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Christianity Today executive editor Thomas C. Oden, a Methodist theologian at Drew University, met Pope John Paul II last December as general editor of InterVarsity Press's Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. Oden, formerly chairman of the board for the Institute on Religion and Democracy, looks back at the pope's impact on evangelicals in an interview with senior associate news editor Stan Guthrie.

What were the pope's most significant contributions concerning relations with evangelicals? He was certainly known as a very ecumenical pope.

John Paul II opened the door in ways that had not been opened before for Protestants, especially for evangelicals, to see that their doctrines, although they differ [from Catholic doctrines] in many ways, have important levels of similarity between them. I regard this as a work of the Holy Spirit in our time to bring the Christian community and all of its different manifestations worldwide into a greater proximate unity as the body of Christ.

The pope gave firm, moral leadership not only on culture-of-life questions, but on questions such as the firm commitment of the church to care for the poor without the overlay of secularist and socialist ideology. John Paul II was a strong, moral voice at a time when evangelicals were beginning to wake up to the fact that while we do, indeed, have many differences with Roman Catholics—on Scripture, sacrament, penitential practice, and many other things—we have many common and shared values, and, in some profound ways, shared doctrine. We share the same New Testament, the same canonical Scripture. We share the same confession, the same Nicene Creed, the same Apostle's Creed, and so forth.

What John Paul did is bring that into much greater palpability and accessibility to evangelicals than had been the case before. I really don't think that the project we call Evangelicals and Catholics Together could have occurred without Pope John Paul II. There were before Pope John Paul many great Catholic ecumenists who were part of making that way, but he broadened the way so that many of us could go in it.

What were the circumstances surrounding your visit to the Vatican late last year?

We have an Italian edition of the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. Our colleagues there were able to get an appointment, or a visit, with the pope so that we could present to him the results of the Ancient Christian Commentary. We have many Catholics in our translation team and editorial team.

Of course, we're dealing with ancient documents that we, as Protestants, share with the Orthodox and with the Catholics as a joint patrimony. They don't become different documents in our hands; they're the same documents.

So we presented it to him and he was very gracious. There are a good number of people in the Catholic Church who understand the importance of this patristic project being developed, sponsored, and published by Protestants. This is something new for them, and we were able to celebrate that on this occasion.

Did you have an opportunity to speak with him?

I greeted him just by handshake, but we didn't speak individually. The conversation essentially went on in Italian. At that time he was quite frail, and yet this charismatic energy certainly showed through. I wouldn't say he was ill at the time we saw him, but he certainly was fragile and weak. We happened to be there just before his health began to fail rapidly. We were greeted warmly, and in a small way it helped to heal some of the divisions and the antagonisms that have prevailed between Protestants and Catholics over 500 years.

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April (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49