In Light of the Gospel

Since I pastor a church, weekends are difficult to stay up with my blog. But I did get a chance to read a few things this afternoon. I noticed that the Washington Post now has an article on Francis Beckwith’s decision to unite with the Roman Catholic Church. You can read it here.

I notice in this article that Beckwith mentions some more influences on his decision to become Roman Catholic. He agrees with the criticisms that the Reformers made of the Roman Catholic Church, but he thinks that the historical division is not as significant now.

Someone who helped to change Beckwith’s thinking was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. Beckwith studied Ratzinger’s book Truth and Tolerance, and he felt like Ratzinger was closer to evangelicalism than Beckwith had previously realized.

After reading the book, Beckwith called a prominent evangelical philosopher, read him a passage about whether theology is really knowledge, and asked him to guess the author. Beckwith says, “He reeled off the names of a bunch of evangelical theologians. I said, ‘No, it’s Ratzinger!’ And he said, ‘So he’s one of us!’ ”

The article also states that Beckwith was deeply affected by a joint declaration  1999 by the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church on the doctrine of justification, which he said went a long way toward eliminating this historical source of division. Beckwith said:

“I do agree with Protestants that there is no good I can do, no work I can perform, that would justify me. But there are many places in scripture that say there’s an obligation Christians have to take on the character of Christ, and that contributes to their justification. The Catholic solution is: I am required to take on the character of Christ, but it is not my power that does it, but God’s grace.”

A few remarks:

• Historically I still cannot get past the Council of Trent condemning Protestants for justification by faith alone. In fact, there is tension here between Trent and Vatican I & II.
• The Roman Catholic Church never denied grace in justification, but grace alone and faith alone [sola fide & sola gratia]
• The issue concerns the distinction between justification and sanctification, a distinction that Beckwith seems to have dropped given his last comment: But there are many places in scripture that say there’s an obligation Christians have to take on the character of Christ, and that contributes to their justification.
• The issue is not whether Christians should take on the character of Christ; the question is the idea that it [sanctification] contributes to our justification.
• The Reformers always said, we are justified by faith alone but not a faith that is alone. We should not forget that the very issues of justification and sanctification were struggles during the 16th century. This has not been eliminated.

UPDATE: This morning Gene Veith commented on the news article with several helpful comments.

One other issue I should have noted was Beckwith citing the joint declaration between Lutherans and Roman Catholics concerning justification. Veith says,

Please: Looking to liberal Lutherans for Lutheranism is like looking to liberal Presbyterians for Calvinism, or liberal Catholics for Catholicism. (Dr. Beckwith will go crazy when he has to deal with the feminist nuns and the pro-abortion college professors). What the liberal Lutherans of the Lutheran World Federation signed was a document in which both sides agreed to use the same terminology, while meaning different things by the words.