity in the gospel can connect the dynamics of the past to the priorities of the present and help to shape an agenda for the ecumenical movement in the coming decade. This would include developing a convincing account of where sinfulness lies, and repentance is therefore needed in the current situation of difference, diversity and division between churches; demonstrating more effectively the inseparability of unity and mission, in theology and in practice; and recovering the centrality of the person of Christ for articulating the oneness of the gospel, the oneness of the Church and how they are always bound together.