It is true that Catholics have a much longer and richer intellectual tradition of social doctrine. In evangelicalism there is the legacy of Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch theologian and politician, but that is still largely the property of those of a Calvinist persuasion who are in a minority among evangelicals. But evangelicals involved in Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT) include some formidable minds. There are, to name but a few, J.I. Packer of Regent College and Timothy George of Beeson Divinity School who delivered the Erasmus Lecture this year. Thomas Oden, longtime professor of theology at Drew University, has a solid grasp of the “consensual tradition” of Christian thought, with a particular accent on the patristic period. And anyone who thinks Charles Colson does not have a sharp and theologically-informed mind does not know Charles Colson.-----
I suppose that I am in a mood to take particular umbrage at the line pushed by Wills, Foer, and others because just this week we completed another meeting of ECT in which evangelicals and Catholics wrestled with the great questions of “the culture of life” as posed by John Paul II’s 1995 enyclical Evangelium Vitae—The Gospel of Life. It was a tough-minded exchange, as ECT meetings regularly are, and I am hopeful that from it will come a bracing common statement, possibly next year.
2005 Erasmus Lecture Pictures
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