2Kolb on Luther and identity:

https://wp.cune.edu/twokingdoms2/files/2017/05/LuthersTruthsThen-and-Now-by-Robert-
Kolb.pdf

https://gudribassakums.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/1999-luther-2kr-kolb.pdf

In July of this year, the World Communion of Reformed Churches signed the Joint
Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, sixteen years after it was first promulgated. In 1999,
it was first agreed to by the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation, and this
development seems like a fitting companion, moreso, perhaps, than the Methodist agreement
in 2006. [Methodist soteriology is perhaps closer to Catholicism]
But there always have been hold-outs to this. [list denominations that didn’t sign on].
And the expressed objections to the Declaration have to be taken seriously, because the simple
fact of the matter is that, if, as the Joint Declaration’s conclusion indicates, there is no longer an
impasse between Lutheran and Catholic teaching and understanding of justification, then the
Reformation did not have to happen.

Some key expressions in the Joint Declaration:

The one that the Lutherans liked: the one about the objective merits of Christ.

The fact is that we are a generation acutely aware of our society’s original sins. The
question of how we can be just is essential, hence the preponderance of “social justice”.

Blessed John Henry Newman opened his lectures on justification by also trying to
harmonize imputation and infusion.

Ratzinger's understanding is that "the sacraments, derived from and linked to the unrepeatable

historical action of Christ, come to be seen as actually participating in and communicating this

action through the mediation of the Church." (Sacramental Presence after Heidegger, 4)

The Ratzinger Report: "the use of the singular is an allusion to the necessity of a personal admission of one's own
fault, to the requisiteness of personal conversion which today is very often hidden in the anonymous mass of 'We', of
the group, of the 'system', of humanity. Hence, in the end, where all have sinned, nobody seems to have sinned. In this
way the sense of personal responsibility, the faults of each one, is dissolved. Naturally the new version of the text can
be understood in a correct manner, because the I and the We are always intertwined in sin--and, of course, in the Lord's
prayer itself we pray, 'Forgive us our trespasses'. But the alteration here does nevertheless reinforce the contemporary
tendency to diminish personal responsibility." (page 51) "The Church presumed that anyone who celebrated the
Eucharist would need to say: I have sinned, Lord, look not upon my sins. It was the obligatory invocation of every
priest: each bishop, the pope himself like the least priest had to pronounce it in [52] his daily Mass. And also the laity,
all the other members of the Church, were called to unite themselves to that recognition of guilt. Therefore, everybody
in the Church, with no exception, had to confess himself to be a sinner, beseech forgiveness and then set out on the
path of his real reform. But this in no way means that the Church as such was also a sinner. The Church--as we have
seen--is a reality that surpasses, mysteriously and infinitely, the sum of her members. In fact, in order to obtain Christ's
forgiveness, my sin was set over against the faith of his Church...It is not only the change from the I to the We, from
personal to collective responsibility. One even gets the impression that some, although unconsciously, may reverse
the prayer by understanding it in this way: 'Look not upon the sins of the Church but upon my faith...' Should this
really happen, the consequences will be grave: the faults of individuals become the faults of the Church..."

And the frank fact of the matter is that, if the Reformation, defined on its own terms, is to be
taken seriously, they have an unassailable point.

“Their [the Tridentine condemnations] true correction regarding the relations between the
churches is not to be achieved through conciling formulae. It could only be achieved through a
fresh understanding that accords with the Gospel.” (“We Will Resist”, signed by the likes of
Gerhard Forde)

[In this month, 500 years after the 95 Thesis, if we look back to what precipitated the
Magisterial Reformation, THERE MAY BE MUCH WE WISH TO CELEBRATE ABOUT THE SOCIAL AND
HISTORICAL AND EVEN ECCLESIAL EFFECTS OF THE REFORMATION. But the fact is that the
Reformation, as it actually transpired, would not have happened for any of the reasons it is often
celebrated. [not marian idolatry; not the Babylonian Captivity of Europe; but for Luther, the
article by which the Church stands or falls is the teaching of justification by faith. And, for him,
and for the Reformers and the traditions that followed him, this has a very specific meaning.
Pope Benedict XVI, the first German Pope since Luther, [stated] that justification by faith
alone is compatible with Catholic dogma, if faith is not understood in a way which precludes
charity. [this is precisely the view of a lot of Evangelicals. This must be, in part, what Bonhoeffer
meant when he referred to “Protestantism without Reformation”.] But this is precisely what it
did preclude for Luther, who is famously said to have declared: “I did not love a just and angry
God, but rather I hated him.” [What is the psychological appeal of the Reformation doctrine?
Why does someone like James White still fulminate against Rome?] [John Piper vs NT Wright]
[Explain the doctrine of imputation here. JUSTIFICATION BEGINS AS A PROCLAMATION. Stress
that it involves union with Christ for Calvin. THE IMAGERY IS THAT OF A COURTROOM, TAKEN
FROM, FOR EXAMPLE, THE BOOK OF ISAIAH.
THE OSIANDER CONTROVERSY SHOWED THAT IMPUTATION AND INFUSION ARE NOT
COMPATIBLE, NOT IN THE WAY THAT MATTERED.
Calvinists have tended more to stress the language of imputation. Calvin was a lawyer. For
Calvin, though, this always had to do with union with Christ.
“I. Those whom God effectually calls, He also freely justifies;[1] not by infusing righteousness
into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as
righteous; not for any thing wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ's sake alone; nor by
imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their
righteousness; but by imputing the obedience and satisfaction of Christ unto them,[2] they
receiving and resting on Him and His righteousness by faith; which faith they have not of
themselves, it is the gift of God.[3]”
“III. Christ, by His obedience and death, did fully discharge the debt of all those that are thus
justified, and did make a proper, real and full satisfaction to His Father's justice in their
behalf.[6] Yet, in as much as He was given by the Father for them;[7] and His obedience and
satisfaction accepted in their stead;[8] and both, freely, not for any thing in them; their
justification is only of free grace;[9] that both the exact justice, and rich grace of God might be
glorified in the justification of sinners.[10]”

The Joint Declaration has a section on the common understanding of justification as “making
righteous”, in which it refers to a common agreement that sins are not imputed.
This may sound morbidly introspective or individualistic today, when the Church is more
conscious than ever of her call to prophetic witness and kingdom building in this world. [but the
appeal is: it is higher than we are. We are also an age more than ever aware of our failings. Irving;
this is probably why Barth was so popular after WWII, and the shattering of our Promethean
illusions.
It is also “maniacally Christocentric”, something that can be seen in many of the old standard
Protestant hymns.
[Christ’s merit is imputed: a word that only appears once in the Joint Declaration, not in
reference to the imputation of merit but to the non-imputation of sin. And, frankly, there is an
impassibility here. Catholicism always affirmed that a person’s merit could remove judgment for
another person’s sins; it could mitigate wrath, as in the doctrine of the Treasury of Merit. But
[RECONCILIATION AT SOME POINT HAS TO GIVE WAY TO REFUTATION HERE]
Louis Bouyer held that [Protestantism is fulfilled in Catholicism], and [if alien
righteousness is at the core of Protestantism then we have to reckon with that.] [Peter Leithart:
the end of Protestantism] And the connection I want to argue for is indeed related to the idea of
an alien righteousness: an alien sanctity. Hans Urs Von Balthasar, the Swiss theologian influenced
by an ex-Reformed mystic, spoke of the Church’s objective sanctity as well as her subjective
sanctity.
[Pope Francis is often warning against Pelagianism.] There is something Augustinian here:
closely linked to Augustine’s refutation of Pelagianism is his refutation of Donatism. [And
Donatism refers to both Baptism and to Orders.]
An illustration of this idea of objective sanctity of the priest is in Catherine Doherty.
 [note the analogy to the famous explanation of Luther’s view of justification:
snow on the dung heap.] This is important: For a whiskey priest, he is not justified, but
he is holy. He does not have an alien righteousness, but he does have an alien sanctity,
not alien inasmuch as it is not truly his, but his in a covenantally mediated sanctity, the
sort of the sacred items in the Tabernacle. The liturgical allusion is deliberate: it situates
the holiness once again within the sphere of the worshipping community. This is part of
what unconditional election meant for the Reformers and the Reformed Scholastics.
And it is often forgotten that this anti-Donatist understanding of what could be called the
objective holiness or efficacy of the ministerial office was upheld by the Magisterial
Reformation, over against the Radical Reformation. Luther, the [LUTHERAN CONFESSIONS], the
39 Articles, and the Westminster Confession of Faith [and London?] all hold to a kind of simul
presbyter et peccator. [A minister may be damned, but his office still makes his administration
of Word and Sacrament efficacious.]
 This is not justification, in the sense of being righteous before God, but it is holiness, a
holiness which is “objective”.
And the way Balthasar explains it is by appealing to the life of Jesus, the human history
and the psychological way of being that he had on earth. Not to an abstract “idea of the holy”
or the numinous.
Modern spirituality is largely the quest for the numinous. This is linked to what we could
call “encounter theology”. Personalism. But the encounter has the objectivity of a covenant, a
conjugal encounter.
This discussion of the specific privileges of the priestly office may seem inopportune in an
era of Church history where we are broadening our understanding of ministry to include the
work of the laity, but in fact, understanding what “the universal priesthood of believers” means
is made possible by understanding what the ministerial priesthood looks like, and, indeed, we
can see precisely that development within the Catholic liturgy.
[When the Council of Trent codified the liturgy in the 16th century, it included the Latin
prayer “look not on my sins but on the faith of your church” which the priest prays silently.
Luther’s Tower Experience, his revolution, is to universalize this experience. And in the Vatican
II Novus Ordo, the prayer is no longer silent, and is now “look not on our sins but on the faith of
your church”. The prayer now has a Lutheran flavour.
Eugene Brand was a Lutheran theologian who was present during the liturgical reforms of
Vatican II who wrote an essay in 1997 on the ecumenism of liturgy. He quoted Bishop James
White (not to be confused with the Protestant apologist): “Why would I wish to teach
ecumenics when I can teach liturgics”. The sacraments are visible words, according to
Augustine.

What active merit does a baby have? A baptized infant may have the principle of faith,
hope, and charity, but seems to have no “works” to offer. The image of infant baptism is
explicitly that of election, of a word spoken to elicit language.
The principle that the baby has within her Is not an abstract imprint but rather the infant
is conformed to Jesus Christ.

Kierkegaard wants a truth that is true for me. " the crucial thing is to find a truth which is
truth for me" Pope Benedict XVI/JPII often talked about “my truth” compared to “God’s
truth”.
John says: If our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts.

Chemnitz on the interpretation of Trent. Chemnitz, “the second Martin”

Assurance was of great importance for the Reformers and remains of great importance to
their heirs.

John Henry Newman: “Catholics hold that there are two justifying Sacraments, in the sense in
which the word "justification" is mainly used in this volume—that is, Sacraments which reconcile
the sinner to God, or sacramenta mortuorum—viz. Baptism and Penance. The other five
are sacramenta vivorum, that is, they presuppose the subject of them to be in a state of grace, or
justified, and increase his justification. To regard the Holy Eucharist as justifying, in the same light
as that in which Baptism justifies, is to confuse the first justification of the sinner with the farther
justification of the already just.”

Gennadius is a later writer (fl. 470), but we may begin with him because he is so
explicit. A century earlier, Zeno of Verona (writing our earliest surviving Latin sermons
in the 370s) presents the paschal baptism as a courtroom scene, in which the initiand is
tried and then executed. The execution is described graphically, and although no blood is
shed the old person is said to have definitely died. [Sermon 1.42, Tractatus]
For us, the courtroom motif, the sinner before God condemned and sentenced to
death, all sound like modern popular evangelicalism. But the present writer’s suspicion is
that for Zeno and his contemporaries, the courtroom was the same as for Gennadius a
century later, that of the confrontation between the gospel and the world, between the
martyr and the judge. [page 65]

Very different is the treatment by Theodore of Mopsuestia of the courtroom motif

in his Baptismal Homilies, where the preliminary rites are portrayed as a court case against
the devil who appears to be the real villain, and at first the candidate appears to be more
weak than evil, and more sinned against than sinning: “When you present yourselves to
give in your names, in the hope of finding a dwelling-place in heaven, the exorcisms are,
so to say, a law-suit with the devil; you are freed from slavery to him by God’s judgment.
However attention reverts to the candidates and their own condemnation:
You stretch out your hands to God in the attitude of one at prayer. For we
have fallen into sin and the sentence of death has thrown us to the ground…The
rest of your body should remain upright, looking to heaven. By this attitude you
present, so to speak, a request to God, asking him like a petitioner for liberation
from your ancient fall and a share in the joys of heaven. [Baptismal Homily 2.1-4]

In the context of baptism in Zeno and Theodore, and in the later tradition of penance
as outlined by Gy, the candidate accepts the verdict and judgment of God, and only by
doing so receives his gracious love and forgiveness. The basic motif remains the same—
the perfect judgment of God. But whereas the martyr is the faithful confessor of Christ, the
candidate preparing for baptism comes in from the world and still shares in its guilt until
that guilt is confessed and forgiveness is received.1

Chrysostom (who also mentions more routine cleansings) and Theodore both stressed a
major exorcism that took place sometime before the vigil. [Finn, Liturgy of Baptism 74.
See for example Chrysostom, Baptismal Instruction 9.11] In Mopsuestia--and in Hippo,
as we will see later--candidates stood barefoot on a sackcloth of goat's hair (the cilicium),
with their heads veiled, their outer cloak stripped off, and their arms outstretched. Then

https://books.google.ca/books?id=CSllSPv63YwC&pg=PA67&lpg=PA67&dq=baptism+judgment
+courtroom&source=bl&ots=uaemQtWpCO&sig=_lKr2IOgBky16jx3cLfwE-
SIMX0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiPp5rr1uvVAhWkgVQKHY4hApYQ6AEINzAF#v=onepage&q=
baptism%20judgment%20courtroom&f=false
 the exorcist would approach and speak "in a loud and prolonged voice" denouncing Satan.
To explain the meaning of this rite, Theodore used a courtroom analogy: the candidate was
the accused; the devil, the plaintiff; and the exorcist, the defense lawyer. By his words, the
exorcist showed that the candidate was innocent, that he had suffered a form of cruel
slavery, and that the devil "had forcibly and unjustly brought him under his rule."
[Theodore, Catechetical Homily 12.22-23]2

"A Critical Comparison of the So-called 'Lawsuit' in the Baptismal Rites"

Charles FD Moule: "If Baptism is a voluntary death, it is also a *pleading guilty*, and
acceptance of the sentence" (of the Last Judgment). Alan Richardson: "To be baptized is to
accept God's verdict of 'guilty' and so to be brought past the great assize and the final
judgment of the last day into the life of the Age to Come."

"Baptism is essentially pleading guilty, accepting the verdict"

“If any one saith, that the just ought not, for their good works done in God, to expect and hope
for an eternal recompense from God, through His mercy and the merit of Jesus Christ, if so be
that they persevere to the end in well doing and in keeping the divine commandments; let him be
anathema.”

--the sacraments have matter and form; form is the Word spoken

--the connection between Judgment and Liturgy can be seen in Daniel 7, where God’s judgment
is portrayed in terms that evoke the Yom Kippur liturgy. The Last Supper was an apocalyptic
event, an eschatological meal:
In 1987, Fr. Andrew Greeley, the priest and sociologist, reported in Religious Change in America
that 3/4ths of those he polled said they preferred to think of God as a friend than as a king.
Protestant New Testament scholar D.A. Carson wonders what the results would have been if they
had been asked if they preferred God as friend or God as judge.
Ignatius of Antioch does not present the bishop so much as successor to the Apostles as

“In this sacrament, the sinner, placing himself before the merciful judgment of God, anticipates
in a certain way the judgment to which he will be subjected at the end of his earthly life”
“although the absolution of the priest is the dispensation of another's bounty, yet is it not a bare
ministry only, whether of announcing the Gospel, or of declaring that sins are forgiven, but is
after the manner of a judicial act, whereby sentence is pronounced by the priest as by a judge”

https://books.google.ca/books?id=1SMlrfzsK1oC&printsec=frontcover&dq=patristic+courtroom
++baptism&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjR9fm63-
vVAhUCwWMKHRaXBRoQ6AEIRzAG#v=snippet&q=courtroom&f=false
“And for the presbyters let there be assigned a place in the eastern part of the house; and let the
bishop's throne be set in their midst, and let the presbyters sit with him.”
“In the middle let the bishop’s throne be placed, and on each side of him let the presbytery sit down;
and let the deacons stand near at hand, in close and small girt garments, for they are like the
mariners and managers of the ship: with regard to these, let the laity sit on the other side, with all
quietness and good order. “
“eschatological mysticism”

What Protestantism offers is a new shape for our kerygma, and for our understanding of
the liturgy, for the space where Church occurs. The liturgy can be understood here, not merely
in the sacrificial symbolism that the Tridentine rite stressed, nor in the image of a communal meal

But this gets into ecclesiology: what is the Church that has faith, that “occurs” at liturgy
and in Word and Sacrament? The Second Vatican Council does not have a document on the
Blessed Virgin Mary; instead, [she gets a] chapter in Lumen Gentium, the Constitution on the
Church.
The Reformation was not only a rejection of Aristotle but in some ways also a rejection of
Plato, as Barth highlighted. [Luther’s nominalism is an escape from what John Howard Yoder
called the “ontocracy” into the freedom of God; the fact that God is Pure Act means something
new now.] But in some ways the Reformation was a development of the Augustinian idea of the
visible and invisible Church, which is still Platonist. Balthasar—working from Augustine as well as
other fathers3--that there are “types” or “archetypes”, but that they are historical. This is the
source of his idea of the Chrisotlogical constellation.

When I stand before God, what do I have to offer? All of these interesting academic points of
convergence have to come to a head in this existential question. Do I fall on the merits of Christ
and cling to His Cross? “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” The posture at Mass, originally
taken only by the priest but now by the whole congregation, is

3
[8] Augustine, De sancta virginitate 6, PL 40, 399; CPL 368.

[9] Augustine, Sermo XXV, 7, PL 46, 938 (G. Morin 162, 19-163,8); CPL 368. For the patristic
understanding of the Mary-Church parallel, see L. Gambero, Mary and the Fathers of the
Church: The Blessed Virgin Mary in Patristic Thought, trans. by T. Buffer (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1999); H. Rahner, Our Lady and the Church; A. Müller, Ecclesia–Maria: Die
Einheit Marias und der Kirche, Paradosis: Beiträge zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur
und Theologie, ed. O. Perler, (Freiburg/Switzerland: Universitätsverlag, 1953); J. C. Plumpe,
Mater Ecclesia: An inquiry into the concept of the Church as Mother in early Christianity
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1943).
 If there is value in ecumenism, then we want to celebrate the Reformation, and to do
that we must appreciate what the Reformation was for. Not merely how it coincided with the
Renaissance or how it strove for the same ends as the Counter-Reformation. The Reformation
would not have occurred based on the reasons that many Protestants today are not Catholic.
Bonhoeffer called this phenomenon “Protestantism without Reformation”. “The article by
which the church stands or falls” is not considered by most Evangelicals to be part of “mere
Christianity”. And in fact, the doctrine THAT THEY BELIEVE IN in its full implications is perhaps
not what was motivating Luther and Calvin.
The are two great intellectual and psychological appeals: that our assurance of salvation
does not come from ourselves, and that it is “maniacally theocentric” IN THE WORDS OF. It
centres on the doctrine of imputation, a word which does not appear in the Joint Declaration,
which is probably why SOME DENOMINATIONS did not sign the Declaration: BECAUSE THEY
REALIZE THEY ONLY EXIST BECAUSE OF THAT UNDERSTANDING; FOR THEM, THAT IS THE
GOSPEL. [comparably: Evangelicals and Catholics Together]
There is an impasse here between imputation and infusion. Catholicism may be able to
draw from the Reformation for some ways to articulate her dogma, but THE THEOLOGIES ARE
ULTIMATELY INCOMPATIBLE. [define these terms] The Reformers rightly saw this
incompatibility and this is what made the Reformation inevitable.

--Jung and projection in love: the lover projects onto the beloved, and this idealization conceals
their faults; there is an analogy to a personalist account of grace. This projection conceals
faults.
“Still another description of grace in interpersonal categories is suggested in an article by
Charles Meyer. [Charles R. Meyer, ‘A Personalist View of Grace: The Ghost of Galileo’, Chicago
Studies 7 (1968) 283-301] Love is described in Sartre’s terms as ‘wanting to be loved,’ which
seeks to ‘seduce’ the other—though without force or deceit—to ‘capture his subjectivity’; love
is also compared to Jung’s ‘projection of an image’ of an ideal on to another, so that the other’s
defects are no longer seen. God’s love or grace, according to Meyer, likewise seeks the love of
men, seeks to ‘seduce’ them, and ‘projects’ an ideal on them.”

Eugene Brand was one of the

Several times I have heard James White quoted as saying, "Why would I wish to teach ecumenics when I
can teach liturgics?" Nothing a congregation does during the week is as ecumenical as its celebration of
the Eucharist.

--Catholicism has no Confession of Dositheus

 The perseverance of the saints may smack of the sin of presumption (though Augustine
proposed and the Council of Trent defined the gift of final perseverance) but there is a
way in which the P of TULIP is part of Catholic dogma: the immutability of sacramental
character. A baptized or ordained person has that status eternally.
 Is the covenant objectively holy because of Christ’s merits?
 Why RC Sproul rejected the Joint Declaration
 Even conceding that, as Pope Benedict says, Catholics can affirm salvation by faith alone
if faith does not exclude charity. But that was precisely the faith that the Reformers held
as salvific.” And this is part of the appeal of the Reformation faith: although
Catholicism may teach that faith, hope, and charity are infused into us, we often have
the experience of not loving or believing enough and thus needing God’s mercy.
 The Federal Vision purports to be in continuity with the tradition of John Calvin and the
Puritans in their understanding of the covenant and of sacraments. Someone like John
Robbins disagrees but they seem to have a point.
 The ecclesial understanding of the FV is less rarefied; there is no longer a visible and
invisible church but a historical and an eschatological church.
 Infant baptism is in perfect concord with the Calvinist (and dare we say the Augustinian
and Thomistic) understandings of election
 The FV is so controversial Douglas Wilson no longer identifies with it although his
positions are the same
 The objectivity of the covenant is the objectivity of holiness. Justus (objective), peccator
(subjective) in the Reformed mind. For Balthasar (influenced by the formerly Reformed
Adrienne von Speyr) this subsists in the hierarchy, which has a precedent within the
Reformation’s rejection of Donatism. The objective sanctity must have both an
institutional and an individual meaning.
 The creedal confession that the Church is Holy
 The Reformation attitude (simul iustus et peccator) has a special power for the Church
today which is coming to terms with her many failings. Here in Canada her complicity
with the residential school system is only one example. The Christian apologetics must
nowadays as perhaps they always had to present the Gospel along with a frank
presentation of her own failures. Does this mitigate her witness? (Omar Khadr, global
warming) The Church’s failings are not part of her mission, but they are part of her
kerygma, which forever serves as a corrective against the Pelagianism which Pope
Francis has often warned against. Some of the traditional movements in the church
have been identified as having a Pelagian streak by the Holy Father.
 The power of the performative word
 Part of the tension comes from the fact that Luther identified concupiscence with sin.
Thus one could be “sinner” and justified simultaneously.
 The objective sanctity of church comes from the subjective sanctity of Christ. For
Balthasar this is very Marian. His theology is Irenaean. Irenaeus speaks of active and
passive obedience but for him active obedience belongs to the Virgin Mary. This is the
basis of Balthasar saying that Mary is the archetype of the Church but also of his
repeated insistence that her Immaculate Conception is a retroactive application of the
merits of Christ. Thus the objective sanctity of the Church is tied back in the to the
merits of Christ
 Transformative graces are present in the sacraments but could be resisted
 Some devotional literature presents Christ present in the soul of the mortal sinner the
same way he was present in the grave. Jean Danielou draws attention to the patristic
 understanding of what we recognize as the sacrament of confirmation: Christ growing
within the soul. But his presence is always assured. One can lose their salvation wihout
losing Christ.
 Luther and the 39 Articles understands the minister’s efficacy to come from his
ordination and office rather than his personal sanctity. The Westminster Confession
(London Baptist?) hints at something similar.
 The point at which reconciliation ends and refutation begins is the difference between
imputation and infusion
 What can Catholicism take from the stress on the declaratory emphasis that
Protestantism has? In fact the sacramental theology/dogma of the Church has
similarities: confession, baptism, are declarations (form and matter) the throneroom of
God is liturgical. Thus liturgical theology has its eschatological components thus the
importance of the revised prayer: look not on our sins but on faith
 Holiness is an objective condition a la marriage
 The Platonic church with a kind of ideal holiness will not do. Irenaeus and Anselm.
Human fulfllment. Barth’s actualism. That is not configured in a directly soteriological
way. But in an ecclesial way. So the movement tends in a Catholic direction.
 In what sense is a lapsed baptized person still holy? What is the locus of their holiness?
The indelible character of baptism. But whence derives the holiness of that character?
 Baptism is immersion into the mission of Christ, that is to say, into His life.
 The appeal of Balthasar’s theology is that it configures all reality to the subjective states
of Christ.
 Ecumenical theology: theology within the parametres of ecumenical statements and
exercising creative fidelity within them
 The Reformation was formed by declarations and decrees primarily on justification