John Armstrong e-mailed me yesterday about a Protestant/Catholic dialog event he’s organized for September 16. I wasn’t surprised to see that the Roman Catholic participants are from Mundelein Seminary, since they hosted Protestant Archbishop NT Wright’s lecture series I attended in the Spring.
Reading what Catholics said about their own theology was one of the things that opened my eyes to how careless Evangelical Christians can be about spreading misinformation. The picture of Catholic theology Evangelical Christians had given me didn’t line up at all well with what Catholics themselves said. I was forced to conclude that the Evangelical Christians who had ‘taught’ me about Catholic theology hadn’t researched it much at all. They had had a knee-jerk negative reaction to it and were spreading inappropriately inaccurate information about it.
It’s been years since I was actively reading about this, so I don’t remember all the details (in other words, please don’t ask me for them). I do remember enough to be glad there are Protestants like John Armstrong open to seeking common ground. I expect John will be criticized by other Protestants who think this dialog is at best a waste of time and at worst dangerous, because it could lead to Protestants making theological compromises with people whose theology is fatally flawed.
Speaking for myself, I don’t think it’s a waste of time at all, because I’ve seen how much misunderstanding there is. Steve S. mentioned in a comment yesterday how much apparent disagreement is in fact misunderstanding. In this case I agree there’s a lot of that.
09-06-2007 |
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