Tre protestantiske kirkeledere i USA har nylig hatt en lang, saklig og grundig samtale om protestantismen og dens framtid. First Things skriver om dette i en artikkel kalt «THE UNCERTAIN FUTURE OF PROTESTANTISM» og har også en lenke til et lydopptak av hele samtalen. Slik beskriver de debatten:
Most promising for such future conversation was the extent of common ground uncovered. All three interlocutors were willing to grant that the Church of Rome is a part of the body of Christ, a diseased part, perhaps, but still a part of us whose sufferings and triumphs we can share in, and whose healing we desire, not some alien entity to be scorned or ignored.
All three speakers granted that some kind of reunion with Rome (and with Orthodoxy) must be eventual goals for Protestantism, which could not think of itself as the sole bearer of the church’s future. All three insisted therefore that Protestantism should be characterized more by its positive witness than by a negative self-definition over against its enemies. All three also managed to agree that the content of this witness was largely set by the terms of the early Protestant confessions, that the solas of the Reformation constituted fundamental truths that must remain the ground of future Protestant ecumenical engagement. Finally, all agreed that the best forms of ecumenism, for the foreseeable future at least, should be local and ad hoc, involving such small but powerful gestures as learning to pray with and for local Catholic and Orthodox churches.
Before moving on to the inevitable frustrated question, “Well where do they disagree then?” we ought first to marvel at, and take encouragement from, this substantial common ground. After all, this isn’t the Protestantism that many of us grew up in, a Protestantism which answered to many of the harsh criticisms contained in Leithart’s essay last fall, “The End of Protestantism”: either militantly convinced that Rome is nothing but a synagogue of Satan, or complacently ignoring her very existence, and also ignoring much of the robust theology of classical Protestantism. …
Fjorårets innlegg “The End of Protestantism” kan leses her.
«Reformational Catholic» – er det en slags liberal katolikk eller er det en protestant som er litt mindre fiendtlig innstilt til katolisismen?
Protestantism ought to give way to Reformational catholicism. Like a Protestant, a Reformational catholic rejects papal claims, refuses to venerate the Host, and doesn’t pray to Mary or the saints; he insists that salvation is a sheer gift of God received by faith and confesses that all tradition must be judged by Scripture, the Spirit’s voice in the conversation that is the Church.
Det er visst protestanter som som er interesserte i kirken og teologien også før 1500, som ikke er så veldig negative til katolikker:
«A Reformational Catholic is truly «reformed» because he embraces the major teachings of the Reformers (salvation by grace alone through faith in Christ alone; a rejection of universal papal authority; the embrace of married priests & vernacular liturgy; rejection or prayers to saints, etc.) while also embracing the universal (or «catholic») Christian tradition, the ecumenical creeds, the liturgical and sacramental piety, and the whole communion of saints.»
Begrepet ligner litt på de lutheranerne jeg kom borti da jeg studerte luthersk kirkeliv i USA noen uker i 1991; de kalte seg «Evangelical Catholics»