2 of 3

What is the next issue for ECT?

Oh, there are many issues. We've been dealing with Mary for the last year and a half. Before he died, Neuhaus sent me a letter saying, "Be sure, whatever happens to me, that my name gets on the document." We pretty well agreed on that. There are other questions that are far more difficult to solve, the church being major. I make no pretense that the Reformation is over; but the issue which precipitated it has been solved.

What was Neuhaus's position on Mary?

Well, I can't say that until we issue the paper. But we found some movement both ways. We didn't resolve it by a long shot.

What characteristics did Neuhaus have that made him such a key player?

First of all, he was a towering intellect. I don't know that I've met a smarter, deeper mind than his. He reminds me of C.S. Lewis a lot in terms of his writing style and his personal mannerisms, including puffing on his cigars and cigarettes.

We got to be really good friends when he was a Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor. We became really good friends, saw one another a lot, we got very much involved in the pro-life cause and in the religious liberty cause. In the culture war battles, we used to see each other frequently. He's a great speaker, a powerful speaker.

One day, with very little warning, he converted to Catholicism. Although we were very good friends, I felt some estrangement. Here this very conservative Lutheran turns up the next day Catholic. And that was a bit hard for me to take. But over a period of about a year, I realized he's still the same guy, we still have the same views in common. He was a brother in Christ before his conversion, so I didn't see how he couldn't un-become a brother in Christ. I realized I could still look upon him as a close brother and friend and colleague and every bit the Christian he was before his conversion. That inspired me that we should be finding more common ground.

In 1992 [Neuhaus and I] were at a meeting where he had convened a number of Catholic and evangelical scholars, theologians, and activists to consider a report which was coming from two British sociologists about proselytization and open conflict in Latin America, the state persecuting evangelicals, evangelicals desecrating sacred objects. It was during that two-day meeting that I felt this real moving of the Holy Spirit to say to Neuhaus, "We need to have discussions like this frequently and pursue common ground." That's where ECT was born.

So in some ways, ECT hasn't just found common ground. It has created the common ground.

No I think we found it, actually.

The lines hardened in the Reformation. At Regensburg in 1541 Calvin and Melanchthon and others met with Cardinal Contarini and basically came to the agreement that Neuhaus and I had come to. And then Contarini died, and it fizzled out. This time I hope and pray it doesn't fizzle out.

But there are other issues, obviously, that one was always central. There are a lot of issues about hermeneutics, and those will continue.

Neuhaus had a very irenic spirit, prodigious intellect and of course was a magnificent writer: Death on a Friday Afternoon, As I Lay Dying: Meditations Upon Returning, The Naked Public Square.

Is there someone who might emerge as a similar leader on the Catholic side?

I think so. I don't think it's up to me to present the name. I've written to the Catholic participants and told them on behalf of all of the evangelicals that we would like to continue the dialogue, but it was kind of up to them to decide who would lead their side of the effort.

next page... |  2 of 3

share this page

January (Web-only) 2009, Vol. 53