wfn.org | Swiss Protestant federation approves Joint Declaration, despite

[FRANK_IMHOFF.parti@ecunet.org (FRANK IMHOFF)]

queries
Astonishment over dispute among German theologians

BERN, Switzerland/GENEVA, Feb. 19, 1998 (lwi) - The Swiss Protestant Church
Federation (SEK), the association of all Reformed and Methodist churches in
Switzerland, has approved the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of
Justification between Lutherans and Catholics. "In the context of the
traditional faith and order oikumene, the Joint Declaration is a remarkable
document. Considering it is the core of Reformatory and especially Lutheran
theology, the Doctrine of Justification, that is being debated, the
agreement on this issue reached in the Joint Declaration admittedly is
astonishing", the SEK statement says.

The SEK does not share fear expressed, especially in Germany, that the
Joint Declaration could, among other things, jeopardize inner-Protestant
church fellowships, such as the Leuenberg Church Fellowship: "Even if we do
not consider the basic consensus described in the Joint Declaration to be a
solid bridge of understanding for us with the Roman Catholic Church --
which, according to what is said above, is not the case --, this would not
be a reason for us not to rejoice if other sister churches within the
Leuenberg Church Fellowship do, in fact, consider this bridge to be solid
enough and use it for themselves."

Despite a positive reception in principle, the SEK does query the Joint
Declaration. It accuses the document of having a "fixation on the past":
"Problems are painstakingly and passionately being solved here which, we
believe, no one any longer has today, nor can even understand." According
to the SEK, ecumenical understanding on the question of "right teaching"
should take place in "people's contemporary thinking and language
patterns".

The intense controversy surrounding the Joint Declaration in Germany is met
with "astonishment" within the SEK. The dispute, it states, reminds us of
the Protestant theologian Fulbert Steffensky who said that "so-called
church-dividing issues are issues of the bishops and theological
specialists. They are not issues of the people". In this connection, the
SEK noted a marked "difference between German Lutheran culture and Swiss
Reformed culture": "This debate entirely misses the point of our being a
church and our struggling with meeting our responsibility today as
witnesses of the gospel in an increasingly post-modern, and at the same
time secularized and multireligious context."

The SEK, therefore, rather considers the Joint Declaration's significance
to be at a "symbolic level", because "the present model of ecumenical
efforts is fixated almost exclusively on solving abstract theological
problems of the past, the practical, substantial relevance of which seems
to be somewhat minimal for us today".

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