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Becoming Catholic: Francis Beckwith’s reasons

I just read a fascinating interview in The Catholic World Report about the conversion of Francis Beckwith. Unfortunately the article isn’t online, but I do quote a bit of it below.

For those who aren’t aware, Francis Beckwith was the president of the Evangelical Theological Society when he began the rite of initiation into the Catholic Church. This is a man that knows protestant theology well, but felt he had to come home to the Catholic Church. And the rationale, although not surprising to Catholics, is fascinating. Here’s a bit:

. . . Then when I read the Fathers, those closest to the Apostles, the Reformation doctrine was just not there. To be sure, salvation by grace was there. To be sure, the necessity of faith was there. And to be sure, works righteousness apart from God’s grace was decried. But what was present was a profound understanding of how saving faith was not a singular event that took place “on a Wednesday,” to quote a famous Gospel song, but that it was the grace of God working through me as I acquiesced to God’s spirit to allow His grace to shape and mold my character so that I may be conformed to the image of Christ. I also found it in the Catechism.
And there was an aesthetic aspect to this as well: the Catholic view of justification elegantly tied together James and Paul and the teachings of Jesus that put a premium on a believer’s faithful practice of Christian charity. Catholicism does not teach “works righteousness.” It teaches faith in action as a manifestation of God’s grace in one’s life. That’s why Abraham’s faith results in righteousness only when he attempts to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice to God.
Then I read the Council of Trent, which some Protestant friends had suggested I do. What I found was shocking, I found a document that had been nearly universally misrepresented by many Protestants, including some friends. I do not believe, however, that this misrepresentation is the result of purposeful deception. But rather, it is the result of reading Trent with Protestant assumptions and without a charitable disposition. For example, Trent talks about the four causes of justification, which correspond somewhat to Aristotle’s four causes. None of these causes is the work of the individual Christian. For, according to Trent, God’s grace does all the work. However, Trent does condemn “faith alone,” but what it means is mere intellectual assent without allowing God’s grace to be manifested in one’s actions and communion with the Church. This is why Trent also condemns justification by works.
This is why I am convinced that the typical “Council of Trent” rant found on anti-Catholic sites is the Protestant equivalent of the secular urban legend that everyone prior to Columbus believed in a flat earth.
I returned again to the [early Church] Fathers and found in them, very early on, the Real Presence, infant baptism, and apostolic succession as well as other “Catholic” doctrines. Even in the cases where these doctrines were not articulated in their contemporary formulations, their primitive versions were surely there. But what is shocking to me is that one never finds in the Fathers claims that these doctrines are “unbiblical” or “apostate” or “not Christian,” as one finds in contemporary anti-Catholic fundamentalist literature . . .

Hope you enjoyed this – it’s fascinating to see the reasons behind a person’s conversion to Catholicism.

God bless,
Jay