Journey Home - 2018-11-12 - Dr. Joshua Hochschild

[Music] [Music] good evening welcome to the journey home I'm your host Marcus Grodi and once again I have this wonderful privilege to join you tonight to hear a story of conversion if we will use that term it's a it's a journey and that's why we caused a journey home a journey of faith and I'm excited tonight because I have a philosopher on the program who teaches philosophy and still cracks me up that I came from a tradition that didn't think philosophy was a good thing at all and I wish the Lord I'd had more philosophy because that because you mentioned early before the program that as you maybe can talk about that there's any one on the word that's world that's truly trained according to the classical understanding of the liberal arts and the good sense is our priests and we can talk about that in a moment if you want dr. Joshua Hoch shield is a former atheist an Episcopalian a professor and Josh it's great to have you on the program having me and what a great privilege we I mean we had thought about inviting you many years ago after I first heard about you your entrance into the church but at the time you I don't think you were quite ready for it well we we talked about it and you know the the idea intrigued me but I had just transitioned to a new job I'm married have a family my wife at that point was not a Catholic but she is now good so you know that there's everything in its season do I think so when when you reached out to me again I was I was happy to say well it's great to have you in the program so let me in back out of the program and out of the way and invite you to go way back and talk about your journey she joining and if I may before I do that just something briefly I teach it not st. Mary's University and this weekend the weekend that were filming a student at Mount Saint Mary's died he was a senior and I knew him from from teaching him and a philosophy class and he was a he was a real seeker he was a real lover of truth and so I just I want to dedicate our conversation to him and ask your viewers to pray for the repose of the soul of Michael that would be meaningful all right and the students at the school students at the school who are who are suffering that loss all right thank you yeah all right very good no that's good that's good does know that that's there on your mind too as you're sharing your story yeah but the death is someone near to us also puts our whole life in perspective it does it does so yeah you mentioned I'm a convert from atheism and Episcopalian ISM just to be clear those not at the same time this these are serial conversions so I was I was raised in a family without religious formation my mother came from a Lutheran family but kind of fell away from Christian faith in college my father came from a Jewish family that was mostly mostly secular I think that there was there was a sense of being part of a sacred tradition but he also I think fell away from from Jewish faith and in college and when my parents met there was you know awkwardness about where to be married and when when they started having children as my brother and me they decided to sort of raise us to you know choose our own way so they weren't antagonistic to religion when we were around one or another part of the family we would observe Christian holidays we would observe Jewish holidays but there wasn't there wasn't a religious formation at home and you know frankly I didn't really feel like I was missing anything I I was a smart kid and I was a busy kid and I didn't I didn't feel you know an emptiness I had friends who were who were Christian and I realized that was important to them and they must need it for something and you know lucky me I didn't I didn't need that nobody invited you a to do a Bible Camp or a crusade I'm sure they did and I'm sure I was kind of condescending and dismissive about it you know III I knew that it was something that was important in some people's lives but it wasn't in in my life or my my home life and my parents were good good people I didn't see why you needed religion to be a good a good person so yeah that's that was those are the those are the beginnings you know it does be speak about our culture where there are so many people today they call themselves nuns mm-hmm they don't have any faith and I would dare say probably no philosophy either and there's our culture you know that's missing out on all these things that isn't a part of what was traditionally recognized as foundational for life they don't have that and you know how did it get that way well sometimes we don't think it's important to pass along or maybe we didn't get it all either generation after generation it kind of just slowly slowly drifts away and there we are yeah you have to do and we think about that student that you're talking about that just died at one time he was a seeker you know and we pray for him did he find it in the process you know so there I look at my childhood and there's all kinds of things that I can see are preparations in retrospect you know I buy I rode horses when I was younger and through high school and the the kind of long-term commitment and cooperation and the culture of tradition and there's certain there's certain almost liturgical aspects of that culture I wouldn't have said that at the time but looking back I didn't see that I played the violin when I was younger and and so you know I know that that helped me to appreciate a certain kind of music that I might not have appreciated and sort of awaken my soul to the the power of music and how it can how it can raise the spirits and you know I can't help think when you talk about the liturgy and the traditions of a horse life you know the the British getting on their horses and dressing up for hunting the Fox with the hounds and horns when there is a litter there is the cymbals and everything that that they did it was a part of their life it's a a parallel to where it came from which was the liturgies and they have the traditions of our faith I'm sure something else that prepared me for the faith in ways that I'm I'm probably still don't fully understand my father died when I was young I was nine years old that was on one level I'm obviously that was devastating yeah but I don't want to make it seem like I experienced that as a traumatic event I actually looking back I mean I know people who have experienced trauma and I don't think that that I in the long run experienced that of something that was that weighed on me at least in a conscious way my mind mother was incredibly strong and incredibly generous and I had a really really good childhood and I don't mean that to sound crass you know even though my father died when I was young I had a really really good childhood and you know one way to put that to about the the strength of my mother I know a lot of people who come into the church one of the stumbling blocks can be the theology of Mary and I've heard it said and in my own experience talking to other people makes this seem very plausible is that a lot of the people who have trouble accepting a theology of Mary in the Catholic Church had had a difficult relationship with their own mothers or their mother's worse too particularly models to them I never had a problem with Catholic teaching on Mary and I think that speaks really well to to my mother and her strength and what her virtue please go home but I'm sure there's a way in which I also felt like I was missing a father figure that so the Fatherhood have gone was something that maybe I was more awake to in my later conversion and some people would be you listed yourself as a former atheist and in my mind I always think of eight agnostic is a significant difference for once I just don't know but the other one says I know there ain't yeah so yeah and probably I was something else for a while - I mean atheism and agnosticism are both answers to questions and I think it for a lot of my life I wasn't even asking that question right I didn't maybe that that in a way that's agnosticism but I think of an agnostic as someone who has actually thought about the question does God exist and is suspending judgment either way don't I don't know one or the other and an atheist who's thought about that question and has answered no and so I think I spent some time isn't a theist I think I spent some time as an agnostic but I also think I spent some time in the kind of fog of a pre theoretical understanding and just it wasn't it wasn't a live question and honestly a lot of a lot of my conversion story both becoming a Christian in the first place when I was in college and then being received into full communion with the Catholic Church about 11 or 12 years after that was about feeling certain questions that hadn't been questions for me before feeling those questions come alive our guest with dr. Joshua hoax shield all right well then there you are did you did you go to you went to Yale right yes did you go to Yale agnostic with those questions did you happen talk about how those first questions arose to you that led to at least your your life with Christ I think I went to Yale not thinking about the question so so maybe not fully atheist or agnostic but if if I had been asked at that time I probably would have said either no or I don't know I went to Yale maybe naively sort of buying into the whole image of like here's this grand place that that believes in noble ends and high aspirations and I thought you know if college is is is going to be worth it I should go to a place that's gonna elevate the soul like so I bought I bought into that and I think that's one of the things that prepared me for conversion as well because you know not everybody goes to college without that aspiration and I was quickly kind of disillusioned that I you know many many students were very careerist or they were very ideological or they were very cynical about the grandiosity of the university and you know part of part of the grandiosity of that university is that it was originally founded as a Christian University and so I started to notice how historically religious faith informed so many of the best things in human culture and you know first just sort of taking note of that that's not enough to make you become religious that's not a motive but it makes it it makes it all of a sudden seem like it might have relevance to life that that religious faith has been so powerful in human history in human culture so they just kind of opened the door yeah that opened the door I I really first fell in love with the search for truth I didn't become a philosophy major until later but I was part of a program that was more like intellectual history politics literature just trying to understand where we are where we've come from the history of ideas the development of ideas and partly through you know the the grace of certain courses that I took and partly through the grace of friendships that I was making found myself kind of building a larger conversation about you know about what is true and that's where you know eventually questions about God and questions about that we think of as having religious significance start to come alive so I was I was a convert first to philosophy I would say but through philosophy philosophy Dunwell recognizes its own limits it opens up questions that philosophy itself can't answer did your awakening to Christ then happened and of course or in reading or what was shared by a friend or it just there are many things that prepared the way for a crucial moment so I there were courses that I took I took a class on John Henry Newman and I wrote a couple of papers on the relationship between faith and reason before I was a Christian but I was just fascinated with how he described the relationship between faith and reason and I took a class on the the Gospels and the first Christians and wrote a couple of papers on one John the Gospel of John and John's understanding of faith before I was a Christian but just because I was fascinated with with how powerful these ideas were and I also had friendships I realized that some of the people that I most admired some of the people who had the virtues that sort of spoke the loudest to me were Christians a variety of sorts I mean some were Catholics some were Calvinists my best friend was an Episcopalian and all of that I'm sure was preparing me and I was starting to think like a Christian and and you know I ended up a philosophy professor I think in a lot of ways I'm sort of inclined to follow my head first and my heart is sort of slow to to catch up and get in line but the crucial moment was I don't even remember what the conversation was about but I was talking to someone we were arguing in a friendly philosophical way and he stopped and he said to me wait a minute do you believe Jesus Christ is your personal Lord and Savior and if if someone had asked me under certain other circumstances or Fida if if I had been sort of stopping to think of that as an academic exercise I'm sure I would have grappled with it and not how to answer it and hemmed and hawed but in that moment I knew the answer was yes I almost had to get outside of my own head and have that person present the question to me like that and I knew the answer was yes and I heard myself say yes and then I realized all I now I know what this means like I know I have to go get baptized I have at that point I probably didn't even know the Lord's Prayer you know I I believed and yet I was I was so naive and and I remember going to some of my friends the the one Episcopalian friend in particular who was who was so helpful to me and sort of threw him just sort of surrendering to to Christ and saying help me I'd you know I believe but I don't know I don't know what to do No so that was my sophomore year in college I was I went through a kind of Christian initiation process that a Episcopal Church in New Haven and so I was baptized and in their sense received into the Episcopal Church at Easter of my junior year of college II did your Christian I didn't take off I mean I I don't be critical Episcopal Church but like many mainline churches you can become a biscuit peléan or a Presbyterian and not know Jesus I'm sure it was did for you did it did it grow it did it did not necessarily because of that particular parish that parish had had beautiful beautiful energy as I as I grew into the faith I I found myself someone disappointed in the theological content and the preaching and and started going to another Church in New Haven another Episcopal Church that had more solid biblical preaching and I was eager to continue to learn the tradition both intellectually but also you know in terms of the the personal practice and the spirituality briefly I considered whether I was called to be an Anglican priest and Episcopal priest I think I was rightly sort of told you know it hasn't even been six months here yet or a year get some get some experience under your belt but to answer your question yeah it was something that I felt I needed to grow into initially I actually didn't think of myself as making a commitment to Episcopalian ISM I was making a commitment to Christ I knew I needed to be baptized and I knew that baptism you know or according to the right formula would count anywhere by that point I was also I guess we could say Catholic minded enough to believe that there was such a thing as apostolic authority I mean I knew about the Creed's so I knew that it would be best for me to be baptized in a church that that had some claim to not pass taluk Authority and at that point you know frankly I don't think I even really considered Catholicism it seemed to have so much more to it than I that I wasn't ready for I knew a little bit about Eastern Orthodoxy but that's a very for most people in America that's that's pretty exotic that form of Christianity at the time you had mentioned that you'd you'd caught this hunger for truth which opened you up to philosophy and then open you up to Christ and Catholic pathology met a bit too much did did the cacophony of non Catholic voices also kind of draw you in you know in terms of Episcopalian ISM versus a cradled church versus all these other voices out there that's it that's a good question i i i i wasn't i didn't consider any other protestant denominations partly because I knew that the Episcopal Church at least some strain of it made more of a claim to apostolic Authority and at the end of the day it was it was that my best friend was Episcopalian too and he had agreed he seemed to know a lot about the Catholic tradition he'd been to a Catholic High School and to my mind picking what church to go to at that point was provisional I just needed good enough to keep growing as a Christian I can see a parallel with your love for philosophy and now even used to teach a historical philosophy which doesn't just go back 50 years or a hundred years or 200 years there's a huge history here there of a thread of truth that you're trying to discern and help people discover which would draw you to a church that has at least seemingly a longer history that points to the counsels of early church fathers yeah and as I mentioned I mean I had taken I had taken a seminar on John Henry Newman so yeah how that happened there and you and I probably read more of his more things that he wrote as an Anglican and then things that he wrote as a Catholic by the but there's a continuity there that he you know as he would attest and some of the things that he wrote as an Anglican looking back you can see how it was preparing him to you know was half of it halfway through his life he was 45 I think when he became a Catholic okay Josh well there you are a brand new Christian the growing Episcopalian Christian at Yale and with no interest in the Catholic Church at that point so what led you to Wheaton well so I got to Wheaton by way of Notre Dame oh yes of course that's Ari I'm sorry no that's okay so I went to graduate school at the University of Notre Dame and some of my friends at that point thought oh he's gonna go spend time a Notre Dame he'll become a Catholic then and the irony is I never I never felt strongly tempted to become a Catholic while I was at another day I had very good Catholic friends at Notre Dame very well-formed Catholic friends my first friend first day on campus was someone who would take me to benediction and and he taught me the rosary even knowing some of those things and and grain before the Eucharist with him I I didn't feel like I was being called to become a member of the Catholic Church I felt like I I could already own that a from within then we married yet when you went to Notre Dame not when I went there I met my wife at Notre Dame in part because she was also an Anglican she's from Canada so she's more likely to say Anglican than Episcopalian so our our minority faith at Notre Dame is part of what drew us together and similar similar influences and I was studying especially medieval philosophy read a lot of Aquinas so in intellectually again I'm being very very much formed in the Catholic tradition like it Yale I also I'm developing friendships and relationships and realizing that people that I admire people that I respect have have been nourished by their Catholic faith but yeah I was I was still an Episcopalian when I finished my degree and got my first teaching job at Wheaton College which you know I don't know if all your viewers know I mean Wheaton College is the preeminent Protestant College if you're if you're a really really smart Protestant student and you know you want to go to a Christian College Wiens probably your first choice I had I had amazing students teaching there the faculty there are incredible it was it was a great blessing to go and teach there yeah especially if you if you put the adjective evangelical there's the Protestants right that's the definition of we I mean there there you go and it's the mecca if you will of evangelical America it really is and to say to a Protestant that you teach a whedon means these are faithful Catholics I'm excuse me faithful evangelical Christian fsor teaching at a wonderful place you know there they are they're very serious about hiring faculty who will will help to form students so faculty sign a faith statement and an a Community Covenant and that they the faculty I think rightly see themselves as as ministers as much as as teachers because they they want to integrate the the formation of souls with the education well so teaching philosophy there no I'm Jen I'm happy yeah let me talk to you Protestants out there that are like me that I went through president without ever taking a philosophy class because my branch of philosophy and II really said that philosophy was unnecessary I just need to study English history and what maybe nine history sometimes but least theology the Bible it's all you need but philosophy there you were yeah I'm philosophies a popular manger that Wheaton and at least while I was there the the there's a year-long lecture course in the history philosophy that has a reputation of being one of the hardest courses on campus maybe the hardest course after organic chemistry which is you know north of notorious on any campus a lot of a sense of of pride and being challenged and there is a lot of intellectual diversity that we from the outside to a lot of people to say that something is evangelical might make it look kind of monolithic but evangelical covers a lot of things and it's not a denomination it's more a style so there were there were other Anglicans who taught there like me but there were Anabaptist there were serious Calvinists there were Lutheran's there were all kinds of Christians coming from all kinds of backgrounds and in a way I think for some students philosophy is is a way to develop a language in which theology can be discussed as if you if you only know your theology from your tradition and you try to make sense of theology from another tradition you know sometimes the words mean different things along and there there needs to be this is an insight that I learned from John Henry Newman there there there needs to be a kind of service discipline that helps the other disciplines talk to each other and philosophy can become well I would probably say that that may be probably agree that one of the biggest problems of our world especially in the science world that there aren't enough science that scientists that didn't live in philosophy first right because understand science you have to see it's a continuity physics is a continuity a philosophy a branch of philosophy and if you ignore the philosophy then you don't know what to do with your science right and that's a big problem in item but you know both of my oldest sons majored in philosophy and one of the reasons what I said looked like I went to engineering school and the only question I asked when I took a class is how will this give me a job we don't ask that when you take philosophy well parents ask it when their kids major you gonna do with that but it's the best foundation for everything else I really believe that I'm thankful that both my sons have it so let's take a break we come back and I do want to remind you as you're listening to the journey on program that if any of you are drawn by what you're hearing from this guest may be concerns that parallel what he's going through encourage you to contact the coming home network at CH network.org and that's why we're there to help you along your journey home to the church be back this month [Music] welcome back to the journey home I'm your host Marcus Grodi and our guest is dr. Joshua hope shield and so there you are teaching philosophy at wonderful wheat yeah there are Catholics teaching there no no they and in fact I knew that there are no Catholics teaching there because the year that I applied for that position there was a big magazine article about the evangelical mind and the the author of the article had focused on weeding among some other institutions and the article mentioned that they didn't have any Catholic faculty and that they didn't they didn't allow it and so I sort of knew that was in the back of my mind I knew I didn't know how how it was disallowed or what the mechanism or policy was but I knew that it just wasn't done by the time you were teaching philosophy at Wheaton in the midst of that evangelical mind after you'd been at Yale studied Newman than you were Notre Dame in the midst of that was there any opening at all in your heart to the Catholic Church it was just still out there I guess I was open to it it didn't feel like an urgent thing to me it didn't feel necessary to me I felt at that point I thought that the the things best about the Catholic tradition were things that I had access to even as in a fairly Orthodox Episcopalian yeah I mean I I see things differently now but that's how I was seeing things I could see that by remember thinking those poor Catholic got all the other stuff added I'm sure you know then what I had is an evangelical I got the core the good stuff and you know there were plenty of things in the Episcopal Church that were were problems and crises but the Catholics have that too and so you know I didn't see solving one problem by turning it in for another second problem well then what opened your heart to the church so by now I'm married imagine that my wife at Notre Dame we had our first child while we were still in then our second child we had seen after moving to Sweden after teaching at Wheaton for a year I started having students coming to me asking me questions about Catholicism and this surprised me at first because I wasn't talking about Catholicism and I wasn't thinking of myself as bringing the Catholic tradition to Wheaton but partly because of the subjects I was teaching medieval philosophy reading a lot of Agustin and Aquinas partly because I'd come from Notre Dame they identified me as someone who might you know be able to answer their questions about Catholicism and I so I just sort of took note of that that that even without trying it I was I was being a bearer of the Catholic tradition in a way that I hadn't realized and then in my second year teaching at Whedon one of the things that we tan does really really well is form faculty I mean they hire well but then they also form faculty that they hire to help them to fully integrate their their teaching with the mission of the college so the second year I was there I was part of a weekly seminar with all the other second-year faculty there maybe 10 or 12 of us on it was called the faith and learning seminar and we took different topics we learned about the history of evangelicalism we went through certain doctrinal issues we went through the integration of evangelical faith with different disciplines so that we could each from you know because my formation as a as a Protestant philosopher might might have different challenges than a Protestant chemist or a Protestant history professor and that was a very very powerful experience for me because I noticed that many of the conversations that took place focused on sort of ongoing challenges within the evangelical tradition and this is another thing I loved about that community was the sort of honesty that that these bright faithful back members had about you know here our strengths but here's also our weaknesses here's things that we struggle with and that we you know we still need to figure out and you know some of those things are like in biblical hermeneutics right how do we how do we judge the authoritative true interpretation of Scripture when two people who are in sincerely reading and trying to do so with the mind of Christ come to different interpretations of Scripture how do we do that how do we characterize the relationship between the individual faithful person and the church right as the church just the collection of all faithful individuals does the church have a kind of reality independent of the sum of its parts do you become a faithful individual by B I mean these are these are all live questions within the evangelical tradition and some of those other questions that divide that's writing Christians from other Christian evangelical world right and what I noticed is having come from a place where I was more familiar with the Catholic tradition than many of the other people in the seminar with me that a lot of these a lot of these problems either had a solution if you were a Catholic right oh yeah I know how a Catholic would answer that or it or the problem didn't even arise in the first place or the Catholics might grapple with a different question the role of women in the church for instance right so proudest this is something that's a first for some Protestants it it's a very difficult question can women be pastors it can they can be certain kinds of pastors or other and now Catholics can still argue about the role of women in the church but the the idea that the priesthood is a sacrament changes the character of that Congress it's a different conversation right but without the notion of a sacrament it becomes a matter of power it becomes a matter of ability and you know or of blind tradition without any anything else built into it so I'm trying to give examples of the kinds of things that I noticed wow if it if I if I'm a Protestant I have to struggle with these problems Catholics have a different perspective on them and then the other thing I realized is that a lot of the things that I found beautiful and evangelical tradition were things that were not exclusively evangelical so a deep close personal relationship with Jesus isn't as a part of what it means to be an image elephant but you can you can have a deep close personal relationship with Jesus as a Catholic a love of Scripture and a commitment to study Scripture and and to take in the word of the Lord you can be a via Catholic and have that and then there were other things that were distinctively evangelical but that I didn't think you needed to be to be a Christian so that that whole year was a year of discernment for me where I kept I could not get out of mine I didn't want this question in my mind but I could not get out of my mind the question why aren't why are not you know too Catholic right what what you know why why why wouldn't you become a Catholic and once again it took a direct personal conversation with someone for that question to be formulated in the way that my whole self was invested in it instead of it just being an academic philosophical question so the summer after that year I was at a conference and once again I don't even remember the context of a conversation but I was I was talking to a priest who is another philosopher he was a philosophy conference but he in the middle of this conversation he just looked at me and he said wow you must really desire to receive Jesus in the Eucharist he just looked at me and yeah I realized yeah I do I really do desire to receive Jesus in the Eucharist no we didn't cause it all felt like after that it all falls into place right it's like I'm assuming yeah that's that's an infused gift but I'm assuming though what was behind that was a growing realization of that's one of those things that's unique about the Catholic tradition right that is an evangelical isn't isn't important evangelicalism but it's one of those that's unit right there so you were developing an understanding of it but the mandate was slowly creeping up on that's right that's right and I think I mean it's not part of evangelicalism it can be a part of anglicanism so I spent a lot of my time as an Episcopalian believing I was receiving Jesus in the Eucharist but I also I mean I respected the Catholic Church's closed communion so if I went to a mass with friends or at a conference like this for instance we would go to Mass as part of the conference schedule and so I I would hold back someone had taught me a prayer of spiritual communion which is a very very powerful prayer highly recommended and I knew that even if I insisted that as a Episcopalian I was receiving Jesus over here that I was not receiving it over here and it was and I'm and I read it because he put the question to me that way I realized something that that a part of me already knew but I hadn't admitted to myself that he's over here too and I want I want to be with him there and with all the others who are with him there our guest is dr. Joshua Hoch shield I'm thinking back about you gathering in those discussion meetings with your second-year professors who come from a great variety of traditions right the Catholic isn't there they kind of think you're the token person that might know about it but there's no can I ask you a question about that environment as good as it is was there a sense of the trajectory of that environment had to be relativism and what I mean was that as you gathered and you recognized well you believe that and I respect that and you believe that and I respect that and you believe that and I expect that those Catholics over there they believe that I don't believe that but I will respect that well that kind of attitude can have a trajectory towards relativism I think I see what you're saying although I'm gonna be very careful here because I mean I I know and even still be in touch with some of the people oh good I wouldn't put any any person I mean everyone there is a very very and my goal behind that I agree what you're saying my goal is not to be snarky and critiquing of that I'm just trying to kind of recognize a potential reality sure that as you your awakening was the Eucharist yeah and some might say well that's good for him right well if that's all that that is I remember flan you're conning O'Connor once being at a dinner party where a bunch of people were talking and somebody said over there well the Eucharist is just a symbol yeah well excuse my language but but Flannery said if the Eucharist is only a symbol then to hell with it right yeah yeah I mean that's right excuse me it ain't just another opinion yeah well I hear here's here's another way of putting it what what that kind of conversation shows among faithful Christians who are really really trying to be with Jesus right it is the need for a principle of unity and a principle of authority and it's very very hard for the evangelical tradition to have that I mean another thing I noticed is that and and other people other other evangelicals would even agree with me and about this that that it's very hard for evangelicalism to define itself except as not Catholic it has if you define it as you know some some set of beliefs a Creed but if it's if it's an Orthodox Creed a Catholics gonna say which is what I did when I was a tween occupy believe that too and so if you're if you're going to define it as distinctively Protestant evangelicalism then you have to kind of stipulate it's all of this plus not Catholic which is a principle of unity it's just not the it's like the Catholic principle of unity it's another principle with unity when you draw a circle around that little group of folk and the Catholics aren't in there but if you start asking mo do we include the health and wealth gospel guys in that right well pretty soon no they're not there well what about Mormons well know or don't know or what the Pentecostals are they in there that's oh pretty soon that big gets whittled down and what is the authority that decides that and it might be the particular people have been power at that time yeah I had a member of my department who a very very strict and well-formed Calvinist and that's probably that's that's one version of like being right at the center of what the evangelical tradition is supposed to mean in America the irony is my beliefs my faith commitments my understanding of Jesus of Scripture of grace probably lineup closer to his than many other wheaton professors who have you know all kinds of different approaches but they were Protestant and so it was allowed and yeah and that's great for very sincere Wesleyan right down the street the hallway would have a whole different view that's right all right love Joseph occasion sanctification and grace and human will and God's freedom to decide there we go and I think that actually makes Wheaton a very strong place as as an academic institution because of that intellectual diversity but I was I grew up you know in my life I was looking for the church so you have this awakening to the Eucharist I mean wow did it hit you immediately that this might have a impact on the rest of your life it did it did and luckily I had some some pretty quick consolations too so right after that conversation I walked to the library at Notre Dame and there was a little table of books that were being given away something I'd never seen before I've been in graduate school there and sometimes they had book sales but I've never seen a table of free books and they're the most prominent book that was there was Ramona Girardi nice book about the mass oh when I it's like okay I thought this missus meant for me and soon after that I went went back to Wheaton and in the town of Weeden there's actually a really excellent Catholic bookstore and I was looking for something else in the bookstore and I leaned down and you're not going to believe me your viewers aren't gonna believe me but a book fell off the shelf and hit me on the head it was Carroll house lenders thin little volume about Mary as the read of God and I you know like the book hits you on the head and you first feel kind of stupid and embarrassed so I picked the book up and I put it back on the shelf and walked away and then I thought wait a minute it's not everyday there that a book hits you on the head I think I better buy that book and read it well you'd mentioned earlier that because of your relationship with your your mother that you had a immediate openness did you want that in reading a book I wish I was very open to it I also I didn't I didn't know a lot about it so I had a lot to learn but but I didn't learn I didn't need to learn to overcome objections I know many people do and and you know there there are there's some beautiful teachings about Mary that that look very strange from a Protestant perspective and so it's very very common and reasonable for people to approach them with objection I didn't have objections I just had curiosity I just had a kind of wonder to learn to learn more but yeah that this hasn't been stated explicitly but your viewers might have pieced things together am i becoming a Catholic at Wheaton meant that I had to leave yeah and there was actually almost a year-long negotiation about what that should look like and and even for a while I thought even whether I had to leave or not because I thought I could still sign their faith statement and there were some I had friends there who you know courage me to make the case for why I might still belong as a member of that community and often the issue on those kinds of faithful statements of faith is the issue of Sola scriptura that's right and that was part of our conversation as well in fact it led me to into deep study of de verbum from from Vatican two and an even deeper appreciation of the the centrality of Scripture and in Catholic theology and spirituality so I actually to make a long story short I argued that there was no part of the the faith statement that all Whedon faculty have to sign there was no part of that that was contradicted by Catholic teaching it's kind of a CS Lewis mere christianity it's very very Orthodox but it's something that an Anabaptist and a Calvinist and a Lutheran an Episcopalian of it they can all sign on and at the end of the day that the judgment was well that may be the case but Whedon is an evangelical protestant school and so this this is how it's gonna be and and you know I was disappointed to have to leave but I also had a respect for the college I mean I knew as I mentioned you know I went to college at Yale that was that was formerly a Christian school that that lost its Christian soul so I knew that for an institution to keep its faith identity and needed to be vigilant and that's how they that's how they chose to do it it might have been one thing if you were a well-known faithful Catholic philosopher who also though had an ecumenical evangelical ecumenical sense to be considered for hiring right it's another thing to have been an evangelical to become because that in itself is a problem at an evangelical school yeah oh and all in God's providence so here's another part of my story that not a lot of people know when I was offered the job at weeny you I had one other job offer on the table I'm out st. Mary's so as an Episcopalian I was offered a job in a real an Austin evangelical school and the job at Mount Saint Mary's Catholic Catholic school and I took the it was actually a really tough decision but I ended up taking the job at Wheaton and you know academic jobs don't come open all the time so I couldn't just go back to Mount st. Mary's and say four years later hey does that job still open but they were advertising again and you know I almost didn't apply just because I thought you know I was ashamed I said no to them before and you know how does that look but that's not all in got at God God was shaking his head at me for four years like no Josh I wanted you over here but following you went over here I'll bring you back here eventually and well I've got or you know God God always has a plan right so the experiences you had at Wheaton were in his in God's mind essential for you to being the kind of professor you need to be Mary's got about five minutes left a couple of the boys so much I'd love to talk to you about Josh we live at a time right now I can't ignore this because we're people that Wheaton see the Catholic Church in the media people outside see the church in the media see the scandal in the church in the media I imagine there are people out there pointing fingers at that church but we also know from our both of our experiences evangelical world we had our own problems yeah you know what how do you from a philosophical Christian perspective how do you in your own mind wrap around the issue of the scandal imagery oh that's a great question you know and I'm I'm in one sense I know I'm that's disturbed about it as anybody but I also I've been trying very very hard to take the long view it's one of the things I love about the Catholic Church is that you know it's not about what's in the headlines today and you know sometimes we can be frustrated that maybe policies and change aren't more efficient but on the other hand we are looking at a long long history and trying to have the providential view and we also know that we're all were all stained with original sin I didn't become a Catholic because I thought that all priests were Saints I didn't become a Catholic I mean I loved that I became a Catholic under john paul ii a saintly man and a and a philosopher pope and i love that my wife became a catholic under under Benedictus profound wise theologian but you know like Pope's don't have to be brilliant philosophers and theologians and academics either there's all kinds of types and the church needs different things at different times and sometimes right in the moment you don't know what it is that the church most needs and so I'm I'm doing as much as I can to sort of let go and to trust and I think I think any any Christian in in Protestant denominations that say the same thing to I mean that there there there can be scandals and in Protestant communities as well and and and it's an important time to remember I'm not part of this church because of it the charisma of this one person but it's got to be about Jesus it's got to be about about Jesus working through history and meeting us in this mysterious way David in the Psalms reminded us not to put our faith in princess ya chariots and horses no it's and it's in God and Jesus Christ it and I also think that you're a unique ability which is important to have the longer view to see that comes because you also have a long back view to from your study of philosophy medieval philosophy you see the trajectory of what God has been doing in church all these years I mean that was a big part of brought you to the church is that it opened me up to questions that ultimately I knew had to have divine answers and that means in a sense timeless answers right so I don't have to be caught up in whatever the headlines are today and whatever the struggle is today again looking at how God just as amazing way of reaching out with different people so here you are to date Catholic teaching philosophy at a Catholic school and all that did that course in everything no I can look back at everything and see somehow a connection but yeah I mean Newman I mean maybe it was as Newman himself and his journey and maybe his commitment to medieval Christianity and philosophy and early church fathers that you do that all have a partly so I mean I mentioned writing about Newman and in college I also defended Newman's idea of a university when I was at Notre Dame and talked about that in relationship to ex corde ecclesiae it's a beautiful document about the role of Catholic education another another thing that I worked on while I was at Wheaton that that I think helped me argue myself into the church I still needed that conversation with the priest philosopher who asked me that very very personal question but the but my mind was was helped into the church by writing again about John Henry Newman a biography had come out about him which was very critical with his conversion and I found myself arguing with this author and writing a review defending Newman's conversion and it's very hard to write a review defending someone's conversion to Catholicism and not finish it and realize oh my gosh what am I just if I'm gonna be consistent here well it's Newman himself when he was trying to find that middle road for Anglicanism the middle way Via Media then he writes he does this research on development and then finds himself in the church that's right I mean the importance that again that would be an issue that you evangelicals would have argued there or talked about I mean a theology does it develop or did it drop out of heaven how do you interpret it from that Scripture developed in the Trinity I mean how does theology connect with secular knowledge what can we know through reason and how does how does theology connect with that do we have to throw it all out is it does does grace destroy nature or perfect it that's also reflected dr. Alma she'll thank you so much for joining us on the journey home and for sharing your journey and continuing to keep your hand on the plow as you're there teaching thank you very much do them thank you for joining us on this episode of the journey home I do pray that Joshua's journey is an encouragement fabulous [Music] [Music] [Music] Oh [Music]

Channel: EWTN

Views: 14,795

Rating: 4.7703347 out of 5

Keywords: jht01634, ytsync-en, jht

Id: 19l324-TtNw

Length: 56min 10sec (3370 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 14 2018