Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 05:4 (Winter 2001)
Article: How Should Evangelicals Think About Roman Catholics Today?
Author: Kevin Offner

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SBJT 5:4 (Winter 2001) p. 70

How Should Evangelicals Think
About Roman Catholics Today?

Kevin Offner

Kevin Offner has worked on staff with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship for sixteen years. He is currently working on a Ph.D. in Historical Theology at Catholic University and is an Associate Editor of Touchstone magazine. He also received a Masters of Christian Studies at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. He has led or participated in Catholic-Protestant discussions for more than five years.

Introduction

I want to begin this essay on an autobiographical note since I think there is a growing number of evangelicals whose thinking about Roman Catholics, thanks to some similar personal experiences, has taken a turn similar to mine. I grew up in east-central Illinois in a strong evangelical home. Both of my parents were (and are) committed disciples of Jesus Christ and we always attended Baptist and Bible churches. What did I think about Roman Catholics during the first twenty years of my life? I rarely thought about them at all. They were a distant faith, a different religion, and I simply did not know any Catholics personally. If you had asked me what Catholics were like and what they believed, I probably would have said something like, “Catholics worship Mary, believe God will save them only if they do more good things than bad things, and most of them are not saved (they do not have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ). They are a lot like Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

I met a few Catholics in my twenties (they seemed hung up about needing to go to Mass every day) but it was not until I was 29 that my perspective began to change. After attending Regent College in Vancouver, and spending a year doing missions in Kenya, I joined the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship staff at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. And there I met Vito, a freshman. Vito was an intelligent, Bible-loving, Christ-centered, deeply committed Christian —and he was also a Roman Catholic. He loved C. S. Lewis, was well versed in the Church Fathers and believed strongly in Christian unity. I was especially impressed with Vito’s compassion for, and action toward, the poor. He loved people better than most of the evangelical students did. In Bible study, I was humbled by the number of times Vito’s insights exposed certain blind spots and biases— “evangelical blinders,” if you will— that prevented me from seeing some Scriptural truths.

In 1990 I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts and for the next five years I ministered among graduate students at Harvard and M.I.T with InterVarsity. At Harvard I met some Roman Catholic doctoral students who, again, did not fit the “typical” Catholic mold. They knew and loved the early creeds, they reasoned wel...

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