THE PROBLEM OF COMMUNION BETWEEN THE EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH AND THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH

1972 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Edmund Schlink
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Lutheran Church ◽  
Evangelical Lutheran Church ◽  
Evangelical Lutheran

Martin Luther in Denmark

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niels Henrik Gregersen
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Lutheran Church ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Two Kingdoms ◽  
Evangelical Lutheran Church ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Evangelical Lutheran

In Denmark, Martin Luther was initially seen as a humanist reformer on a par with other humanists, but during the 1520s he increasingly became a divisive figure separating those wanting only to reform the Roman Catholic church from within, and those working for a break with Rome. Ways of understanding Luther differed widely within the evangelical camp too. Early “Lutherans” in Denmark, such as Hans Tausen and the drafters of the Confessio Hafniensis of 1530, presented legalistic and spiritualistic elements. In 1536, however, King Christian III announced the Reformation of Denmark, using robust Wittenberg theologians such as Johann Bugenhagen and Peder Palladius to reform the church, the university, and the society at large. Since then Denmark has been an unusually homogeneous Lutheran country, compared to Lutheran areas of Germany in the 17th and 18th centuries, including Luther’s own Sachsen. Yet Danish views of Luther have changed significantly over the centuries, especially after the national awakening in the 19th century. Thereafter, Luther was seen as a church father, though also as a somewhat remote figure. In 20th-century theology, N. F. S. Grundtvig and Søren Kierkegaard served as mediating figures between premodern Lutheranism and contemporary theology. After World War II, the Reformation is still widely regarded as formative for Danish history, albeit in combination with other inspirations. A secular mindset grew stronger both within and outside the Evangelical-Lutheran Church, with some promoting a liberalist interpretation of Luther’s two-kingdoms doctrine, and others challenging the Evangelical-Lutheran Church’s status as the “People’s Church.” By January 1, 2016, 76.9 percent of the Danish population were tax-paying members of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Denmark.

Historical Scholarship and Ecumenical Dialogue

Horizons ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 420-424
Author(s):  
Carter Lindberg
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Final Exam ◽  
Ecumenical Dialogue ◽  
Lutheran Church ◽  
Hundredth Anniversary ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of

I am honored to participate in this theological roundtable on the five-hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. I do so as a lay Lutheran church historian. In spite of the editors’ “prompts,” the topic reminds me of that apocryphal final exam question: “Give a history of the universe with a couple of examples.” “What do we think are the possibilities for individual and ecclesial ecumenism between Protestants and Catholics? What are the possibilities for common prayer, shared worship, preaching the gospel, church union, and dialogue with those who are religiously unaffiliated? Why should we commemorate or celebrate this anniversary?” Each “prompt” warrants a few bookshelves of response. The “Protestant Reformation” itself is multivalent. The term “Protestant” derives from the 1529 Diet of Speyer where the evangelical estates responded to the imperial mandate to enforce the Edict of Worms outlawing them. Their response, Protestatio, “testified” or “witnessed to” (pro testari) the evangelical estates’ commitment to the gospel in the face of political coercion (see Acts 5:29). It was not a protest against the Roman Catholic Church and its doctrine. Unfortunately, “Protestant” quickly became a pejorative name and then facilitated an elastic “enemies list.” “Reformation,” traditionally associated with Luther's “Ninety-Five Theses” (1517, hence the five-hundredth anniversary), also encompasses many historical and theological interpretations. Perhaps the Roundtable title reflects the effort in From Conflict to Communion: Lutheran-Catholic Common Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017 (2013) to distinguish Luther's reformational concern from the long historical Reformation (Protestantism), so that this anniversary may be both “celebrated” and self-critically “commemorated.”

A Pneumatological Description of Sacrifice for Mitigating Idolatry

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-225
Author(s):  
David Farina Turnbloom
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Sacramental Theology ◽  
Eucharistic Theology ◽  
Lutheran Church ◽  
The Way

The nature of eucharistic sacrifice has been an ongoing point of contention between the Lutheran Church and the Roman Catholic Church. Drawing from the pneumatology and sacramental theology of Thomas Aquinas, this article provides a way of describing eucharistic sacrifice that is intended to help avoid the idolatrous notions of sacrifice often found lurking in eucharistic theology. The article concludes by using the linguistic concepts of metaphor and synecdoche to describe the way that the language of “sacrifice” can be strategically used to mitigate the concerns that continue to arise in Lutheran/Catholic dialogues.

Martin Luther: Prophet to The Church Catholic

1984 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-327
Author(s):  
James Atkinson
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
General Acceptance ◽  
Lutheran Church ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Lutheran Theology ◽  
Subsequent Rise ◽  
The Church

Controversy forced Luther into a confessional position which history has hardened almost into a kind of denominationalism. The subsequent rise of the ‘Lutheran’ Church, and of ‘Lutheran’ theology, owing to Luther's excommunication and his exclusion from the Roman Catholic Church, have contributed to a general acceptance of this evaluation. Save for a few distinguished Roman Catholic and Protestant scholars, who have worked on the sources and allow Luther to speak for himself, most historians, and certainly the general reader, work on the assumption that Luther is such a ‘confessional’ figure. To find a truer understanding of Luther, of what he was concerned to say to the Church of his day, it is necessary to detach him from this confessional, denominational location by setting him in the Catholic environment in which he was born, in which he was educated, and to which he felt called by God to speak the Word of God. He should be seen as a reformer of a Catholicism which had largely become de-spiritualised and secularised. He offered a reformatio of that which had suffered a de-formatio, and did so for the sake of God, propter deum, as he put it. He sought only to reform a Catholicism which he loved, and to reform it, not as he thought fit, but according to the intent of Jesus Christ and his Apostles, and that on the lines of solid biblical scholarship, authentic tradition and fair argument.

Popes, Saints, Beato Bones and other Images at War

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-364
Author(s):  
Kristin Norget
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Peripheral Populations ◽  
New Strategy ◽  
Catholic History ◽  
Local Cultures

This article explores new political practices of the Roman Catholic Church by means of a close critical examination of the beatification of the Martyrs of Cajonos, two indigenous men from the Mexican village of San Francisco Cajonos, Oaxaca, in 2002. The Church’s new strategy to promote an upsurge in canonizations and beatifications forms part of a “war of images,” in Serge Gruzinski’s terms, deployed to maintain apparently peripheral populations within the Church’s central paternalistic fold of social and moral authority and influence, while at the same time as it must be seen to remain open to local cultures and realities. In Oaxaca and elsewhere, this ecclesiastical technique of “emplacement” may be understood as an attempt to engage indigenous-popular religious sensibilities and devotion to sacred images while at the same time implicitly trying to contain them, weaving their distinct local historical threads seamlessly into the fabric of a global Catholic history.

DIALOG Z HUMANIZMEM RENESANSOWYM W DZIEŁACH PIOTRA SKARGI / PIOTR SKARGA’S DIALOGUE WITH RENAISSANCE HUMANISM

2013 ◽  
Vol 54 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 405-424
Author(s):  
Alina Nowicka -Jeżowa
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Ignatian Spirituality ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Renaissance Humanism ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

Summary The article tries to outline the position of Piotr Skarga in the Jesuit debates about the legacy of humanist Renaissance. The author argues that Skarga was fully committed to the adaptation of humanist and even medieval ideas into the revitalized post-Tridentine Catholicism. Skarga’s aim was to reformulate the humanist worldview, its idea of man, system of values and political views so that they would fit the doctrine of the Roman Catholic church. In effect, though, it meant supplanting the pluralist and open humanist culture by a construct as solidly Catholic as possible. He sifted through, verified, and re-interpreted the humanist material: as a result the humanist myth of the City of the Sun was eclipsed by reminders of the transience of all earthly goods and pursuits; elements of the Greek and Roman tradition were reconnected with the authoritative Biblical account of world history; and man was reinscribed into the theocentric perspective. Skarga brought back the dogmas of the original sin and sanctifying grace, reiterated the importance of asceticism and self-discipline, redefined the ideas of human dignity and freedom, and, in consequence, came up with a clear-cut, integrist view of the meaning and goal of the good life as well as the proper mission of the citizen and the nation. The polemical edge of Piotr Skarga’s cultural project was aimed both at Protestantism and the Erasmian tendency within the Catholic church. While strongly coloured by the Ignatian spirituality with its insistence on rigorous discipline, a sense of responsibility for the lives of other people and the culture of the community, and a commitment to the heroic ideal of a miles Christi, taking headon the challenges of the flesh, the world, Satan, and the enemies of the patria and the Church, it also went a long way to adapt the Jesuit model to Poland’s socio-cultural conditions and the mentality of its inhabitants.

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