HONG KONG (SE): The third edition of the Chinese version of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification was launched during a ceremony at the Truth Lutheran Church, Waterloo Road, Kowloon, on May 13.
Showing the unity of the five Christian Churches in Hong Kong, the new edition is a milestone in ecumenical relations.
The ceremony was held after an ecumencial communion service with Church leaders and co-workers. Father Peter Choi Wai-man, a member of a task force dealing with the Chinese translation of the declaration, then introduced the third edition of the book.
The Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church and the Methodist Church in Hong Kong signed an agreement to ratify the Chinese ecumenical translation of the declaration on 25 May 2014. (SundayExaminer, 8 June 2014).
The first edition of the Chinese translation was released at the same time. The second edition, with the addition of more photos of the ratification ceremony, was published in October of the same year.
The third edition covers the recognition of the declaration from the Anglican Church as well as the World Communion of Reformed Churches in recent years.
During the May 13 launching ceremony, six copies of the new edition were signed by John Cardinal Tong Hon of the Catholic diocese, Bishop Ben Chang Chun-wa of the Lutheran Church, Reverend Lam Sung-che of the Methodist Church, Archbishop Andrew Chan Au-ming of the Anglican Church and Reverend Eric So Shing-yit of the Hong Kong Council of Church of Christ in China.
The five Churches, together with the Hong Kong Christian Council, each kept a copy as a memento.
The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Lutheran World Federation signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification on 30 October 1999 after several decades of dialogue. It states that the Churches share a common understanding of justification by God’s grace through faith in Christ, resolving the 500-year-old conflict over justification, which was a major cause of the split of the Churches. It also says that mutual condemnations pronounced by the Catholic and Protestant Churches during the Reformation do not apply to their current teaching on justification.
In 2006, the declaration was also signed by the World Methodist Council. In April 2016, the Anglican Consultative Council, at a meeting in Lusaka, Zambia, welcomed and affirmed the substance of the declaration. On 5 July 2017, the World Communion of Reformed Churches signed the document during a ceremony in Wittenberg, Germany, where Martin Luther lived.
