Correspondence

The Wheaton from the Chaff

As a Wheaton alumnus who has been received into the Catholic Church—and thereby lost a chair at another evangelical school, Gordon College in Massachusetts—I read with interest Alan Jacobs’ account of Wheaton College’s dismissal of a convert to Catholicism (“To Be a Christian College,” April).

I certainly support Jacobs in every point he made. And may I say also that I have immense admiration for President Litfin. I consider him a trusted friend. Insofar as his task is to maintain Wheaton’s specifically evangelical identity, he acted well. I understand the dismissed professor, Joshua Hochschild, also takes this view.

As one whose background lay in the most praiseworthy sectors of American evangelicalism, and who considers the evangelicals to be very strong allies of the ancient Church, I find myself in the odd position of often explaining (to their credit) the evangelicals to Catholics, and at the same time assisting brilliant and devout young men, by this time numberless, in their pilgrimage toward the fullness of the Faith as that has been understood and taught by the Apostles, the Fathers, and the Doctors of the Church from the beginning.

I suppose that any orthodox Catholic would want to urge, in the conversation among academics anyway, that primary sources, so to speak, be brought into play. Having been a Protestant for fifty years, I am aware of the views that prevail in that quarter of Christendom on the big questions: the papacy, the Blessed Virgin, the Eucharist, the priesthood, and the sacraments. My experience, even in the higher reaches of evangelical academia, most notably in the seminaries, is that once you have explained what the Church actually teaches on a given point, the rejoinder is rarely, “That is heresy.” Rather, one hears often, “Oh. I had never thought of that.” Meanwhile, I have often pointed out to Catholic audiences that the reason their Protestant friends think that Catholics worship the Virgin Mary is that a lot of Catholics think that Catholics worship the Virgin Mary. The list in this connection is a very long one.

I would wish, most sedulously, to invite my evangelical brothers-in—arms, in this epoch when the Faith itself is being driven into the defensive by titanic forces, to consult such sources as the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the documents of Vatican II, and to read such authors as Romano Guardini, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Karl Adam, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Louis Bouyer, and all the encyclicals of John Paul II. I think they will find it all fruitful, exhilarating, and even perhaps bracing.

 

Thomas Howard
St. John’s Seminary
Boston, Massachusetts

 

Being both a graduate of the English department at Wheaton College and an Episcopal clergyman, I was doubly intrigued to see how Alan Jacobs would consider the college’s decision not to renew Joshua Hochschild’s contract. At almost every turn, I found myself in agreement with Jacobs, most especially in his assertion that “it is important to avoid the claim that the differences between Protestants and Catholics are insignificant,” while at the same time maintaining that there is a great diversity among Protestants at the college itself.

My hesitation, however, surfaced when Jacobs included Anglicans within a list of Protestant bodies represented at Wheaton. Since Jacobs is a self-confessed Episcopalian, I would have thought that he would have included in his discussion the shifting sand upon which Anglicans stand between these two extremes within this discussion. I stand, as an Anglican, in what is clearly the “Catholic” camp, and I would assert that Anglicanism, in its ideal form, maintains a much greater concomitance with the Roman Catholic Church than with any other Protestant body.

I treasure and am grateful for my experience at Wheaton College (where I became an Anglican, incidentally) and would be honored to be able to teach the kinds of students Wheaton consistently attracts. But if the Statement of Faith as articulated by President Litfin remains the official interpretation, I could not, an Anglican, sign that statement in good conscience. If Wheaton is going to clarify its position regarding how the Statement of Faith is to be read in light of Roman Catholics, just consideration should also be given to the many Anglicans who share with most Roman Catholics the kinds of assumptions that make them “not Protestants” in Litfin’s estimation.

 

Rev. Matthew S.C. Olver
Church of the Incarnation
Dallas, Texas

 

In his intriguing article, Alan Jacobs asks, “Would the clause in the Statement of Faith affirming that ‘all human beings are born with a sinful nature that leads them to sin in thought, word, and deed’ need to be revised to make room for those who believe in Mary’s immaculate conception?” Allow me to ask as a follow-up: Could Martin Luther, given his views on the Immaculate Conception, teach at Wheaton? Suppose we construe Wheaton’s Statement of Faith to require those who teach there to subscribe to the Reformer’s meaning of justification by grace through faith. Would Augustine, given his views on inherent righteousness, grace-infused merit, and final justification, be allowed to teach there?

As an evangelical who teaches at an evangelical institution, I have nothing but the deepest respect for Wheaton College and for its place within evangelical higher education. But perhaps evangelical institutions of higher learning could benefit from a serious reexamination of our policies as to who can teach at our institutions. There is something at least paradoxical about Protestant statements of faith that would keep Luther or Augustine from teaching at Protestant schools.

 

 

Paul R. DeHart
Lee University
Cleveland, Tennessee

 

As an evangelical Christian in the mainline Presbyterian Church, I have had my faith renewed by the writings of C.S. Lewis. On several occasions, I have visited the Wade Center on the Wheaton campus and have benefited greatly from the writings not only of Lewis but also from the other six authors whose work is deposited there. Reading these seven authors has also awakened my catholic sensibilities. It has made me aware that, as Lewis says, “those who are at the heart of each division are all closer to one another than those who are at the fringes.”

It occurs to me that of the seven authors represented in the Wade Center, none can be classified as evangelical in the sense that the word is used today. Two were Roman Catholic (Chesterton and Tolkien), and the others (including Lewis) all had some doctrinal positions that would not be in agreement with the Wheaton Statement of Faith. Indeed, none of the seven authors would be able to be hired to teach at Wheaton!

 

William J. McClain
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

 

On reading Alan Jacobs’ account of the inability of Wheaton College to tolerate even one Roman Catholic professor in its community, a phrase came to my mind: The Church needs to breathe with all three of its lungs. I mean, of course, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. These are the three main branches of Christian believers that have come through the twists and turns of history to our present day. Each has well-educated and articulate representatives who could serve with distinction on the Wheaton College faculty and contribute to its mission effectively. If the administration of the college is not able to see that because of deep-seated anti-Catholic prejudices, then there is no other word to describe the situation than small-mindedness. What else can one say about a school that takes pride in its Marion Wade Center—an advanced research collection featuring Catholics such as G.K. Chesterton and J.R.R. Tolkien—if the school cannot fathom the idea that they, or Eastern Orthodox or Catholic experts on them, could actually be members of the faculty?

If C.S. Lewis, the centerpiece of the Wade Center, were here today, he would be appalled at the idea that Wheaton is dumbing itself down by excluding Catholics from its faculty. I’m sure he could find some way to put the double-standard logic that allows Catholic students to attend Wheaton College into the words of Screwtape the devil.

What are the fruits of the Reformation? Either an insipid and self-dissolving liberalism or a neurotic fundamentalism or a small-minded and scandalously anti-intellectual (according to Wheaton’s own Mark Noll) evangelicalism. If this is the prism through which God’s light shines, then we need a different prism. Perhaps we should be asking not “Is the Reformation over?” but “Was the Reformation a mistake?” If Wheaton College is the best fruits of the Reformation, as it no doubt thinks of itself as being, then the answer to the latter question seems to be yes. This cannot possibly be what the Wheaton community desires as the result of its attitudes and policies.

 

Charles Kilby Bellinger
Arlington, Texas

As usual, Alan Jacobs is very irenic and winsome in his arguments. But I am not persuaded. While some evangelicals no doubt believe that the difference between Catholics and Protestants comes down to how each regards the Scriptures, I doubt that most theologians would agree. The fundamental difference has always been one of soteriology, and from that arises a difference in how each approaches the Scriptures. No doubt, as Jacobs argues, there are many common grounds on which evangelicals and Catholics may meet, but the theological differences are still significant enough that few evangelical colleges will wish to be placed in the ironic position of judging the “orthodoxy” of a Roman Catholic applicant to the faculty. Would such a test be the candidate’s adherence to the historic teachings of the Magisterium? Or to a new standard by which they would hope to find (or create) an “evangelicalized” Catholic? If Jacobs’ vision comes into being, it is likely to be at a brand-new institution, not at an established one such as Wheaton.

 

William Reichert
Rolling Hills Estates, California

 

Alan Jacobs’ nuanced attempt to explain the tension at Wheaton College over a Catholic faculty member avoids the elephant in the room: Evangelicals who form the constituency of Wheaton reject most of the core beliefs of Roman Catholicism. Likewise, Roman Catholicism rejects the core beliefs of such evangelicals. It is often considered impolite to mention these profound differences. Jacobs gingerly touches on a few but generally obscures them beneath a mountain of multifaceted qualifiers and subtle distinctions. Without rancor or malice, we need to define those irreconcilable differences.

The large majority of evangelicals (I am one) do not believe in sacramental theology nor in the special role of a “priest.” We believe there is but one mediator between man and God, Christ Jesus. As our high priest, he is all-sufficient. Thus, no other mediators or mediating works are necessary—no saints, no Mary, no penances, no indulgences. The blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin. While the typical evangelical loves his church, he does not believe that the church contributes to one’s salvation. The church points to Christ and proclaims Christ but does not add anything to the finished work of Christ. No pope is necessary. No human interpreter of Christ and his doctrine is infallible. No magisterium is ultimately authoritative over all Christians. The Church has leaders, but they arise not through a strict, formalized rule of apostolic succession but by a less structured process of discernment and deployment. Though not every Christian is a leader, every Christian is a member of a “royal priesthood” gifted for a ministry of some kind.

The president of Wheaton rightly insists on preserving the evangelical, Protestant heritage—the DNA—of the college. Professor Hochschild is playing a crafty little game by pretending his Catholicism is compatible with Wheaton. He should leave graciously and cheerfully instead of pretending that the Reformation has expired.

 

Gary Hardaway
Lynden, Washington

 

Kudos to Alan Jacobs for his charitable and balanced article on Wheaton’s decision not to renew Joshua Hochschild’s contract because of his reception into the Roman Catholic Church. Jacobs walks a middle ground on the issue, and in this case I believe that, by and large, the middle ground is the area where wisdom is to be found. I suspect that, in this context, the middle ground may also be a courageous place to take a stand.

Jacobs’ article illustrates, it seems to me, the great need for evangelical colleges like Wheaton to face head-on the question of Catholic faculty. Jacobs mentions “Arminians and Calvinists, Anglicans and Dispensationalists, Baptists, Nazarenes, Plymouth Brethren.” These folk, he argues, may disagree on quite a few things, “but they all accept a doctrinal statement that draws heavily on the Nicene Creed. More important in the daily life of the college, they all use the Bible in a similar way.”

This may be true of Wheaton, but unfortunately, many of the evangelicals I meet in Christian colleges hardly know the Nicene Creed, and they certainly do not all use the Bible in a similar way.

Some of them are quite happy using the Bible according to the dictates of Enlightenment principles, others believe that we need to read the Bible literally wherever possible, and again others believe that individual Bible texts are there primarily to give therapeutic support to their subjective quest for emotional and spiritual healing. Perhaps as evangelicals we need to learn from Catholics, today more so than before, precisely because we have such a wide variety of approaches to Holy Scripture. As evangelicals, we need our Catholic brothers and sisters to remind us that the interpretation of scripture is not a purely personal matter. If there is a commonality in the “use” of the Bible among the various Protestant groups Jacobs mentions, too often such commonality lies in a complete disregard of ecclesial guidelines for interpretation.

Much of this has to do, I believe, with the lack of serious ecclesiological awareness among evangelicals. Which church one attends is generally a matter of relative indifference, and Jacobs seems to suggest that adding Catholics to the Wheaton faculty would put a strain on such ecclesial indifference: “What would it do to the Christian unity and fellowship of the faculty to have some among us who (while not doubting that the rest of us are Christians) do not believe that we belong to the Church in the form intended by Christ?”

The question is a fair one to ask. But do we need to believe that each person on the Wheaton faculty agrees that all other faculty “belong to the Church in the form intended by Christ”? Does the melting pot of evangelicalism really require Anglicans to believe that Baptists belong to the Church in the form intended by Christ, regardless of the question of infant baptism? Have Plymouth Brethren really come to accept that their fellow Christians in a Reformed church belong to the Church in the form intended by Christ? Perhaps today this is indeed largely the situation in which we find ourselves. If so, then with Catholicism—and with most Protestants and evangelicals of earlier generations—I am of the conviction that evangelicalism has gone off the rails in its ecclesiology. Perhaps as evangelicals we need to learn from Catholics, precisely because we need to be reminded that doctrinal and ecclesial differences really do have significance.

 

 

Hans Boersma
Regent College
Vancouver, British Columbia

 

I once heard a vice president of Marshall Field’s say that “success in merchandising depends upon being the first-choice store for a certain group of shoppers.” I think this observation is equally true for institutions that depend on voluntary support: private colleges, private clubs, Christian churches. When there ceases to be a distinction between Roman Catholic, Orthodox Catholic, and Anglo-Catholic and between Methodist, Presbyterian, and Lutheran Protestants, then those institutional churches will lose the necessary support. When the Episcopal Church stopped worshipping in the “Anglican Way” with the change to a new prayer book, millions of Episcopalians left the church, which is today following Marshall Field’s toward nonexistence.

Wheaton College is supported by a particular group of Protestant Christians. It has an influence far beyond that of its inner circle. The same, of course, is true of the Roman Catholic Church. When a member of the faculty of Notre Dame converts to Unitarianism and supports legalized abortion, then Notre Dame, too, will be following Marshall Field’s.

 

Betsey Bobrinskoy
Chicago, Illinois

 

Alan Jacobs fails to mention Christendom College among the Catholic schools in America that have policies regarding non-Catholics. Christendom requires theology professors to swear allegiance to the Magisterium of the Church during the opening Mass of every school year. It is optional for teachers in other departments, but most of our teachers are Catholic, so they do it anyway. There is no policy against non-Catholics, except that they not teach in the theology department.

 

 

John O’Herron
Christendom College
Delaplane, Virginia

 

Alan Jacobs replies:

I am grateful to all those who responded to my essay; their comments deserve a more detailed response than I can give here.

I thank John O’Herron for his information about Christendom College. The practice there—in which an institution’s theologians have a unique role in safeguarding and representing the institution’s tradition—is a common one in Christian colleges and universities, but it is not Wheaton’s model.

At Wheaton, not just all faculty but all employees sign the Statement of Faith, which reminds us that everyone shares the task (though in varying ways) of conserving and articulating our evangelical tradition. So if we had a Catholic faculty member as a kind of second-class citizen, one whose presence we welcomed but not, strictly speaking, as “one of us,” then the biggest change to Wheaton would not be to have a Catholic faculty member but to have two tiers of employees, those fully and those partially on board with our mission. Because I think that much of the strength of Wheaton’s institutional conversation comes from its systemic character, my

hope is that if we open our doors to Catholic faculty, those doors will be all the way open. But my posi-tion just makes all the more serious the issues raised by my other interlocutors.

Matthew Olver claims that “Anglicanism, in its ideal form, maintains a much greater concomitance with the Roman Catholic Church than with any other Protestant body,” but of course Anglicans like Paul Zahl would say precisely the opposite and would be no less Anglican for doing so. And since no Anglo magisterium exists to determine what the “ideal form” of Anglicanism is, we Anglicans may (and do) position ourselves at various points along the spectrum. So I would say that it is not “as an Anglican” that Olver is unable to sign Wheaton’s Statement of Faith but as a particular kind of Anglican. To say that someone is an Anglican is not to say much about their level of agreement or disagreement with Wheaton’s theological views. (This is one of the reasons that, though still an Anglican, I am no longer an Episcopalian.)

I hope Paul DeHart will recognize my goodwill when I say that the question of whether Augustine or Luther could teach at Wheaton reminds me of one of the great debates of my childhood: What would happen if Superman fought Godzilla? When you try to bring together, in imagination, powerful beings from different worlds, the sheer speculation is dizzying. The real question would not be whether Wheaton would have Luther or Augustine, it is whether Luther or Augustine would recognize Wheaton as being a Christian school at all. And can you imagine Aquinas applying for a job at Notre Dame? We see the continuities between our views and theirs, but I am not confident that they would see things the same way.

Even though Lewis and Tolkien et al. are much closer to us in time—I am now thinking of the letters of William J. McClain and Charles Kilby Bellinger—some of the same caveats apply. Wheaton’s Statement of Faith, while drawing heavily on the central statements of historic Christian orthodoxy, makes provisions that are distinctive to our place and time—that are meant to address certain issues that the leadership of the college (and presumably its employees as well) believe to be especially significant for Christians here and now. For instance, the statement on Scripture would look different if it had been composed in a time when the authority of Scripture was not under significant attack, from within the Church as well as without. If faithful Christians in other times and places—or indeed in our own time and place—would think our statement odd, or incomplete, or too detailed, that does not necessarily reflect poorly on us or them. Different Christian institutions may have legitimately different roles and therefore legitimately different self-definitions.

This is why-pace William Reichert—Wheaton is not and has never been in the business of judging someone’s “orthodoxy,” whether they are Catholic or Protestant. We have a particular vision that we believe in strongly and wish were more widely shared in Christ’s Church, but I don’t think anyone at Wheaton has ever questioned the orthodoxy of someone who doesn’t share our every point of emphasis and conviction.

Christian orthodoxy, as I understand it, is encapsulated in the great creeds of Christ’s Church, especially the Nicene; and since Catholics obviously affirm that teaching, I cannot agree with Gary Hardaway that evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics do not share “core beliefs.” Hardaway may also be interested to know that the Catechism of the Catholic Church makes this affirmation: “Jesus Christ is true God and true man, in the unity of his divine person; for this reason he is the one and only mediator between God and men.” Moreover, Professor Hochschild did leave Wheaton graciously, if not altogether cheerfully—he had good friends here and enjoyed his students, who also greatly respected him—and has played no games of any kind, “crafty” or otherwise, as I am sure the administration of Wheaton would be glad to affirm.

Hans Boersma’s letter is thoughtful and nuanced, as I would expect from him, and raises questions too deep to be addressed here. I will say, though, that when I claimed that Wheaton people “all use the Bible in a similar way,” what I had in mind was rhetoric rather than theology per se. That is, people of varying traditions tend to quote from their Bibles at the same points in debates and to address the same kinds of issues—and they expect those biblical references to have a certain force that they might not have for other Christians. This rhetoric is our inheritance from modern American evangelicalism and its fundamentalist predecessors, and it does indeed tend to smudge or even erase differences in the great Reformation traditions, so that, in the interdenominational evangelical context, one struggles to remember that, once upon a time, Calvinists and Wesleyans didn’t sound so much alike, even when they were quoting from the same Bible.

Thus my erstwhile colleague Mark Noll, sensing that this lack of differentiation weakens rather than strengthens the evangelical movement, has long been counseling his fellow evangelicals to draw more deeply from the wells of their own particular traditions. If we do so, our conversations are likely to be more pointed and sometimes more difficult, but will surely also be more productive.

And perhaps that practice will make us better able to embrace Catholics as our fellow workers in the vineyards of Christian higher education. If, on the other hand, we can embrace Catholics as fellow workers only because we (and they) have lost our awareness of what distinguishes these various traditions, then ours will be a hollow victory indeed, and a largely false “oneness.”

The question for Wheaton is simply whether its current hiring policies help or hinder its own mission to serve Christ and his Kingdom. I have argued that we may well have reached the point where the exclusion of Catholics hinders us; but it is both inaccurate and uncharitable to attribute that exclusion (as Charles Kilby Bellinger does) merely to “small-mindedness” and “deep-seated anti-Catholic prejudices.” Hans Boersma’s letter gives an indication of the real complexities at issue here. And in response to Betsey Brobinskoy: While I do not want Wheaton to go the way of Marshall Field’s or the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago—Lord preserve us!—I also think we have to follow the Lord’s call upon us without counting the cost. He has not promised any of us success in all our endeavors.

Finally, twenty-five years ago, as a new Christian and a graduate student in English at the University of Virginia, I awoke to find myself lost in a dark wood and was helped to escape Error by a long correspondence with one Thomas Howard, then of Gordon College. He introduced me to many of the books and thinkers that he mentions in his letter—and to Peter Kreeft, whose epistolary patience with me was similarly Christlike—and while I have remained (in the words of my beloved fellow Anglican Sir Thomas Browne) “of that Reformed new-cast Religion, wherein I dislike nothing but the Name,” the Catholic traditions that Tom showed me then have continued to sustain me spiritually and, I think, to give far greater depth and resonance to my teaching than I would ever have achieved otherwise. He also, in effect, got me my job at Wheaton. So to those who think that my tolerance of papistical nonsense and sophistry has far exceeded the bounds appropriate to a good evangelical and professor at Wheaton College, I say: Blame Tom Howard.

Warding Off Liberalism

Reading Joseph Pearce’s review (“The Watch and Ward Society,” April) of my book, Out of Due Time, I do not know whether to laugh or to cry. It must bring a smile to the lips of those who know me (and to my superiors) for me to be called a man of “liberal prejudices,” a person in “seeming sympathy toward Tyrrell’s point of view,” and so on. That certainly has not been my reputation. In fact, my interpretation of Wilfrid Ward does not differ (as Pearce should know) from that of Ward’s daughter Maisie (something I was much criticized for), who describes her father as an intelligent conservative caught between intransigent conservatives (whom the eminent historian and Newman scholar Sheridan Gilley calls the “hyper-orthodox”) and those much more radical theologically.

Though one would never know it from his comments, my book was the result of an enormous amount of primary and secondary research and of archival work in England and Scotland. (One of my readers called it “research rapture.”) I can confidently say that I know what I am talking about. I would not say that of Pearce. He assumes all sorts of things about me and my opinions that are false and that he should know are false if he actually took the time to read what I have said and if he knew the material. He has done a grave disservice to the readers of this journal and a grave injustice to me personally. There is a place for literary journalism and a place for scholarship. What Pearce does is not scholarship.

 

Dom Paschal Scotti
Portsmouth, Rhode Island

 

Joseph Pearce replies:

Needless to say, I have nothing personal against Dom Paschal Scotti. How can I have? I do not know him. Unlike his superiors, I have no inkling of his reputation, liberal or otherwise. I was, in fact, not judging him at all; I was judging his book. I complained that his book was plagued by “intellectual impressionism,” namely its failure to provide definitions and its spurning of clear meaning. Scotti’s letter suffers from the same impressionism. It gives the vague impression that I have done him an injustice because I do not know him as well as those who know him, but it fails to engage a solitary criticism that I made of his book. He doesn’t address my criticism of his use of words such as extreme and dogmatic or papal and rigid as pejorative synonyms. He doesn’t explain why he never refers to Tyrrell as a heretic but suggests that the notorious excommunicated Jesuit was merely being “adventurous” in his modernism. Since he fails to critique my critique, there is no point of engagement to which I can respond. It is hard to argue with an impression. It is even harder to grapple with the fog.

Whose Philosophy? Which Rationality?

R.R. Reno is right about greater emphasis on truth and objectivity in analytic philosophy as compared with most continental philosophy (“Theology’s Continental Captivity,” April). Analytic philosophers make important contributions to theodicy, moral theology, and other areas. But Reno passes over Hegel, whom Karl Barth called the “Protestant Aquinas,” too lightly. Yes, Hegel in the Phenomenology interprets the vocation of the philosopher to raise the “picture-thinking” of the Christian religion to a conceptual level, and he does not exactly see philosophy as the “handmaid” of theology. However, the greater part of his work is concerned with philosophical speculation on the Christian dogmas. In the Phenomenology itself, which he describes at the end as the “Golgotha” of Spirit, he engages in deep reflections on the nature of faith, in contrast to the dialectics of the Enlightenment, and on the nature of original sin, the atonement, the Virgin Birth, the Incarnation, the Redemption, mutual forgiveness, and the emergence of the Spirit in the Christian community.