In an excellent survey of the writings of Cardinal Ratzinger, Michael S. Horton explores some of the implications of the election of Pope Benedict XVI for Protestantism. After providing a brief background of the relationship between Ratzinger and Pope John Paul II, Horton addresses “some of the representative statements by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, to obtain a better idea of what we might expect from his pontificate. Hopefully we will see that there is much to appreciate in an age of increasing pressure to conform the church’s message to the spirit of the age, while also recognizing the distance that remains between genuinely evangelical churches and the Bishop of Rome.”

I find that the heart of the matter lies in the observation that “those who argue for orthopraxis over orthodoxy forget that with this ‘facile’ and ‘superficial slogan,’ that ‘the contents of orthopraxis, the love of neighbor, radically change (always, but today above all) in keeping with the manner and way orthodoxy is understood’ (23).” In this way, the proper understanding of the relationship between orthodoxy and orthopraxis acts as a check on the tendency to understand unity purely in practical terms, at the expense of doctrinal concord.