President Of The Evangelical Theological Society

[Katholikos]

bUDGE, here's the part of my post that you ignored.

[quote]He's [Dr. Beckwith's]a first-class theologian and knows that to be 'born again of the water and the Spirit' imeans to be baptized. John 3:3-5 is the only place in Scripture that the term is used.[/quote]

Likos

[Paddington]

[quote name='Katholikos' post='1269082' date='May 9 2007, 02:46 PM']John 3:3-5 is the only place in Scripture that the term is used.[/quote]

Likos,

I used to think that 1Peter 1:23 was the same terminology. If I knew Greek, I might think different. So I guess I don't really know.

Here is the text:

(NRSV) "You have been BORN ANEW, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God."
Footnote = OR 'through the word of the living and enduring God'

Peace,
Paddington

[Katholikos]

Paddington, the Greek word in question in John 3:3-5 is [i]anothen[/i] -- meaning from above. anew or again.

Do you know how to check Strong's Greek on line to see if 1 Peter uses the same word? Unfortunately, I don't.

Thanks for this. But even if it is the same word, it would not mean "the emotional experience of accepting Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior," or, "giving my heart to Jesus," or, "turning my life over to Christ," or, "repenting of my sins and accepting Christ," or some similar meaning, which is the [i]'born again'[/i] Protestant interpretation.

The "living and abiding word of God" means Jesus (the Logos) Himself and/or the oral word of God (the Gospel) being preached by the Apostles. "This is the word that has been proclaimed to you" 1 Peter 2:24.

Born again by water and Spirit (John 3:3-5) means baptism. That's the way the first Christians who were taught by the Apostles or their disciples understood it.

"Then they are brought by us where there is water, and are born again in the same manner of rebirth by which we ourselves were born again, for they then receive washing in water in the name of God the Father and Master of all, and of our Savior, Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit. For Christ also said, "Except you are born again, you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven" Justin Martyr, First Apology (A.D. 155), Ancient Christian Writers, p. 66

Likos

[Paddington]

Thanks Likos

[Katholikos]

Budge is attracted to liars -- Alberto Rivera and Mary Ann Collins are both liars. Albertol calls himself "a former priest." Mary Ann Collins calls herself "a former nun." But her on-line bio says she was rejected from the sisterhood while still a novice.

QUOTE

I spent over two years as a postulant and a novice. This was a time of testing for the leaders of the convent, and for me, to decide whether or not I should make vows. My mother superior had some questions about my calling, and she and [u]the leadership decided that I should not remain in the convent.[/u] I left the convent on good terms and have occasionally been in contact with the sisters since then.

Wonder what Mary Ann says to the sisters when she is "in contact" with them. Maybe she says something like, "Hey, have you read my book claiming that I was a nun and slamming the Catholic Church?"

END QUOTE

[url="http://www.catholicconcerns.com/Bio.html"]http://www.catholicconcerns.com/Bio.html[/url]

Likos

[Katholikos]

Beckwith's commentary on his own conversion:

Greetings Commentators:

I would like to thank each and every one of you for your comments, even the critical ones. I know it is important for many of you to get these things off your chest and say your peace (and perhaps a bit more).

Many of you have asked me some very good questions, some of which concern the sorts of writings that influenced me. I plan on posting some kind of list in the near future. However, in the meantime, let me make two suggestions on the matter of grace and justification:

(1) Read the portion of the Catechism that deals with this matter. (Go here)

(2) Read the Joint Declaration on Justification by the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church. (Go here)

Remember to read each one charitably.

In addition, I am planning on writing a book, or a major article, that offers an account of the sort of thinking, deliberation, and reasoning that went into our decision to return to the Catholic Church.

That is it for now.

With Christian affection,
Frank


Posted by: Francis Beckwith | May 10, 2007 11:14 PM

[Katholikos]

Excerpt from Dr. Beckwith's interview with the National Catholic Reporter about his conversion:

The link to it is posted on his blog, [url="http://rightreason.ektopos.com/"]http://rightreason.ektopos.com/[/url]

The NCR editorial, same subject, is also linked to his blog; it's very good.

[url="http://ncregister.com/site/article/2772"]http://ncregister.com/site/article/2772[/url]

QUOTE

Much of what evangelicals think of as the odd beliefs of Catholics have their roots deep in Christian history. This, of course, may not convince a Protestant that these views are correct. But what it will do is help the Protestant to appreciate that the very same Christians that deliberated over the content of the Biblical canon also believed in the Real Presence, purgatory, intercession of the saints and indulgences.

If these Christians, who knew the Bible far better than us, did not think these practices and beliefs “unbiblical,” one should not be so quick to dismiss these practices and beliefs simply because they are outside of one’s Protestant experience.

END QUOTE

[Ragamuffin]

[quote name='Katholikos' post='1283689' date='May 29 2007, 06:14 PM'](Francis Beckwith) "Much of what evangelicals think of as the odd beliefs of Catholics have their roots deep in Christian history. This, of course, may not convince a Protestant that these views are correct. But what it will do is help the Protestant to appreciate that the very same Christians that deliberated over the content of the Biblical canon also believed in the Real Presence, purgatory, intercession of the saints and indulgences.

If these Christians, who knew the Bible far better than us, did not think these practices and beliefs “unbiblical,” one should not be so quick to dismiss these practices and beliefs simply because they are outside of one’s Protestant experience."[/quote]
If I were to become Catholic, I think my thought process would look a lot like his. Makes me wish he lived nearby so I could take him to lunch and pick his brain. This particular quote is pretty much where I'm at right now. I can't summarily dismiss the aforementioned doctrines for the same reason I don't dismiss the Canon.

[Katholikos]

[quote name='Ragamuffin' post='1284442' date='May 30 2007, 03:46 PM']If I were to become Catholic, I think my thought process would look a lot like his. Makes me wish he lived nearby so I could take him to lunch and pick his brain. This particular quote is pretty much where I'm at right now. I can't summarily dismiss the aforementioned doctrines for the same reason I don't dismiss the Canon.[/quote]

Ragamuffin, there have been two other conversions you may be interested in reading about.

Here are the links:

Dr. Robert Koons – Utexas at Austin Philosophy Professor – converts to Catholicism
(from Lutheranism) - received into the Church May 26, 07. The announcement ws made on Dr. Beckwith's blog - May 2007). Dr. Koons has posted the voluminous notes he kept as he studied the issues. They can be downloaded or printed from this link. (I chose to print them -- 94 pages).

[url="http://rightreason.ektopos.com/archives/2007/05/my_imminent_rec.html"]http://rightreason.ektopos.com/archives/20...minent_rec.html[/url]

Dr. J. Budziszewski – author “Natural Law for Lawyers” – convert to Catholicism –
Interviewed by Dr. Beckwith on his blog May 2007. Dr. Beckwith says that in spite of the title of the book everyone should read it.

[url="http://rightreason.ektopos.com/archives/2007/05/latent_knowledg.html#comment-51346"]http://rightreason.ektopos.com/archives/20...l#comment-51346[/url]

Reading these was really worth the time. Dr. Beckwith keeps good company!

Likos

[Katholikos]

IgnatiusInsight interviews Beckwith:

Answering The Call To Full Communion | An Interview with Dr. Francis Beckwith | Carl E. Olson | June 5, 2007

Excerpt:

QUOTE

I thought to myself that if sola scriptura can result in everything from the philosophical theology of Calvinism to the Open View of God, from Nicean Trinitarianism to social trinitarianism to Oneness Pentecostalism's rehabilitation of Sabellianism to 19th-century Unitarianism, then sola scriptura is not a sufficient bulwark for sustaining Christian orthodoxy.

END QUOTE


Read the full interview here:

[url="http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/fbeckwith_intervw2_jun07.asp"]http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features200...ervw2_jun07.asp[/url]

Edit to correct typo

Edited June 6, 2007 by Katholikos

[Ragamuffin]

A thoughtful and considerate counterpoint from Carl Trueman at Reformation21.com:

[quote][b]Thoughts on the Return to Rome of Professor Beckwith[/b]
By Carl Trueman

The stunning news of another high-profile conversion to Rome is made even more surprising by the particular identity of the convert: Francis J Beckwith, current President of the Evangelical Theological Society. Beckwith, who was brought up as a Catholic and became an evangelical, has returned to the Church of his youth and describes his recent journey in a statement on the web at:

[url="http://rightreason.ektopos.com/archives/2007/05/my_return_to_th.html"]http://rightreason.ektopos.com/archives/20...turn_to_th.html[/url]

What started as something which could have been simply a mischievous blog rumour has indeed proved to be true. Blogs telling the truth? Perhaps I need to nuance my opinion of the blogging after all. Maybe some people have been believing mine all along. Scary thought, that one.

Let me begin by saying that I have tremendous respect for Professor Beckwith’s integrity in making this move. Given his position, and, presumably, that this move could well jeopardize his career, not to mention many friendships, he has made a difficult but honourable decision. It would presumably have been much easier for him just to hide his intellectual and spiritual change. That the timing was precipitated (and thus made more difficult for him) by the request of a nephew who had wandered from the church and returned, is a touching detail which only increases respect for Beckwith’s humanity.

As to the details of his change, I think the key paragraph in his testimony is not one that deals with the ETS dilemma, but one which outlines the last months of his spiritual pilgrimage:

[indent][i]The past four months have moved quickly for me and my wife. As you probably know, my work in philosophy, ethics, and theology has always been Catholic friendly, but I would have never predicted that I would return to the Church, for there seemed to me too many theological and ecclesiastical issues that appeared insurmountable. However, in January, at the suggestion of a dear friend, I began reading the Early Church Fathers as well as some of the more sophisticated works on justification by Catholic authors. I became convinced that the Early Church is more Catholic than Protestant and that the Catholic view of justification, correctly understood, is biblically and historically defensible. Even though I also believe that the Reformed view is biblically and historically defensible, I think the Catholic view has more explanatory power to account for both all the biblical texts on justification as well as the church’s historical understanding of salvation prior to the Reformation all the way back to the ancient church of the first few centuries. Moreover, much of what I have taken for granted as a Protestant—e.g., the catholic creeds, the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, the Christian understanding of man, and the canon of Scripture—is the result of a Church that made judgments about these matters and on which non-Catholics, including Evangelicals, have declared and grounded their Christian orthodoxy in a world hostile to it. Given these considerations, I thought it wise for me to err on the side of the Church with historical and theological continuity with the first generations of Christians that followed Christ’s Apostles. [/i][/indent]

Several points stand out. First, the role of patristic writings. Second, the issue of justification. Third, the common theological ground of Catholicism and Protestantism as having been originally determined by the church. Fourth, the weight of all this evidence pointing to the `safer bet’ option of backing the Catholic Church. I can only throw out a few brief thoughts on each but here they are, for what they are worth.

As to patristic writings being more Catholic than Protestant, I would be the first to concede that modern evangelicalism has not been strong in its study and use of patristic authors, unlike the great founders of Protestantism such as Oecolampadius, Calvin, Owen etc. This is a great and serious fault and places evangelicalism in serious danger of not being catholic in the best and true sense. But to argue that the patristic authors are more Catholic than Protestant is arguably to impose anachronistic categories upon the first five centuries. Further, given the variegated nature even of the extant patristic writings, it is to beg questions of the kind: Which authors? Whose theology? The temptation for both Catholics and Protestants has always been to prioritise those writers most conformable with their own later traditions. In general, many of the earliest patristic statements, for example, about church government are ambiguous and could be read as consistent with a variety of later ecclesiologies. I know those who read the Apostolic Fathers as pointing clearly towards later episcopacy; but to me they make statements entirely compatible with presbyterian polity. Truth be told: we lack the context to make a definite judgment one way or the other. Then there are the typical knotty problems relative to how one defines Catholicism in order to find it in the early writings. For example, the relative late date of clear Roman supremacy (scarcely a peripheral Catholic dogma) makes the earliest patristic writings arguably very un-Catholic in the Roman sense. And what of Mariology? The link between the penitential system and purgatory? The intercession of saints? All might be hinted at in some early church documents but one can only trace such lines once the later Catholic Church is presupposed. This was precisely the dilemma faced by John Henry Newman as he researched and wrote his magisterial masterpiece on the development of doctrine; and the reason why he was a Catholic by the time he published it. In other words, the real issue of how to read the early church fathers is, for Beckwith as for Newman, a matter of church authority.

This is surely again the case with justification. The problem with tackling pre-Reformation views of justification is, of course, that the church strictly speaking had no view: the Reformation crisis itself precipitates the first elaborate formulation of justification by the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent, a decree which then imposed order on the Catholic Church’s dogmas in this area. The question of precedents for, say, Luther’s position, is a vexed one and Beckwith is right to ask where this was before the Reformation. But that is, of course, only a potentially insurmountable problem from the perspective of Tridentine Catholicism. Doctrine develops even for Catholics, as Newman made clear, and could have developed into Luther (as the work of, say, Heiko Oberman on late medieval nominalism has shown). That it did not do so points us again not so much to specific problems in the history of dogma per se, but to the issue of church authority.

I also confess at this point to being perplexed that Professor Beckwith regards both Catholic and Reformed notions of justification as historically and biblically defensible, the balance being tipped, it seems, by the fact that the former is more so. There are many questions one could raise here but two will suffice. First, Catholic and Protestant views of justification do share a vast amount in common, particularly in terms of a common christological basis in the righteousness of Christ. Indeed, such was never at issue in the Reformation. But the key differences -- impartation versus imputation, and the instrumentality of faith – are mutually exclusive. One has got to be wrong, both may be wrong, but both cannot be right. Again, the issue seems ultimately to be one of the nature of church authority in making the final decision about something unclear in scripture. I could go on at this point: the whole issue of assurance – surely the pastoral issue vis a vis justification at the Reformation -- is critical: there is no assurance as Protestants understand it in the Roman Church; and Catholics regard Protestant teaching on assurance as leading directly to antinomianism and presumption. This is not a little matter; it is decisive for everything from the role of the church to the shape of individual piety. But, if Beckwith genuinely sees Scripture as ambiguous or unclear on this, he is right to return to Rome: first, justification is historically non-negotiable to Protestantism; and, second, he clearly sees the need either for church authority or some extra-biblical revelation to break the tie – both of which really require a Roman understanding of Scripture and authority. His move back to Rome on this issue alone would thus be a necessary one of great personal integrity even if no other issues were causing him difficulty.

As to the third point, I do indeed rejoice in the common creedal heritage of Catholicism and Protestantism. But I do not believe the creeds because the church approved them. Now, let me nuance that. I find myself in basic agreement with Heiko Oberman on the nature of the Reformation struggle over authority. He argued that the clash between Rome and Protestants was not a clash between tradition and Scripture alone, but a struggle over the nature of tradition. Protestants (and, indeed, some Catholics at that point) held to the notion that there was one source of revelation from which the church’s tradition flowed, namely, Scripture; and that this tradition (which Oberman calls T1) was thus always in principle corrigible by Scripture. There were others in the Catholic Church, however, who argued for a two-source theory of tradition, Scripture and extra-scriptural revelation as recognized or defined by the church (T2). This distinction is important as it allows me, as a Protestant, to acknowledge my debt to tradition in an honest and realistic manner without being required to submit to the church as ultimate authority. My approach to creeds, therefore, is decidedly that of a T1 adherent: I take them very seriously because they are the work of the church at a corporate level, but I only believe them because they seem to have done the job of making sense of Scripture for at least 1500 years and continue so to do. Thus, they command my adherence but no longer and no further than they continue to be a credible and consistent synthesis of what Scripture says.

This brings us to Professor Beckwith’s last point: the Erasmian move. In 1525, Luther clashes with Erasmus over the nature of the agency of the human will in salvation. The debate is often read simply as a re-run of Augustine versus Pelagius, but it is, in fact, far more subtle than that. What Erasmus is arguing is that Scripture’s teaching is unclear and uncertain; therefore, we should keep speculation to a minimum and stick with the church. For Luther, on the contrary, Scripture is clear on such central matters as the will (and the nature of God, the incarnation etc.) and we should therefore proclaim these truths and, if necessary, stand against the institutional church when it contradicts Scripture in these areas. The debate is, if you like, all about Scripture and church authority. And this is the burden of Professor Beckwith’s fourth point: given that there is a certain equivocal nature to the Catholic-Protestant debate on justification, [i]better to back the church with historical and theological continuity with the first generations of Christians that followed Christ’s Apostles. [/i]I have said enough already to indicate that I think this statement involves a romantic view of both the early church and the contemporary Catholic Church; more importantly, it rests upon notions of church authority and Scriptural perspicuity and sufficiency, as well as the right and ability of the individual to read and learn from scripture. Professor Beckwith has clearly come to repudiate basic Protestant positions in this area.

Given this, Professor Beckwith is absolutely right to have rejoined the church of his youth. Not to have done so would presumably have been to go against his conscience. Yet, I would fire one shot across the bows at this point: while the issue of authority is too complicated to engage in a satisfactory way here, it is important to say that, for all of the crowing over the chaos in Protestantism by various Catholic ex-Protestants, I know of no more practically flexible and ultimately meaningless notion of authority than that which has historically been practiced by the papacy. Protestantism’s chaos may be more evident at an institutional level; but maybe that just makes it more honest about its condition. I do not say that in order to be rude (though it may well not seem too polite!!) but simply to point to what is for many Protestants the obvious elephant in the Catholic room.

A few years back, a good friend of mine, Dr Ray Van Neste of Union University, TN, did a survey of various scholars, asking if they could sign the ETS doctrinal statement. At least one leading Catholic wrote back to say yes – and the only reason why any Protestant could was because the Catholic Church had first defined these basic doctrines! Whether Professor Beckwith can legitimately remain a member of ETS is for others to decide. I am not a member any more. Ironically, I let my own membership lapse two years ago and joined the North American Patristic Society. My reason: there are now so many post-modern, open theist types in ETS (who can, I think, sign the doctrinal statement with integrity, so minimally orthodox and inadequate as a Christian statement is it) that I decided it was bizarre to remain a member of a group with many of whose members I had less in common than I do with good, confessionally Catholic friends. I resolved instead to use my money to learn more about the early church fathers from which later Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, developed. Frankly, the NAPS is better value for money; and, believe it or not, patristic reading has persuaded me to stick with Geneva, rather than head to Rome.[/quote]

Edited June 6, 2007 by Ragamuffin