New Insights in Fostering Closer Fellowship
AUGSBURG/GENEVA, 31 March 2009 (LWI) – The Reformation will go on for as long as a bold spirit breathes life into the body of the communion, said Prof. Vitor Westhelle of the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, USA, summing up his impressions of the week-long LWF international consultation in Augsburg, Germany.
Speaking on 31 March before some 120 participants attending the consultation, Westhelle said, “We are truly inheritors of the Reformation, not only by the content of its theological formulations, but above all, by the audacious spirit exhaling through the movement.”
Within the reformation movement, speaking as church and speaking to the church became a “crossing-the community of the cross in its feeble, unstable, and weak (re)formation,” he said.
Referring to the consultation, Westhelle said, “This spirit was described as the tense encounter between the voice that speaks as church and the one that speaks to church, and for the people breathing life into the body of the communion.”
The church community straddles the uncertain ground between church and the challenges of its task. The church must at one and the same time be a teaching church that speaks authoritatively and a learning church, in the sense of a church that can be addressed and in that way, corrected, he explained. “Theology in the Life of Lutheran Churches: Transformative Perspectives and Practices Today,” was the theme of the consultation jointly organized by the LWF Department for Theology and Studies (DTS) and the Institute of Protestant Theology of the University of Augsburg.
Pointing to the connection to future theological discussions, Westhelle noted, “By its very nature, conversation, if it is true conversation, is always an event that ends in a deficit, and in this deficit lies the key to the understanding of what needs still to be talked about.” If such deficits did not exist, it would not be a conversation. He explained that as the Augsburg meeting proceeded, it became evident that theological issues such as interfaith dialogue, ethical questions and human sexuality, needed to be explored more deeply in future dialogues and consultations.
Speaking to LWI, Prof. Bernd Oberdorfer, who holds the chair of Protestant theology at the University of Augsburg, said, “The consultation, by providing new insights for fostering closer fellowship among the world’s Lutheran churches, marks a promising step forward.”
To come together with Lutherans from all over the world and thus recognize that the Lutheran tradition transcends all differences was a genuinely horizon-expanding experience, said Oberdorfer. “It is encouraging to see that despite our great diversity, we speak a common language and this language will enable us to tackle the same issues,” he remarked.
For LWF/DTS director, Rev. Dr Karen Bloomquist, “This event was an historic gathering of working together in new ways on the future of Lutheran theology, especially in those areas where churches are spreading in numbers and deepening their appreciation of Lutheran insights.”
Bloomquist said the theological conversations during the consultation, were intense, and cut across many boundaries and differences. Bloomquist said that one participant had aptly commented that “what binds us together is not necessarily that we think in the same way, but that we are able to continue talking together through the networks that began here.” (549 words)
See also:
- Augsburg Mayor Welcomes Participants at LWF International Consultation
- Closing Gap between Academic Theology and Church Life
- The Ongoing Reformation of the Church
- Reformation Jubilee in 2017 Must Have Clear Ecumenical Dimension
- Church Must Focus Involvement on Injustice, Hunger and Poverty
- “We Recognize Ourselves as Children of the Reformation”
- Everyone Needs Bread for Daily Life
- Reformation Is a Continuing Call, LWF General Secretary Junge Tells Council
- The Bible and 2017 Reformation Commemoration
- Lutheran Theology Alive and Well
