I know the Catholic blogosphere’s been lit up with this one for a week, but I decided to post on it now because something interesting is emerging.  For those who’ve been under a rock, Dr. Frank Beckwith of Baylor University and president of the Evangelical Theological Society returned to full communion with Rome a few Sundays back.  He explains why here.  He also elected to go ahead and resign from the ETS, following vitriolic blog posts like one finds here.  He further explains that he personally doesn’t see a reason why he can’t be in the ETS and be Catholic, as the vagueness of the ETS’s statement of faith is not disagreeable to Catholics.  A female Baylor student who was at the Mass where he was received back into the Church blogged about it here.

The key is that you need to read the comboxes on all the above blog posts.  The vitriolic and mean-spirited (not to mention downright intellectually dishonest) comments are from Protestants who are somehow trying to, through such attacks, show Beckwith the error of his ways.  Meanwhile, the Catholics who have posted messages of support are posting very charitable answers to the Protestant messages.

These last two sentences are generalizations and should be regarded as such.  Some Protestants have been quite charitable and supportive, recognizing that since the ultimate governing authority of Protestantism is one’s personal interpretation of Scripture, it is quite reasonable that Beckwith could have personally interpreted Scripture to best be understood in the light of 2000 years of magisterial teaching handed down through an unbroken line of apostolic succession.  They don’t agree but they recognize his right to believe this because they realize that they cannot authoritatively interpret scripture any more than anyone else can.

One of the greatest comments here is in response to attacks on the Baylor student’s blog:

“If you do not passionately love the truth, God is under no obligation to continue to allow you to possess it.”

Dr. White doesn’t see any problem with that statement ? He implies that Dr. Beckwith does not love the truth and further implies that God will allow him to lose his salvation.

The posts that I have seen today have convinced me that hyper-Calvinists like Dr. White hold to “once saved always saved”, UNTIL a person converts to Catholicism. Suddenly, reformed theology goes out the window as they write about how God is not obligated to allow the Catholic to possess the truth because of a “work” that they do.

I can’t help but mention that the original vitriolic post I speak of above is by James White. Apparently Mr. White is very good at finding mentions of himself online.  My hope is that he’ll find this post, post a comment, and in turn start a small internet dust-up which will drive traffic to my blog, thereby improving my standing in the New Catholic Voices contest here at St. Blogs!