I går kveld kom jeg over nyheten om at Robert Koons, filosofi-professor ved the University of Texas, som hele sitt liv har vært medlem i the Lutheran Church, Missouri Syond, skal bli opptatt i Den katolske kirke i pinsehelga – les hans egen forklaring og begrunnelse her.
Jeg syns han begrunnelse er interessant; at nyere bibelforskning leser Paulus’ uttalelser om rettferdiggjørelsen litt mindre protestantisk-vennlig, at kirkefdrene støtter en mer katolsk forståelse av rettferdiggjørelsen, og at den luthersk-katolske avtalen om rettferdiggjørelsen fra 1999 fjerner helt grunnlaget for at reformasjonens kjernepunkt kan begrunne at man holder seg utenfor Den katolske kirke.
Francis Beckwith (som jeg skrev om tidligere) har nylig også sagt følgende: «At the end of the day, the reason for the Reformation was the debate over justification. If that is no longer an issue, I have to be Catholic,» Beckwith said. «It seems to me that if there is not a very strong reason to be Protestant, then the default position should be to belong to the historic church.»
Slik lyder Robert Koons’ egen begrunnelse: My confidence in this position was shaken by three blows: (1) new scholarship (primarily by Protestants) on Paul’s epistles, which raised profound doubts about the correctness of Martin Luther’s and Phillip Melanchthon’s excessively individualistic and existentialist reading of Paul’s teaching on justification by faith, (2) the fruits of Lutheran/Roman Catholic dialogue on justification, expressed most fully in the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification in 1997, that greatly clarified for me the subtlety of the doctrinal differences between the two bodies, and (3) a more thorough exposure to the writings of the early Church fathers, especially those considered most “evangelical”: Chrysostom, Ambrose, and (above all) Augustine of Hippo.