[music] Marcus Grodi:
Well, good evening, and welcome to
'The Journey Home.' I'm Marcus Grodi, your host for this program, in which every week, EWTN gives me
this great privilege after all these years to sit down with you,
and let's relax and let's hear
about the work of grace in someone's life. God brings us from all
different places, every one of us a little; the fingerprints are the same, but the way He works
in our lives are all just a tad different. And for me, one of the
beauties of this program is it gives you a chance to hear how
the Holy Spirit works in somebody else's life, so that also will
help you appreciate how He works in yours and mine. So praise God for that. Our guest is
Dr Jonathan Fuqua, right? Dr Jonathan Fuqua:<i>
Right.</i> A former
evangelical Protestant. He's an Assistant
Professor of Philosophy at Conception Seminary College
of Missouri. We'll find out more
about that later. Also, co-editor of a book, which we'll talk about later. Jonathan, welcome
to the program. Thank you. Thank you.
Glad to be here. It's great
to have you here. Well, I'm going to
get out of the way, because I want to hear your whole
story right away. Okay. Please, it's good
to have you here. Thank you. So, I was a child
of the '80s and '90s, raised in
a Pentecostal home, Pentecostal church. <i>A committed
Pentecostal home?</i> Very committed. My parents were
very devout, very pious, still are. Neither one goes to
a Pentecostal church now, but they're still
very committed Christians. Yeah, I saw both my
parents reading the Bible, you know, on their own
devotionally, growing up. We talked about God
all the time in my home. My parents took us
to church, my siblings - I'm the eldest of three. They took us to church, you know, three times
a week or more, you know, Sunday morning, Sunday night,
Wednesday night. You know,
there was always room for Sunday school
before church. So, church camps and church conferences
during the summer. So, yeah, I had a great, I have an, I enjoyed an embarrassment of riches
really, spiritually. My parents laid
a wonderful foundation for me in the faith that ironically
would eventually lead me all the way to,
into the Catholic Church. Our brand of Pentecostalism,
though, was, was a little different. We were Oneness
Pentecostals. <i>All right. Yes.</i> So, what I later learned, we were Modalists, as the early Church
called that view, Modalism, the idea that the Father,
Son and Holy Spirit are just three masks
worn by the one person in the Godhead. So, we really believe
that, you know, the Father died
on the cross, but wearing the mask
of the Son, you know,
another ancient heresy. Patripassianism. So, but, and yet,
we also thought that, you know, you had
to speak in tongues in order to be saved. So, we weren't mainstream
evangelical Protestants. You know, we didn't really think of ourselves; we were Protestant
only in the sense that, in the negative sense that we rejected
Catholicism. But we weren't Protestants in any kind
of positive sense, where we really identify with the theology
of the Reformation. Yeah, we didn't
know much. <i>You identified
with Azusa</i> Street? Yeah, Azusa Street. That's right,
the Pentecostal revivals of the early
20th century. So, I didn't have
a ton of exposure to Catholicism growing up in this,
this environment. I had a few
Catholic friends and classmates at school, but they weren't exactly, most of them weren't
really shining, you know, examples
of Christian faith. They didn't seem
that serious about following Jesus. Whereas I was very serious about following Christ and the people
in my church. You know,
you were in or out. I mean, so the idea that I,
you know, would give up a very serious form
of Christianity for a very lax,
kind of unimpressive, you know, watered-down
version of it, that's just not something
that entered my head. And, in fact,
when Catholicism did come up
in my Pentecostal circles, it was very negative. We were, we were
very anti-Catholic. I was taught, you know, that the Catholic Church is the great whore
of Babylon, you know, from the book
of Revelation. I was taught
that the false prophet, you know,
the Antichrist sidekick, if you will,
from the book of Revelation, that was gonna
be the Pope. And so, and so, yeah,
I was this very, sort of anti-Catholic. Of course, I didn't know
much about Catholicism, but I thought I did. You know, I thought I knew
all I needed to know to reject it and not really
ever take it seriously. And they would
have fit in, though, not quite,
you would have had; I don't want to use
the word negative, but you didn't
have a real positive view
of the rest of us either. So we viewed
all of the Protestants and Catholics as part
of the mission field. They needed to be saved just as much
as any atheist, because their theology
was all wrong. You know, they believed
in this polytheistic, you know, Trinitarian
conception of God, which was really
an aberration from the biblical
teaching on God. They hadn't spoken
in tongues, you know, so, everyone except us was part
of the mission field is kind of how we
viewed the world. But in God's grace,
later in high school, my parents
moved our family to an Assemblies
of God Church, which was a much more
mainstream version of Protestant Christianity. And at first I thought, 'These people aren't
really Christians, you know, they're just
playing church,' you know. <i>I mean you would
have gone now</i> <i>from</i> Oneness
to Trinitarian? To Trinitarian, so that was
an obstacle, you know. And then we,
as a Oneness Pentecostal, I believed in a very strict
legalistic code which barred, you know, many normal activities
as being, you know, sinful or sin-inducing. So, we didn't go
to the movie theater. We didn't dance. Women didn't cut their hair
or wear makeup. They didn't wear pants, you know, they only wore
skirts or dresses. And so, here I was in
this allegedly, you know, Christian church, where women
are cutting their hair and they've got
lipstick on, and they're
wearing pants, and there's not enough
speaking in tongues to suit my tastes. And they are talking about
the Trinity, and this just
seemed strange. But, you know,
as I got to know the people over time and develop relationships with the people
in the church and made some good friends
that were my age, I began to see
that these people are really actually lovers
of Jesus Christ, and they actually believe in what the Bible teaches. And their interpretations of the Bible are actually
pretty decent. And our pastor was
very intellectual, which is somewhat
of an oddity in Pentecostal circles. And he was a very good expository preacher
and teacher. And so, I learned a lot
from the Bible from this pastor. And I realized that
the world of Christianity was a little bit bigger
than what, than what I
initially thought, from my days as
a Oneness Pentecostal. And so my horizons
expanded. And about this time; so I finished high school in this Assemblies
of God Church, and went to college, and some things
happened at college that expanded
my horizons, in even more dramatic way. For one thing,
my faith came under fire, as often happens to young
Christians in college. And my professors
were very respectful. <i>Did you go to
a Christian college?</i> It was a mainline
Protestant college. <i>Okay.</i> Yeah, so, my... <i>Which, today, sometimes...</i> Yeah. Yeah. It's a very mixed bag. It's in the very
fine print down there, whatever denomination
it is. Exactly. Yeah. One of my religion
professors who identified
as a Christian, you know, let me know
that there was no bodily resurrection. You know, there was only
a spiritual resurrection. And then some of
my professors were atheists, and some subscribed
to Eastern, you know, Eastern thought. So it was a real
mixed bag intellectually. And they were all,
they were all good teachers, good scholars,
good men and women, who helped me learn
how to think. But they seemed
to be more enamored by secular
philosophical ideas and to base
their theology on that, rather than to be enamored by the Christian
intellectual tradition. So, my professors
and my classmates raised questions for me about my very,
you know, traditional, almost fundamentalist
type of Christianity, and I had no idea
how to answer these questions. I wasn't ready to
just give up my faith. I knew God was real. You know, I knew that
Jesus was the Son of God, but I was kind
of at an impasse. I didn't know what to do. And, in God's providence, a friend recommended
Lee Strobel's books, 'The Case For Faith'
and 'The Case For Christ.' And so I read the books, and I was just blown away by the fact
that there were actually Christian
scholars who were believing
Christians, and who accepted the Bible as the authoritative
word of God. And they published books
and articles, and they had good answers to these tough questions
I was wrestling with; I didn't know
such a thing existed. And I learned that,
for the most part, these people were not
Pentecostal Christians. They were, most of them
were evangelical Christians, and some of them
were even Catholic. And so I moved
from Strobel to start reading the people
that he interviewed, and that introduced me into the broader world
of Christian ideas, and then I started
reading people who didn't fit neatly into either my Pentecostal or even evangelical
understanding of Christianity. So, I was reading CS Lewis. And then GK Chesterton
and Peter Kreeft. And some of these people
were even Catholic. And so, I have... <i>Some of those </i>people
didn't speak in tongues. Some of those
people didn't speak, exactly, they didn't
speak in tongues. And yet they seemed
to be very holy, serious followers of Jesus. And so, again, my conception
of Christianity sort of expanded more to include
even Christians who weren't
Pentecostal at all. And I had to
begrudgingly admit that even some Catholics seemed to be
serious Christians. And then, also,
about this time, I had a kind of
intellectual conversion. <i>It's because</i> Jesus
is sitting on the right hand of God, but sometimes God
can't see over here, you know, He's blocked. That's right. You know, so, some people,
like Catholics, skip, sneak
through somehow. Yeah, yeah. Our guest is
Dr Jonathan Fuqua. Yeah. So, there you are. I mean, you learned to
put up with some of us. <i>Yeah, I learned
to put up</i> with Catholics begrudgingly. And I had this
intellectual conversion in political science class. I was, I was really
a, more of a, I was into sports
a lot as a kid. Went to college on
a football scholarship, and wanted to be
a PE teacher, and a football coach
in high school, but I had to take; all education majors
at this college had to take
American Government, a basic
Political Science course. And my professor happened
to be a Christian, a committed Christian, theologically
more traditional, but he emphasized, he wasn't really that big into quantitative
social science. He emphasized the
importance of ideas. And so, I began to see that different
political views are based on
different philosophical and theological views. And so, I just fell
in love with ideas. So, I changed my major to history
and political science, and I minored in
religion and philosophy. And so, I began to take
classes in history, religion, philosophy, political science,
literature, and I started
reading people I had never
heard of before. I read this guy,
St Augustine. You know, I read
'The Confessions,' and I was blown,
again, I was blown away. Here was, I mean, the text
is brilliant. Right? And in Augustine, there is no dichotomy between faith and reason, between the mind
and the heart. They're beautifully
brought together, and that's something I was
really struggling with, you know, growing up
in this very kind of emotional, anti-intellectual
Pentecostal background, and now I'm moving myself into this more
intellectual milieu. How do you put these
things together? And I saw it in Augustine. I didn't have
all the answers, but I saw it in Augustine. And it was, it was more
than a little disconcerting that Augustine was,
as I learned, a Catholic Bishop. [laughs] And then... You know, the other thing
that hit me my first time
I read some of those; I think growing
up Protestant, and I didn't read any of
the early Church Fathers. Any of those. And when I started
reading them, it amazes how so many
of us modern folk think we're so much
more intelligent than those people
way back then. <i>That's right.</i> And then you read them, and they just
blow you away. That's right. Because they're so much
smarter than me. That's right.
That's right. [laughter] And then, so, you know, in some of my
philosophy classes, you know, I read,
I don't think we; I don't think I ever read through any complete
philosophical text, but I read excerpts
through the tradition. And I was really impressed by these medieval
philosophers, like Anselm and Aquinas. And, I thought, you know, Aquinas just might be
the greatest of all the great
philosophers, but much to my chagrin, I learn he's
a Dominican friar? I mean, you know, what's
going what's going on? You know? And so, it reinforced this expansion
of my understanding of who counted
as a real Christian. You know,
it became undeniable that Protestants,
and even Catholics, could be real Christians. And so, at some point, I realized that some
of the Pentecostal emphases, even in the
more mainstream Assemblies of God
tradition, were problematic. They didn't teach that
you had to speak in tongues in order to be saved, but they taught that to really live
the Christian life at the highest level, you had to speak
in tongues. You know, you were
kind of on the JV team as a Christian if you hadn't
spoken in tongues. There was a real emphasis
on speaking in tongues. And there was, there was some other suspect
theological elements, a little bit of Name It,
Claim It theology. And so, I was
much more impressed with the evangelical
Protestants I was reading. And so, I kind of made
this transition in my mind
to evangelicalism. And so, while I was
in college, I met my wife. That was another factor, because she was
not a Catholic. She was a new Christian. Her faith in Christ
was unquestionably real, you know. And so,
as I got to know her, I'm like, again, like, 'How can I deny
that this, you know,
this amazing woman really loves Jesus?' And so, we; I decided I wanted to be
a professor and help Christians love
God with their mind. You know, Jesus says
the greatest Commandment; 'To love the Lord,
your God, with your heart, your soul,
your mind, and your strength.' And I had read Mark Noll's
book, the historian, 'The Scandal of
the Evangelical Mind,' and I thought, 'Oh, man,
this is really problematic. We got to start,
as Christians, we got to start
thinking, you know, like Augustine
and Aquinas do. We need to get
intellectually serious about our faith,'
but in a Protestant way, not in a Catholic way. So, I went to Baylor
to get a Master's degree in Church State studies. My plan was to do
after that, to do a PhD
in Political Science and be a professor, like this Political
Science professor that was influential
in my undergraduate days. And I picked Baylor because there was a Protestant
philosopher there that I read and had
a lot of respect for named Francis Beckwith, who while I was there,
much to my dismay, reverted to the Catholic Church
of his youth. And there were some
other grad students in the program who were
very devout Protestants like I was, who also came into
the Catholic Church. And some of these, some of these folks
had been to seminary. They knew Hebrew
and Greek. They were theologically
informed. They knew stuff
about Church history, a lot more than I did. And they were giving
me arguments against Protestantism
and in favor of Catholicism. I didn't know how to answer
these arguments at all. And so, I was forced
to really take seriously, for the first time
in my life, the possibility to just be
intellectually honest. That Catholicism might be,
just maybe, it was a long shot, but just maybe
it might be the right version
of Christianity. The Catholic Church
might be the Church
that Jesus founded. <i>Well, the</i> <i>first step </i>was
at least they're Christian. At least
that they're Christian. Exactly, yeah. And then, you know, when Angela and I,
my wife, when we moved to Waco, by this time we had
our first child, a baby girl. And while we were there, we got pregnant
and had our second one. And then, by the time
I finished my Master's degree, we were pregnant
with our third one. So, I had this young,
growing family. And unlike
some evangelicals who don't
emphasize doctrine but only having a relationship
with Jesus, I never saw
any opposition between the importance
of a personal relationship with Jesus, and truth. You know, Jesus said, "I am the way,
the TRUTH and the life." Right? It's the truth
that sets you free. "Love the Lord your God
with all your heart, your soul, your MIND,
and your strength." You know, don't be tossed,
to and fro, by every wind
of doctrine. So, I thought that part of
being a follower of Jesus was embracing the truth. Didn't the Bible contain
mountains of truth? Wasn't it important
that we try to understand those teachings
and live by them? So, I thought, 'You know, I've got to raise my family
in the right version of the Christian faith. I've gotta figure out
what that is.' And so, I had
this more evangelical mindset at this point. And so, we visited a lot of different evangelical
churches in Waco, Texas, all throughout
our two years there. And it was the beginning of a very long
and frustrating process in which I realized how inadequate
I was at the task; how trying to live out
Sola Scriptura, Scripture Alone,
really just wasn't workable. And I had countless hours
of conversations with friends
and professors about theological issues, and I began getting
these books published by Evangelical publishing
houses, like Zondervan, InterVarsity Press, like,
I call them 'Views Books.' You know, four views
on the Rapture, two views
on Women in Ministry, five views
on the Miraculous Gifts. Where a Protestant from a different
denominational background will defend his or her
denomination's take on this particular
doctrinal issue, I thought,
'This is gonna be how I'll figure out
the truth.' And after reading
a bunch of these books, I thought,
'This is hopeless. I thought, this could not
have been God's plan for the Church. It doesn't work.' I could go learn
Hebrew and Greek and master the
biblical languages. I could spend
my entire life trying to sort this out, and I might
never succeed. After all,
these Protestants have been doing this
for 500 years, and they're more
divided now than they were
at the beginning. Over time,
the disagreement gets worse, not better. And so, I just saw the practical unworkability of the Protestant
prescription for how Christianity
was supposed to work. And I thought, this couldn't
have been God's plan. <i>You know,
I remember</i> <i>when</i>... I was a Presbyterian, and I was going
through this. And I remember that in
the Westminster Confession, which would've been the
foundational confession for my particular brand
of Presbyterianism. It talks in there
about the infallibility, the inspiration of Scripture,
in its original. <i>That's right.</i> And what that did was that immediately made
the regular Christian kind of impotent to really
know what it said. It really raised up the
scholar as "the bishop." <i>Right, exactly.</i> They're the experts. So, that allowed
that person to get around
all these other ideas, because, well, I can read it
in the Greek. Right. And that's the way
I was functioning. Instead of consulting
the magisterium and the successors
to the apostles, I was consulting
these scholars who had that same kind
of functional role. Yeah. And so I had taken
some Church history and theology classes, you know, I was
an undergraduate. And I wasn't a professional
church historian, but I realized
that, you know, the principle
of Sola Scriptura, in addition to being not something taught
in Scripture, so, it kind of
undermines itself, I thought, maybe if it's
in church history though. Maybe it's not taught
in the Scripture, but maybe
the early Christians, maybe the Fathers
taught it.' So, I looked in history. I read some of
the Fathers. I didn't see
Sola Scriptura anywhere. And I thought, 'Oh, man, if Sola Scriptura
is right, then God allowed the Church
to go off the rails for 16 centuries.' And I thought,
how could God fail to exercise providential
care for His Bride, His Body for that long,
and allow the Church to; Didn't Jesus promise, 'The gates of hell
would not prevail against the Church'? And yet, it seemed like it had,
at least partially. And as I dipped my toes in the early
Church Fathers, I saw a version
of Christianity that was much more Catholic
than it was Protestant. And so, as I was thinking
through all these issues, you know,
the Lord's Supper, you know, Real Presence or some more
symbolic perspective? Well, the Fathers had
a Real Presence theology of the Eucharist. Scripture or tradition? Well, the Fathers believed in Scripture
AND tradition. You know, and so, as I read
through the Views books and looked at the Fathers, I realized the Fathers
answered these questions and handled
these problems in a much
more Catholic way than they did in a much
more Protestant way. And as a Protestant, now as an evangelical
Protestant, not so much
a Pentecostal Protestant, I did embrace
the kind of Reformation idea of getting back
to the early, the faith
of the early Church. But this was troubling, because the faith
of the early Church looked a lot
more Catholic than it did a lot more; in fact, the Protestants,
if anything, seemed to be innovators. They professed to be
getting back to the early, the faith of
the early Christians, but they were innovating in ways that the early
Christians would've rejected. And, in fact, I realized that Protestants
were actually imitating more the early Church's, the heretics
that the early Church had to defeat than they were imitating the early
Christians themselves. It was the heretics who used the Bible
against the Church, in the first
few centuries. And so, I thought, you know,
I couldn't believe; it was surreal. And so, because
of the influence of Dr Beckwith's conversion
and my friends, and then seeing
the practical unworkability of living the kind of
Sola Scriptura, living Sola Scriptura, I was forced to read, start reading and
seriously considering Catholicism
in a very real way. I remember,
during this time, I went to a conference
at Boston College. It was on John Paul II
in Philosophy. This was shortly right
before Dr Beckwith reverted back to
the Catholic Church. He was at the conference, and I think he may
have been the only Protestant speaker
at the conference. And I had never
been around so many Catholics
before in my life at this conference. And I had never; I had read
Catholic writers, you know,
present and past, but to be around so many
Catholic thinkers, I was just impressed. I mean, these guys,
men and women, you know, they were
respected scholars. They obviously took the
Christian faith seriously. And then there was a Mass that closed
the conference out. I think this was probably
the first Mass I ever attended in my life. And I saw these Catholic
scholars on their knees! I saw them
reciting the Creed. I saw them praying
and genuflecting. And I'm like,
'They actually believe this. They believe it! It's real to them.' There's no
opposition here between faith and reason, between Scripture
and tradition, between mind and heart, and that was
attractive to me. And so, I came out of that fired up about
John Paul II. I wanted to learn
more about this guy that I heard so much about
at the conference. And so, I went and I read
'Fides et Ratio.' And I, you know,
as a young philosophical, you know, budding
maybe one-day philosopher, I was just, again,
just blown away. And I thought,
'I don't know any, the head of any
Protestant denomination who could produce
something like this.' He seemed to be drawing
from a well that was so deep
and so rich, theologically
and spiritually, and I thought, 'I want to belong
to a tradition that can produce people
like Pope John Paul II.' I saw good
Protestant scholars. I saw morally virtuous
Protestant people, but I really didn't see
this combination that you see
in the Catholic saints that look back
over Christian history. I thought, this combination
of virtue, loving God
with your heart; and then knowledge, loving God
with your mind, I saw this over
and over again in the greatest
Catholic saints. And I thought, 'This tradition
is producing a caliber of disciple that I just didn't see anywhere in Protestantism, even the 500-year history
of Protestantism.' And so, I think by the end
of my Baylor days, which came in 2006, I was probably, you know,
75-80% converted in my head, but hadn't really gone to Mass very much. It was all mostly
theoretical at this point. Catholicism seemed like maybe it's the most
correct theory of Christianity,
theologically speaking. <i>But it's hard
when</i> you had it so much as a part of your background
to be anti-Catholic. It is. It's hard
to get rid of that. And, may I ask, were you sharing
any of this at home? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, my wife and I
talked about it, and we, I think, we were the only;
I was the only student. I wasn't the only
married student, but I think I was
the only student that had a wife
and children. So, it was just
easier for us to host all of our friends
at our house. And so, we often had
these debates in my house. So, my wife was there, and her and I
talked about it. And we did go to Mass
a few times, and she was actually
more open-minded to Catholicism than I was, because she'd been baptized in the Catholic Church
as an infant. And she didn't
grow up Catholic, but she had a large number of Catholic family members
on one side of her family. And her grandfather,
who she loved dearly, had been
a devout Catholic. And so, she kind of grew
up around Catholicism. She didn't see it
as this alien, strange, foreign
Roman thing. <i>Plus, you said</i>
she was a more recent adult convert
to Christianity. That's right. So, she wasn't bringing a huge amount of baggage
to Christianity. I had
much more baggage. So, she was much more,
you know, open-minded than I was. Well, maybe, Jonathan,
let's pause there. Sure. We'll take our break,
and we'll come back. Yeah, because sometimes
that baggage is not easy to let go of, when you come from such a, not just an anti-Catholic, but a position
where everybody else is wrong but us. You know, so, all right. So, let's pause, and we'll come back
in just a moment. [music] [music] Welcome back
to 'The Journey Home.' I'm your host, Marcus Grodi. And our guest is
Dr Jonathan Fuqua. And before we get back
in the story, I want to talk to you
about two books. First of all, Jonathan is
the co-editor of a book. It's called,
'Faith and Reason: <i>Philosophers Explain
Their Turn to Catholicism.'</i> <i>It's an Ignatius Press book,</i> and one of the reasons
I'm mentioning that, besides the fact that
Jonathan is the co-editor, is that it's conversion stories. And a number of those guests have been on
'The Journey Home,' including the professor you're talking about, Beckwith. Dr. Fuqua:<i> That's right.</i> One of his stories
is in there. So, it's a great read, especially those of you that might have friends
that are philosophers and a good way to help them
hear the journeys. The second book, I thought
about mentioning as Jonathan was talking about the Sola Scriptura ideas, is a book I've not
mentioned on the program, but I'm an editor of a book
called, 'The Bible Alone?' <i>And it includes a number
of articles</i> <i>by mostly converts
about their own journey</i> <i>discovering</i> the problems with the doctrine
of Sola Scriptura. And that's a
Coming Home Network book. I'm not sure if it's on
EWTN Religious Catalogue, but if you go to
chnetwork.org, besides all the other stuff, you can find out more about the book
'The Bible Alone?' All right, Jonathan, let's
walk back into your story. Yeah, so, as I said, I was, you know,
75, maybe 80% intellectually
converted, and it came through
these conversations with friends and reading in the Catholic
intellectual tradition. And I mentioned
I had read Augustine, I had read Aquinas, and I read John Paul II. I was reading contemporary
Catholics, as well. And then I started moving
back in the tradition reading some of the documents
of the Second Vatican Council. I thought, 'Well, this
theology is actually, is pretty good, you know. It kind of makes sense.' And went back
through the tradition. You know, I didn't read
everything, realized I couldn't
read everything. That's part of the problem with the Protestant
prescription for Christianity is who
can read everything? What individual can really figure this out
for themselves? How practical and realistic
was it for God to just hand every
Christian a Bible down through 20 centuries
and say, 'Read it. You'll all come up
with the same theology.' That contradicted
my lived experience, trying to figure out,
you know, how to follow Jesus. But I also was
concerned that I was moving fast, right? Just, I mean,
not too long ago, I had been
a Oneness Pentecostal, and then a more
mainstream Pentecostal, and then an Evangelical. Now, I was, you know, moving in the direction
of Roman Catholicism. And I was worried
that I was driftwood. You know, caught up
in this current, this professor I respected, my friends that I respected,
my classmates. And I thought,
'If I become a Catholic, at this time in my life, I'll never really know
if it was because it's something that God
was really calling me to or if I was just being
caught up in a current.' <i>Yeah, and
what could</i> be next? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so, I consciously
pumped the brakes and kind of put
the books aside. And for the next, you know, decade of my life almost, I intermittently
would go back and forth. I would go through periods where I would pick up
the books again. I visited Mass,
here and there. I would talk to people
I respected. And then I worked
myself into this, almost this frenzy, right? Like, 'Oh, am I going
to become Catholic now? Is now the time?' And I said, 'No, no, it's not, it's not time,
you know, I'm not convinced
enough yet.' You know, I, I, as someone who wanted
to be a philosopher; and so, the other part
of the story is that I realized
at Baylor that I really belonged
in philosophy, not political science. I'd taken in some
political theory courses which really revealed
to me that philosophy is where I belonged, including a course
on Aquinas's political theory. So, I got to read a whole
bunch of Aquinas, which I loved. But again, it's like, 'Ugh, medieval
Catholic Dominican.' And so, I switched gears and decided to
pursue philosophy, to graduate work
in philosophy. And for a while,
I thought, 'You know, given
how much I like Aquinas, maybe I should,
maybe I should get trained as a Thomist and become an apprentice,
you know, to Thomistic philosophy,
to St Thomas himself, the great master,
and master Latin, and write a dissertation on Aquinas's
Natural Law theory.' But as part of this self-conscious pumping
of the brakes, I thought, 'You know,
if I go down that road, then I'll become
Catholic for sure.' So, I thought, 'I'll just be
an Aquinas fan boy, you know, I'll keep him
as an avocation, rather than focusing
on his thought.' And so, I decided to go
into analytic philosophy and did Master's work, and then PhD work at Purdue in analytic philosophy. And in spite
of my decision to put Aquinas
in a secondary place, so I wouldn't
become Catholic, I ended up becoming
Catholic anyway. So, as part
of this intermittent picking the issue up, putting it back down,
picking it up, putting it back down; I became more and more
convinced over the years that I didn't really have any good reason not
to become Catholic. All my excuses, you know, part of reading
Catholic theology, as I worked through
Catholic books and essays, I realized that
most of my objections were based
on misunderstandings, you know,
typical Protestant misunderstandings
of Catholicism. I mean, I had all those. You know, I thought,
'Catholics worship the saints. Oh, wait. Wait a minute. Prayer of the saints is just asking the saints
to pray for you.' Oh, well,
that's not so bad. That kind of makes sense. 'Catholics idolize Mary. Now, wait a minute. What they say about Mary is based on what
they say about Jesus. Okay, that kind
of makes sense.' And so, and then there were
Catholic practices, I just, I didn't
know anything about. They just seemed bizarre
and arbitrary to me. You know, 'Why do Catholics
dip their fingers in holy water and make
the sign of the cross? Oh, they're reminding
themselves of their baptism. Oh, that's a good idea. It's good to remind yourself
of your baptism.' <i>Well, I don't mean
to interrupt,</i> but you said something
a moment ago that I want
to make sure someone didn't
misunderstand, because you said
that what they say about Mary is what they say
about Jesus. Yeah. You don't mean that She
was divine like Jesus. What you mean is
the way we appreciate Mary is because She is
the Mother of our Lord. Exactly. I mean
that's the reason. Yeah, exactly.
What we call Mariology is based on Christology, you know, and that kind
of made sense to me. And so, as I,
as my objections, my misunderstandings just got cleared up,
you know. Of course,
as a philosopher, as I think I was
mentioning a minute ago, I could always
invent clever, you know, some
clever reason, you know, not to, that this is
kind of what, you know, philosophers
are good at doing, you know, poking holes in other people's
arguments and ideas. Which is much easier to do than to defend
your own positive theory. So, I found that because
of my philosophical training, I could always
come up with some reason, which really was
functioning as an excuse at this point, not to
come into the Church. And I realized this is
what I was doing, you know. And I think really the Lord
was dealing with me, and saying,
'Okay, it's time. It's time for you to
really start this journey.' And so, [clears throat]
my wife and I, whenever I would pick up the issue again
and think about it, her and I
would talk about it. She was, again, always,
you know, more open-minded. But, you know, Catholicism seemed like a foreign
country to me. It would be like moving
to Nigeria, you know. The culture shock factor is another reason why
I pumped the brakes. So, there were good reasons
for pumping the brakes and not so good reasons
for pumping the brakes. <i>And probably also </i>why, I don't know
if you considered Eastern Orthodoxy at all
during any of this time? A little bit. I mean, talk about
a foreign country for a Pentecostal. Yeah, I looked
into that a little bit, and it really seemed,
yeah, alien. So, and I thought,
you know, I'm a Western
Christian anyway. So, and I didn't
see the split between the East and the West
as like a divorce. I saw it more as,
Dad sleeping on the couch, you know, and Mom is upstairs
in the bedroom, because they're fighting. You know, so, becoming
Eastern Orthodox for me was not really a way
of avoiding becoming Catholic. I really saw it as just becoming a certain kind
of Catholic, you know. And so, I thought,
'I'm a Western Christian, if I'm going to do this, I need to join
the Western Church.' And so, you know, as I would pick up
the issue, I would talk
about it with my wife. Again, always more
open-minded, not as you mentioned, not as much baggage
as I had. And so, we finally
thought, you know, 'Look, we've got to
actually go to Mass, you know,
we've got to figure out, not just
whether Catholicism is correct theologically, but can you actually follow Jesus
as a Catholic?' And so, you know, I had to
take this more seriously in a really
existential way. I had to take this theory
down out of the clouds and see if I could live it. And so, we decided we would put our kids
in Catholic school, and we would go to.., because the public school in the town
we were living in, we weren't overly thrilled. So, we thought,
'Well, the Catholic schools is a better choice
educationally anyway. And we're thinking
about doing this, so let's just put the kids
in Catholic school.' And we decided
to attend the parish that was attached
to the school, so our goal was
to immerse ourselves in a Catholic community, and see if we could live
as disciples of Jesus in this community. And so, we went to Mass
for a year. And, at first, it was
quite an adjustment going from evangelical
services to the Mass. But... <i>At least it was in tongues,</i> because it was Latin,
right? [laughter] I recognized that part. So, as I learned more
about the Mass, it made it;
the objectionable mystery. There was still mystery,
of course. You know,
the Paschal mystery, the mystery of the Trinity, and the mystery
of the Incarnation, I was okay with that
intellectually. But some of the
objectionable mystery like, 'Why do
Catholics genuflect?' As I learned the reason
for these things, it began to make
a lot more sense. And eventually, I came to
actually like the Mass. I liked
the reverential nature of worshiping God
in a Catholic Mass. I like the physical bodily
sacramental element of living as
a Catholic Christian. And so,
after the first year, we thought, 'Maybe we should
join RCIA the next year, you know, we could always
back out, you know, but it seemed like we really can follow Christ
as Catholics, if that's what we decide.' So, we joined RCIA
the second year. And our kids were old
enough, I think, you know, maybe 9, 10, 11, at this
point, our three girls, and they just came
into RCIA with us, and they sat
in the RCIA class. And so, they kind of
went through RCIA just by being in the room. And so, they were going to
Catholic religion class. We were going to Mass
as a family. And so we were talking
about these things in the home
with the girls. And the people who led
the RCIA class were just, they were wonderful. You know, Jesus-loving, you know, church-loving
Catholics. And the more I learned
about the Catholic faith, the fewer
objections I had. And eventually, I thought, 'You know,
I think this is, I really believe
this is what God is calling us to
as a family.' So, at the Easter vigil
in 2017, all five of us were
received into the Church. A couple of things
strike me, Jonathan. One of them is, all the way
through your journey from, not just
theologically from Oneness Pentecostal, but all the way
through that, it didn't seem
that, to you, that the idea that
a Church is important. It's the relationship between an individual
and Jesus. <i>Yeah.</i> But the Church is really not a key issue with you all
the way through. <i>Yeah.</i> And one thing that actually helped me to see the importance
of the Church, eventually, was I became
very concerned about Christian division. You know,
as I read and studied and thought about the high priestly prayer
of Jesus in John 17. It seemed to me that
Jesus really expected and desired His followers to be visibly united
in One Body. I mean the Body,
that metaphor, right, the Bride, you know, Jesus wasn't a polygamist. He had one Bride.
[chuckles] He didn't have
multiple bodies. He had One Body. And then, you know, studying history
and philosophy, I saw that,
I saw that the Reformation; Christianity
really splintered after the Reformation. And I thought,
'If we really practiced this version
of Christianity, how can we have any hope of satisfying
the desire of Jesus, that His followers
be visibly united? Isn't this a scandal
to the world?' And I thought, 'Protestantism is actually undermining
Christian unity.' And I thought, 'It's helping to
secularize the West because of the scandal
of division.' And then all
the religious conflict versus Catholics, between
Catholics and Protestants in the
post-Reformation era, I saw that led, eventually, to the privatization
of religion. 'How do we get rid
of this conflict? Let's kick religion
out of the public square and privatize it.' I found these to be
very alarming trends over the recent history
of Western civilization. So, I thought, 'Man, the Church
is really important.' And another thing
that helped me see the importance
of the Church was, you know, I thought, 'Okay, God prepared
the Israelites for the Messiah over the
course of 2,000 years or so. He prepared the Gentiles
for the Gospel through Greek philosophy.' I had this perspective
from the Fathers, right? He prepared Plato
and Aristotle. They were kind of like
Greek prophets almost. And I thought,
'What sense does it make to think that God would go
through the trouble to prepare the Israelites and the Gentiles
for hundreds, even thousands of years,
for the Gospel, only to put in place
no mechanism for securing
the New Divine revelation that came in
the first century, just to let it all
dissipate so quickly?' I thought, 'That doesn't
make any sense to me. Surely, God would care more
about His Bride than that.' And so, I began to see
that the Church is actually, It really matters. What was the hardest thing
for you and your wife, after you
came into the Church? Yeah. In your journey, what was the biggest
barrier for you? Yeah, I think
the biggest, the biggest barrier was, I had been attracted
to Catholicism by some of
the greatest saints and Doctors of the Church, you know, Augustine,
Aquinas, John Paul II. I took a Liberation
Theology class at Baylor, and I read the CDF document
on liberation theology, put out by Cardinal Ratzinger
in the '80s. And so I was
a huge Ratzinger fan. When he became Pope,
I thought, 'Yes,' you know. And so, these are
the figures that attracted me
to Catholicism. When I actually got into contemporary
21st-century suburban Catholicism, the lived reality
of the shallow faith of many of those Catholics just kind of smacked me
in the face. I thought, 'Wow, we got
a lot of work to do.' I knew I had a lot
of work to do. I felt like
I was starting over as a baby Christian. But the gap between the
figures who attracted me and many of the people
in the pews was, as I said, it kind of smacked me
in the face a little bit. Yeah, I mean,
it's one thing to read about
the Church on paper. That's right. [laughs] And I don't just
mean us Catholics that you run in with, that we're not living
our faith very well, but just the state of
Catholicism, if you will. Yeah. You know, some of, if we look back
at the reason John Paul and Ratzinger
and the society for a New Evangelization, well, one of the reasons
they're saying it is because entire cultures
have been lost. France. That's right. Ireland, Québec, Brazil, you know. What do we do? And here we are
in a country where, uh... are we on the verge? Yeah. And so, you know, what's wrong
with this picture? You know,
and what do we do? And I'd love to ask
your thoughts on what's wrong
with the picture, but one of them
which is, I think, to what extent is the loss
of philosophy one of the problems? Yeah. Yeah, I think
it's a big problem. Because I think,
you know, you mentioned
I teach philosophy at Conception
Seminary College. <i>Yeah.</i> And I tell my students, you know, in most cases
bad theology is based on bad philosophy,
you know. And I think it was
St Irenaeus who said that all these heresies
the early Church dealt with; they have
philosophical sources. And so, one thing,
you know, coming into this position
I'm in now, as a philosophy professor
at a Catholic seminary, I was greatly relieved
to learn that the USCCB now requires
that future priests get degrees
in philosophy. And they are also required to study the history
of philosophy and to learn how
to think well. So that when they start
thinking about the faith, they can think properly
and well about the faith, because they know
how to think, because they've been
properly trained in philosophy. So, I think
philosophy is vital. <i>You know,</i> in my book,
'Life from Our Land', I talk about the fact
that in many ways, we're blind to the soup that we live in
as a culture. <i>Yeah.</i> And your average person is just blind
to the philosophies that influence
their thinking. <i>Right.</i> It's there
but they don't know it, because they've been
in it all their life, like a fish in water. <i>That's right.</i> And so, it really
undermines, you know, our culture
preaches autonomy. But how can you really be a self-directed
autonomous person when you just
imbibe these hugely controversial ideas? And those are really
what's dictating your life. That you don't even know
where they come from, and you couldn't even
articulate the ideas. So, philosophy,
I think, is vital. <i>Yep. </i>Yeah,
but I will say that it's a little
intimidating to..., in fact,
I have an email here, so maybe this email
will actually express what I, my thoughts
better than I could, I think. Jesse from<i>
Michigan writes:</i> <i>I mean, where do you go,</i> <i>because there's all
these ideas out there?</i> Yeah. Yeah,
that's a great question. So, I think definitely,
as Catholics, we have to use
divine revelation to sift philosophy and weigh the good
and the bad. And, in fact, this is one
of the reasons why divine revelation
is necessary. I mean,
Aquinas opens the Summa with one of the first
questions he asks is whether there is
any other science needed than philosophy. And this is basically
his defense of the necessity
of divine revelation in theology,
as a science. And he says, yes, because
what we can know about God from reason alone
takes a lot of work, and there's a lot of error
mixed in with it. And so, if we're going
to know God, and if we're going to have the knowledge
of salvation, it's got to be because God
reveals it to us, Himself. And so, I think, you know, philosophy is really
the love of wisdom. And on the Christian view, Christ is the wisdom
of God. And the early Fathers
view Christianity as the true philosophy. And so, I think philosophy
and theology are consistent. If you're really searching
for wisdom, we find it in Christ. And a proper use
of human reason, I think,
supports the tenets of the Catholic faith. And so, there is a way
to reconcile faith and reason, I think. <i>What's your thought
about</i> this? The idea of formation
of conscience, which really is key
to our whole culture, you know, of course, even our founding
fathers of America said that a democracy
ain't gonna work, unless it's based on people that have morals
and a religion. That was Adams. But if you cut through
all the stuff that's essential for
a well-formed conscience, and at the same time
wondering what's wrong with this world
around us? Why are there so many
"nones" out there, people that don't believe? What do you think? It seems to me that one
of the most important absolutely essential
foundation stones to a good philosophy
for life begins with accepting God
as the Creator. <i>Yeah,</i> I agree. I mean, as I studied
philosophy myself and I studied ethics; that was one of the areas that
I spent a lot of time in; I became convinced that the ethical outlook
of Plato and Aristotle, which can be called
Natural Law theory, was the right way
to approach the question of
how should I live? And this was also
the approach that St Thomas
took as well. And Natural Law theory bases questions about
how we should live on a theory
of human nature. It bases ethics
on teleology, the Greek word 'telos'
meaning 'purpose.' And I thought,
without God, without mind,
you have no purpose, so you have no teleology. And there's a recognition
of that in modern philosophy, because modern ethicists, the two main, the three
main competitors: Social Contract theory
from Hobbes, Kantianism
from Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher, and Utilitarianism,
from John Stuart Mill, all divorce the questions of how you should live
from teleology. They're not dependent
on teleology. And in modern
secular philosophy, there's a rejection
of teleology, I think, because there's
a rejection of God. And so, without an idea
of human purpose and meaning in life, and you don't get
that without God - no God, no purpose. No purpose, there's no
solid foundation for ethics, and that's why
modern man is adrift. <i>Yeah, yeah, yeah.</i> You know,
the idea of Creator just builds every gratitude in all the things that has
to come with that. That's right. If you don't believe
there's a Creator... Right. It just, it's gone. And what cracks me up, there was a time
in American literature in the early 20th century, when a lot of these authors were trying to get away from any teleological idea
behind even fiction. There's no plot here. Let's just write the story
without any plot. It didn't go very far, because we, there's a part
of our being... Right. We read a story, there's a purpose here! Right. We know it. And, of course, if our culture isn't taught
good philosophy... That's right. Got another email. Melanie from Portland. <i>Yeah, let me mention</i>
two examples. So, you know,
all inquiry presupposes what Catholic
philosophers call the intelligibility
of being. Right? It presupposes that being
is rational, that the world of real things
can be understood. That there's
an order there, and that there's
a fittingness between our minds
and the world. It's almost like they
were made for each other. Right? And there's a principle that expresses this called the Principle
of Sufficient Reason. That's kind of another way of stating the idea that being
is intelligible. So, for one thing, how do you explain
this correlation between the human mind and the intelligibility
of being in a naturalistic context? It makes much more sense
in a theistic framework. And then, if being
is intelligible, that means there should be
some answer to the question, why is there something,
rather than nothing? Why does the universe
exist at all? And if there's an answer
to that question, it must appeal to something that transcends
the universe, something outside
of space and time, something very powerful, something very
intelligent, right? And, as Aquinas says
in the Summa, "And this all men
call God," right? So, that's one approach
you can use to help philosophy put you in contact
with Catholic ideas about the world. A second one is, we're
moral beings by nature. You know, CS Lewis
starts out, you know, the beginning
of 'Mere Christianity,' talking about whenever
we have an argument about who's right
or who's wrong or whenever you accuse me
and I defend myself, we're all
presupposing some idea, some standard of
morality and justice. Well, if there is no God, then the human mind
is a product of a blind random process which only cares about
reproductive fitness. It does not care
about moral truth. You don't need
moral truth to be; you don't need
the right theory of justice to be reproductively fit. So, why should we trust
that our minds are actually
reliable instruments in attaining
moral knowledge if there is no God? It would just be
a pure accident. But in a theistic context, the idea of a conscience that's in tune
with moral reality makes a lot of sense. So, those are two ways I think that philosophy
can help theology. <i>Excellent.</i>
I know, excellent. And for those of you that
have this program on tape, listen to it many times to go over what
Jonathan just said. I know I've mentioned
many times on my program that that's why I like
the opening of Romans, where he says,
"God's evidence is there." <i>Yeah.</i> Just look for it. Bonaventure talked
about it in the mind's search
for God. You know, it's there! The vestiges of God
are there. Just open your eyes. <i>That's right.</i> Use the senses
that He gave us so that we could know Him. Jonathan,
thank you so much! Yeah, thanks
for having me on. What a great privilege
to have you here. And, again, you teach at Conception Seminary
College in Missouri. And this book, co-editor
of 'Faith and Reason'. And, you know,
as a good teacher, it's a good vote up for the Conception
Seminary College in Missouri, you know. So, God bless you
and your work there. Thank you for joining us
on the program. And thank you
for joining us. I do pray that
Jonathan's journey is an encouragement
to you. God bless you. See you next week. [music]
