Lutheran professor of philosophy prepares to enter Catholic Church

Insight Scoop | The Ignatius Press Blog ^ | May 18, 2007 | Carl Olson

[Frank Sheed]

Friday, May 18, 2007 Lutheran professor of philosophy prepares to enter Catholic Church

Dr. Robert Koons, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas, will be entering the Catholic Church next week following several years of considering the teachings and history of the Catholic Church. In a post over at Right Reason, he writes:

Several weeks ago, I learned through a mutual friend that Frank Beckwith was intending to return to the Roman Catholic Church. At the same time, Frank learned that I myself have been moving in the direction of Rome for the last several years. I am very pleased to be able to announce that I intend to be received into the Church on May 26th, at St. Louis King of France parish in Austin. My own story is quite different from Frank’s, although our reasons for entering the Church of Rome are strikingly parallel.

I was baptized through the Lutheran Church -- Missouri Synod, and I have been an active member of the church body ever since. As a Lutheran, I’ve never thought of myself as “Protestant”, nor have I ever embraced the kind of extreme sola-scripturism that has been much in evidence in responses to Frank’s announcement. I always recognized that the Scriptures are themselves the foundation of, and very much a part of, a divine Tradition. Although I believed that only the Scriptures were infallible, I nonetheless assigned great weight to the ‘rule of faith’ established by the continuous tradition of teaching by the Church, and as reflected in the writings of the Fathers and the decrees of Councils. Insofar as I accepted a form of ‘sola scriptura’, it took the form of insisting that all doctrines must have their source in the Scriptures as interpreted by the Church, or in the universal practices and teaching of the early church. This is the only sort of “sola scriptura” principle that can hold up to logical scrutiny, since the Scriptures themselves provide no definition of the canon and no clear statement of any sola-scriptura principle (both of these can be found only in the Fathers and Councils). Extreme sola-scripturism is, given these facts, self-refuting.

How, then, could I have remained Lutheran? I did so because I believed that the late medieval church (in the form of both the Scotists and the nominalists like Ockham and Biel) had distorted the doctrine of salvation or “justification”, embracing a kind of “Pelagian” error: that is, the notion that human beings can save themselves through the exercise of unaided human reason and will. I still believe this to be so (as do many, if not most, contemporary Roman Catholic theologians). I also believed that the Church erred in its brusque condemnation of Luther’s early protests (again, a view I still hold), and that the Council of Trent solidified a kind of apostasy from the true faith (this is where my current view departs from my former one). I believed that the teachings of the church popularly known as “Lutheran” or “Evangelical”, as codified in the sixteenth century Book of Concord, constituted the defining characteristic of the one Catholic Church in its fullness, in continuity on all essentials with the teachings of the Church from the first century until at least the twelfth. The logic of my position was a simple one: the modern Roman Church clearly embraced an erroneous doctrine of justification, which nullified its otherwise strong historical claim to continuity with the apostles (especially on the matter of ecclesiology, the theory of the Church), depriving modern Christians of any good reason to embrace late-medieval and modern developments in Roman Catholic doctrine (including the immaculate conception and papal infallibility).

Those of you who know more about theology and the history of theology than I did then can easily see how untenable a position I held (although I think this untenable position is one still held by many, if not most, thoughtful Lutherans and Reformed Christians). My confidence in this position was shaken by three blows: (1) new scholarship (primarily by Protestants) on Paul’s epistles, which raised profound doubts about the correctness of Martin Luther’s and Phillip Melanchthon’s excessively individualistic and existentialist reading of Paul’s teaching on justification by faith, (2) the fruits of Lutheran/Roman Catholic dialogue on justification, expressed most fully in the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in 1997, that greatly clarified for me the subtlety of the doctrinal differences between the two bodies, and (3) a more thorough exposure to the writings of the early Church fathers, especially those considered most “evangelical”: Chrysostom, Ambrose, and (above all) Augustine of Hippo. I began to realize that many Lutheran and Protestant polemicists have been guilty of two fallacies: a straw-man version of contemporary Roman Catholic teaching, and a cherry-picking of quotations from the Fathers, ignoring the undeniable contradiction between the teachings of those Fathers, taken as a whole, and the one-sided version of the faith-alone doctrine on justification embraced by the second generation of the Reformation (especially Martin Chemnitz). The Joint Declaration and the recent Catechism of the Catholic Church aided me in giving a closer and more charitable reading to the anathemas of the Council of Trent (which I still believe to be have been written in an unprofitably provocative way).

Read the entire post, as well as Dr. Koons 94-page essay on justification (PDF document).

Posted by Carl Olson on Friday, May 18, 2007 at 09:28

[AnAmericanMother]

Here is the liturgical music group that sells our parish the missalettes:

Liturgical Press. It's a group founded in 1926 by St. John's Abbey, Cistercians in Collegeville MN. They're also doing the handwritten St. John's Bible, which has fabulously beautiful illustrations (some of which show up on the cover of the missalettes).

They seem to be more sensible than most - lots of hymns out of the old Northern European hymnals like the Alte Catholische Geistliche Kirchengeseng and the better stuff from the Protestant hymnals ("Crown him with many crowns", etc.) They do have some of the "Glory and Praise" junk but it can be safely ignored because there's plenty of good music to choose from. Our music director throws in "Weagle's Ings" and "Here I Am" occasionally, just to throw a bone to the old retired hippies who LIKE that stuff . . .

[Aquinasfan]

So Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Voltaire, Russell were all lovers of God?

The first three, certainly. They pursued truth (Jesus) to the best of their abilities. They developed great insights into the nature of being/reality/truth. Aristotle even developed the classic arguments for the existence of God.

There is also Scriptural support for the idea:

Acts 17:22-23

Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you.

OTOH, I think Voltaire admitted that he studied the Summma only to look for ways to justify his atheism. So truth was not the object of his philosophizing. And from the little I've read about Russell, he seemed to be a militant atheist as well.

Certainly, there is a lot of bad philosophy out there, but it usually issues from bad people. Great saints make great philosophers, and evil men make bad philosophers.

[Frank Sheed]

The American situation will be resolved when, to paraphrase and expand upon Lenin, the last liturgist is strangled with the guitar strings broken off the smashed instrument of the last modernist Church “musician”, and the two of them are thrown onto a heap to suffocate the last Extraordinary Ordinary Ministerette of the Eucharist, causing such a shock to the last Girl Altar Boy that she accidentally swallows and chokes on the gum she is chewing during Mass, thus accidentally falling in front of the last Fr. Bob Smiley who trips over and smashes his nose backwards into his brain cavity, cutting short a final handshake of peace he was attempting to initiate with the back row of the Church. This day cannot come soon enough.

Good grief! My friend, Chesterton, will pay you a visit if you don't take a breath! No matter how tawdry the trappings might seem outwardly, Christ becomes present at the altar. Stables in Bethlehem were pretty bad too!

[Frank Sheed]

Visit the blog the New Liturgical Movement written by Shawn Tribe! I’ve given the link to numerous people who are at a loss at the state of current Church music and tears come to their eyes!

The Musica Sacra is having a big “to-do” on Sacred Music in D.C. in June and I know some who are driving quite a distance to attend.

Be part of the Resistance!

http://thenewliturgicalmovement.blogspot.com/

[Frank Sheed]

http://thenewliturgicalmovement.blogspot.com/

Good stuff!

[AnAmericanMother]

And you have the Limbo of the Fathers.

[AnAmericanMother]

Thanks for the link! This is great!

I love the floral vestments - I think that's a traditional English pattern because we had similar ones at our old ECUSA parish.

It would be better to have a vested choir IN the Choir on either side the altar though. Responsive psalms sung by left-and-right (Gospel and Decani). Clearly an old English church.

[Aquinasfan]

http://thenewliturgicalmovement.blogspot.com/

Thanks! And the churches even look like... churches!

[Frank Sheed]

Mother,

Shawn LOVES all things sacred and especially sacred music; he posts musical things all the time (check his older posts for music).

The Musica Sacra is something you may wish to Google. I think they come to Florida from time to time. They hold seminars/conventions on Chant for beginners to Music Directors of Basilicas.

The only way we can get the guitar strings out of Church is to return glorious chant to the Catholic Church. And, as a kid, I remember singing it! We were expected to sing it. The NLM is a blog I check daily.

Glad you like it!

F

[Campion]

Semi-Pelegianism, which says while works do contribute to salvation, grace is absolutely necessary

That isn't what semi-Pelagianism said; that's (arguably) the Catholic position.

The semi-Pelagians held that the initiative in the ordo salutis belonged, or at least sometimes belonged, to man rather than to God. That is, man "did something good" or "displayed good will" apart from grace, and God then rewarded that goodness with grace and salvation.

The (local) II council of Orange condemned the view that we could do anything salutary apart from divine grace, and many theologians hold that the council's decree was later raised to dogmatic status by a Papal ex cathedra proclamation.

[Frank Sheed]

We should PING sitetest. I am on his classical music PING LIST. I wonder if he likes classical Church music?

F

http://thenewliturgicalmovement.blogspot.com/

[Frank Sheed]

Zounds! A reasonable man! Thanks!

[Campion]

Both Beckwith and Koons are philosophers, which mean that their focus has been on the work of man rather than the work of God.

Well, no, it means their focus is on the application of reason to truth, in order to discover and defend truth, without using divine revelation as a starting point.

There's nothing wrong with that; it can be very useful.

It's not theology, but it doesn't claim to be, either. Your complaint is somewhat like complaining that physicists don't know how to titrate acids. THat's what chemists do.

[AnAmericanMother]

I’m going to Email a link to our choirmaster, JUST IN CASE he hasn’t found this one on his own!

[Andrew Byler]

No matter how tawdry the trappings might seem outwardly, Christ becomes present at the altar.

I went to a "Mass" once, where the Priest (?) had two women from the congregation come up and concelebrate with him.

Would you have received there? I didn't even genuflect as I left early.

Another time, the Priestly (?) Poofter was up at the altar, opining about interior decorating in his lisp as his "sermon". I didn't make it to the end of the "sermon". Apparently, you would have shaken hands with him afterwards and thanked him for the service?

Stables in Bethlehem were pretty bad too!

This is not a valid excuse for tolerating the disrespect of the modern Mass. The disrespect continues because of our continued support of it, and our acting as if it does not matter.

If it makes no difference, why not apply the same standards to the rest of our life? For example, at your next job interview, come chewing gum, dressed in a t-shirt, ripped jeans, and flip-flops, and see how it goes.

[narses]

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[Cicero]

Good news.

But I hope this works out for him. Many of the things that he says in this statement seem curious, and contrary to the historical facts to say the least, if not to Church teachings. Read it carefully and it’s more than a little disturbing.

I say that because, God knows, plenty of born Catholics are shaky in their beliefs these days, but usually when Protestants come into the Church as converts they know whereof they speak.

[Palladin]

Did you know that many of the elite “intellectual” ELCA guys support Obama for Prez? They think he is the Second Coming.

‘nuff said.

[narses]

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Obama Says A Baby Is A Punishment

Obama: “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”

[Jaded]

Apparently so..... whatever.