While reading R. R. Reno’s lament about the Roman Catholic left, I went back and took a look at Joshua Lim’s account of his conversion:
It was during this time of doubt that I came across a few Catholic theologians at a conference on Protestant and Catholic theology. These were not the first Catholics that I had met; prior to this encounter, I had dialogued with a rather intelligent Catholic (though he knew very little about Reformed Protestantism–which, at the time, enabled me to ignore his arguments) at a nearby coffee shop over a span of about two years. Moreover, there were constant online debates with Catholics on different blogs that I participated in. Yet, perhaps because of my realization of the shortcomings of Reformed theology, it was at this point that I tried to really understand Catholic theology from a Catholic perspective — as much as this was possible for someone who was raised to distrust Catholicism. . . .
During the several months following this conversation, I kept in touch with these theologians and they provided answers to my numerous questions. For the next five months or so, I buried myself in books, Catholic and Protestant. I carefully read Peter Martyr Vermigli’s work on predestination and justification; Vermigli was an Augustinian friar prior to his conversion to the Protestant movement, and so his book represented something of a final vestige of hope. To my surprise, I came away from the book even more convinced of the truth of Catholicism. I read Heiko Oberman’s work on the medieval nominalism of Gabriel Biel and its immense influence on Luther’s theology. Through my study, I realized that much of my doubt and skepticism stemmed from certain philosophical assumptions that I had unwittingly adopted regarding knowledge of God and reality through Luther’s theologia crucis–and much of the philosophical issues that I had stemmed from my understanding of theology’s relation to philosophy. The inextricable link between philosophy and theology became evident to me. One cannot have a ‘pure theology,’ just as one cannot simply believe the Bible without simultaneously interpreting it; philosophy will always be there whether one acknowledges it or not–and those who claim to have no philosophy in distinction from their theology must necessarily elicit a certain sense of suspicion, much like the suspicion aroused by fundamentalists who claim simply to be reading the Bible.
The reason for looking at Lim’s conversion narrative owed to the distinctly different picture of Roman Catholic theologians that Reno gives:
There they go again. The usual gang of Catholic theology professors has signed a manifesto, “On all of our shoulders: A Catholic Call to Protect the Endangered Common Good.” It claims to warn us of the grave danger posed by Congressman Paul Ryan. The future of America is at stake! The integrity of Catholicism hangs in the balance!
. . . Serious people don’t pass off cheap, partisan rhetoric as substantive analysis. Why, then, would past presidents of the Catholic Theological Society of America hurry to support a manifesto that is largely an emotive exercise in partisan rhetoric?
The answer, at least in part, can be found in the changing character of the American Catholic Church. In the years after the Second Vatican Council, liberals thought that the future was theirs. They saw the way in which the hierarchy acquiesced to dissent in the aftermath of Humane Vitae. Their way of thinking seemed natural, inevitable. But it wasn’t so. During the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, the Church slowly solidified around a vision more traditional than trendy. Liberals went from being presumptive heirs to embattled outcasts.
One sees as much in the episcopacy and priesthood. There are no more Hunthausens and Weaklands. The priests under fifty today see their ministry as counter-cultural, and the culture they are countering is the one ministered to by liberalism.
As a result, the academic Catholic establishment, which invested so heavily in liberalism, is now very much on the margins of the Church. Can anyone imagine one of the twenty or so past presidents of the Catholic Theological Society of America serving as trusted advisors for bishops today? Hardly. They’ve reorganized the CTSA into a trade union for dissent.
If Lim had run into the theologians who were Reno’s colleagues in the CTSA when he taught at Creighton University, would the former Westminster student have remained a Protestant or simply abandoned the faith altogether? And if Called to Communion were ever called to give an account of the state of Roman Catholic theology — despite the efforts of infallible and authoritative pontiffs to reign U.S. theologians in — their call might look more like a pipe dream.
Old Life 
“I kept in touch with these theologians and they provided answers to my numerous questions”.
Providing answers is easy when you have two virtually opposite answers to offer for almost any question. When your catechism is 2,000 questions long you have a lot of tricks in your bag.
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This is what is funny about CTC’s project. Now that they are Catholics, don’t they have enough house cleaning to do to worry about us silly old Reformed people in our tiny churches? When we criticize Rome or Evangelicals at least we are picking on somebody bigger. I don’t know if the Pope and his Bishops are looking for their insights, though.
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The whole notion of a Catholic theological blog is kind of ridiculous. If I want to learn about the Magisterium I can consult official church teaching. Why would I care what these newbies think? Who is asking for their opinions inside or outside of the church? They have some Protestantism to get out of their systems.
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There seems to be a pattern for seminarians: read a wide range of theologians across different traditions, change your theology to match whichever theologian you are reading at the time, notice your inconsistency, become frustrated, have an existential crisis, and then move over to the church that claims to have never changed. There probably is more at work…but these decisions do seem to be based on illegitimate appeal to emotion.
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I think for an OCP / PCAer the Catholic church of the 1960s and the Mormon church today provide interesting case studies of a “what if”. What would have happened if the fundamentalist / modernist wars had turned out differently.
The Mormons present the what if for what if the Pearl Buck’s all get excommunicated, the membership doesn’t follow them out the door but instead agrees with them. That is whey want to belong to Machen’s church but theologically end up siding with the liberals. A generation later you end up with a leadership that ends up having to be rather vague on theology since they have a formal membership that while supporting them institutionally, theologically has been a family of different theologies that aren’t openly spoken about. So theology simply drops off and instead the institution builds support for itself on secondary areas that do enjoy support, like canning. They end up having to ignore or thread the needle on issues like the fact that 1/3rd of the congregation are almost trinitarians while another 1/3rd believe that Elohim’s wife / wives are goddess worthy of worship in their own right. And no one talks about it since they don’t want a church split.
Similarly for Catholics. To my mind they present an example of what happens if Machen is allowed to create his own missions board and no one really cares. Imagine a history where he’s just not able to whip up enough controversy to cause a church split. Assume there is a gentile shift and not a crackdown on the Buck type liberals. So the priests and bishops slowly shift right, but at the same time, the membership continues to go left. Confronted with having to pick between:
a) Birth control is a moral necessity
b) Humane Vitae is a teaching of the church and teaches that birth control (excluding NFP) is gravely immoral
c) The church cannot err on import matters of faith and morals
The liberals tried to argue that (b) wasn’t really true. The conservatives won that battle and now (b) is widely accepted by the membership. So the overwhelming percentage of their membership is compelled by (a) to believe that (c) is false. Which cuts the very heart of Catholic theology. They ended up winning a battle on the secondary things and lost the battle on the primary thing. Over a few generations, that’s leading to a huge falloff in their membership being willing to even formally remain members. Baptisms and church marriages, the two last institutions to go are falling off a cliff.
Eric’s point above is a good one. You would think someone with an interest in apologetics would be much more interested in talking to the 50-70m American Catholics that reject core Catholic doctrines than the 300k conservative reformed. But I’m not sure the CtC crowd has anything to say. Culturally America is Protestant. Even the forms of Judaism that evolved in America were Protestant in matters of culture. The Islam that is evolving in America is culturally Protestant.
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CD – You sound like you have been reading Hart’s “Defending the Faith”. Great book. Probably his best work in my opinion.
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Reno and First Things are hardly in the position to throw stones at others for issuing half-baked partisan statements. Reno is just one more convert to Rome who teaches the myth that the magisterium stands as an objective fact compared to Scripture which permits many interpretations. The magisterium is as much a theological construct of Reno’s interpretation as any doctrine taught by Protestants or non-sacramentalists.
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Reno: Peter Leithart and James Jordan are among America’s most penetrating Christian preachers and teachers, at once rigorously biblical and richly catholic. Their ambitious vision of the Lordship of Christ gives a vital role to the liturgical worship, helping us to see that the church is the New Israel, a nation of disciples that is a light unto the nations, a form of life capable of ordering society as a whole in accord with divine precepts. Today a hostile secular elite is determined to drive the church’s witness out of the public square. Under their leadership the newly founded Trinity Institute for Biblical, Liturgical, and Cultural Studies will deepen and renew pastoral ministry and church mission.
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I am still waiting for the name of somebody who supports Leithart’s ambitions for the empire but who despite that also teaches the gospel of sovereign grace apart from our works.
Norman Shepherd: On three different occasions I have had the privilege of sitting under Jim Jordan and Peter Leithart as they have lectured for the annual Biblical Horizons conference in Florida. Each time I have come away from these conferences with new insight into the teaching of God’s word, and rejoicing in the unity and coherence of the program of redemption revealed therein. Consequently I am thrilled now to learn about the founding of the Trinity Institute for Biblical, Liturgical, and Cultural Studies in Birmingham, Alabama. Peter and Jim will be working with other competent scholars to establish a faculty that will contribute directly to the liturgical and pastoral needs of the church today. These men understand how the gospel has functioned in the life of the church from the earliest centuries to the present.
Norman Shepherd, Former Pastor of Cottage Grove Christian Reformed Church, South Holland, Illinois
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The irony of Called to Communion’s errand is that a lot of these guys left Reformed churches because they found certain elements of Reformed theology (such as sola scriptura) to be implausible. Their solution? Rome, which to the rational mind offers up far more that is implausible – not only Scripture but Papal infallibility, transubstantiation, priestly celibacy, no birth control, and on-and-on. It’s as if my wife burns my dinner twice in the same week so I leave her for being unstable, only to take up with a pair of twins that I meet on the local roller-derby circuit. This is why I predict that if you look at the current CTC roster and check back in five years you will find a lot of these guys to be AWOL, most likely due to becoming atheists. These guys need to watch Christopher Hitchens debate William Lane Craig for a reality check.
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Does this mean there will be no more polemics against the solas or against Westminster California?
From Joseph Ratzinger in Communio: Vol. 1, The Unity of the Church (Ressourcement: Retrieval & Renewal in Catholic Thought):
“The true chance for ecumenism does not lie in revolt against the Church as it is, in a Christianity as free of the Church as possible, but in a deepening of the reality which is the Church. . . . In practice, this means that one cannot live ecumenism against one’s own Church, but only by trying to deepen it in relation to what is essential and central. This means that one must seek the center in one’s own Church, and this, after all, for all Christian Churches are truly only one.
more from the inquisitor’s office: “Conversely it means that at any event one may not seek the center in traditions that are purely one’s own. All this, however, can never be done by merely rational calculation. It presupposes spiritual experience, penance, and conversion. And again, it begins quite concretely by overcoming mutual mistrust, the sociologically rooted defensive attitude against what is strange, belonging to another, and that we constantly take the Lord, whom after all we are seeking, more seriously than we take ourselves. He is our unity, what we have in common—no, who is the one who is common to and in all denominations.”
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Somewhat as an aside but related to Rome. As I look at the Roman traditionalists even CTC and Jason, they look to me like broader american evangelicalism over the past 30 years but with pictures. As CD noted their religious expression, outside the mass, revolves around secondary political conservative issues. The scriptural and even philosophical arguments by CTC and Jason are serving as ‘Gateway’ propositions to get you in the door, after which the switch takes place and then you engage the mass and RC culture issues. It’s interesting for me to see all these guys embrace pageantry and pictures(icons) which brings up another ‘contextual’ issue that was on the front burner at the time, all our RC icons were white European depictions of semitic folk and God seemed to have a particular propensity for those of Italian descent to lead His One True Church. I bring this up because it was, even as RCers, a glaring ethno-centric flaw of our claims and painted(no pun intended) God as rather human and even, dare I say, with all the same racial and ethnic biases of his creation. If God isn’t a White European God, where are all the black popes and Semitic popes(outside st Peter), and Asian popes, etc. How about just equal representation in the magisterium? It was a big deal just to get your token American representation, and that after much clamoring and money given. These are all valid historical considerations, that seem to be glossed over in the rosy historical valuations of Rome’s claims by it’s adherents. So much for catholicity.
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Eric —
This is why I predict that if you look at the current CTC roster and check back in five years you will find a lot of these guys to be AWOL, most likely due to becoming atheists.
First generation converts are always agitated. They never have the untroubled relationship with their new faith of those born into it. Catholics as they exist in the real world and not in CtC imagination, reject Protestantism not because of justification but because Protestants: are boring on the holidays, don’t know how to make a sandwich, are easily offended by humor… And this works in the opposite direction, for example the priest sex abuse scandal. The CtC people are genuinely untroubled by it because they believe the magisterium teaches the doctrine that the church is trustworthy in a limited sense. They don’t expect infalible human leaders of any institution, but accede to the Catholic doctrine in the most limited way possible. Born Catholics are enraged by it, because they believed the church was trustworthy, in a broad sense, the priestly conduct and the coverups by bishops proved them wrong.
I agree with you, that atheism is a likely outcome of this road. But then again I think atheism is the likely outcome of most Catholic roads at this point. John XXIII saw the iceberg the church was headed for, Paul VI didn’t and they’ve crashed. CtC argument keeps having to define itself in terms of excluding what real Reformed opponents do bring up. I think because they are retracing their own conversion and expect it it be universally applicable. That won’t survive long.
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Erik —
No I haven’t read it. Though the reviews make Hart’s book sound very good. I wrote a piece about 4 1/2 years ago which is a good summary of my feelings about Machen. The theme was much more related to Church Discipline, Machen as an example of how support after the fact will decrease not increase. On the other hand I do walk through my thoughts about the events.
http://church-discipline.blogspot.com/2008/07/gresham-machen-invalid-excommunication.html
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Hakkenberg: “Gordon Clark and a number of other ministers left the OPC over seemingly non-fundamental and highly technical doctrinal matters, since on the surface it seems as though the theological issues involved should not have warranted such an extreme action”(330). The Westminster Seminary faculty had sought to defrock Dr. Clark, not by charging him judicially with doctrinal error and so affording him the protection of due process, but by administrative action. (This was the same tactic the PCUSA had used against Machen a decade earlier.) Had the Westminster Seminary faculty attacked Dr. Clark over “seemingly non-fundamental and highly technical doctrinal matters.” ?
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Machen: “Dr. Stevenson [President of Princeton Seminary] objects to the League of Evangelical Students because it brings our students into connection with ‘ ‘small institutions and sects which are committed to separation and secession….’ I confess, gentlemen, that at no point is my disagreement with Dr. Stevenson more profound than here. His attitude at this point seems to me to be hostile to the very foundations of Christian liberty…. ‘Forbid him not,’ said our Lord, with regard to a secessionist of the early days, who was objected to because he did not follow with the company of the other disciples; and so from that day to this He has had in His care those who follow the dictates of their consciences in the worship and service of Him. We Protestants are all secessionists; and if, in the interests of organizational conformity, we fail to honor liberty of conscience, our high heritage has been lost”
(quoted in Bradley J. Longfield, The Presbyterian Controversy. Oxford University Press, 1991, p 52).
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I wish I had more time to comment here, heck, more time in general would be nice. I am not sure how Lim’s conversion played out for him internally, but I read his account not too long ago in the wake of Stellman’s conversion, and I couldn’t help but think that for him (more so than other CtC converts who have written of their experience), intellectual coherence – philosophical or theological seemed to be the measure of warrantability for belief. I am not sure how he ultimately will find that in Rome, unless in an enclave that doesn’t bother itself with the theological and traditional patchwork that defines Rome outside the unifying factor of the mass, but, really this is beside the point.
In other intellectual disciplines, such as the hard sciences, the demand for total coherence to believe anything at all is a good way to hold to nothing at all. Physicists have had the darndest time trying to make their theories cohere at the macro and quantum levels, but they hold both in kind and wait for further development in scientific knowledge – as opposed to trying to pit their theories (which do give a reasonable account for things) against eachother. As Reformed Christians we simply try to give an accounting for the facts of Revelation, namely in Scripture, by attempting to give an account that best corresponds to what we believe God has revealed. Of course we have to wade through the harder issues of good and necessary consequences from Scripture and even general revelation, and that is hard work full of intellectual rigor – yet our Confessions have stood for centuries withstanding this scrutiny amongst the confessing community – which may not mean we have all the answers, but might indicate we are on the right track with respect to the truth.
Yet, Lim seems to be buying into a common approach to the systems of truth, arising out of the enlightenment, especially since Kant, that insists for a system of truth to warrant belief, it must be coherent. This was a big leap from more traditional approaches that demanded that systems correspond to the facts of the external world (or Scripture). Maybe this didn’t lead to systems where all the loose ends are buttoned up, and there may be mysteries for which we do not have adequate answers right now, and maybe ever – but, since the Enlightenment are we any closer to God than when we started – and if Lin (and others) hold a criteria of coherence in order to justify their conversions to Rome, I suspect that in the end they will be sorely disappointed. Better to rest in t he mysteries of analogical truth and ectypal theology, you know theology of the Cross stuff, than constantly chasing the intellectual carrot that is coherence – because in the end, if coherence is true there’s as good of a chance that Nietzsche is right as the Pope is.
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Jed, in light of your comments, it’s interesting to think what would have happened to Lim if he had had a full dose of Kuyperianism at WSC instead of the Reformed confessionalism he encountered there. After all, the neo-Calvinists also look for that Kantian or Hegelian synthesis to justify the coherence of Christian truth.
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Jed & D.G. – Good comments. I hang out with some scientists at Iowa State. One is a Physicist who is not a believer. I asked him once about how they deal with scientific questions that they do not have answers to. He basically said they just have faith that at some point in the future they will find the answers. What if the CTC guys had this attitude instead of running to Rome when they had questions they couldn’t answer. Rome is happy to offer themselves up as the all-wise father (mother) for those with questions. All that is required is for the questioner to surrender their autonomy to the wisdom of the church. This is why guys like Cross sound like brainwashed robots when they interact here. They can no longer just have a normal, human, reasonable conversation because they’ve surrendered themselves and are now all-in. It’s rather cult-like.
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You learn far more from the CTC guys by the questions they won’t answer than you do by the questions they will answer.
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DGH,
I agree, at least some of those neo-Cals who are less reticent about Kant, Hegel, & Co aren’t totally consistent in their use of their philosophies. They maintain to the Creator/Creature distinction, and anaolgical knowledge, but I am not sure how they square that with the insistence that Christian theology can be construed as a body of knowledge that can be proven (in an absolute sense of proof) to be totally internally coherent. We certainly affirm that Christian truth is rational, and that belief in Christian truth is reasonable, but there are too many mysteries to be found in Christian theology to insist that the finite mind can possibly understand how they cohere. Whether we are dealing with the mysteries of divine simplicity, the Trinity, the dual natures of Christ, predestination, and the many other paradoxical truths we hold to, we as humans lack the intellectual capacity to prove how these truths in their fullness all are absolutely coherent, because we don’t see these truths down to the absolute level. Better to stick with revealed truth, and understand that from God’s eyes all these truths work in perfect harmony, but we don’t need to work all these out. After all we don’t expect physicists to give up on quantum theory just because they aren’t quite sure how light functions as both a wave and a particle. The drive to total coherence in how one understands Christianity seems to be a fast track out of the faith, and the history of philosophy and ideas is littered with former Christians to prove this.
I think there are aspects or factions within neo-Calvinism that is a little too enamored with enlightenment thought, even if there are some who seem to have a good grip on the folly in Kant. It seems like quite a departure from the philosophical and theological means of inquiry that defined the confessional age to embrace these forms, and I don’t think they are an improvement.
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Lane is apparently reading Robert Barron’s(an RC priest) book on Roman Catholicism. Here’s a snippet that rings terribly true;
“(p. 6). He is entirely up-front about the syncretistic nature of Roman Catholicism (although he would almost certainly not use this word): “Part of the genius of the Catholic tradition is that it never throws anything out!” (p. 8). ”
IOW, it’s a religious bazaar, but they all go to Mass.
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If the RCC is conservative, why do Roman Catholic universities not follow the standards that Roman Catholic agencies do?
How do institutions with a religious mission hire people who do not share that mission? That did not used to be the case in the days before Jason and the Callers’ parents were married.
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