Theology Today - Vol 19, No. 1 - April 1962 - BOOK REVIEW

118 - Reformation and Catholicity

Reformation and Catholicity
By Gustaf Aulén
Translated by Eric H. Wahlstrom
203 pp. Philadelphia, Muhlenberg Press, 1961. $3.75.

Bishop Aulén has attempted a task which needs to be done more widely in Churches which take their theological participation in the ecumenical movement seriously. Starting from the conviction that the creeds demand that a Church consider in what way it is "catholic" if it is to be a Church at all, Aulén engages in an examination of the Reformation, mainly on the Lutheran side, to determine wherein its catholicity lies. "We cannot join in the confession about the catholicity of the Church without seeking to clarify the attitude of our own communion to the catholicity we confess" (p. 178).

This standpoint leads Aulén to consider current ecumenical developments from an unusual point of view. He is not concerned with the "more or less official reports of ecumenical conferences" but with "what has taken place and what is taking place within different communions." Aulén goes on to write, "we are concerned with the inner front where traditional ways of stating the question, ways that have been securely held to for a long time, have been undergoing obvious shifts" (p. 190).

The discussion, of course, is not limited to developments within Lutheranism. Rather, it is a part of Aulén's intuition of the ecumenical importance of what goes on within confessions and communions that he must evaluate such developments in the light of the whole ecumenical scene. Indeed, such movements can only be understood against the backdrop of ecumenical activity which motivates them. Seen only as the internal development of the various traditions of Christendom, they do not make sense. The changes described in Aulén's book concern first of all the attitudes of other confessions toward the Reformation. One of the most useful sections of the volume, for example, summarizes the new attitude being taken by Roman Catholic theologians toward Luther and his successors, an attitude which plays down the traditional charges of heresy and which suggests that genuine Christian insights are obscured in Reformation thought by perverse influence of late medieval nominalism. Similar treatment is given to new attitudes toward the Reformation in Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, and the post-Reformation free Churches. The treatment of Orthodoxy, in particular, is now dated in view both of the greatly increased participation of Orthodox Churches in the ecumenical move-

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ment, and of the new themes that are being sounded in Orthodox-Protestant discussion.

The fact that his own confession is seen, even by others, to occupy a place within catholic Christendom provides Aulén with a starting-point for evaluating its catholicity. The method by which Aulén does this is basically an application of the Christological technique of Faith and Order to the problem of tradition and traditions. The central Reformation formula, "justification by faith alone," is not an isolated dogma among many others. The doctrine of justification is "a statement about that continuing redemptive activity which the living Christ, present and active in the Word and the sacraments, carries on in and through his Church" (p. 60, Aulén's italics). That the central confession of Christendom is put in terms of justification stems from Luther's battle, in part against a doctrine of salvation with moralistic features, and in part against the spiritualism of the fanatics. But the theological meaning of justification is simply that man's salvation rests upon Christ's redemptive act alone. Every element in the confession of the Reformation is similarly to be tested for its fundamental fidelity to the central Christian confession. Aulén applies this method to Reformation assertions about Scripture and tradition, about liturgy, and about church order. In the process he counters criticisms of the Reformation that have been made by writers of other confessions.

On the whole, it must be said that in Aulén's hands, the Lutheran Reformation comes off extremely well. So well, in fact, that one may doubt whether Christological analysis proves to be sufficiently objective and historically penetrating for the announced purposes of the inquiry. It is too easy to say that a given doctrine or practice is, or is not, a reaffirmation of the central Christian confession of the Lordship of Christ. It is not clear at times whether one is claiming that a given doctrine is a mark of catholicity because of its inward correspondence to the confession of Christ or whether a given doctrine is faithful to the centrality of Christ, at least in its intentions, because it was promulgated within the Catholic Church.

There is no more pressing theological problem than that of finding a really objective and critical way of testing doctrines and practices in the Church for their catholic character. The Christological method too often turns into subjective affirmation of what this or that doctrine "really means." One wonders, indeed, whether it is justifiable to rewrite doctrinal history in terms of a theological principle certainly not understood in past epochs in the same way as now. Christological, or better, fully Trinitarian, analysis of doctrines is perhaps most justifiable as a means of forming and testing what we must now say to each other and to the world.

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It is less applicable to evaluating the catholic character of the theological work of earlier generations.

Aulén attempts to cover too much ground. In less than 200 pages the writer ranges over the whole contemporary ecumenical scene and the entire period of the Lutheran Reformation. There is scarcely an important head of doctrine that is not given a paragraph. The book suffers, moreover, from the lack of sustained argument. It gives the impression of being a collection of incomplete studies of various matters which possess a certain unity of theme, but which have not been written into a single coherent exposition. Aulén has tried to put the variegated fruits of many years of ecumenical participation into one brief volume. The result, while not without movement and direction, is at many points bewildering to the reader. The outlook and purpose of the study, however, can only be applauded. Representatives of other confessions might well attempt similar analyses of the meaning of catholicity in their own church life and history.

Lewis S. Mudge
Geneva, Switzerland