If that day is not to be wasted and the twilight of Lutheranism
is to be positive, only a recovery of catholicity will do the job.
This means that we must think and act in ways that will make
the ultimate reunion of the West and of the West and East
possible. It will mean shaking off some bad habits, reviving the
confessional practice of the sixteenth century. For me it would
involve, as I suggested above, an openness to certain practices
that Lutherans have tended to rule out and, perhaps more
drastically, a concession that, as in its first fifteen centuries, the
church can live in unity, even as a variety of theological
opinions on justification and sanctification, faith and works,
law, and gospel inform its life. If the pope will now “allow the
gospel” and surely that is implied in the declaration that the
condemnations of the Reformation era no longer apply to us
then we might be able to start to think about a positive twilight.
Four hundred years ago a twilight in which Lutheranism
retained, or returned to, full communion with the Catholic West
might have been effected with relative ease. Just looking at what
has changed since then on our side to make such a reunion
harder is to see a twilight of a more discouraging sort. That, I
am afraid, is the twilight that more likely will herald our future.
