IVP - Addenda & Errata - May We Borrow Your Pope?

May We Borrow Your Pope?

August might be a “down” time for some professions, but if you are in academic theological publishing here in North America, it can be a busy time. It’s the season of final preparation to send books to the printer so they will be released in time for the ETS and AAR/SBL conventions in November. One of these books in my bailiwick this August is The Legacy of John Paul II: An Evangelical Assessment, edited by Tim Perry (author of Mary for Evangelicals). It consists of essays by leading evangelical intellectuals who examine the pontiff’s major encyclicals. This is a book that I have been watching develop for over two years—since John Paul’s death—and I’m eager for it’s debut this fall. Today I have been reviewing the page proofs, and that eagerness is renewed.

This book is one that would not have been published by an evangelical press not so long ago. It represents a new day in evangelicalism in North America, a day in which evangelicals and Catholics are rediscovering each other and their commonalities. Maybe just the fact that the book has forewords by both J. I. Packer and Avery Cardinal Dulles says enough. Timothy George, with reference to the culture wars, speaks of it representing an “ecumenism of the trenches.”

In a lead-off chapter Mark Noll offers a fascinating look at the gradual shift in evangelical perspective on Roman Catholicism, largely based on reviewing Christianity Today articles from the 1950s to today. Noll summarizes: “Clearly, for many American evangelicals, the implacable suspicion of the pope that once prevailed widely is no more. To be sure, significant sections of the evangelical community maintain the older criticisms of Catholicism, and sometimes with the old vigor. But most evangelicals who have taken the time to study what John Paul II actually spoke and wrote know that these older attitudes are no longer helpful” (p. 36).

Noll recounts Richard John Neuhaus’s comment: “My Baptist friend who says that this pope sure knows how to pope adds, ‘He’s your pope, but I hope you don’t mind if we borrow him from time to time.’” Noll adds, “Gauging how much and in what ways to borrow, rather than whether to borrow, have become the pressing questions.”

In this book we find calm and informed voices speaking from within evangelicalism and appreciatively evaluating the contribution of this remarkable pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. Differences, even when not always stated, are assumed. But the contributors are able to get beyond that and speak as mature Christians and theologians.

No doubt there are still many evangelicals who will not understand why IVP is publishing this book and will regard it as one more disturbing “departure” in contemporary evangelical theology. But that criticism will be tested by how well it wears over time. What cannot be denied is that contemporary evangelical theology in North America is no longer the withdrawn and insular movement of our grandparents’ day. The ecumenism of the trenches engenders conversation, friendship and greater mutual understanding and appreciation. It doesn’t mean losing our family name or identity or accent.

Posted by Dan Reid at August 16, 2007 6:03 PM