Evangelicals and Roman Catholics
I listened with great interest to the recent interview of Francis Beckwith by Greg Koukl on the Stand to Reason radio show. As most of you probably know, Beckwith, then president of the Evangelical Theological Society, converted (actually reverted) to Catholicism. I recommend you listen to the podcast available at STR. Given the recent interest in the relationship of evangelicals and Catholicism, I thought I would present a series of blogs on the subject. I must stress the limited nature of my presentation. It is well beyond the capability of this medium to attempt to treat this subject exhaustively. Fortunately, someone has done an excellent job of doing that already in book form: Ralph MacKenzie and Normal Geisler in Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Disagreements. I have recently read this book and it serves as the source for this series of posts.
Over the next several posts , I hope to clarify and sharpen our thinking regarding the relationship between evangelicals and Roman Catholics. After providing a brief sketch of developments in the history of Catholics and evangelicals, I will then examine areas of doctrinal agreement. Then, I will discuss areas of doctrinal differences, and finally, I will provide a brief summary of our subject.
In 1054, an event known as the Great Schism divided Christendom into two large branches, the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic churches. In actuality, this was not a sudden event that occurred in 1054, but was instead a long process of estrangement between Latin and Greek Christianity. Then, in the early sixteenth century, a German monk named Martin Luther began a reform of the Roman Catholic Church, which was increasingly viewed as corrupt, both in theology and practice. Other reformers, such as John Calvin, followed suit, and these groups of people became known as Protestants. The Roman Church then launched a counter-reformation culminating in the Council of Trent (1545-1563), condemning the Protestant reforms. For roughly four hundred years, Catholics and Protestants had little in common, often co-existing in an antagonistic relationship.
In the 1960’s Vatican II softened the traditional stance of Roman Catholicism toward Protestants, no longer referring to them as apostates, but as “separated brethren.†The charismatic movement within the Catholic Church later in that decade provided some new common ground with many Protestants. Combined with the liberalization which has taken place within many mainline Protestant denominations, evangelicals now find themselves more closely aligned on many issues with Catholics than with their fellow Protestants, manifesting itself in scholarly cooperation and alliances on social issues. That Catholics and Protestants were common enemies of communism in Eastern Europe served to further erode barriers. In 1994, a group of thirty prominent evangelical and Catholic leaders met together and created a joint-document called, “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: THE CHRISTIAN MISSION IN THE THIRD MILLENIUM.†Among the Protestant contributors were well-recognized men among evangelicals, such as J. I. Packer, Pat Robertson, Bill Bright, and Chuck Colson. There have also been, in recent years, prominent evangelical leaders who have converted to Catholicism, including Francis Beckwith, former president of the Evangelical Theological Society.
Given this recent ecumenism, was the Protestant Reformation a mistake? Do Catholics and evangelicals have any substantial differences that merit the present distinction? Or, is it as some evangelicals have argued that the Roman Catholic Church is anti-Christ and demonic? Many lay evangelicals which I have spoken with question whether Catholicism is even a Christian institution. Just how much do evangelicals and Catholics agree or disagree? How important or significant are these disagreements?
Next, I will begin a discussion of areas of agreement.