Baptist scholar turns Catholic, stuns colleagues

WACO, Texas — A respected Baylor University scholar and president of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) has shocked colleagues by returning to the Catholic faith of his youth.

Francis Beckwith, an associate professor at the Waco, Texas, university, announced May 5 on his blog that he was resigning as president of the 4,300-member ETS. He resigned as an ETS member May 7.

"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," Beckwith wrote in the May 5 posting on his "Right Reason" blog. In his announcement, Beckwith said he had recently read the writings of the early church fathers and found Christianity’s roots to be "more Catholic than Protestant." He became convinced that he should reunite with the Catholic faith, where he had been baptized and confirmed and received communion as a youth.

The choice made by Beckwith, 46, shocked his ETS colleagues. "The conversion was certainly a surprise," said Darrell Bock, a New Testament professor at Dallas Theological Seminary and a former ETS president. "It was not at all anticipated or expected. That he would resign (as president) is not necessarily a surprise, because the ETS has been fundamentally a Protestant organization."

Bock and another former ETS president, Craig Blaising, said they consider Beckwith to be a friend but said it no longer makes theological sense for him to be a member of the scholarly organization. "I think it became very clear, once he made the decision, that really as a Roman Catholic he’s not traditionally where the Evangelical Theological Society is," said Blaising, the provost of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. "And I think it’s clear that our doctrinal basis, by which we work, is not where he’s now working."

The society’s "doctrinal basis" is a two-sentence statement that declares that the Bible is the sole "Word of God written and is therefore inerrant," or without error. Catholics, ETS officials say, have a broader view of Scripture, and therefore would not generally be able to agree to that statement.