“Is the Reformation Over?”
A conversation among friends: George Lindbeck, David Burrell, and Stanley Hauerwas

By John W. Wright
Professor of Theology and Christian Scriptures
Point Loma Nazarene University

“Is the Reformation Over?” Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom asked this question a few years ago – and cautiously answered no. Stanley Hauerwas, one of our guests here, asked a related question in the Spring 2006 volume of the Wesleyan Theological Journal: “Is Protestantism Over?” Hauerwas states, “I think . . . that we may be coming to a time when the story we call the “Reformation” will not determine our understanding of where we are as Protestant Christians. Bluntly put, we may be living during a time when we are watching Protestantism coming to an end. . . . When Protestanism became an end in itself, when Protestants became denominations, we became unintelligible to ourselves. Our inability to resist the market, our inability as Protestants not to become consumers of our religious preferences, is but an indication that we are in trouble. Of course, Roman Catholicism is also beset by the challenge of choice, which helps explain why Catholicism in America may now be a form of Protestantism!” If Roman Catholics have become Protestants, a recent article in the Christian Century wrote about significant Protestant theologians who have joined Roman to become Catholic because they found there the commitments to an evangelical, catholic, and orthodox faith in a way that they did not find supported in their mainline and evangelical Protestant denominations. These are strange times. Is the Reformation over?

A little closer to home here at Nazarene Theological Seminary, a year earlier William Abraham wrote in the Wesleyan Theological Journal, “The bad news is that half a century of splendid historical investigation has unwittingly become a worthy obituary notice for the death of the Wesleyan theological tradition.” Abraham argues that Wesley points beyond himself into a deeper catholicity of the church. Wesley “brings us into a wholly different way of thinking about the wider canonical heritage that we will find the full salvation of our souls. It is also within that canonical heritage that we will find the charter for a whole new way of doing theology.”

Such musings may surprise those of us accustomed to hearing repetitive concerns for “Wesleyan distinctives” or attempts to establish “Nazarene denominational identity” or “holiness institutional core values.” These concerns, however, arise from a similar observation: Christianity in the United States has become increasingly co-opted by social, political, and economic ideologies in which consumeristic needs of local congregations define more and more the nature of the gathering of the body of Christ. Whereas Hauerwas and Abraham turn to a notion of catholicity to avoid the idolatry of the marketplace, others understandably seek to brand “distinctives” to order to sustain long term ecclesial institutional viability within a highly competitive market place.

“Wesleyans,” “holiness people,” the Church of the Nazarene rest uneasy with such assimilative movements. We vaguely remember vestiges of language of being called out “from the world” into the church by the Spirit; we read Wesley’s consistent concern with the “church catholic” and his claim that the “particular glory” of his Methodists was their catholicity within their particularity – one might say, their practice of reconciliation without capitulation. We know that the National Camp Meeting Association for the Promotion of Holiness intentionally called its original meetings to pursue holiness among all believers; we remember persons like Albert Outler who retrieved the works of John Wesley while devoting himself to working for the visible unity of the church catholic; we celebrate the thought and work of persons like Paul Bassett and Donald Dayton for their work in representing the holiness movement to those not in connexion with us. We may even know that the Preamble to the Manual of the Church of the Nazarene states that the fundamental purpose of our entering into discipline together is to “preserve our God-given heritage, the faith once delivered to the saints . . . and also that we may cooperate effectually with other branches of the Church of Jesus Christ.” These provide a counterweight that moves us sympathetically towards a catholicity of witness amidst either a cultural captivity of congregations or the branding of our particular type of “worship celebration.”

I want to suggest a deeper reason why the discussion is of particular importance to take place here at Nazarene Theological Seminary. The Church of the Nazarene is, to my knowledge, one of two churches whose polity witnesses to the worldwide catholicity of the church within one ecclesiastic order. We are over a quarter century into the internationalization of the church; we are just now really beginning to struggle with its significance. The witness of the church outside the United States has called into question many of the cultural conventions thought central to earlier practices of the faith grounded in Midwestern American culture; we are trying to learn to relate the locality of church practice and structure with a catholicity that spans the world. It is difficult. Balancing consumerist choices is a hard process globally.

Dr. James Hudson, an architect of internationalization, spoke to me openly in 1980 about using the Roman Catholic communion as a model for internationalization. Since, then, however, we have often used neo-liberal, globalization language to “spread Jesus” to the nations. Non-North Americans balk at such neo-conservative language for they recognize that it keeps the church based geographically and nationally in the church’s financial center. Frictions and penetrating questions arise. God is making us the church.

A genuine internationalization of the church requires a notion of catholicity; there are not two orders of baptism, one for wealthy North Americans; another for poor Africans. Questions of catholicity within the Church of the Nazarene raise questions of relationships to other churches now, and not only now, but also relationships to believers in the past, and those in the future. An international church is a catholic church; how one defines that catholicity is of exceeding importance. Will it be found in a vital evangelical, catholic, and orthodox faith as practiced and preserved through the ages to allow the appropriate cultural, local variations that do not annul, but enrich that catholicity? How can the faith remain vital as it is passed down from generation to generation, inviting others into the life of God through Christ?

This inner-ecclesial situation is not unlike that which Pope John XXIII found himself in 1959 when he was raised to the Pontificate. He decided to call an ecumenical council, eventually named “Vatican II” to show that is was not a merely continuation of the prematurely terminated Vatican I. In his opening sermon to the Council, he said the inspiration to call the Council “was completely unexpected, like a flash of heavenly light, shedding sweetness in eyes and hearts. And at the same time it gave rise to a great fervour throughout the world in expectation of the holding of the Council.” The Council was anchored in the past; in French, it was a Ressourcement, a return to the Sources: “The greatest concern of the Ecumenical Council is this: that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be guarded and taught more efficaciously.” This impulse was championed by French Catholic theologians in the mid-century, the Nouvelle Theologie, theologians like Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, Etionne Gilson, and Jean Daniélou.

Yet this Ressourcement could not be simple repetition. The church needed a renewal that cannot come from the repetition of formulas and a fortress like church oblivious to changes in the world that mediates an external grace to the faithful whose real life is lived in a completely distinct realm: “But at the same time she must ever look to the present, to the new conditions and new forms of life introduced into the modern world, which have opened new avenues to the Catholic apostolate.” This would be called in Italian would be called in Italian, “Aggiornamento”, the up-dating of the mission and language for the church in response to the world by the Council.

John XXIII struggled to keep these two strands, the Ressourcement and the Aggiornamento in proper balance, as Roman Catholicism has ever since. John XXIII’s vision for the Council was to take “a step forward toward a doctrinal penetration and a formation of consciousness in faithful and perfect conformity to the authentic doctrine, which, however, should be studied and expounded through the methods of research and through the literary forms of modern thought. The substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another. And it is the latter that must be taken into great consideration with patience if necessary, everything being measured in the forms and proportions of a magisterium which is predominantly pastoral in character.”

The significance of Vatican II is hard to gauge for those of us who did not live through it, not only for Roman Catholics, but all Christians, indeed, the whole world. Its interpretation and its implementation have not been without struggle. Documents on the reform of worship, on divine revelation, on the ecumenical task of the church, on the church’s relationship with non-Christian religions, particularly the special relationship Christianity has with Judaism, on the nature and mission of the church in the world all have influenced theological discourse and the church’s practices in the last forty-five years.

For our guests here tonight and tomorrow, I would venture to say that three particular documents stand out of particular importance: “Unitatis Redintegratio,” the Decree on Ecumenism; “Nostra Aetate,” the Declaration on the Church to non-Christian Religions, and “Lumen Gentium,” the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. Such changes in Roman Catholic Church as articulated in Vatican II have reached beyond Roman Catholicism, and touched in places to renew the faithful thought and witness of the church in the modern world in ways that we are only now beginning to realize. These changes make it possible to raise with a force the question, “Is the Reformation Over?” as a question of hope, of faithfulness, as an answer to the Son’s prayer that the Father might “sanctify them in truth” by the power of the Spirit so that they might be one, so that the world might believe.

Our three guests here all have lived in the wake of Vatican II, the forces and thoughts that gave rise to it, the events themselves, the continuing aftermath as God continues to lead God’s church. Their years of witness, thought, conversation, listening, teaching, and writing have borne great fruit. At first sight little seems to bind our three interviews together; one is an ecumenist; another a philosophical theologian; another a Christian ethicist. On closer examination, however, we find among them that they all possess graduate degrees from Yale University, though they never studied either with or under each other. To look deeper, we might recognize in each an attempt to go back to the Christian tradition to try to think a new modernity, especially from the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas, to attempt to heal the Reformation by re-thinking the presuppositions that gave rise to it. Even more deeply, we discover friendships, decades- long relationships and conversations that have sustained and fructified each others work, friendships made possible by the ecumenical achievements arising out of Vatican II. We will explore with them their thought and lives, their experiences and their wisdom, their convictions and their hopes, in interviews tomorrow.

To have the opportunity to listen to either George Lindbeck, David Burrell, or Stanley Hauerwas alone is a profound honor; to have the opportunity to listen to them all in interaction with each other is a gift of a gracious God. If I may have the honor of introducing each of them in preparation for tomorrow:

Doctor George Lindbeck grew up as a son of Lutheran missionaries in China. He attended Yale Divinity School for his M Div, graduating in 1946. He studied with Etionne Gilson at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto before spending time in 1950-51 at the University of Paris. He joined the Yale faculty in 1951, receiving his PhD from Yale as a medievalist in 1955, writing his dissertation on Duns Scotus. Mr. Lindbeck was an official Delegated Observer to the Second Vatican Council, representing the World Lutheran Federation, and received honorary doctorates for his service there from his alma mater, Augustana College and from the University of Notre Dame. Mr. Lindbeck has an esteemed publication record, particularly in ecumenics. More significantly, however, has been his consistent behind the scenes work with ecclesial documents, culminating in the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification by the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church, officially promulgated in 1999. Most recently he has signed “In One Body through the Cross: The Princeton Proposal for Christian Unity”, an ecumenical document sponsored by the Centre for Catholic and Evangelical Theology. He remains active in publications, recently working on an edition of works by his own theology professor at Yale, Robert Lowry Calhoun.

Father David Burrell, CSC, showed up at the University of Notre Dame as an undergraduate about the same time that Professor Lindbeck arrived in France – and in a sense, he has never left. He has visited many exotic places as a member of the Congregation of Holy Cross – Rome, Jerusalem, Cairo, Bangladesh, Princeton. He received his Licentiate in Sacred Theology from the Gregorian University in Rome in 1960, where he studied with Bernard Lonergan. He immediate matriculated at Yale, and completed his PhD in Philosophy at Yale in 1965. He has done ground breaking work in philosophical theology. His work has been instrumental in the recent creative re-readings of the theological program of Thomas Aquinas in terms conducive to contemporary analytic philosophy, particularly the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein. This work has taken him into publications concerning analogical language, particularly about God, the relationship between God and creation, and the interaction of Jewish, Islamic, and Christian thought about this relationship between God and creation. He was chair of the Department of Theology at Notre Dame from 1971-80, and has served as the Rector of the Ecumenical Institute for Theological Research at Tantur in Jerusalem, where he now resides for the majority of the year. He is the Theodore M. Hesburgh CSC Professor Emeritus in the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame.

Our third guest, Professor Stanley Hauerwas, showed up at Yale Divinity School as a M Div student while Professor Lindbeck was in Rome, and Professor Burrell in the midst of his PhD studies in Philosophy. Professor Hauerwas is the son of a Texan Methodist bricklayer who decided to study theology at Yale Divinity School because he never could get saved at the Sunday night evangelistic service in his evangelical Methodist church. He continued at Yale following his M Div and received his PhD in Theological Ethics in 1968 with the completion of a dissertation interacting with such thinkers as Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Bultmann, Barth, Calvin, Wesley, and Edwards. He joined the faculty at the University of Notre Dame in 1970, where he taught until he moved to Duke University in 1984. He is now the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Ethics. A prolific writer, Professor Hauerwas has been instrumental in bringing language of character and virtues to the center of reflections upon the Christian life. Named Time Magazine’s “Best Theologian in America,” perhaps Professor Hauerwas’ most profound contribution has been his commitment to the formation of doctoral students. He has chaired or co-chaired at least 53 successful dissertations, and in 2001 received the Duke University Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award.

We are saddened that a fourth person who had planned to be here, Monsignor Lorzeno Albacete, is not able to attend due to health problems. Monsignor Albacete is the Responsible of the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation in the United States and Canada. We will miss him in the course of our conversations

Is the Reformation Over? There is no doubt that things have changed. Listen to Benedict XVI, the Bishop of Rome, steal a page out of Martin Luther, or even John Wesley, in an address to the Swiss bishops from November 7, 2006:

Earlier, in my Homily [see page 6], I endeavored to say that in all the anguish of our time, faith must truly have priority. Two generations ago, it might still have been presumed natural: one grew up in the faith; in a certain way, faith was simply present as part of life and did not need any special seeking. It needed to be formed and deepened, but seemed something perfectly obvious.

Today, the opposite seems natural: in other words, that it is basically impossible to believe, and that God is actually absent. The faith of the Church, in any case, seems something that belongs to the distant past.

Thus, even practicing Christians are of the opinion that it is right to choose for oneself, from the overall faith of the Church, those things one considers still sustainable today. And especially, people also set about fulfilling their proper duty to God through their commitment to human beings, so to speak, at the same time.

This, however, is the beginning of a sort of "justification through works": the human being justifies himself and the world, in which he does what clearly seems necessary yet completely lacks the inner light and spirit.

Consequently, I believe it is important to acquire a fresh awareness of the fact that faith is the centre of all things -- "Fides tua te salvum fecit", the Lord said over and over again to those he healed. . . . . And we too can only serve the Lord energetically if our faith thrives and is present in abundance.”

Yes, the world has changed; the Church of the Nazarene has changed; the Roman Catholic Church has changed. Perhaps amidst all this change, the Spirit might bring about a convergence of minds, hearts, and even institutions so that the unity of the body of Christ might be seen in the world today. We thank NTS President Ron Benefiel, and Professor Andy Johnson for all their work in making these next few days take place and welcome you and our special guests to a time of thought and renewal for the sake of the witness of Christ’s church today.