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July 19, 2006

On a recent post, Eric Rasmusen queried why Evangelicals and Roman Catholics are meeting each other at the door: The Evangelicals are coming in, and the Catholics are going out. His observation that prominent Protestant minds are coming over the pond to Rome is cogent; in the past 30 years we have Avery Dulles, Richard Neuhaus, R.R. Reno, Steve Webb, J. Budziszewski, Reinhard Huetter, Mortimer Adler, Paul Griffiths, and Robert Bork, just to name a few. And of course, who can forget Newman and Waugh from a few years back.

Rasmusen wonders if this is due to the classic "evangelical despair" at theology. Mark Noll of Wheaton suggested as much in his classic Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (1996) with his opening line, "The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind." For the layman, who has no interest in theological training, this might be true. But for a minds like Heutter, Adler, Griffiths, and Neuhaus, evangelical despair simply doesn't cut it. One remembers Newman's line that conversion stories are not conversation pieces between courses at dinner, but I'm certain that all of these men knew and continue to know Protestant theology - there was little chance that, mirabile dictu, evangelical theology suddenly went limp.

But I seriously doubt that anyone in the list above came to Rome becuase "the idea that if a doctrine is old, it's got to be right, and that papal infallibility, unlike inerrancy, can quiet one's uneasy doubts by giving a right answer to everything." That the pope has spoken infallibily twice in history makes me wonder if "everything" for Rasmusen relates to Marian dogma. Rasmusen qualifies his evangelical with "intelligent," so I take him at his word and believe that such a man would engage in serious theological inquiry - and, in so doing, would see that such stale Protestant estimations of why one converts are the stuff of the Brothers Grimm. But I cannot help but think that he speaks in jest, so criticism should be taken with a grain of salt.

His post is short, so one is also hesitant to admonish Rasmusen for short-shrifting evangelical theology with despair. Unless, of course, he has in mind those parts of the evangelical community who narrowly apply sola scriptura to the exclusion of any extra-biblical theological discourse. Under such an estimation of Christianity, despair seems about right when faced with 2,000 years of theological inquiry. One simply cannot get the homousion of the Son out of John 1 without some inquiry into other elements of God's creation, through the guidance of the Spirit. You need Nicea's help to get an orthodox Trinity.

Hesitancy waivers, however, at Rasmusen's claim that Rome can't keep "seriously-minded people." In all honesty I'm not sure what people Rasmusen is thinking of, but I cannot call to mind one well-regarded theologian who has left recently. There have been a small number of theologians who have been officially censured by the Vatican, but this was due to heresy being presented to the faithful by such theologians as orthodoxy.

While Rasmusen get the impetus for conversion wrong, one wonders if he was completely serious, and, notwithstanding sincerity, his question is a good one.

Posted by Seth Zirkle at July 19, 2006 01:00 PM

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