Replies

I'd be interested to hear your opinion of this.

Of course, I support Wheaton's right to terminate the man if his employment contract required him to be a professing Protestant. That's not the question, IMO.

The question is, was it a good idea. Why is a Catholic the wrong person to teach Thomistic philosophy? It's not like he's teaching "Reformation Distinctives 103".

OTOH, most Catholic colleges have Protestant faculty and staff, but I tend to doubt that the serious, orthodox ones would approve of a Protestant in the philosophy department.

(The non-serious, heterodox ones probably wouldn't care for a serious evangelical, either. A Vicki Gene Robinson kind of apostate "Protestant" would be okay. They have every other kind of fruit on the tree already.)

A Protestant in the theology department (as permanent faculty) would be an impossibility at, e.g., Steubenville, because theology professors there have to sign a profession of faith.

My interest in this is reflected in this part of the article:

Yet a question nagged Mr. Hochschild: Why am I not a Catholic? As he saw it, evangelical Protestantism was vaguely defined and had a weak scholarly tradition, which sharpened his admiration for Catholicism's self-assurance and intellectual history. "I even had students who asked me why I wasn't Catholic," he says. "I didn't have a decent answer."
His wife, Paige, said her husband's distaste for the "evangelical suspicion of philosophy" at the school might have contributed to his ultimate conversion. The Hochschilds say some evangelicals worry that learning about philosophy undermines students' religious convictions.

Another Wheaton professor, Mark Noll, lamented several years ago that "the tragedy of the Evangelical mind is that there is not much of an Evangelical mind." I've had people assume that I am some sort of Catholic wolf-in-sheep's-clothing because I read and quote Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. I have encountered in the Evangelical church a rampant anti-intellectual bias, to the point that some claim that even a theological education is a hinderence to true ministry. In an environment like that, I can understand and sympathize with a philosophy professor who feels the pull of Rome. (Though I have no intention of "swimming the Tiber," since I still have grave reservations regarding certain issues that keep me Evangelical.)

As an Evangelical, I think that this is our loss. There was a lot we could have learned from someone with a deep understanding of Thomastic philosophy. I am amazed at just how relevant his natural law theology is today.

Actually when it comes to the philosophy department, a professor's religious background isn't quite as important as it would be for a theology department at an orthodox school. The issues that divide Catholics and Protestants like soteriology, the role of Scripture, the role of Mary, and such are not the kind of things that are studied in philosophy departments.

There is a popular and growing area of philosophy which is specifically focused on philosophy of religion. However the issues discussed here are more along the lines of God's omnipotence, the problem of evil, providence, etc. Very basic questions about the nature of God and how He interacts with the world. I've studied this area a lot myself and I've found that anyone who seriously believes in God and is also very smart can be quite an asset to these discussions. I've seen Catholics, mainline Protestants, Evangelicals, Mormons, and Jews come together to work on questions like how God can be all powerful and all good but still create a world where there is evil. Whatever theological differences separate us were pretty much irrelevant for these larger discussions. Philosophy of religion is not about Catholic vs Protestant but rather Judeo-Christian theism vs materialistic atheism.