One church, after all.

Is the Reformation Over? An Evangelical Assessment of Contemporary Roman Catholicism, by Mark A. Noll and Carolyn Nystrom (Baker Academic, 272 pp., $24.99)

'FOR my part, Sir, I think all Christians, whether Papists or Protestants, agree in the essential articles, and that their differences are trivial, and rather political than religious." Thus spake, not quite correctly, Dr. Johnson. In this excellent new book, however, historian Mark A. Noll and freelance writer Carolyn Nystrom make the case that while the differences are far from trivial, there is a growing sense among committed Catholics and evangelicals that they are not central either. Over the past half-century, the underlying unity among Christians has become evident to a degree that would have shocked observers as recently as 1960.

In that year, it will be recalled, John F. Kennedy felt that he had basically to disavow the practical consequences of his Catholicism to assure America's Protestant majority that he posed no threat to them. Anti-Catholic animus dated back to colonial days, and was stoked not just by the majority's fear of difference (the bigot's usual stock in trade) but also by 19th-century Vatican pronouncements against religious and political liberty. Noll and Nystrom recount that when, in 1857, the Supreme Court issued the notorious Dred Scott ruling, "abolitionists pointed out how natural it was for Chief Justice Roger Taney, himself the highest ranking Catholic in all of 19th-century American government, to push the Court to defend slavery"--but the fact that Taney had liberated his own slaves much earlier was "barely noticed" by contemporaries. In 1945, evangelical theologian Carl McIntyre declared that "without any doubt the greatest enemy of freedom and liberty that the world has to face today is the Roman Catholic system. Yes, [there is] Communism in Russia ... but if one had to choose between the two ... one would be much better off in a communistic society than in a Roman Catholic Fascist set-up."

Kennedy, therefore, had to cope with a deeply ingrained piece of conventional wisdom. His conciliatory words were met with suspicion by, among others, prominent evangelical leader Harold John Ockenga--who, "according to the New York Times, claimed that Kennedy's statements upholding the separation of church and state should be viewed in the same light as statements by Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union in support of world peace. According to Ockenga, 'Mr. Khrushchev's meaning of the word "peace" equal[s] the world-wide victory of Marxism.'"

In this well-written volume, Noll and Nystrom give a lucid--and often highly inspiring--account of the amazing distance Catholics and Protestants have traveled in the years since JFK's statement. By 2004, evangelical politician Gary Bauer was able to say the following: "When John F. Kennedy made his famous speech that the Vatican would not tell him what to do, evangelicals and Southern Baptists breathed a sigh of relief. But today evangelicals and Southern Baptists are hoping that the Vatican will tell Catholic politicians what to do." Bauer's statement was hardly even controversial: In a poll that same year, evangelicals gave a higher approval rating to Pope John Paul II (59 percent) than to Jerry Falwell (44) or Pat Robertson (54).

The ice had melted on the Catholic side as well. In 1956, a commentator in the Catholic magazine Priest was still dismissing Martin Luther as "a lewd satyr whose glandular demands were the ultimate cause of his break with the Christian Church." Less than a decade later, a writer in the same periodical admitted that "we'd feel quite silly today declaiming against Luther in the intemperate words of yesterday"; by 2004, a Catholic reviewer of a new Luther biography was declaring that Luther simply could not "have foreseen that the Church of Rome would some four centuries later, at Vatican Council II, adopt many of the reforms that he championed."

Vatican II was certainly the most important event in this transformation; that council's decrees on ecumenism and religious liberty marked an epochal development in Catholic teaching, one that has borne much fruit in the succeeding years. The crucial theological dispute of the Reformation concerned the issue of justification: Is the sinner made righteous purely by God's grace, or also by his own works? Perhaps the most important ecumenical initiative in the United States--Evangelicals and Catholics Together, spearheaded by Richard John Neuhaus and Charles Colson--reached a notable measure of agreement on this question. In its first statement, in 1994, the ECT affirmed that "we are justified by grace through faith because of Christ" and that "all who accept Christ as Lord and Savior are brothers and sisters in Christ."

In 1999, the Vatican and Lutheran officials also agreed on a declaration on this subject: "Together we confess: By grace alone, in faith in Christ's saving work, and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God ... Faith is itself God's gift through the Holy Spirit who works through word and sacrament ... Our new life is [a gift] we receive in faith, and never can merit it in any way." What makes this joint declaration especially important for the future of Christian unity is the identity of one of the key figures involved in it. Lutheran bishop George Anderson told the National Catholic Reporter at the time that "it was [Joseph Cardinal] Ratzinger who untied the knots ... Without him we might not have an agreement." In its 1994 statement, the ECT had issued the important caution that we must "reject any appearance of harmony that is purchased at the price of truth"; in this respect, Pope Benedict XVI--whose commitment to Catholic orthodoxy is even more widely known than his belief in ecumenism--is exactly the right man to promote the cause of unity.

Noll and Nystrom discuss not just the recent history of evangelical-Catholic rapprochement but its possible future. Disagreements remain; what to do about them? In 1985, George Carey--subsequently archbishop of Canterbury--pointed to Vatican II's Decree on Ecumenism as indicating a way forward. That document, wrote Carey,

   suggested that closer agreement among
   Christians is possible if we think in terms
   of a hierarchy of truths.... Unity is often
   barred by the attention given to our differences,
   but not all doctrines have the
   same importance for faith. Could we
   arrive at an understanding of the common
   core of the faith we share while allowing
   freedom with respect to other teachings
   less essential? ... It is biblically true that
   not all the doctrines of the Christian faith
   have the same value for saving faith even
   if they are regarded as important in their
   own right.

This concept of the hierarchy of truths offers a way to acknowledge differences without absolutizing them. Noll and Nystrom write that "judgments about the other group's errors" don't vanish, but are instead "relativized by new affirmations" of what is believed in common; the differences are seen "as (for now at least) incommensurable, but for reasons having more to do with historical circumstances than with sinful error, mistakes, or the exercise of power."

The authors seek a way of viewing the remaining disagreements positively ("as a result of God's providential oversight") as well as negatively ("as a result of God's permission of human failing"). In the process, they hit upon a highly thought-provoking metaphor. Each of the main branches of Christianity, they write, reflects an incarnation of the faith appropriate for a particular time and place: "The closest analogy to a Christian world divided into these instantiations of Christian faith might be the general condition of humanity divided into the world's various languages." Protestantism, Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodoxy are thus akin to major language families. "What we see today may be described as an incarnation of Christ in Catholic form and an incarnation of Christ in evangelical form. Since there is only one Christ, these incarnations are pulled toward each other. Since they constitute different cultures, different traditions, and different languages, the incarnations retain the differences characteristic of cultures, traditions, and languages."

While a person may be most comfortable in his mother tongue, he is also undeniably enriched by the nuances offered by other languages. To take one example: As an evangelical who grew up Catholic, this reviewer is well aware that the language of devotion to the Virgin Mary is foreign to most Protestants--but equally persuaded that it can be introduced to them with much spiritual benefit, and without any cost to central Reformation principles. This is actually happening: It has been widely reported that evangelicals are rediscovering Mary's role in salvation history. This is one of the most heartening developments of recent years--not just as an instance of theological progress on a specific issue, but as a demonstration that evangelicals are gaining a certain intellectual self-confidence, one that allows them to embrace Christian ideas that were formerly rejected owing to a defensiveness against "Catholicizing" tendencies.

The most common criticism of ecumenism--voiced, over the decades, by conservatives of all denominations--is that it waters down religious truth. Noll and Nystrom make a persuasive case for the proposition that today's very real ecumenism is based not in a mere papering over of differences in shallow compromise, but rather in a desire to embrace the truth more fully. In 1964, Billy Graham--ahead of his time in this as in so many other ways--declared that he felt "much closer to Roman Catholic tradition than to some of the more liberal Protestants." What Graham was talking about was an ecumenism of Christian integrity: a "mere Christianity" with nothing "mere" about it. He was on to something. So are Noll and Nystrom, when they suggest that ours may well be a "genuine moment of grace" in Christian history.