In the spring of 1994, a group of Roman Catholics and evangelical Protestants
issued a much-discussed statement, “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The
Christian Mission in the Third Millennium” (FT, May 1994). That statement, commonly
referred to as “ECT,” noted a growing “convergence and cooperation” between
Evangelicals and Catholics in many public tasks, and affirmed agreement in basic
articles of Christian faith while also underscoring the continuing existence
of important differences. The signers promised to engage those differences in
continuing conversations, and this has been done in meetings of noted theologians
convened by Mr. Charles Colson and Father Richard John Neuhaus. At a meeting
in the fall of 1996, it was determined that further progress depended upon firm
agreement on the meaning of salvation, and especially the doctrine of justification.
After much discussion, study, and prayer over the course of a year, the statement
“The Gift of Salvation” was agreed to at a meeting in New York City in October
1997, and published in the January 1998 issue of this journal. The next question
taken up by ECT participants was the relationship between Scripture and tradition.
The following statement, “Your Word Is Truth,” is the product of intense and
extended deliberation and was first published this summer by Eerdmans in a book
by the same title. The participants express the hope that those responding with
critical evaluations of the statement will consult the scholarly papers prepared
for their deliberation and to be found in the book. The ECT project continues
and is currently studying Roman Catholic and evangelical Protestant understandings
of “the communion of saints” (communio sanctorum). — The Editors

Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ prayed for his disciples: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. . . . I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:17,20-21).

We thank God for the years of prayer, study, and conversation in the project
known as “Evangelicals and Catholics Together.” Among the many blessings resulting
from this cooperative effort, we note especially our common affirmation of the
most central truths of Christian faith, including justification by faith, in
the 1997 statement, “The Gift of Salvation.” From the beginning of this venture,
and at each step along the way, we have insisted that the only unity among Christians
that can be pleasing to God is unity in truth. Therefore, we have understood
it to be our duty to note, carefully and clearly, matters both of agreement
and of disagreement between Evangelicals and Catholics.

Among matters of utmost importance, and involving both agreements and disagreements,
is the question traditionally framed as the relationship between Scripture and
tradition. As we have together explored this question, we have prayed for the
guidance ofýthe Holy Spirit, and we believe that prayer has been answered. We
respectfully submit the following considerations and conclusions to the ecclesial
communities and transdenominational fellowships of which we are part, with the
hope that they will be received and examined as possible contributions to our
better understanding of one another and our greater unity in Christ’s truth.

From before the foundation of the world, God has desired a people to share
forever in His life and love (Ephesians 1:4). To that end, God disclosed Himself
and His loving intention by a sequence of revelatory and redemptive acts that
involved the uttering of verbal messages and the producing of written records
(Hebrews 1:1). He created a world that bears witness to His glory (Psalm 19:1-6),
and when humanity sinfully rebelled against His purpose, He chose Israel to
be instructed by word and deed in the ways of covenant fidelity in order to
become a light to all the nations (Genesis 12:1-3, Deuteronomy 4:1-8). To this
people He promised a Savior, who is Jesus the Christ, the very Word of God who
was in the beginning with God, and who is to be recognized and confessed as
the Son of God (John 1:1-14). The God of Israel is the One whom Jesus calls
Father and teaches us to call Father (John 17:1-5, Matthew 6:6-13). To Jesus’
disciples, and to those who would become disciples through their word, he promised
the Spirit to guide them into all truth. Thus the new Israel worshiped, obeyed,
and proclaimed the one true God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—in faith-filled
anticipation of participating in the divine life forever (Hebrews 12:18-24,
John 16:3, Acts 1:8). Already now, God’s promised redemption is fulfilled in
the mediatorial ministry of Jesus Christ that is centered in his cross, resurrection,
ascension, present reign, and assured return in glory to establish his eternal
kingdom (2 Corinthians 1:19-20).

God gives His people full and final knowledge of His plan of salvation through
Jesus Christ. “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the
prophets; but in these last days He has spoken to us by a Son, whom He appointed
the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world” (Hebrews 1:1-2).
The Son sent and sends the Holy Spirit who, bestowing the gift of faith, creates
the community of faith for whose unity Jesus prayed. Christ himself is the head
and cornerstone of his Church, which is built on the foundation of apostles
and prophets. In its understanding, believing, celebrating, living, and proclaiming
the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Church is guided by the Holy Spirit (Ephesians
2:19-22).

Both Evangelicals and Catholics affirm the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic
Church, as set forth in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, but they define
the Church and its attributes in distinctive ways. Evangelicals stress the priority
of the gospel over the Church whose primary mission is to herald the good news
of God’s salvation in Christ. For Evangelicals, the Church as the one body of
Christ extending through space and time includes all the redeemed of all the
ages and all on earth in every era who have come to living faith in the body’s
living Head. Everyone who is personally united to Christ, having been justified
by faith alone through his atoning death, belongs to his body and by the Spirit
is united with every other true believer in Jesus. Evangelicals maintain that
the one Church becomes visible on earth in all local congregations that meet
to do together the things that, according to Scripture, the Church does.

Catholics hold that the Church is the body of Christ, a sacramental and mystical
communion in which Christ is truly and effectually present and through which
his justifying and sanctifying grace is mediated. While Christ is the unique
mediator of salvation for all humanity, the Church of Jesus Christ “subsists
in” and is most fully and rightly ordered in the Catholic Church, meaning the
Church governed by the bishops in communion with the Bishop of Rome, the successor
of Peter. Although there have been variations through history in the exercise
of that governance, and may be further variations in order to accommodate a
fuller expression of Christian unity, Catholics believe that Christ has endowed
the Church with a permanent apostolic structure and an infallible teaching office
that will remain until the Kingdom is fully consummated.

While Catholics and Evangelicals have not been able to reconcile these different
views of the Church, with both communities finding serious aberrations in the
ecclesial understanding of the other, as individual believers we do recognize
in one another, when and where God so permits it, the evident reality of God’s
grace expressed by our trust in Jesus himself as Master and divine Savior. All
who truly believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord are brothers and sisters
in the Lord even though they are not in full ecclesial fellowship.

In communion with the body of faithful Christians through the ages, we also
affirm together that the entire teaching, worship, ministry, life, and mission
of Christ’s Church is to be held accountable to the final authority of Holy
Scripture, which, for Evangelicals and Catholics alike, constitutes the word
of God in written form (2 Timothy 3:15-17; 2 Peter 1:21). We agree that the
phrase “word of God” refers preeminently to Jesus Christ (John 1:1,14). It is
also rightly said that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the word of God, as is
the faithful preaching of the gospel (Acts 6:7; 8:4). Then the canon, the listed
set of writings making up the Bible, is recognized by the community of faith
as the written word of God, possessing final authority for faith and life. On
the extent of the canon we do not entirely agree, though the sixty-six books
of the Protestant canon are not in dispute. In every form—the gospel, the preaching
of the gospel, and the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments—the word of
God is in service to Jesus Christ, the Word of God preeminent.

The divinely inspired writings of the New Testament convey the apostolic teaching,
which is the authoritative interpretation of God’s revelation in Christ. The
early Christian community recognized the authority of the first apostles who
planted local churches and urged them to be faithful to the teaching they had
received. Still today we possess that apostolic teaching in the New Testament,
which, together with the Old Testament of which the New is the authoritative
interpretation, is the written word of God. This entire process of the reception
and transmission of God’s revelation is the work of the Holy Spirit (John 14:26,
2 Timothy 3:15-17, 2 Peter 1:20-21).

Evangelicals and Catholics alike recognize the promised guidance of the Spirit
in the elucidation and unfolding of apostolic teaching that took place as historic
Christian orthodoxy emerged. This continuing work of the Spirit is evident in,
for instance, the formulation of the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian creeds,
and in the conciliar resolution of disputes regarding the two natures of Christ
and the triune life of God. Such development of doctrine, typically in response
to grave error and deviant traditions built upon such error, is to be understood
not as an addition to the apostolic teaching contained in Holy Scripture but
as Spirit-guided insight into the fullness of that teaching. In this way, the
Lord has enabled faithful believers both to counter error and to make explicit
what is implicit in the written Word of God.

In the course of that same history, and in the context of crises posed by
philosophical and cultural changes as well as manifest ecclesiastical corruptions,
the question of how to determine authentic apostolic teaching came into intense
dispute. The mainline Reformers of the sixteenth century posited what is called
the “formal principle,” which holds that the Scriptures are (in the words of
the 2000 Amsterdam Declaration) “the inspired revelation of God . . . totally
true and trustworthy, and the only infallible rule of faith and practice.” The
Reformers vigorously protested what they viewed as deviations from biblical
teaching, but they never used Scripture to undermine the Trinitarian and Christological
consensus of the early Church embodied in the historic creeds that had come
down from patristic times. The Reformers stoutly resisted the charge of innovation:
they did not seek to found new churches but sought simply to reform the one,
holy, catholic, and apostolic Church on the basis of the word of God.

We who are Evangelicals recognize the need to address the widespread misunderstanding
in our community that sola scriptura (Scripture alone) means nuda
scriptura (literally, Scripture unclothed; i.e., denuded of and abstracted
from its churchly context). The phrase sola scriptura refers to the primacy
and sufficiency of Scripture as the theological norm—the only infallible rule
of faith and practice—over all tradition rather than the mere rejection of tradition
itself. The isolation of Scripture study from the believing community of faith
(nuda scriptura) disregards the Holy Spirit’s work in guiding the witness
of the people of God to scriptural truths, and leaves the interpretation of
that truth vulnerable to unfettered subjectivism. At the same time, we insist
that all Christians should have open access to the Bible, and should be encouraged
to read and study the Scriptures, for in them all that is necessary for salvation
is set forth so clearly that the simplest believer, no less than the wisest
theologian, may arrive at a sufficient understanding of them.

We who are Catholics must likewise address the widespread misunderstanding
in our community that tradition is an addition to Holy Scripture or a parallel
and independent source of authoritative teaching. When Catholics say “Scripture
and tradition,” they intend to affirm that the lived experience (tradition)
of the community of faith through time includes the ministry of faithful interpreters
guided by the Holy Spirit in discerning and explicating the revealed truth contained
in the written Word of God, namely, Holy Scripture.

Together we affirm that Scripture is the divinely inspired and uniquely authoritative
written revelation of God; as such it is normative for the teaching and life
of the Church. We also affirm that tradition, rightly understood as the proper
reflection of biblical teaching, is the faithful transmission of the truth of
the gospel from generation to generation through the power of the Holy Spirit.
As Evangelicals and Catholics fully committed to our respective heritages, we
affirm together the coinherence of Scripture and tradition: tradition is not
a second source of revelation alongside the Bible but must ever be corrected
and informed by it, and Scripture itself is not understood in a vacuum apart
from the historical existence and life of the community of faith. Faithful believers
in every generation live by the memories and hopes of the actus tradendi
of the Holy Spirit: this is true whenever and wherever the word of God is faithfully
translated, sincerely believed, and truly preached.

We recognize that confessing a high doctrine of the nature and place of Scripture
is insufficient without a firm commitment to the intense devotional, disciplined,
and prayerful engagement with Scripture. We rejoice to note that in our communities,
and in joint study involving people from both communities, such engagement is
increasingly common. In this engagement with Scripture, Evangelicals and Catholics
are learning from one another: Catholics from the Evangelical emphasis on group
Bible study and commitment to the majestic and final authority of the written
word of God; and Evangelicals from the Catholic emphasis on Scripture in the
liturgical and devotional life, informed by the lived experience of Christ’s
Church through the ages.

There always have been, and likely will be until our Lord returns in glory,
disputes and disagreements about how rightly to discern the teaching of the
Word of God in Holy Scripture. We affirm that Scripture is to be read in company
with the community of faith past and present. Individual ideas of what the Bible
means must be brought to the bar of discussion and assessment by the wider fellowship.

“The church of the living God is the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Timothy
3:15). Because Christ’s Church is the pillar and bulwark of truth, in disputes
over conflicting interpretations of the Word of God the Church must be capable
of discerning true teaching and setting it forth with clarity. This is necessary
both in order to identify and reject heretical deviations from the truth of
the gospel and also to provide sound instruction for passing on the faith intact
to the rising generation.

Evangelicals and Catholics alike are concerned with these questions—What does
the Bible authoritatively teach? And how does Christ’s Church apply this teaching
authoritatively today? Catholics believe that this teaching authority is invested
in the Magisterium, namely, the Bishop of Rome, who is the successor of Peter,
and the bishops in communion with him. Some Evangelicals see the communal office
of discerning and teaching the truth in the covenanted congregation of baptized
believers, while others see it in a wider synodical or episcopal connection.
In either case, however, Evangelicals believe that a true understanding of the
Bible is achieved only through the illuminating action of the Holy Spirit. For
this reason, all attempts at discernment and teaching must rely on prayerful
attentiveness to the guidance of the Spirit in the study of Scripture.

While Catholics agree that the entire community of the faithful is engaged
in the discernment of the truth (sensus fidelium), they also believe
that Evangelicals have an inadequate appreciation of certain elements of truth
that, from the earliest centuries, Christians have understood Christ to have
intended for his Church; in particular, the Petrine and other apostolic ministries.
While Evangelicals greatly respect the way in which the Catholic Church has
defended many historic Christian teachings against relativizing and secularizing
trends, and recognize the role of the present pontiff in that important task
today, they believe that some aspects of Catholic doctrine are not biblically
warranted, and they do not accept any claims of infallibility made for the magisterial
teachings of popes or church councils.

With specific reference to the subject of the present statement, we are not
agreed on the exercise of teaching authority in the life of Christ’s Church.
To Evangelicals it appears that, in practice if not in theory, the Catholic
understanding of Magisterium, including infallibility, results in the Roman
Catholic Church standing in judgment over Scripture, instead of vice versa.
Catholics, in turn, teach that the Magisterium exercised by the successors of
the apostles—which they believe is intended by Christ, is guided by the Holy
Spirit, and is in clear continuity with the orthodox tradition—enables the Church
to explicate the truth of Holy Scripture obediently and accurately. We both
recognize that judgments must be made in the life of Christ’s Church as to what
is and what is not scriptural truth. We are not agreed on how such judgments
are to be made, nor can either group accept all the decisions that have resulted
from what they regard as a flawed way of deciding.

Among the Catholic teachings that Evangelicals believe are not biblically
warranted are the eucharistic sacrifice and transubstantiation of the elements,
the doctrine of purgatory, the immaculate conception and bodily assumption of
the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the claimed authority of the Magisterium, including
papal infallibility. Catholics, on the other hand, believe that Evangelicals
are deficient in their understanding of, for instance, apostolically ordered
ministry, the number and nature of the sacraments, the company and intercession
of the saints, the Spirit-guided development of doctrine, and the continuing
ministry of the Petrine office in the life of the Church. On these and other
questions of great importance, we are not agreed. Nor do we agree on how we
view our differences. Catholics view Evangelicalism as an ecclesially deficient
community that needs to be strengthened by the full complement of gifts that
they believe Christ intends for his Church. Evangelicals see Catholicism as
centering upon an idea of the Church that clouds the New Testament gospel, and
so needs to be brought into greater conformity with biblical teaching. The contrast
here is far-reaching, and goes deep.

ýAt the same time, we recognize that, during the past five hundred years,
the Holy Spirit, the Supreme Magisterium of God, has been faithfully at work
among theologians and exegetes in both Catholic and Evangelical communities,
bringing to light and enriching our understanding of important biblical truths
in such matters as individual spiritual growth and development, the mission
of Christ’s Church, Christian worldview thinking, and moral and social issues
in today’s world. We praise God for His faithful work within each community
as He has provided instruction and guidance in these and other important areas
of Christian faith and life.

As Evangelicals and Catholics we are agreed on what we have said together
in the statement “The Gift of Salvation” and on what we have been able to say
together in the present statement on Scripture and tradition. The theological
disagreements that still separate us are serious and require prayerful reflection
and sustained mutual engagement. But in the face of a society marked by unbelieving
ideologies and the culture of death, we deem it all the more important to affirm
together those foundational truths of historic Christian orthodoxy that we do
hold in common.

We are confident that the Lord is watching over His gospel and over those
who have been called by the gospel, and we are sure that the forces of hell
will not be able to thwart His divine purpose. By God’s grace, we will continue
to pray for one another, to seek greater mutual understanding in continuing
conversations, and, in accordance with our deeply held convictions, to work
together to bring the love and light of Christ to all persons everywhere. We
earnestly invoke the Holy Spirit’s continuing guidance in further establishing
and making manifest our unity in the truth of Jesus Christ, so that the world
may come to believe (John 17:21). In union with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,
we together pray, “Sanctify us in the truth; Your word is truth” (John 17:17).

Evangelical Protestants

Dr. Harold O. J. Brown
Reformed Theological Seminary

Mr. Charles Colson
Prison Fellowship

Dr. Timothy George
Beeson Divinity School

Dr. Kent R. Hill
Eastern Nazarene College

Dr. Frank A. James
Reformed Theological Seminary

Dr. Cheryl Bridges Johns
Church of God School of Theology

Dr. T. M. Moore
Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church

Dr. Thomas Oden
Drew University

Dr. James J. I. Packer
Regent College,
British Columbia

Dr. Timothy R. Phillips
Wheaton Graduate School of Theology

Dr. John Woodbridge
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Roman Catholics

Dr. James J. Buckley
Loyola College of Maryland

Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J.
Fordham University

Father Thomas Guarino
Seton Hall University

Father Joseph T. Lienhard, S.J.
Fordham University

Father Francis Martin
John Paul II Institute for Studies
on Marriage and Family

Father Richard John Neuhaus
Institute on Religion and Public Life

Father Edward T. Oakes, S.J.
Regis University

Dr. Robert Louis Wilken
University of Virginia