Home sweet Rome...

Responding to my entry, Not Just Now, Thank You, dealing with the conversion to Roman Catholicism of many of my peers from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Greg Barnes writes:

I suspect that many of those who are converting to Rome are like so many who convert to Mormonism, in that they know very little about what they are getting into. It also shows a defect in the curriculum of whatever seminaries and Bible colleges those preachers attended...

And Pastor Paul McCain writes:

Tim, we've suffered a few diversions ourselves. Not too many though. Perhaps some of the more notorious conversions would include Richard John Neuhaus... and Jaroslav Pelican who headed East. ....What do you think accounts for it? I've identified it as a longing for some sense of "security" which is gladly provided in the "magisterium" of Rome... Your thoughts?

To which I respond:

Without getting too specific, whatever may be said about the rest of the Gordon-Conwell converts, no one would accuse Scott or Kimberly Hahn of being ignorant of what they were getting into. Scott and Kimberly were (and are) both bright ones, and would have known exactly what they were doing. On more than one occasion, I was very pleased to have Kimberly standing with me when I was arguing with Professor Roger Nicole in his advocacy of the ordination of women. And Kimberly's husband, Scott, was the cutting edge of theonomy's entrance into our campus who, like every other proponent of theonomy I've known, was no dullard.

Neuhaus is an interesting and, I think, instructive case. When he converted to Roman Catholicism he sent a number of us a letter explaining his action and I here quote what I found most telling, and have since resonated with:

"With respect to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America of which I was a pastor, the evidence compelled me to the conclusion that its operative understanding of the Church is informed not by the ecclesiology of the New Testament, nor by that of the fathers, nor by that of the Augsburg Confession, but by American denominationalism. I can no longer persuade myself that Lutheranism is an evangelical catholic movement of Gospel reform within and for the one Church of Christ. It now seems to me that Lutheranism is a Protestant denomination among Protestant denominations, and is determined to remain so." (Richard John Neuhaus in "To Friends and Colleagues," September 10, 1990.)

Sadly, this rings true for both denominations I have held membership in--the Presbyterian Church (USA) and, now, the Presbyerian Church in America. In meetings of our judicatories, at times it seems each man is out to build his own kingdom, not the Kingdom of God; and together, that we are denominational men working to build our denominational apparatus and institution. Rather than a confessing community holding to particular doctrines, we become an organizational community held together by our denominational affiliation with numbers in our eyes.

This only reflects evangelicalism, generally, which long ago ceased being a community of faith and is now simply an emotive and experiential community with a massive amount of money at stake--we all have participated in something approximating a born-again experience and are consumers of evangelical brands--mega-churches with our CCLI contract and Starbucks in our food courts, Christianity Today's stable of magazines, Zondervan's best-selling Bibles, Tyndale House's potboilers, Campus Crusades' huge number of missionaries and mind-boggling number of Jesus Film converts, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship's intellect, Wheaton's diplomas, Young Life's clubs and camps, Dennis Rainey's marriage fixes, and the conversions of Billy, Franklin, and Anne Graham Lotz--or more recently, Mel Gibson's movie.

Granted there are some who enter Rome with a good degree of ignorance concerning her true identity--anyone whose experience of Rome is limited to the Northern Hemishphere ought to be granted a plenary indulgence covering any conversion they wish to reverse--but if we allow that their knowledge grows as time goes on, few seem to return to Protestantism voicing surprise or shock at Rome's reality.

Although one swallow doth not a summer make, I do have a friend who converted to Rome--another Gordon-Conwell graduate--who, as he made the move, seemed not to be taking the doctrine of justification as seriously as he ought. Then, a year later, he converted back to Protestantism.

In a phone conversation he told me he had found the "legalism" of the Roman Catholic church "mind-numbing."

He wasn't talking about rules, but what Joe Brown comes to in his book, Heresies, issuing his considered judgement that, down through history, the Roman Catholic church has been guilty of a persistent promulgation of salvation by works that in the final analysis is heretical. Not in any way meaning to disparage those I respect and love within that communion, I agree.

As for seminary training, the one thing certainly lacking at Gordon-Conwell was authority--and by authority some will be surprised at my saying I am speaking specifically of the authority of the Word of God. Yes, our seminary was well-known for its adherence to the inerrancy of Scripture, but precisely in those areas where our culture focused its attack on God's Word and doctrine, our professors often seemed to fall all over themselves demonstrating their acceptance of whatever ideology the Academy currently found infatuating--and when my two brothers and I were enrolled in Gordon-Conwell, that ideology was feminism.

As my father said, evangelicals are big on Scripture's inspiration, but the authority of Scripture, that's a different thing.