Answering The Call To Full Communion | An Interview with Dr. Francis Beckwith | Carl
E. Olson | June 5, 2007 | IgnatiusInsight.com
Answering The Call To Full Communion | An Interview with Dr. Francis Beckwith | Carl E. Olson | June 5, 2007
http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/fbeckwith_intervw1_jun07.asp
In early May, Dr. Francis Beckwith (personal website),
Associate Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University, publicly announced,
on the Right Reason blog,
that he had returned to the Catholic Church in late April after spending
over thirty years in Evangelical Protestantism. The news was met with a wide range of reactions and, in some cases, with strong rhetoric. Beckwith's decision garnered substantial attention, in large part
because he had been the recently elected president of the Evangelical
Theological Society, a position he resigned from in order to spare the ETS and
its members the burden of asking him to step down. In interviews with Christianity
Today and National Catholic
Register, Beckwith outlined some
of the major reasons for his decision to return to full communion with the
Catholic Church.
Recently, Beckwith graciously agreed to a detailed and wide-ranging interview with
Carl E. Olson, editor of IgnatiusInsight.com. In addition to discussing his
journey away from and then back to the Catholic Church, Beckwith sets the record
straight about his educational background and how it informs his understanding
of both Evangelical and Catholic theology. He also reflects on the influence that
philosophy and natural law have in attracting scholars to the Catholic Church,
assesses the current and ongoing state of Catholic-Evangelical dialogue,
discusses his plan to write a book about his journey back to Rome, and comments
on his many years of apologetic and scholarly endeavors, including his
soon-to-be published book about abortion.
IgnatiusInsight.com: Since announcing your return to the Catholic Church you've given several
interviews and have talked at length about your reasons for returning.
Especially striking, I think, were your comments (in a June 3rd
interview with National Catholic Register) about the "innovations" you experienced as a boy in the
Catholic Church, including "'folk Mass' with cute nuns and hip priests
playing 'Kumbaya' with guitars, tambourines and harmonicas." Isn't it
ironic that the very things meant to be "hip" and
"contemporary" were part of what paved the way for you to leave the
Catholic Church? What does it say about the dangers of trying to be relevant
without being grounded solidly in theological and historical truth?
Dr. Francis Beckwith: I think it says
that form itself cannot substitute for substance, that at the end of the day,
theology is either a knowledge-tradition or it isn't. If it is, then our forms
of worship must conform to that knowledge and properly express it and convey it
to the church and to the wider world. Of course, there are different ways that
Christians and Catholic Christians worship God, and I am not saying that the
folk mass is necessarily bad. What I am suggesting is that such cosmetic
changes by themselves, without adequate theological training or understanding,
teaches precisely the wrong lesson: it's all just song and dance signifying
nothing.
What
is ironic, for me, is that the Evangelical churches that I attended for most,
though not all, of my adult life did in fact have contemporary music. But those
churches did it better than the Catholic church of my youth, for the songs and
the way they were delivered pointed toward theological truths firmly embraced
by the church's pastoral leadership and congregation. So, it is not
contemporary music per se that's
bad--in fact, some of it is quite good if done well in the appropriate
context--but rather, what is bad is the attempt to paper-over and ignore
serious theological issues with feel-good poorly-executed campfire jingles
performed below ugly felt banners dangling from the rafters. That is an
abomination.
IgnatiusInsight.com:
Can you tell us more about your younger years when you left the Catholic Church
and became an Evangelical?
Dr.
Beckwith: I still considered myself
Catholic when I was fourteen, though I was attending both Protestant and
Catholic services intermittently as I explained in my National Catholic
Register interview. But as I grew
into my teens and the charismatic movement at my parents' church began to wane,
I sought theological insight at the Catholic high school I attended. But the
religion teachers did not seem to have a serious interest in theology. They
were more interested in exploring our feelings with contrived moral dilemmas,
reading Jonathan Living Seagull
and watching contemporary films. These activities are certainly not
in-themselves bad. But they were no way to introduce young people to the study
of Catholic theology and the foundations of the Christian faith. Remember, this
was the mid-1970s and the American church was still trying to find itself after
Vatican II. So, I don't blame my religion teachers. They were doing the best
they could under a confused and directionless American leadership. (I
understand that things have changed at my alma mater, that the school's
religion curriculum is much more intentionally Catholic and theological.)
IgnatiusInsight.com:
So, is that when you migrated to Evangelicalism?
Dr.
Beckwith: Yes. I began spending time
at several Evangelical bookstores in Las Vegas, where I grew up. There I
obtained materials from a variety of Evangelical scholars and popular writers.
These authors exposed me to the thought of the Reformation as well as to the
study of Christian apologetics. This was intellectually exhilarating for me.
Here I had discovered serious people who believed that their faith is
reasonable and defensible. I began attending Evangelical churches, mostly
non-denominational ones that had outstanding Bible teachers. It was at that
time that I began to learn the solas of the Reformation. Once I became fully convinced of them, I felt
comfortable saying that I was no longer a Catholic.
In
1980, a good friend of mine, Dan Green, to whom I dedicated my 1997 book, See
the Gods Fall: Four Rivals to Christianity (College Press), introduced me to the works of Francis Schaeffer. Along
with the works of Norm Geisler, John Warwick Montgomery (with whom I would
later study), Ron Nash, R. C. Sproul, and Alvin Plantinga, Schaeffer's writings
contributed to my theological and philosophical formation. In fact, in 1986,
two years after Schaeffer's death, I had an incredible encounter with his
widow, Edith Schaeffer, in a Christian bookstore in Manhattan. Edith was there
signing copies of her books. I bought one of her books and asked her to sign
it. I told her my name and also shared with her my appreciation of her
husband's work and how it influenced my decision to pursue a PhD in philosophy.
She looked at me with affection in her eyes, then pulled out a black marker and
proceeded to draw in the inside cover of the book a picture of a mountain scene
with trees and birds. At the bottom she wrote, "Dear Francis: May your life be
as significant in history as another Francis I once knew. Love, Edith
Schaeffer."
IgnatiusInsight.com:
Do you have any formal training in Evangelical theology?
Dr.
Beckwith: Yes. I earned my first
master's degree (M.A. in Christian Apologetics) under the direction of two
Lutheran theologians, Charles Manske and John Warwick Montgomery. It was at the
old Simon Greenleaf University that has since merged with Trinity International
University in Deerfield, Illinois. In any event, at SGU I studied Evangelical
theology, apologetics, comparative religion, and church history under
Montgomery, Manske, and Michael Smythe. Among the several works that Smythe had
us read for his church history course was Progress of Dogma by James Orr, the great Scottish Presbyterian
scholar. This is when I first came in contact with the Council of Trent. Orr's
interpretation, as well as the interpretations of others I would read over the
years, would shape my understanding of Trent when I finally got around to
reading it for the first time a few years later. However, as I pointed out in
my NCR interview, when I read
Trent again with fresh eyes several months ago at the suggestion of several
friends, I was shocked at how much I had missed the first time, largely because
I did not read it then with a teachable spirit. I had read it more like a
prosecutor trying to entrap a hostile witness rather than as a dispassionate
judge seeking to issue a just verdict based on all the evidence.
IgnatiusInsight.com:
What was your attitude toward Catholicism during those years?
Dr.
Beckwith: Even though I thought the
Catholic Church had missed the boat on the Reformation and had incorporated
some non-biblical ideas into its theology, I never engaged in anti-Catholic
polemics. I knew too many serious Catholic believers who loved Jesus to believe
that one could not be a practicing Catholic and a true Christian at the same
time, which is what some Protestant Christians actually believe. My early
experience in the Catholic Charismatic movement probably immunized me from
aligning myself with rabid anti-Catholicism.
IgnatiusInsight.com:
You earned your PhD and MA in philosophy from Fordham University, a Jesuit
institution. How did those years at Fordham shape you?
Dr. Beckwith: During those years, 1984 to 1987, I lived with my Italian grandmother,
Frances Guido, a devout Catholic who was delighted that I was attending
Fordham. Although she knew that I was Protestant, she seemed confident that
some of my professor-priests would help steer me back to the Church. I left
Fordham in June 1987 and finished my doctoral dissertation in Nevada in
November 1988.
My experience at Fordham was terrific. I took
memorable classes from some great philosophers. I took "Thomas Aquinas" and
"Metaphysics" with W. Norris Clarke, "Medieval Humanism" with Gerald McCool,
and "Plato," "Nietzsche," and "Hegel" with Quentin Lauer. In McCool's class we
read Augustine's Confessions and
in Clarke's Aquinas class we covered important sections of the Summa
Theologica and Summa Contra
Gentiles.
Although it would be wrong to say that my experience
at Fordham led me back to the Church, it is fair to say that because I studied
under some of the finest philosophical minds American Catholicism had to offer,
I acquired a deeper appreciation of the philosophical underpinnings of Catholic
theology and its relationship to the histories of philosophy and Christian
thought. This understanding helped form and shape my views on God's nature,
the human person, and the natural moral law. But none of these philosophical
views were inconsistent with Protestant theology, as the works of some
Thomistic and Thomas-friendly Evangelical philosophers--such as Geisler, Paul
Copan, and J. P. Moreland--clearly show.
IgnatiusInsight.com:
Some noted Protestant philosophers have entered the Church recently, including
you, Dr. Robert Koons (University of Texas), and J. Budziszewski (University of
Texas in Austin). Is there something in the water in Texas? More seriously, is
there something about philosophy in general and the natural law tradition in
particular that helps point a person toward the Catholic Church?
Dr.
Beckwith: Both questions are
difficult to answer, but I'll pass on the one on water unless you can somehow
turn that water into wine. So, let me try to answer the second question. First,
both these men are good friends for whom I have the deepest respect. They are
both very good philosophers and would have remained such even if they had not
been received into the Catholic Church. Second, there are many outstanding
Protestant Evangelical philosophers, such as Moreland, William Lane Craig, and
C. Stephen Evans, who I do not anticipate becoming Catholics anytime soon.
Nevertheless these philosophers have caught the attention of Catholic scholars,
such as Avery Cardinal Dulles, who see such philosophers as part of a rebirth
of Christian apologetics and a true gift to both
Protestants and Catholics.
Having
said that, I do think that there is something about philosophy and the natural
law tradition that makes a transition to Catholicism easier for an Evangelical
trained in philosophy and open to natural law. The latter goes hand-in-hand
with natural theology, which claims that one can discover some truths about God
and ultimate reality apart from special revelation. So, for example, when I
read the Nicene Creed and come across the line that the Lord Jesus Christ is
"not made, being of one substance with the Father," I understand that
this scripturally supported truth is made coherent by a philosophical notion of
substance that the Council of Nicea brought to the text of Scripture in order
to illuminate its content and to make sense of the phenomena of God found
there. After all, if one denies the realist view of substance assumed by Nicea,
then it becomes difficult to make sense of what it means for God the Son to be
of one substance with God the Father. Although Nicea is saying that Jesus and
the Father are different persons, it is also saying that they share both the
same nature as well as the same being or substance. These distinctions, though
subtle, are philosophically profound, and for that reason, they were
instrumental in helping the council to properly fix the historical trajectory
of the Church and its theology. That is why it is plain to me that these
carefully crafted, well-reasoned creeds could not have arisen from a church
that had an understanding of theological knowledge that isolated sola
scriptura from the authority of a
visible ecclesiastical body. Those who think it is possible to do this are
like a son spending his rich father's inheritance but calling it salary.
I say all this because the Council of Nicea spoke authoritatively for the church
universal, and did so in order to publicly and visibly resolve a theological
controversy. And in the end, it offered to us a creed that is a model of
clarity and economy, one that resulted from weaving together an elegant
tapestry of scriptural, historical, and philosophical arguments. As someone
trained in philosophy, it is a marvel to behold, for it is a testimony to the
undeniable fact that the church derives its doctrine from a reading of
Scripture through the inherited eyes and practices of its theological
predecessors and with the assistance of philosophical reflection. And once an
issue like this is settled, future generations of believers, including
Protestants, are provided a bequest that assists their reading of Scripture
that makes it unlikely that the Church will stray from sound doctrine.
IgnatiusInsight.com:
How have attitudes toward it changed over the past 20 or 30 years among both
Evangelicals and Catholics? What basis does it provide for ecumenical dialogue
and common endeavors in fighting the culture of death?
Dr.
Beckwith: The issues on which many
Evangelicals and Catholics are united, such as the sanctity of life and the
institution of marriage, have helped forge alliances that would not have seemed
possible three decades ago. These alliances, which have been manifested both in
national leadership and local churches, have provided opportunities for
Evangelicals and Catholics to understand each other better. Once we begin to
understand that both groups embrace a common philosophy that informs our
understanding of the good, the true, and the beautiful--one derived from the
Biblical tradition--this will lead to more fruitful discussions on contested
theological questions.
Things
have really changed. In fact, I briefly document the degree to which things
have changed in the opening paragraph of an article I published in Touchstone
Magazine two years ago: "When my
father attended St. John's University in the late 1950s, his apologetics
professor (a Catholic priest) told his class that the two greatest evils of the
age were Communism and Protestantism. In the early days of Fuller Theological
Seminary, Professor Harold Lindsell (later the editor of Christianity Today) offered a course on cults that included a section
on Roman Catholicism."
IgnatiusInsight.com:
You've mentioned, in past interviews, that Dr. Mark Noll's book, Is The
Reformation Over? (Baker,
2005), was a helpful work for you to read. Do you agree with Noll's assessment
that "the central difference that continues to separate evangelicals and
Catholics is not Scripture, justification by faith, the pope, Mary, the
sacraments, or clerical celibacy ... but the nature of the church"? How
significant is the issue of ecclesiology in current and ongoing
Catholic-Evangelical dialogue?
Dr. Beckwith: I partly agree with Noll.
I think he is right that logically that once the authority question is
answered, the other issues that he mentions fall into place. However,
practically, the process is more organic, as it was in my case. Once I saw that
the Catholic view of justification could be defended biblically and historically,
and that the sacraments, including a non-symbolic understanding of the
Eucharist, have their roots deep in Christian history prior to the fixation of
the biblical canon, the authority issue fell into place.
Something
else concerning authority factored into my internal deliberations as well. But
I do not think I can conjure up the words to properly express it. So, I will
just rely on an elegant insight offered in First Things
by a recent Catholic convert, R. R. Reno, which
perfectly echoes my own sentiments: "In the end, my decision to leave the
Episcopal Church did not happen because I had changed my mind about any
particular point of theology or ecclesiology. Nor did it represent a sudden
realization that the arguments for staying put are specious. What changed was
the way in which I had come to hold my ideas and use my arguments. In order to
escape the insanity of my slide into self-guidance, I put myself up for
reception into the Catholic Church as one might put oneself up for adoption. A man
can no more guide his spiritual life by his own ideas than a child can raise
himself on the strength of his native potential."
I hope to write a book about my journey in the next year. There are a lot of
people who are clamoring for my reasons and what went into my decision. This is
why I have consented to several of these interviews, since they give me a
chance to provide, however superficially, the reasons for my decision.
But
given my status in the Evangelical world, I think a more detailed memoir of my
pilgrimage is needed. It will not be a polemical work. What it will be is a
narrative of my own reflections and what led my wife and me to first consider
and then choose to seek full communion with the Catholic Church.
One
of the points that I want to make clear in the book is that my reception into
the Catholic Church has not changed my vocation as a Christian philosopher. I
will continue to work on projects that offer to the Christian and secular
worlds reasons for the Christian faith and the moral and social implications
that follow from it. In that sense, there has always been a catholicity about
my work. I do not anticipate that changing.
IgnatiusInsight.com:
Have you read the various documents produced by the "Evangelicals and
Catholic Together" (ECT) initiative? If so, what did you think of them?
Dr.
Beckwith: I've not read all of them.
I did read the first one published in 1994 as well as "The Gift of
Salvation." The latter was particularly important to me, since it said
things about salvation in a way that were inconsistent with what I had read by
Protestant authors on Roman Catholicism. I also read some of the Protestant
criticisms of the document. But some of these critics, though certainly not
all, seemed bent on not allowing the Catholics to speak for themselves. It was
almost as if these critics were jealously guarding the Catholicism that even
the Catholics didn't believe. However, there were some thoughtful critics who
brought out important points, such as on forensic justification, that the
"Gift of Salvation" did not address.
IgnatiusInsight.com:
Not long after you made your announcement, Dr. Albert Mohler, president of the
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Dr. Bruce Ware, vice president of
Evangelical Theological Society, spoke about your decision on Dr. Mohler's
radio show. In the course of that program, Dr. Mohler made a rather surprising
statement: "Scripture alone doesn't protect Evangelicalism from error.
That's why we have to have constant correction." Granting that he was
speaking off the cuff, as it were, is that an accurate summary of what many
Evangelicals believe? If so, who might provide the "constant
correction" referred to?
Dr.
Beckwith: Before I answer your
question I do want to commend Al Mohler and Bruce Ware for the gracious manner
in which they talked about both my return to the Catholic Church as well as my
contributions to the Evangelical Theological Society.
As
for your question, I am not quite sure what Dr. Mohler means, but if I had to
speculate I would guess he means that one can come to Scripture with bad
philosophical assumptions that distort the text and meaning of the Bible and
that results in flawed doctrine. If that's what he means, then Dr. Mohler is
largely in agreement with John Paul II's views in his encyclical Fides et
Ratio in which the late pontiff
argues that biblical theology cannot get off the ground unless one has the
proper philosophical framework when one approaches Scripture. But embracing
such a view means that Dr. Mohler has to qualify sola scriptura to include certain interpretative requirements that
cannot themselves be derived from Scripture since they are necessary conditions
for the reading of Scripture. In fact, it was just such reasoning that pushed
me toward Catholicism. 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.
IgnatiusInsight.com:
Some Evangelical theologians point out that although the Catholic Church seems
to present a unified or monolithic whole when it comes to doctrine and belief,
there are actually all sorts of competing and even contradictory Catholic
schools of philosophy and theology. How is that similar or different from the
many different philosophical/theological movements within Evangelicalism,
including controversial issues such as "open theism" and the
"emergent church" movement?
Dr.
Beckwith: Within Catholicism there
are different approaches to questions that the Church has not claimed are
settled. That is why Molinism and Thomism, the Catholic equivalents of
Ariminianism and Calvinism, are live options within the Church. There are, of
course, Catholics who hold views contrary to Church teaching and, in rare
cases, are excommunicated from the Church because of that. But in those few
cases the person is not considered non-Catholic or non-Christian. Such a
person, if excommunicated, is not allowed to receive the Eucharist because the
Church seeks repentance and reconciliation with the brother or sister who has
gone astray. Because Catholics have the benefit of a well-defined and
articulated Catechism, these
sorts of issues can be adjudicated in accordance with a rule of law and are
thus not that easy to reduce to matters of ecclesiastical fiat.
The
Evangelical movements you mention--open theism and the emergent church--are
instructive in this regard, since they both claim to be purely scriptural and
sometimes charge their more conservative critics of incorporating
"non-biblical" ideas. In that sense, these projects are thoroughly Evangelical
in their insistence on being committed to sola scriptura.
For
example, the open theists claim that classical theism is just Greek philosophy
Christianized and all that they are doing is getting us back to the pure,
non-corrupted, view of God in Scripture. The emergent church charges
traditional Evangelicals with corruption as well, but in this case the
corruption is Enlightenment rationalism and an overemphasis on American culture
war issues such as abortion and homosexuality. But both groups are simply
taking the Protestant Principle to its logical conclusion. For this reason,
unless Evangelical critics of these movements are willing take a more modest
view of sola scriptura and a more
charitable posture toward tradition, they do not have the resources to respond
to these movements in an effective way. Having said that, I should say that
there are many Evangelicals, such as my Baylor colleagues Dan Williams, Ralph
Wood, Steve Evans, and David Lyle Jeffrey, Biola's J. P. Moreland and John Mark
Reynolds, and Samford's Timothy George, who take approaches to Scripture and
the Great Tradition that are bearing fruit in both their scholarship and their
presentations of the Gospel.
IgnatiusInsight.com:
Some books by Joseph Ratzinger, including Truth and Tolerance and
Introduction to Christianity, played a role in your journey to Rome. What do
you think of him as a philosopher? In what ways is he providing a blueprint for
addressing contemporary philosophical, theological, and cultural challenges?
Dr.
Beckwith: Although Joseph Ratzinger
is a trained theologian, he is a very good philosopher. Because of his
long-time pastoral role as bishop, his philosophical work in theology is
directed toward advancing the cause of Christ both in and outside the Church.
Take for example his emphasis on the need for the West to return to a view of
faith and reason that sees theology as knowledge rather than merely subjective
belief. It has the virtue of calling us back to an understanding of reason that
accounts for the successes of modernism in the sciences, the arts, and
government while showing that it was the ideas of Christian civilization that
provided modernism with the philosophical scaffolding for these successes and
not modernism's inherent skepticism on matters of human nature and transcendent
ethics. The Enlightenment opened a door, but it was the Church that built the
house.
IgnatiusInsight.com:
You mentioned in your National Catholic Register interview that some reactions to your return to
the Catholic Church surprised you. Did any of them disappoint you?
Yes. For example, one friend, a scholar I
deeply respect, commented on my blog that my move to the church was likely the
result of my not being sufficiently well grounded in Reformation theology. His
conclusion, of course, is that my return to the Church was the result of
ignorance. I understand why he has to believe that. For if I am knowledgeable
of Reformation theology and I still seek full communion with the Catholic
Church, this would mean that I am either wicked or that it is not unreasonable
for a faithful Christian to believe that the Reformation answers on salvation,
scripture, and authority are contested answers and not axiomatic deductions or
undeniable inferences from the Bible. But this means that "the
gospel" is not reducible to one theory of justification, one theory of
ecclesiology, or one theory of scripture's sufficiency. For someone like my
friend, who equates the gospel with the doctrines that arise in 16th
century Christianity as a unified and interdependent set of beliefs for the
first time in the church's history, the thought that one may have the gospel
without the Reformation is conceptually unfathomable. But unlike my friend, I
do not believe one is saved by embracing one particular cluster of contested
theories on justification, authority, and scripture. One is saved by Jesus
Christ and his grace alone, which is exactly what the Catholic Catechism, the Council of Trent, and the Bible all teach.
But the truth is that the supportive comments far
outweighed the negative ones. My wife and I received many kind and encouraging
messages from Protestant Evangelicals as well as Catholics. In fact, several
notable Evangelical scholars and teachers privately told me that they
understood why we sought reception into the Catholic Church, but for a variety
of reasons, including serious theological ones, they could not follow us. Two
Evangelical ministries with which I am associated told me that my status with
them would not change. One of them will retain me on its editorial board,
refusing to accept my resignation, which I procured several months ago for
their protection. I was deeply touched by their generous spirit. And the other
ministry will keep me as a lecturer for the seminars it offers. Because this
ministry just requires its staff to affirm the Apostles' Creed, there was no
problem with me remaining on its faculty.
IgnatiusInsight.com:
You've been involved in apologetics--high level, sophisticated apologetics--for
many years, having written articles and books about miracles, moral relativism,
applied ethics, Mormon theology, and other issues. It seems to me that,
generally speaking, Evangelical apologists are doing a better job addressing
skepticism and relativism than are Catholics. Is that a fair assessment? What
can Catholic apologists learn from Evangelical apologists such as J.P.
Moreland, William Lane Craig, and others?
Dr.
Beckwith: I think that is generally
a fair assessment, though there are outstanding Catholic thinkers doing good
work in these areas as well, such as Peter Kreeft, Ron Tacelli, and J.
Budziszewski. Having said that, I do think that Evangelical apologists are
producing an important body of work that Catholics should access and master.
Because philosophers like Moreland and Craig make a case for those beliefs
shared by Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox--such as God's existence, resurrection
of Jesus, reliability of Scripture, existence of the soul, moral realism,
etc.--Catholics would clearly profit from their works.
This
will hopefully lead to collaborations between Christian apologists from
Catholic and Protestant backgrounds. A good sign of things to come is Geisler
and Hoffman's book, Why I Am A Christian?, (Baker, 2006; 2nd ed.), which includes essays by Kreeft,
Budziszewski, and me. I think with all the talent out there the opportunities
for collaboration are limitless.
In
terms of Christian approaches to social issues that are accessible to popular
audiences, I do not think anyone can match the works of Greg Koukl and Scott
Klusendorf, both of whom have penned some of the best training manuals and
books for prolife ministry. Catholics would do well to read the works of these
two men. (I should say that Greg has written a few essays critical of Catholic
theology, but they are penned with respect and a charitable spirit. Also, a
serious Catholic should feel honored to be challenged by such a thoughtful and
winsome representative of Protestantism.).
IgnatiusInsight.com:
This fall Cambridge University Press will be publishing your book,
Defending
Life: A Moral and Legal Case Against Abortion Choice, which is described as "the most comprehensive
defense of the prolife position on abortion ever published." Would you
like to give it a shameless plug and tell readers what is unique about the book
and what you hope to accomplish with it?
Dr.
Beckwith: You gotta love publishers!
Now to the shameless plug. Some of your readers may know of my 1993 book, Politically
Correct Death: Answering the Argument for Abortion Rights (Baker Book House). Defending Life was originally going to be a revised edition of that
book. But since so much has been written over the past decade on abortion, and
because Politically Correct Death
did not cover some issues and was a bit outdated, I decided to just write a
whole new book. Defending Life covers
not only the popular arguments for abortion, but also some of the most
sophisticated cases offered by abortion-choice advocates in the academy. I deal
extensively with the arguments of thinkers like David Boonin (author of A
Defense of Abortion [Cambridge
University Press, 2002]) and Judith Jarvis Thomson on issues of fetal
personhood and the mother's obligation to her unborn child. But I also deal
with the paucity of the legal case for Roe v. Wade, the cloning and stem-cell research debate, and
whether prolife religious citizens have the right to shape laws in a liberal
democracy, none of which I addressed in Politically Correct Death. Although Defending Life covers sophisticated arguments offered by
professional philosophers and bioethicists, the publisher believes that because
it is clearly written and includes sections on popular arguments, it will be
marketing the book to an audience broader than academics and scholars. In fact,
the publisher asked me to place the book's footnotes as endnotes in order to
make the text attractive to non-scholars. I, of course, said yes.
What
I hope to accomplish with the book is this: I want to offer my colleagues as
well as the general public an intelligent, clearly articulated, and
non-polemical defense of the prolife position on abortion that does not rely on
theological or religious arguments. I also want to help college students and my
friends in the prolife movement so that they are better equipped to deal with
the best arguments offered by our fellow citizens who do not share our point of
view.
Related IgnatiusInsight.com Links/Articles:
• Has The Reformation Ended? | An Interview with Dr. Mark Noll
• Evangelicals and Catholics in Conversation | An Interview with Dr. Brad Harper
• From Protestantism to Catholicism | Six Journeys to Rome
• Thomas Howard and the Kindly Light | IgnatiusInsight.com
• Objections, Obstacles, Acceptance: An Interview with J. Budziszewski | IgnatiusInsight.com
• Thomas Howard on the Meaning of Tradition | IgnatiusInsight.com
• Why Catholicism Makes Protestantism Tick | Mark Brumley
• Surprised by Conversion: The Patterns of Faith | Peter E. Martin
• Reformation 101: Who's Who in the Protestant Reformation | Geoffrey Saint-Clair
• The Tale of Trent: A Council and and Its Legacy | Martha Rasmussen
• The History and Purpose of Apologetics |
An Interview with Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J.
• Foreword to A History of Apologetics | Dr. Timothy George
• "Be a Catholic
Apologist Without Apology" | Carl E. Olson
• "Love Alone
is Believable: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Apologetics" | by Fr. John R. Cihak
• "Kreeft On Apologetics"
| An interview with Peter Kreeft
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