Do a google search for Hochschild. He was teaching at Mount St. Mary's in 2004. The guy is obviously brilliant. A Yale undergraduate of whom W. F. Buckley took note already ten years ago, his 2001 dissertation at Notre Dame was on analogy in Cajetan (applying medieval philosophical principles to Cajetan's Thomism. He's a Chestertonian, writes poetry, has been active in Institute for Collegiate Studies publications, has published in major journals. Wheaton was stoooooooooopid. I know, I know, the loss to the school in terms of real scholarship is more than offset by the bucks that will flow from the purist Reformation fat cats.
But the really dumb thing about it all is that the Wheaton statement of doctrine does truly exclude some people--liberal Protestants could not sign that statement because of what it says about the authority of Scripture, of atonement by the blood of Christ etc. That's who it was designed to exclude and has excluded since the 1920s Fundametantalist controversies. What intelligent Evangelicals have long realized (hence, Evangelicals and Catholics Together) is that compared to liberal Protestants who deny the very essence of Christian soteriology, Catholics and Evangelicals are on the same page. Their disagreements are over the nature of the church (including sacraments) but in those areas, Evangelicals don't all agree. Hence any doctrinal statement that could be signed by a wide range of Evangelicals can also be signed by traditional Catechism of the Catholic Church Catholics and could not be signed by liberal cafeteria Catholics or liberal Protestants.
The Hochschild case starkly illustrates the point many have been making for at least 10 years now: traditional Evangelicals who believe Jesus Christ is God Incarnate and died to save us from our sins have more in common than either does with liberal Protestants or liberal Catholics CINOS.
But Wheaton is too stupid to get the point. Quite frankly, the "strict-constructionist sixteenth-century Protestantism revivalists" are too small in number and already had it in for Wheaton (their big name pastors just found their own colleges anyway, where they can run the show) that I can't really see that their "big bucks" would have mattered. Had Wheaton taken leadership on this issue to show that Catholics and Evangelicals are on the same side in the culture wars and the big issues, it might have given Wheaton a real "distinctive" among Evangelical schools.
No, I'm increasingly convinced that the real reason they could not employ Hochschild is not loss of donations by fat cats stuck in the 16th-Century Reformation but that too many students might actually start exploring Catholicism with open minds and convert. And THAT we wouldn't want to happen.
Correction to # 105: "traditional Evangelicals who believe Jesus Christ is God Incarnate and died to save us from our sins have more in common than either does with liberal Protestants or liberal Catholics CINOS."
" should have read: "Evangelicals . . . . have more in common with JPII/CCC Catholics than either does with Liberal Protestants or CINOS."
Perhaps "the cultural wars" are not the "big issues" Wheaton is most concerned with.
That's at least the second time you've used that phrase in this thread.
Thank you, God, for all purist Reformers, led by God's word alone, be they chubby or buff.
Please, please consider me dumb & dumber