The Evangelical Church in Germany is a theological muddle, being a federation of Lutheran, Prussian Union, and Reformed (or Calvinist) Protestant communities. Still, it must have been a moving moment when the council of this federation met with Pope Benedict XVI last month in the chapter hall of the former Augustinian priory at Erfurt: the place where Martin Luther had studied theology, had been ordained a priest, and had, as the pope put it, thought with “deep passion” about one great question: “How do I receive the grace of God?” As Benedict, himself one of the great theologians of this or any other era, put it in his winsome way, “For Luther, theology was no mere academic pursuit, but the struggle for oneself, which was in turn a struggle for and with God.”
One hopes the Catholic Theological Society of America was listening.
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