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Book Review: Wonderfully Irenic

March 29th, 2009 at 02:55pm Jan P. Dennis

Return to Rome: Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic – Francis J. Beckwith Brazos Press (December 2008) Topic: Catholicism; Protestantism Summary: Beckwith’s apologia for his return to Catholicism Rating:

In one sense, there’s no need for a book like this to be written. The tale of a prominent Protestant ethicist and philosopher, former president of the Evangelical Theological Society, returning to the communion of his youth, the Roman Catholic Church, really isn’t news; this kind of thing goes on quite regularly–Evangelical Christians becoming Catholic, and Catholic Christians becoming Evangelical.

What is unique about this story is that Francis Beckwith wants to continue to be considered as an Evangelical even as he returns to his Roman Catholic roots.

How does that work? Isn’t there a great divide that separates Evangelicals from Catholics?

Not necessarily, says Beckwith, and, one might add, a growing number of ecumenically minded Christians, from both sides of the aisle, so to speak. For example, from the Protestant side, you have Brian McLaren, with A Generous Orthodoxy, in which he claims that, as a Protestant Christian, he is free to adopt the Catholic liturgy (or at least portions thereof) as his rightful patrimony, as well as Mark Noll’s interesting book, Is the Reformation Over?, not to mention D. H. Williams’s exercise in Evangelical Ressourcement, Evangelicals and Tradition. From the Catholic side you have books like Louis Bouyer’s Spirit and Forms of Protestantism and Word, Church and Sacraments, as well as Jean Guitton’s great and irenic book, The Church and the Gospel.

What does all this mean?

For one thing, it means that the divided Church is a scandal, per se. In a sense, it doesn’t even matter who’s to blame: the mere FACT of the divided Church brings scandal to Christianity. The question is, how to get it back together? The uniqueness of Beckwith’s position is his idea that one can be a (Roman) Catholic and an Evangelical, but it’s difficult if not impossible to be and Evangelical and a Catholic. Why? Because Catholicism is great enough (in the sense of its EXTENT) to embrace Evangelicalism, but that Evangelicalism isn’t great enough to embrace Catholicism.

In other words, Catholicism contains within itself the possibility of an Evangelical understanding as part of its legitimate heritage, but Evangelicalism doesn’t contain within itself the possibility of a Catholic self-understanding as part of its legitimate heritage.

The key issue is probably Evangelicalism’s understanding of church. For Evangelicals, church can’t help but be an epiphenomenon, a contingency, something that comes about as a consequence of one’s decision to trust Jesus as one’s savior. Thus, if church isn’t essential, something that has an essence apart from one’s personal decision for Jesus as savior, it HAS no essence, and, consequently, is not an historical, visible presence. It truly is an effect. But that can’t be the basis for true ecumenism. After all, if the church has no historical existence, how can one know what is and isn’t the true church? One can’t, and, therefore, there can be no basis for unity.

Thus the beauty of this book is its simple testimony to the idea that you can be an Evangelical Catholic, but that it’s very difficult if not impossible to be a Catholic Evangelical–to which there are a growing number of Evangelical Catholics that bear witness.

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