Forthcoming Book

Last March, I posted a list of prominent conversions to Catholicism in the year 2007. One was Francis Beckwith, who had been President of the Evangelical Theological Society. He had to resign.

Anyway, Dr. Beckwith has a book about his conversion to be released in November. You can read about it on his webpage. He also has links to various news articles which covered his conversion.

From an interview in Christianity Today:

The issue of justification was key for me. The Catholic Church frames the Christian life as one in which you must exercise virtue—not because virtue saves you, but because that's the way God's grace gets manifested. As an evangelical, even when I talked about sanctification and wanted to practice it, it seemed as if I didn't have a good enough incentive to do so. Now there's a kind of theological framework, and it doesn't say my salvation depends on me, but it says my virtue counts for something. It's important to allow the grace of God to be exercised through your actions. The evangelical emphasis on the moral life forms my Catholic practice with an added incentive. That was liberating to me.

Dr. Beckwith is not a bitter ex-Evangelical. In an interview in Catholic World Report he says:

I do not believe I ceased to be an Evangelical when I returned to the Church. What I ceased to be was a Protestant. For I believe, as Pope Benedict has preached, that the Church itself needs to nurture within it an evangelical spirit. There are, as we know, too many Catholics whose faith needs to be renewed and emboldened.

There is much that I learned as a Protestant Evangelical that has left an indelible mark on me and formed the person I am today. For that reason, it accompanies me back to the Church.

I'm sure there will be another round of articles when the book is released, and I look forward to reading it.