My conversation with Francis Beckwith about his return to Roman Catholicism.

My conversation with Francis Beckwith about his return to Roman Catholicism.

So… Frank Beckwith has converted. A Catholic would say, repented. A Protestant (the more uppity term for an Evangelical) might say, lapsed. Whatever we say, it should be said with Charity.

I had the pleasure of having a long talk with Beckwith about Roman Catholicism and his possible return to that communion well over a year ago. We were recording a radio show on some subject or other over at the “Reasons to Believe” studios. Having read his book “Politically Correct Death” to my great edification, I was honored to have the chance to meet him. He is a man of rare sophistication, wise, thoughtful, honest, a gentleman, and of course, a finely tuned Philosopher.

When I was a young man grappling with the arguments for and against abortion, his book, easily one of the best and most influential upon the young Evangelical crowd of that day, explained with clarity, depth, and consideration what we needed to hear. It was such a joy to hear a Christian with the philosophical background and scientific understanding requisite to the task, laying down the questions and answers in the big abortion debate. There was a certain style in his work. It neither deteriorated into name calling or abuse nor descended into mere rhetoric. In a tone worthy of respect, Beckwith challenged rivals to simply come to the table of sound reason and think these things through with him. There was a lesson to be learned not only in the arguments but in the very manner of presentation. It was as if he were telling us, “This is how a Christian should behave themselves when engaged in public discourse.” It was a good lesson. Solid arguments and plain language carry so much more weight than spite and accusation. I consider myself to be in his debt for these lessons and have no reservations in saying so.

As to our conversation on Catholicism, we spoke of the glories of historic Christianity. Banter with Beckwith is a little like conversation with a philosophical encyclopedia endowed with wit and charm. We spoke of the historic liturgies, the creeds, the sacraments, and the Scriptures. The big names: Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin. He was yet to read Luther and Calvin on these things but said that he would love to when not so busy with his regular labor. I can imagine the burdens upon a professional philosopher must be great indeed, especially when to be a professional philosopher that is both a Christian and Conservative makes it needful to work twice as hard as all the others to be thought of as half an equal. But Beckwith has always been one of the few Christians able to be effective in a field that is not particularly pleased to have them. God is generally as unwelcome in philosophy departments as He is in the sciences.

I guess the main point of my thought was that as Protestants, we have all of these things. We lose nothing in the realm of history, nor in our line of succession of thought from the early to the contemporary Church. The things that we “lose” if you will, are the things we feel like need a good losing. Things that the Church has either not historically held and created along the way, or things that while they may be old, their oldness has no relationship to either their truth or their reconcilability with Christianity. Everything that is “old” is not good and everything that is new is not bad. As an example, almost every doctrine modernly described by the Church as a “heresy” was born and grew to maturity in the first 3 or 4 centuries of the Christian Church and the Apostle Paul spent almost all of his time combating error within the existing Church of his day, even while still in its infancy. We have a special respect for our Fathers in the faith. It does not make them right. If anything, if they wrote during the first few centuries, it unfortunately makes then subject to special scrutiny, as they disagreed so much among themselves.

As to the liturgies and the look and feel of the Roman denomination, I don’t think that there is anything about that that is particularly foreign to Evangelical faith or practice. If you really like High Church liturgy there are always the Anglicans, Episcopals, and Presbyterians without all the prayers to the dead and the worship of Mary. And these groups are either still broadly Evangelical in theology or carry groups within themselves that are. We spoke of the alternatives to Catholicism that still comport with a more sturdy understanding of the authority of Scripture and the Justification that we find in Christ.

As to the Evangelical response to Beckwith’s return to Catholicism, it seems to me that it has been very mild and reasonable. Some of the Roman Catholic reactions I’ve read have not been quite so reasonable. They seem to imply that even a ripple in the sentiment of the Evangelical community is something that should be taken as an offence. Well come on… we’re Protestants. We shouldn’t be expected to be happy about someone deciding to not be a Protestant. That kind of thinking isn’t particularly helpful in a situation like this. As a person that knows many Protestants that used to be Catholics, their stories are not brimming with the gracious understanding of Catholics as to their change of mind that led to a change of communion. We shouldn’t pretend that Evangelicals should be happy about it and no one is going to have a party. That is certainly acceptable Christian behavior under the circumstances.

But we do understand. Evangelicalism has its cardinal doctrines of course but more than that it has a certain mode of conduct. We still carry in our souls the weight of those famous words of Martin Luther, “Unless I can be convinced by Holy Scripture or sound reason, I cannot, I shall not, recant. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.” Now speaking of reason, Luther at the time was reasonably certain that the next step in his career as a Reformer would be burning at the stake, but still, he said, “To act against conscience is neither right, nor safe.”. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Though it cost him his life, or even his immortal soul. This was Luther’s message and the bulk of Evangelicals still remember where they came from, and thus, even if we think Beckwith to be in error in both faith and practice, we understand.

As far as Protestants are concerned, no one should be questioning Beckwith’s motivation or character in this, but only his theology. We question his understanding of Holy Scripture and use of sound reason. This is the way Protestants handle this kind of thing. In his written testimony of his reasons for changing teams, he cites historical, biblical, and philosophical reasons for his change of mind. Those are exactly the kind of reasons that someone should have for a change of mind. Now, he does not say, and I think should have said, what those sources, Roman Catholic and otherwise, that he read and found so convincing were, and who the Church Fathers were that seemed to him more Catholic than Protestant, and what the philosophical positions that he adopted were, so that we, his Evangelical friends, could measure these things against our own understanding of Scripture, history, and sound reason and see with the full force of informed insight if any of Beckwith’s reasons hold water. It is, of course, my presumption that they don’t but without any titles, references, texts, arguments, hints, or bibliography, all we can do is guess. But certainly, Beckwith is a thoughtful man and if you want to persuade him, it will take arguments, not complaining. And it should take arguments because this is the Protestant method.

Beckwith, I think, won’t leave us waiting for very long. He is not the kind of thinker to either change his mind without grave consideration nor fail to explain it carefully when he does. When he does, we will carefully hear what he has to say and then reject it accordingly. Just kidding. We will carefully, respectfully, listen to what he has to say. But… I would very seriously doubt that there is anything that even a mind so sharp as Frank Beckwith’s can provide that hasn’t already been said in the ongoing dialogue between Protestants and Catholics. There really isn’t any new information on the table. And we haven’t finished talking about the old things.

Beckwith has openly and robustly identified himself as a Thomist (a follower of the philosophical system of Thomas Aquinas) and many of the more peculiar doctrines of Roman Catholicism cannot be justified without reference to the Thomistic system as its metaphysical foundation. In fact, we could say without reaching too far that if one has completely adopted Thomism one has tacitly adopted Roman Catholicism.

The Summa Theologia includes much of the ideological basis for the Priesthood, the sacramental system, sacerdotalism, the nature of grace as a substance eaten in the mass, the change explained by transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the physical blood and flesh of Jesus Christ that we eat to consume the grace, the power of the Priest to forgive sins and convert the bread in to flesh, and the power of the Priest to wash sin away by baptizing the person and to infuse good character into the person that makes them able to do the Meritorious good works necessary to earn that aspect of their salvation. And most important to the Evangelical, Thomas’ rejection of the view that we gain our Justification before God by the imputed righteousness of Christ alone, and that we receive this through faith alone, apart from any Merit that our good works can provide. Once someone has become a Thomist, or I should say a “Thomist Thomist”, since there are many Christians influenced by Thomas Aquinas that do not buy into the whole Thomistic system (R.C. Sproul, Norman Geisler, etc.), the present writer included, there is nothing to bar them from a completely Medieval understanding of all of these things.

One thing that we understand is that no one can be admitted to communion in the Roman Catholic Church without repudiating Justification by faith alone, either explicitly or implicitly. Implicitly if one is simply asked to assent to whatever the Roman Catholic Church teaches, even if they don’t really know what that entails. Explicitly if they know what that entails and then agree to the same thing. Beckwith is not in the don’t know category. I’m sure this was one of the reasons that he, being a man of wisdom, saw it wise to step down as the President of the Evangelical Theological Society. As much as we can say in good conscience that we and our Roman Catholic friends have many points of agreement on things, at least, many more than we do with other groups, the way of salvation is not one of them. This is one of the biggest things that identifies us as Evangelicals. It’s like in the top two or three there. That makes it really hard to overlook. I don’t think Beckwith would ever have a problem with the inspiration and authority of Holy Scripture, or the Trinity, or the Hypostatic union, or the other historically common Christian doctrines, so it must be that one. But it’s a big one.

Even though Evangelicals believe that a “true and living faith” will always produce Repentance and Good Works in the person that is Justified by the work of Christ alone, it is Christ’s goodness, and not any of our own, that is the Meritorious cause of our righteous standing before God. We do not consider those works that He works in us or through us to be accounted by God as an aspect of our righteous standing before Him. For Protestants, these are the effects of Justification, not the cause of it. Because God loves His children, He teaches them to be good. He does not choose to love them because they are already good in and of themselves.

And then there is the caveat on the issue of the inspiration and authority of Scripture. He would now have to say that he will submit to whatever the Roman Catholic Church (i.e. the Pope, the Teaching Magisterium, tradition) currently says their infallible interpretation of the Scriptures is, is the one he will agree with both publicly and in his heart. Ouch. It’s a tough one for a professional philosopher. Protestantism has this very public long standing tradition that the best argument wins. The position is that the scriptures themselves are “the sole infallible authority”. And the way this principle works itself out is that the most reasonable interpretation of scripture on any subject, in accord with the subsidiary and inferior authorities of reason, Christian tradition, and sound philosophy, is the one you should go with. This of course carries the scandal that good men might disagree, and then agree to disagree.

(Really, this is what Protestants think that Roman Catholics tend to do in practice also, but because of the ability to appeal to the Power of certain offices, you only need to get a few guys with Power to side with your position, and they can coerce the rest to accept your position, even if it is not as reasonable. So we tend to see this as a system that includes the tendency toward two logical fallacies as the ground for its ultimate arguments: the Appeal to Force and the Appeal to Authority; Argumentum Ad Baculum and Ad Verecundiam.)

A common Roman Catholic argument is that Protestants can’t be right because we have so many denominations. This is not something we consider to be an argument against us; this is a badge of glory. We love each other past our differences and still remain Evangelicals. And I guess we see it as, better to have good people disagree than to have one single interpretation imposed upon all and all be wrong together.

When is the last time you ever heard of a Presbyterian telling a Baptist that they weren’t really a Christian because they won’t baptize their kids? It just doesn’t happen. And visa versa. Why? Because we agree on the matters that the Church has always agreed upon, and on the peripheral matters, we leave every man to God and their conscience. The best argument wins, which is why the Apostle Paul did nothing in the New Testament but get into theological arguments with people with different understandings of things. Of course, he was an Apostle, so he had infallible insight, but isn’t it interesting that instead of just saying, “Believe X”, he still took the time to make incredibly detailed arguments and explanations so that our faith would not be built upon implicit faith and pleasant minded ignorance but understanding.

Of course Roman Catholics, and this by implication now includes Francis Beckwith, claim that the Pope has the same ability and authority as the Apostles themselves to perfectly tell us what the Scriptures mean, and Protestants aren’t buying that, but it is because we don’t have any very persuasive reasons to believe that kind of thing either from Scripture, or history, or philosophy. There are some very interesting arguments, but none that are very persuasive. It’s not because we don’t like the Pope. He is a very knowledgeable man. I’ve read a few of his books and it’s good to have an intellectual in the Vatican. But we still think he is wrong, and the mere claim that he is right coupled with the threat of damnation for not believing him does not inspire in me the slightest tinge of fear.

You must be certain in your own mind what you believe, but you can’t believe it for anybody else, and it is God that will be the judge of these things. I have no doubt that Beckwith is convinced in his own mind that what he is doing is right, but then again, he used to think that what we are doing was right. So I have no problem having great confidence in God and very little in men. There is no reason to believe that the mature Francis Beckwith that converts to Catholicism may not be the same matur-er Francis Beckwith that does not stay so converted. So I think if we can all just keep our heads and give every man their room to be wrong as much as we think it so, but with grace, and not be so insecure about what we know to be true as to attack a man for choosing not to believe it, we’ll be OK. He will not be the last to leave us, and since about half of the many Evangelicals I’ve known in my life have been former Roman Catholics, not the last to change their mind.

Christopher Neiswonger

Francis Beckwith

“The past four months have moved quickly for me and my wife. As you probably know, my work in philosophy, ethics, and theology has always been Catholic friendly, but I would have never predicted that I would return to the Church, for there seemed to me too many theological and ecclesiastical issues that appeared insurmountable. However, in January, at the suggestion of a dear friend, I began reading the Early Church Fathers as well as some of the more sophisticated works on justification by Catholic authors. I became convinced that the Early Church is more Catholic than Protestant and that the Catholic view of justification, correctly understood, is biblically and historically defensible. Even though I also believe that the Reformed view is biblically and historically defensible, I think the Catholic view has more explanatory power to account for both all the biblical texts on justification as well as the church’s historical understanding of salvation prior to the Reformation all the way back to the ancient church of the first few centuries. Moreover, much of what I have taken for granted as a Protestant—e.g., the catholic creeds, the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, the Christian understanding of man, and the canon of Scripture—is the result of a Church that made judgments about these matters and on which non-Catholics, including Evangelicals, have declared and grounded their Christian orthodoxy in a world hostile to it. Given these considerations, I thought it wise for me to err on the side of the Church with historical and theological continuity with the first generations of Christians that followed Christ’s Apostles.”

http://rightreason.ektopos.com/archives/2007/05/my_return_to_th.html

Christopher Neiswonger, christopher neiswonger, christopher neiswonger, chris neiswonger, chris neiswonger, chris neiswonger, neiswonger, neiswonger, neiswonger, neiswonger, neiswonger, neiswonger, neiswonger, christopher scott neiswonger.

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Superpastors run amok
• Frank Beckwith Rejoins Catholic Church
• Francis Beckwith Responds