What would cause an evangelical professor of philosophy at a well-known Protestant university and the president, as well as a member for over twenty years, of the Evangelical Theological Society to suddenly resign both his presidency and membership and return to full communion in the Roman Catholic Church? This is in fact what took place back in May 2007 when Dr. Francis Beckwith suddenly made public his rejection of key Protestant doctrines and his return to the Roman Catholic Church. Dr. Beckwith's resignation and departure from Protestantism caused no small tempest within evangelical circles among friends, colleagues, and many, like me, who have benefited from his scholarly writings over the years.
With his most recent publication, Return to Rome, Dr. Beckwith seeks to provide both an autobiographical account of his personal struggles in this transition, along with his theological reasons for leaving the Roman Catholic Church as a young adult to embrace and cherish Protestant theology, only to return years later to full communion with the church of his childhood.
While Beckwith's personal account is an interesting story, I have space to make only a quick point in regard to this portion of the book. Beckwith's impetus in returning to Rome seems to be more romantic than reasoned, even if he denies this criticism throughout the introduction (14). His testimony throughout makes it clear that this is an important reason for his return; an almost nostalgic "return home" motif is developed as Beckwith repeatedly uses the phrase "the church of my baptism" (28, 75, 116, and 129) to describe his impulse of longing. Beckwith's parents baptized him a Catholic and saw that he was confirmed, which prompts him to ask in hindsight if there is a sufficient reason to "remain in schism with the Church in which my parents baptized me" (116).
But the nostalgic longing wasn't the only motivation for Beckwith's return to Rome. He was also encouraged by pietist sympathies and mystical impulses. He relates how as a teen he became interested in Protestantism because they appeared to be more serious about their faith and their defense of it in contrast to the "watered-down and intellectually vapid presentation of the Gospel" in the American Catholic Church after Vatican II (38).
Additionally, Beckwith shares a sentimental story about his niece Darby (73-75), his nephew Dean (19-22), and his wife's mystical vision of Jesus moving and talking with his disciples during Mass in Waco, Texas-all of which coincided with the exact time in Homewood, Alabama, when the bread was blessed under a mural of the Lord's Supper hanging over the altar. This gave comfort to Dr. Beckwith and his wife concerning her father's "baptism of desire" (68-71), and further contributed to his reasoning to return to Rome.
The specific doctrines that most challenged Beckwith, and in fact kept him from ever thinking he would return to the Catholic Church, were "the doctrine of justification, the Real Presence in the Eucharist, the teaching authority of the Church (including apostolic succession and the primacy of the Pope), and Penance" (79, 82, 114). It is clear from his own testimony, however, that the nature of the church's authority is the lynchpin of the entire disagreement so that once pulled all the other teachings would simply be embraced. In a rather telling display of clarity, Dr. Beckwith summarizes the heart or formal cause of the Reformation debate:
I reasoned that if the Catholic views on Church authority, justification, the communion of the saints, and the sacraments were defensible, then these other so-called "stumbling blocks" withered away, since the Catholic Church would in fact be God's authoritative instrument in the development of Christian doctrine. (79)
In this regard, Dr. Beckwith states that the doctrine of sola scriptura played almost no role in his struggle with the question of his theological identity (79). He argues that he had long ago rejected the Protestant doctrine, seeing that most Protestants had so qualified the limits of the doctrine that "it seemed to be more a slogan than a standard" (79). In its place, however, Beckwith offers no argument for the Catholic Church's supreme authority (see 79-81). Rather, one is left with only a few criticisms of how Protestants have not provided sufficient support for their doctrine of sola scriptura or how that doctrine has been so qualified as to fail to be of any practical use.
Unfortunately, there is something of a false dichotomy in his argument. Simply stating that sola scriptura is irrelevant or doesn't function very well practically in all cases isn't the same as proving that it is wrong or a false doctrine, nor does it prove that all authority in faith and life should belong to the church or the pontiff in Rome. This is the crux of the debate about authority between Protestants and Catholics: either the Bible alone is supreme or the magisterium is. As Dr. Beckwith argues, once sola scriptura is jettisoned in favor of the pope, then whatever the church states as her doctrine is de facto orthodox and biblical.
Dr. Beckwith spends most of his argument on the material cause of the Reformation-the doctrine of justification by faith alone or sola fide. Once again, he begins with how the Protestant's doctrine of justification is deficient, both historically and exegetically. Here we see how the material cause bears such heavy weight on the formal cause for support. One must first answer the question of authority, whether sola scriptura or the magisterium, before he or she can proceed any further in the debate. If sola scriptura is accepted, then the historical argument will carry less weight (N.B., I did not say "no" weight). But if the magisterium is supreme, then the historical argument becomes crucial in the debate.
Regarding the doctrine of justification, Beckwith returns to well-worn, and frankly superficial, arguments to the effect that the Protestant doctrine depends on philosophical nominalism and voluntarism (in the notion that God can declare a sinner righteous who is not actually inherently righteous). This is, in Beckwith's view, a legal fiction, a mere forensic relationship-what he calls "methodological Protestantism" that always pertains to theory and never practice. The Catholic view of justification, meanwhile, is held to be much broader and realistic, and one that involves progressive sanctification as part of justification. In this schema, the sinner freely cooperates with God's unmerited, infused grace so as to produce real, radical transformation of life.
While Dr. Beckwith's book makes for interesting reading, I don't think his case will be persuasive to a Reformed Christian unless he or she is already sympathetic to Rome, radical pietism, and even mysticism. For the most part, he offers little by way of new arguments, and all the texts he references in regards to the doctrine of justification have already been adequately interpreted by Reformed theologians for over five centuries. Without any convincing arguments for why sola scriptura should be rejected, I remain unmoved. The Bible teaches that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Jesus Christ's work alone.
