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Just Another Essay



Professor Beckwith and the Blind Man

Essay Posted May 15, 2007 by James E. Nelson

The following statement from Christianity Today, precedes an interview with Francis Beckwith that can be found here.

Francis Beckwith resigned on May 5 as president of the Evangelical Theological Society. One week earlier the Baylor University philosophy professor rejoined the Roman Catholic Church, his home until age 14. He spoke with Christianity Today editor David Neff about the reaction to his decision, theological misconceptions, and evangelical strengths and weaknesses.

People have been leaving Evangelical churches for Catholicism and Orthodoxy in large numbers, so his return to Roman Catholicism is not a big surprise. Even major theologians and philosophers have done so, but typically at the beginning or end of their careers, such as the late Jarislov Pelikan, the Lutheran theologian and professor, who formally became Orthodox after his retirement from Harvard. Beckwith’s decision, on the other hand, has sent shock waves through the evangelical world because he was not only in the middle of his career, but he was the President of the ETS at the time.

I haven’t been able to confirm this, but I suspect the reason he is being transferred from the religion department to the philosophy department at Baylor in the fall of 2007 is his return to the Roman Catholic church. Baylor is more than just nominally Southern Baptist, after all, and I suspect his newfound Catholicism created a great deal of indigestion among the department heads and board members.

The reaction among Evangelicals has been shockingly vitriolic and there has been a remarkable rise in anti-Catholic sentiment on the various internet discussion groups. I observe several groups on the Yahoo Groups site and a number of new meetings have been formed in the last two weeks dealing with a variety of Evangelical-Catholic issues, all growing out of the Beckwith defection. Those responsible for decorum, politeness, and standards have been busy deleting messages that are offensively anti-Catholic.

Although, there is a part of me that is not surprised at this turn of events. Triumphalism has been a besetting sin of Christians of all stripes since ancient days, probably since Pentecost itself. The sort of petty hatreds expressed in the last two weeks is not an uncommon side effect of triumphalism. All Christians (except for the silliest of liberals) affirm the truth of the Bible and since we all believe ourselves to be committed to scripture, it is easy to confuse our own opinions and commitments with God’s truth. (This is the very heart of triumphalism—assuming that God is on my side rather than seeking to be on God’s side.) While this is not an essay about Orthodoxy, I will add as an aside that one of the greatest gifts of Orthodoxy to me is its sense of humility in the face of God’s truth. This is not to say that Orthodox Christians do not frequently fall prey to triumphalism, but the humility of the core tradition is both remarkable and refreshing to one such as me, who entered Orthodoxy from the sometimes vicious and certainly triumphalistic battles in the Presbyterian Church between the emerging Evangelical majority and the old line leadership.

But in contrast to the storm that is swirling around Frank Beckwith, I am deeply impressed with calmness and humility with which he has taken each of his recent steps and the generosity and kindness he has shown in responding to his critics. In the above-cited interview, David Neff asked, “Were you surprised by the number and strength of the reactions you received?” Beckwith answered,

Yes, I'm shocked. What it did to me, though, was create a sense of humility that I don't think I ever had before in my entire life. I felt a sense of responsibility that had been placed on me by God to conduct myself in a way that was neither scandalous to the Catholic Church nor the evangelical world. This is a unique opportunity, and I don't know where it is going to go from here. But it is a unique opportunity to be able to engage both my Catholic friends and my Protestant friends in a way that we can have mutual understanding and maybe move toward some sort of Christian unity, even if it's not ecclesiastical.

Last Sunday, the sixth Sunday of Easter (or the fifth Sunday after Easter, depending on how one counts it) was the Sunday of the Blindman, based on the Gospel reading John 9:1-38. It’s one of my favorite stories in the Gospels. When asked how he received his sight, the blind man didn’t speculate, he simply recited the facts: “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight” (v 11). As the story progresses the formerly blind man begins to see more clearly what must have happened. He recognizes that Jesus is at the very least a prophet (v 17) and then later he realizes that he had to come from God (v 33), but beyond that he refuses to speculate as to who Jesus might be or how he did it. Even at the end of the story, when Jesus asks him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” The formerly blind man doesn’t jump to conclusions or assume that he has all the answers just because he is the recipient of a miracle. Rather, in v. 36, he answers Jesus, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.”

The man is open to the truth. He is ready, possibly even anxious, to believe in the truth, but his hunger for truth is rooted in humility. Isn’t it obvious that this “Son of Man” must be Jesus? The miracle that was just performed—the creation of eyes out of the dust of the earth just as God had created Adam in the first place—was of a different magnitude than he had probably ever imagined. But this man didn’t confuse his own desires with the truth. He knew the most important fact of all: that he didn’t know. And so he responded to Jesus’ question by saying, “Tell me, so that I may believe in him.”

Like the blind man of John 9 and Frank Beckwith of more recent history, we too ought to hold our speculations, insights, and ideas . . . our little truths with open hands. And certainly we ought never to confuse them with The Way, The Truth, and The Life. Rather, we too should ask, “Tell me, so that I may believe in him.”