Justification and the Future of the Ecumenical Movement

On October 31, 1999, officials of the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church in Augsburg, Germany, signed and "Official Common Statement" with its "Annex" and the "Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification," declaring publicly and in a binding manner that a consensus in basic truths of the doctrine of justification exists between Lutherans and Catholics. A number of the essays in this book emanate from a conference at the Berkeley Divinity School of Yale University in 2000 that discussed the import of this momentous declaration for ecumenism.