Carl Braaten has joined the church triumphant. We who remain “feebly struggle,” but, as many colleagues, friends and former students believe, he “in glory shines.”
The church militant struggles because it is embattled, not least in its own internal divisions. The scandal of Christian disunity mocks the apostle’s admonition that we all be of one mind, which is the mind of Christ. It is perhaps inevitable that there be divisions among us, as the same apostle affirms in the same letter to the Corinthians, in order to test faithfulness. But at the midpoint of his theological career, Carl Braaten realized that contemporary Christianity is nigh lethally failing the test of faithfulness. So he spent the rest of his career calling the church to faithfulness by calling into unity in Christ.
The origins of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology may be found in this urgent call to faithfulness. When Carl and Robert Jenson shook the dust from their feet at the denominational seminaries where they had been teaching, they joined forces to create the journal Pro Ecclesia and The Center as its mother organization. They organized a working group of younger theologians, whom Carl and Lavonne hosted in their capacious home in Northfield, MN. They undertook work on doctrinal theology for an ecumenically reconciled Christianity. This initial brainstorming evolved into regional conferences calling the divided churches to doctrinal reconciliation and renewed unity on the basis of the creedal tradition of the undivided church. With characteristic bluntness, Carl at this time argued that the church has never been united in theological opinion but it can and should be united in creed; indeed, disunity in creedal theology is at the heart of the contemporary churches’ failure in faithfulness.
As a theologian, Carl’s own work focused on Christology-and-missiology in a new eschatological key. For Carl the event of Christ was the in-breaking of the reign of God, breaking up the walled cities of contemporary Canaans, dethroning their kings but in their ruins forming the harbinger of the Creator’s new humanity, the ecclesia in Christ. As a theologian, moreover, Carl remained ardently, sometimes exasperatingly Lutheran. Until his later-in-life encounter with the Finnish Luther research, he was a committed extrincisist: righteousness is not our own but only Christ’s which is credited to us by divine imputation in the event of justification. Yet with disarming humility, Carl was capable of being persuaded and changing his mind on account of the kinds of conversations The Center sponsored. He realized accordingly that orthodoxy is the Spirit’s work in progress. The Center’s work in this light was his great endeavor and this cause will be his lasting legacy.
I speak for many when I say that I personally benefited from Carl’s generous friendship and theological mentorship. Soli Deo gloria.
Paul R. Hinlicky
Tise Professor Emeritus of Lutheran Studies, Roanoke College
Docent, Evanjelická bohoslovecká fakulta Univerzity Komenského, Bratislava, Slovakia
Carl Braaten Memorial Service Details
Carl Edward Braaten Memorial Service
Lord of Life Lutheran Church in Sun City West
13724 W. Meeker Boulevard, Sun City West, AZ 85375
November 25, 2023 at 1:00 PM
Condolences may be sent to
The Family of Carl E. Braaten
C/O Martha Memmesheimer
7419 W. Mountain View Road
Peoria AZ 85345