Christians vs. lions.

We can't go on like this. For the past hour we have been bumping along in and out of potholes as the twelve-year-old Landrover makes its way along the grassy plain and out of the Rift Valley. For the last thirty minutes, every time I turn to the left, I can feel the tire rubbing against the mudguard. Now it is worse, hitting even when I go straight. Eventually we come to a stop. With all the jolting, the center-bolt of the spring has broken.

The setting is magnificent. To our left, beyond the Rift, are the mountains, Gelai and Kitumbeine. Then comes the conical dormant volcano, Oldonyo Lengai (the Mountain of God). Further up is the massif of the Ngorongoro Highlands. On our right, a range of mountains stretches all the way beyond Lake Natron, which is sixty kilometers (thirty-five-miles) long. We are on the open grassland, on the edge of the Serengeti, in Tanzania. (Real missionaries don't go into the Serengeti. There are no people there, only wild animals and tourists.) But I am in no mood to appreciate this land of wide horizons.

We are on our way back from Malambo, where we held a seminar for students of the Extension Seminary, all Masai. Five are now with me, both Catholic catechists and Lutheran evangelists. We are sixty-five kilometers from the nearest service station, on the rim of the Ngorongoro crater. Little traffic passes this way, just a few herd boys with their animals grazing in Edenic cohabitation with wildebeest, zebra, and gazelle. But the evening is drawing on, and this is lion country.

We pile out of the car. There is no difference between Catholic and Lutheran. I am reminded of my Dutch confreres back in the sixties who assured me that during World War II the difference between Catholic and Protestant didn't count. What mattered was how they coped with the German occupation. We put a board on the soft sand to jack up the Landrover and take a look at the spring. One catechist gets under and tightens two nuts. Another hammers the spring leaves back into place. As an unreconstructed post-Tridentine Roman Catholic, I take no chances. I always carry a full complement of tools for such an emergency. Next month this saran will be the concern of my Lutheran colleague, Pastor Nathaniel Ngobei. His Toyota Hilux is a real Lutheran car. It carries no tools, and runs on faith, not good works.

Safari work here is a matter of either/or. If you keep to the track--tire marks in the grass--you can get stuck in the dry dust and sand just as easily as in thick mud. Even with fourwheel-drive there is no traction. But if you go off the track to avoid getting stuck, you get tire punctures from thorns. Once stuck, everyone--it doesn't matter if you are Catholic or Lutheran--gets out of the car and everyone pushes. (Once, just as we were going into a bad spot where we had been stuck four months earlier, one of the Masai cried out, "Simba!" There, sticking above the grass, were two pairs of lions' ears. Such shared experiences lead to a real bonding process, the stuff of stories for years to come.)

The course we are all part of takes three years, and because Catholics and Lutherans have studied together, when they return to their villages, they tend to maintain their good relationships. In general, it is the expatriate missionaries who are most in favor of this joint ecumenical program for the formation of church workers. Certainly the local Catholic diocesan bishop and clergy are less than enthusiastic. The attitude of one bishop nearby is instructive. He insists that the Catholic faithful hold fast to the traditions of the nineteenth-century missionaries.

After an hour's work on the Landrover, we get five centimeters leeway for the tire and limp along. We get home to tell the tale.

For Protestants, self-righteousness is the capital sin. I try very hard to be humble but I don't get very far. I must confess openly to a certain smug, patronizing attitude toward the separated sisters and brothers. After all, we Catholics claim we have been around for 2,000 years. The Reformation in Germany and England led to the emptying of the monasteries. Yet here we religious are still on the ground after 500 years, a force to be reckoned with, and a power on which the hierarchy can rely. I agree that Protestants give witness to gospel values that have been minimized or neglected by Catholics. But even here the sixteenth-century Reformers didn't have the last word, as can be seen by later qualifications by Lutheran Pietists and Wesley's Arminianism. But does all this entail the structural division of the church, for which both sides are to blame? Differences of theology are not always differences of faith. Are we not big enough to welcome the former in the una, sancta...?

One day the three of us staff members for the joint program were sitting around a coffee table when Sister Angelika, a Lutheran nurse, came in. She works with a mobile eye clinic in South Masailand. Blonde and wearing jeans and no veil, she is the daughter of a Lutheran pastor. In her two-story house in Ngasumet there is no ladder or stairway; she uses a fire pole to get to her bedroom. Immediately, she put me on the spot, excruciatingly so. While my two companions maintained an embarrassed silence, she asked how I coped living with and working with Lutherans. Such collaboration, she said, would be unheard of back in Germany. I told her it was no problem at all, and here's why.

It's not as if I haven't tried to make things difficult. I spent a year in Chicago studying Reformation history and the Lutheran Confessions, both at the Lutheran School of Theology and at the Catholic Theological Union. I went with an open mind, at least consciously. But after two weeks I was convinced that Martin Luther had gone astray. It was his "freedom of a Christian" that put me off. His distinction between the outer and inner man [sic] I found unacceptable. It smacked more of Greek dualism than of biblical anthropology. Dietrich Bonhoeffer would agree with me. Then the comparison of works to the fruit of a tree is a false analogy: the good or bad tree comes before good or bad fruit. But a human is not a plant. Rather, faber fit fabricando: we learn by doing. Or, metaphysically, a being perfects itself by its operations.

Then, I cannot accept, pace John Reumann (see The Supper of the Lord, Fortress), that "justification by faith" is the primary image or analogy of our relationship to God and Christ. It was only one of Paul's ten metaphors. Besides, being declared innocent in a tribunal is too legalistic a concept. Surely, the point of Jesus' parables of the lost son and the laborers in the vineyard is that our relationship to God is not based on legalism. That was the misunderstanding of the eider brother. On the other hand, I found Yves Congar's Vraie et Fausse Reforme dans I 'Eglise (True and False Reform in the Church) too dismissive of a Protestant straw man. We can caricature our opponents to avoid being challenged by them.

But in Chicago they taught me nothing about motor mechanics. I did discover how the Lutheran seminarians avoided all controversy in class. They will have to be accepted as pastors by their communities and so avoid all notoriety as seminarians. The Catholic seminarians, in contrast, throve on controversy. Most were professed religious and so enjoyed a certain security. We Catholic pastors are assigned by our bishop and so can fearlessly (that is, with near impunity) confront our communities with the gospel and its demands.

Even back in Tanzania, my Lutheran colleagues are excessively polite. Whenever I embark on some controversial point in faith or theology, they take evasive action. I enjoy a good fight. It is one way of discovering one's limitations. (When I had to explain devotion to the Sacred Heart--that Jesus as a human needs other humans to share his enthusiasms and griefs--I was met with blank stares. That was when I accused my colleagues of being Monophysites. It's become part of our joking relationship.) But the only one really willing to lock horns with me in interdenominational combat is Aino, an ordained pastor who is the wife of my Lutheran co-worker, Pastor Yrjo Rossi.

Comparisons are odious. Still, witness is a gospel value. From the point of view of availability to students, I have become convinced of the value of celibacy. Poverty, too. When we Catholic missionaries are transferred, all we take is our toothbrush!

Ecumenism on the Masai Steppe is not all wine and roses. The first time our students came together at Oldonyo Sambu for the four-week residential sessions, there were fisticuffs in the dormitories. But over time these problems solve themselves. Then there was the scandal of 3,000 Masai who were baptized Lutherans at Soit Sambu in the past year. Half of them had already been baptized as Catholics. Pace Vincent Donovan, the author of Christianity Rediscovered (Orbis), evangelization is not enough. Nurture and pastoral care are also called for, and these Catholics had not been looked after. We Catholics depend on a highly educated male celibate clergy, who are necessarily thin on the ground. The Lutherans emphasize lay leadership in small communities, and train for it. This is where they score. In Malambo, it was Catholic missionaries who built the primary school and the first dispensary. Now there is no visible sign of Catholic presence, while the Lutherans are building their third church on the same site.

When I challenged my Lutheran colleagues on the rebaptisms at Soit Sambu, I was first told that the Catholics had been baptized with milk. (Water for the Masai, it is true, has none of the significance of milk.) I investigated, but they had all been baptized with water at a running stream. Then I was told that they had not been baptized with the trinitarian formula but in the name of Engai (God). I checked again, and this also was not true. Then there have been incidents where Lutherans have disturbed our liturgies, claiming that we Catholics have not yet heard the gospel. At the Extension Seminary, when it is the Catholics' turn to conduct the Service of the Word at morning prayer, the Lutherans complain that they are too shortwinded. But we also do enjoy joint services together, especially on Good Friday. So our ecumenical safari continues to be bumpy, with occasional breakdowns.

The ecumenical course at the Extension Seminary lasts three years. There is one year each on the Bible, church history, and theology. There are three elements to the course: (1) home study with written exercises; (2) weekly or monthly meetings held at six or seven centers throughout the diocese, such as Malambo, where homework is discussed; and (3) two month-long residential sessions each year with a stress on lecture-style teaching. While there are only three permanent staff members, we are assisted by other teachers from both churches during the residential sessions. The students, mostly males, are mature individuals with a primary-school education. They have given proof of leadership charisms in their communities. About twothirds are Lutheran, the rest Catholic.

The course, which was conceived in 1974, has had a decidedly Lutheran slant. That should be no surprise: initially, no Catholic was willing to join the staff. I arrived five years ago and my two colleagues agreed that we redress the balance somewhat.

First, the Bible course. At the beginning I was embarrassed by the abysmal ignorance of the Catholic students. In contrast to the Lutherans who grow up with an easy familiarity around the family Bible, the Catholic students didn't even know the setup of the Bible, where to find what. But they learned.

Lutherans accept the Bible as a given. But, I challenge them, how do we know this is the Word of God? Because, I answer, the church says so. In the history course we examine how the church determined the canon of Scripture. The Bible is the book of the community. We cannot divorce the two. Lutherans are continually being harassed here by fundamentalists, the Walokole (saved). This is because the basis of each group's faith is the same, the Bible. Catholics are not book-centered but peoplecentered. (If a fundamentalist approaches a Catholic, the latter responds that he or she "will ask Father"!) Catholics believe Jesus committed his mandate to a community but didn't tell them to read a book.

Then there is Bible and Tradition. But the Bible is a collection of oral traditions. I agree with Congar that the Bible and Tradition mutually judge and challenge one another. As for the canon of Scripture, Catholics recognize the forty-six books of the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint; Protestants recognize the thiny-nine books of the Hebrew Bible. The Reformers thought that the Hebrew was closer to the Word of God. But they did not enjoy the fruit of modern biblical scholarship. The writers of the New Testament had quoted from the Greek Bible.

I myself teach the introduction to both the Old and New Testaments, and Proverbs, with its catholic (small "c") openness to "pagan" wisdom. I also insist on teaching Romans. (I tell my colleagues I want the students to learn what Paul said, not what Martin Luther said!)

In the second year we study the history of Christianity, that great relativisor of dogma, when seen in context. (This is true for morality as well. The Council of Trent condemned polygamy but knew nothing of the institutional polygamy of African societies.) The early heresies are important for us to understand, since the truths of our Christian profession of faith surpass our limited understanding. There are mysteries and paradoxes. God is One and Three. Christ is God and human. There are both faith and good works. To safeguard our faith we must hold on to both poles and maintain the tension between apparent contradictions. If we stress but one pole and minimize or neglect the other, we are heretics.

Pastor Ngobei's course on Martin Luther is highly popular. I teach Trent. When it comes to institution versus charisma, it's hardly a level playing field. But I hang in there: charisms are eventually institutionalized. The Catholic church claims to be guided till the end of time by the Holy Spirit. Hence indefectibility and infallibility. But then how could we have gotten it so wrong in so many ways? Because of a misinterpretation of Romans 5:12 we believe that we were born with Original Sin before committing personal sins. Augustine was the first to think that one up. The early Christians had no such belief. For them, baptism was the visible sign of entry into the community of believers. But, if we reject Augustine, does it follow that we were conceived immaculate?

I also teach Vatican II: To what extent does it answer the demands of the Reformers? It is clear from my discussions with Catholic catechists that Vatican II has not yet been understood or theologically "received" by the clergy and the faithful in this part of Africa. Preparations for the so-called Roman synod "for" Africa, later this year, make this lacuna even more obvious.

The third year is devoted to theology. Traditionally, Catholicism has been more open to the insights of non-Christian philosophies and religions. But in our course, everyone spends a lot of time examining the traditional beliefs of the main tribes of the Arusha region. For the students, this is the most attractive section. I also give classes on liturgy and the sacraments. The Lutheran students seem fascinated by the medieval teaching that the seven sacraments accompany the seven stages of life. This conforms closely with their traditional initiation rites from one stage of life to another. Yet we now know that the scholastics sometimes got it wrong: Confirmation has nothing to do with maturity but is related to baptism; and the anointing of the sick is not a preparation for death.

Have I succeeded in casting the beam from my own eye? Do I even see it? Frankly, I cannot see how Lutheranism can answer any of my felt spiritual needs. But I respect the depth of their theological thinking. And when the sun goes down behind the western hills in Malambo and night comes on swiftly with a stiff breeze from the northeast, carrying with it the smell of rain, the Lutheran faithful gather for evening prayer by a paraffin lamp outside a neighbor's mud house. Every evening at a different family's. There is Scripture reading, a homily by an evangelist, prayers, and hymns.

This is how it should be. This is how it was in the early church. Liturgy is, literally, the work of all the people. But pushed by my compulsive Tridentine conscience, I sneak out of the village in the last light of day, in order to "get in" vespers from my breviary, to which I am bound as a cleric in major orders of the Latin rite church. "On behalf of the people of God," of course, as the constitution on the divine office states. But how can one breathe "on behalf of' someone else?