Justification and the Future of the Ecumenical Movement : The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (Unitas)

On October 31, 1999, in Augsburg, Germany, officials of the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church signed two documents, an Official Common Statement with its Annex and the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. The Lutheran Churches belonging to the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church were declaring publicly and in a binding manner that a consensus in basic truths of the doctrine of justification exists between Lutherans and Catholics. Within four months of the Augsburg signing, the Yale University Divinity School and the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale sponsored a theological conference Justification and the Future of the Ecumenical Movement." The goal of the conference was to begin testing the wider import of theJoint Declaration. The essays in Justification and the Future of the Ecumenical Movement explore the larger implications of the Joint Declaration. The majority of the chapters are the presentations made at Yale in 2000. Three of the chapters were written later than the Yale conference and are included in this collection to expand the range of the discussion and to add new insights. Justification and the Future of the Ecumenical Movement includes: Introduction by William G. Rusch; *The University and Ecumenism, - by George Lindbeck; *The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification: A Roman Catholic Perspective, - by Walter Cardinal Kasper; *An Anglican Reaction: Across the Reformation Divide, - by Henry Chadwick; *A Model for a New Joint Declaration: An Episcopal Reaction to the Joint Declaration on Justification, - by R. William Franklin; *The Implications of the Joint Declaration on Justification and Its Wider Impact for Lutheran Participation in the Ecumenical Movement, - by Michal Root; *The Joint Declaration and the Reformed Tradition, - by Gabriel Fackre; *The Joint Declaration on Justification: A Significant Ecumenical Achievement, - by Edward Idris Cardinal Cassidy; *Beyond Justification: An