Augsburg and Catholicism: Healing the Reformation Breach

Abstract

“If Lutheran Christians, as the elder brothers and sisters of the sixteenth century Reformation tradition, now discover that, for the sake of the gospel, division from Rome is no longer necessary (and therefore, precisely for the sake of the gospel, no longer permissible), other Protestants would have to ask what fidelity to the Reformation tradition means for them. In this light, Lutheran-Roman Catholic advance does not represent an instance of Lutherans ‘going their own way’ but is an exercise of Lutheran leadership in helping to bring the Reformation to its fulfillment as a renewing movement in and for the whole church of Christ.”