By Joshua Betancourt

Cradle Baptist

There I was, in front of a life-size statue of Jesus at a rural parish in Northern California—my eyes fixed on his, and his seemingly on mine. I remember feeling ambivalent about what I saw, intrigued yet fearful. I was intrigued because I had never seen an image—let alone a statue—of Jesus in my Evangelical church back home in Southern California. I felt fearful because the statue was staring right at me; his eyes followed me as I moved slowly to the left or to the right. This encounter felt real: this Jesus whom I had read and sung about in Sunday school was standing before me. Once my fear dissipated and intrigue took over, I slowly began to trace the statue’s cold, pierced acrylic hand with my index finger and to recall what my parents had taught me: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. . .” This was my first experience visiting a Catholic parish. I was nine years old and on a routine summer vacation to visit my uncle John Phillip Vallejo (an ordained deacon from the Diocese of Stockton) and his family in Modesto, California.I also remember being in awe of the vaulted ceilings, the flickering candles, and the beautiful lifelike statues of Mary and Joseph. I remember going home and asking my mother about my uncle’s “brand” of Christianity and why my uncle wore a “dress” (clergy vestments). My mother graciously juxtaposed the Catholic faith with Evangelicalism with respect and candor.

I was born into an Evangelical family. My father, who is from Mexico, was born and raised in a Baptist home. My grandmother, who had been baptized a Catholic, converted to Evangelicalism in the Baptist tradition and thus raised my father and his siblings as such. My mother, who was born and raised in the Eastside of Los Angeles, was baptized and raised Catholic; she received her sacraments at the local barrio parish. However, she stopped practicing her faith in her young-adult years and came to faith in Jesus Christ within the context of Evangelicalism in a Calvary Chapel church. Both my parents were committed to raising their children within a Christian home, teaching us about Jesus and his sacrificial love. It was in the context of these two great Evangelical traditions (Baptist and nondenominational) that I learned to memorize Scripture and experienced God’s love for me.

My parents alternated taking us to their respective faith communities; on one Sunday, we would attended my mother’s Calvary Chapel community, called Harvest Christian Fellowship, and on the following Sunday, we would attend my father’s much smaller independent Baptist church. My sister and I enjoyed them both and came to know Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior in these two faith communities. And for this I am forever grateful.

Interestingly, I experienced a somewhat “second great (spiritual) awakening” in my early twenties one fall evening while walking my Boxer puppy. For the most part, the voices of truth and virtue had gone silent as I entered high school and moved on to college and entered the workforce, but that all changed when an older gentleman named “Art” befriended me. We both had Boxers, which made for a great common ground. In addition to being a lover of dogs, Art was an even greater lover of God. After a number of walks and talks, he eventually offered me an invitation to recommit my life to Christ, which I accepted.

From that point forward, I experienced a profound change of heart, which resulted in a major shift in lifestyle, friends, language, and entertainment choices. I suddenly developed a deep desire to read the Bible, to attend church and fellowship with other believers, and to share the gospel with everyone. My sense of call to ministry soon followed. Reading and teaching Scripture became my passion, and evangelizing others—even reaching out to those “unsaved” Catholics—became for me a common practice.

Faith Seeking Clarity

Maria von Trapp of The Sound of Music fame once said that Catholics are often “oversacramentalized”, and many observers have noted that they are “underevangelized” in the process. Conversely, Evangelicals are plenty evangelized but are devoid of the sacraments (save baptism and communion). I was saturated with Scripture but had not received baptism or communion until I was about ten years old. To be sure, Evangelicals and Baptists are extremely serious about the Bible and use it as the basis for teaching, preaching, and evangelizing. It was this threefold approach to ministry—teaching, preaching, and evangelizing—that inspired me to become a student of the Bible and pursue full-time ministry. As I matured in my walk with the Lord, I began to lean more toward the Calvary Chapel side of the Evangelical spectrum and enjoyed the contemporary flavor of the megachurch scene, where there was a greater emphasis on worship and evangelizing. I was therefore inspired to learn the Word of God under the great Calvary Chapel pastor-teachers and evangelists, such as Chuck Smith and Brian Brodersen, at the popular Calvary Chapel Bible College (CCBC).

During my studies there, I enrolled in an apologetics course. Prior to this, I had never really considered the historicity of Christianity and the importance of Jesus’ bodily Resurrection and his claim to be the Son of God. In one class, we built a case for the veracity of Christianity, beginning with the “knowability of truth”, based on the first principles of thought, and concluded with the reliability of the New Testament. We studied 1 Corinthians 15:3 and following, where the apostle Paul argues for the importance of Christ’s physical Resurrection in establishing the faith and our salvation, saying, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Cor 15:17). This course sparked my interest in other apologetic-type courses, such as the Kingdom of the Cults and Logic / Critical Thinking. The instructors who taught these courses had received their seminary training from the same institution: Southern Evangelical Seminary (SES). These select Calvary Chapel instructors had sat under the tutelage of some of Evangelicalism’s finest minds, and they were eager to pass their knowledge on to those students who demonstrated a propensity for learning and defending the Christian faith. After I had graduated from CCBC, I packed my bags and moved across the country to Charlotte, North Carolina, to attend SES in my quest to deepen my knowledge of Christianity.

Meeting the “A-Team”: Aquinas, Anselm, and Augustine

My first semester at SES was invigorating and eye-opening. The Introduction to Apologetics course at SES was more robust than the one I had taken at CCBC. At SES, we spent more time considering the classical apologetic method of Saint Thomas Aquinas. We studied his arguments for God’s existence, especially from causality and design.Saint Thomas’ “five ways” (or arguments) for defending the existence of God are from motion, causality, necessity, perfection, and design. While we studied all of these, primacy was given to the arguments from causality and design. We also considered arguments from other classical apologists, such as Saint Anselm of Canterbury, who is famous for his ontological argument for God’s existence, especially from God’s “necessity” and “perfection”. In another course on soteriology (the study of salvation), we studied Saint Augustine’s doctrine of sin and grace. We were taught that it featured two distinct phases: (1) his early years—in which he focuses more on man’s freedom and his cooperation with God’s grace; and (2) his later years—in which he focuses on man’s depravity and fallen nature and God’s predestination of man for salvation.

Our seminary was famous for taking a “moderate Calvinistic” stance on predestination: we understood that man, morally depraved as he is, is still capable of responding to God’s grace by virtue of being made in the image of God—thus the image of God is “effaced but not erased”. Our more “extreme Calvinistic” brothers (those of the Reformed tradition) followed Martin Luther’s and John Calvin’s doctrines of sin and salvation, teaching that man is totally depraved and thus is incapable of responding to God’s grace without being regenerated first.Luther taught that Original Sin has obliterated the Imago Dei of man. The Imago Dei is restored in the justification of the believer, received by “faith alone”. Calvin, on the other hand, taught that although man is “totally depraved”, he still maintains the Imago Dei, which is maintained before, during, and after justification. The order of salvation within Reformed theology (also called in Latin the ordo salutis) is as follows: (1) regeneration, (2) justification, (3) sanctification, and (4) glorification. Thus, in response to Saint Augustine, our professors would often state, “The way you refute Saint Augustine’s later doctrine of predestination is to use Saint Augustine’s earlier doctrine of grace.” According to our professors, alluding to the earlier Augustine, God predestined man to salvation but always in accordance with man’s free will. In short, we were taught that God’s grace is cooperative, not merely operative (synergism versus monergism). As one professor crassly put, “God is not a divine rapist.”

The seminary taught a more mitigated version of Saint Thomas Aquinas’ view of election, which follows from his principle of causality. To be sure, Saint Thomas taught the doctrine of predestination and argues that election has its primary cause in God’s will, but man’s free will is the secondary cause flowing from God’s decree; this seems to be compatible with the Catholic Church’s teaching on cooperative grace in man’s justification.See Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, 22, 3. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “Justification establishes cooperation between God’s grace and man’s freedom. On man’s part it is expressed by the assent of faith to the Word of God, which invites him to conversation, and in the cooperation [emphasis added] of charity with the prompting of the Holy Spirit who precedes and preserves his assent.”CCC 1993. Thus, the Church permits Catholics to hold to a stronger Augustinian-Thomistic view of election so long as it does not include double predestination (the election of the reprobate to damnation).

For all intents and purposes, Saint Thomas Aquinas was the seminary’s “patron saint”, but no one would ever dare frame it in such terms. In fact, one of the seminary’s cofounders, Norman Geisler, penned a book on the life and works of Aquinas, titled Thomas Aquinas: An Evangelical Appraisal, with the intriguing subtitle Should Old Aquinas Be Forgot? Many Say Yes, but the Author Says No!See Norman L. Geisler, Thomas Aquinas: An Evangelical Appraisal (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 2003). To his credit, in the book’s epilogue he points out areas of disagreement he has with the Angelic Doctor; for instance, he disagrees with Saint Thomas’ views on infant baptism, baptismal regeneration, and transubstantiation. In a more recent article, Geisler argues that there is no logical connection between embracing Thomism and converting to Catholicism.Norman L. Geisler, “Does Thomism Lead to Catholicism?” (unpublished article, 2014). Although this might be true, it does not eliminate the fact that Saint Thomas was, well, Catholic, and many Thomists are now Catholic!

Thomism is so important to Catholic teaching that Pope Leo XIII stated that it was the definitive exposition of Church doctrine. This was troubling to me as an Evangelical. Why did we as an Evangelical institution place so much stock in this Catholic man’s theology and philosophy? Well, because it was “good philosophy”. It was good philosophy because it was sound philosophy! I then began to wonder whether Saint Thomas’ views on Catholic doctrine could also be true. If he was so insightful when it came to natural theology, why couldn’t he be when it came to divine revelation and what the Church teaches regarding the sacraments?

Although Saint Thomas often left our hearts yearning for more learning, he also often left pebbles in our shoes and our stomachs turning. I found myself in a love-hate relationship with him. Saint Thomas was as much a formidable foe as he was a close friend. But he wasn’t the only problem that I faced. There were others upon whose shoulders he stood—namely, the early Church Fathers. I was introduced to them shortly after I was introduced to their younger brother in the faith.

Facing the Giants: The Early Church Fathers

During my second semester at SES, I had to choose a topic for my master’s thesis. Having caught wind of former Evangelicals who had converted to the Catholic faith, such as Scott Hahn and Peter Kreeft, I wanted to know why they chose to leave biblical Christianity for a faith that seemed so riddled with medieval superstition. I consulted with my academic adviser, Geisler, who happened to be the seminary’s president at the time, and presented the thesis topic of why Evangelicals convert to Catholicism. He shot the idea down, however, and said that such a topic would be much too subjective and that it needed to be more apologetic in nature. So he suggested that I research the topic of “papal infallibility” instead. I obliged. My thesis was titled “An Examination of the Infallibility of the Bishop of Rome”.This became the basis for the book I coauthored with Norman Geisler, Is Rome the True Church: An Examination of the Roman Catholic Claim (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2008).

Geisler assigned readings in Catholic primary sources, such as Ludwig Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma and Henry Denzinger’s Sources of Catholic Dogma, and also recommended that I consult the early Church Fathers. He assured me that the dogmas concerning the papacy would be absent among their writings, since the papacy was a well-developed dogma that took centuries to crystallize.

I first turned my attention to Saint Clement’s letter to the Corinthians. I knew that the Church regarded Saint Clement to be the third successor to Saint Peter, but what I did not know was that the concept of apostolic succession would be present as early as the late first and early second centuries. In chapter 42 of his epistle, Saint Clement mentions the threefold office of bishop, priest, and deacon. Clement then writes, “Our apostles also knew, through our Lord Jesus Christ, that there would be strife on account of the office of the episcopate. For this reason, therefore, inasmuch as they had obtained a perfect foreknowledge of this, they appointed those [ministers] already mentioned, and afterward gave instructions, that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed them in their ministry.”Saint Clement of Rome, First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians 44; emphasis added.

I also found Saint Ignatius of Antioch’s Letter to the Trallians to be as jarring as Clement’s regarding the presence of the threefold office of bishop, priest, and deacon. Writing on the Church’s order, Ignatius states, “He that is within the sanctuary is pure; but he that is outside the sanctuary is not pure. In other words, anyone who acts without the bishop and the presbytery and the deacons does not have a clear conscience.”Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Trallians 7, 2; emphasis added. Ignatius also stated, “Let everyone revere the deacons as Jesus Christ, the bishop as the image of the Father, and the presbyters as the senate of God and the assembly of the apostles. For without them one cannot speak of the Church.” Letter to the Trallians 3, 1. Here was another second-century counterexample of what I thought was a late development in the Church’s ecclesiology.

If this were not troubling enough for this young Evangelical, I was very surprised when I read Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, the disciple of Polycarp (who was mentored by the apostle John). Not only does Irenaeus explicitly mention the papacy, but he uses the office and authority of the papacy (as well as papal successors) to defend the catholicity of the Church against the Gnostics, who allegedly held to a form of esotericism (secret knowledge) that was not compatible with the universal nature of the Church’s teachings. Irenaeus wrote (ca. A.D. 175—185):

Since, however, it would be very tedious, in such a volume as this, to reckon up the successions of all the churches, we do put to confusion all those who, in whatever manner, whether by an evil self-pleasing, by vainglory, or by blindness and perverse opinion, assemble in unauthorized meetings; [we do this, I say,] by indicating that tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; as also [by pointing out] the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree [Latin: convenireis] with this Church, on account of her preeminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere, inasmuch as the tradition has been preserved continuously by those [faithful men] who exist everywhere.Saint Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3, 3; emphasis added.

I brought this troubling passage to Geisler’s attention, and he pointed me to a commentary by a respected Protestant scholar, J. N. D. Kelly, who dealt with this very passage in his classic book on early Christian doctrines. Kelly argued that “the normal meaning of convenireis, ‘resort to,’ ‘foregather at,’ and necesse est does not easily bear the sense of ‘ought.’ ”J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (New York: Harper, 1960), 193. Kelly and Geisler argued that Irenaeus’ comment was merely reflective of the political status of the Roman Empire at the time, and this no doubt had an effect on its capital and the Church that resided there (for better and for worse). The passage, therefore, could be understood descriptively and not necessarily prescriptively.

I initially accepted Kelly’s commentary and my adviser’s direction in dealing with this troubling passage. But the more I read and reread Saint Irenaeus’ defense, the more it became clear to me that he was using the authority of the Church, i.e., the papacy, to defend the catholicity of the Church. I soon learned that it was this same authority that first defined the canon of Scripture in the councils of Carthage (A.D. 387) and Hippo (A.D. 397).

Called to Commune with Him

By this time I was becoming more and more convinced that apostolic succession and the authority of the Church (especially the papacy) was indeed present in the second and third centuries. And although there certainly was an element of development to the Church’s teaching regarding the papacy, the basic forms of these doctrines were embedded in the writings of the earliest Christians. If the Church possesses Christ’s authority (as the early Church Fathers claimed), then it follows that whatever she teaches is true as well as binding on all the faithful. This led me to consider the Church’s teaching on one of her most central—and most controversial—doctrines, namely, Christ’s true presence in the Eucharist.

Growing up as an Evangelical, I knew very well that the climax of the worship service was the sermon. The worship music that opened the service prepared one to receive the Word of God as delivered by the preacher. Communion was not something done regularly at my home church. In fact, it was our practice to receive communion only on a quarterly basis. To Catholics this is unthinkable! The Catholic Church teaches that the Mass, not the sermon, is central in worship, calling the Eucharist “the source and summit of the Christian life”. So, I asked the question: If the Catholic doctrine of the papacy is present in the earliest centuries of the Church, then could the Eucharist also be present?

Indeed, the Church’s teaching regarding the Eucharist was clearly articulated in the writings of the early Church Fathers. Ignatius of Antioch, writing in the second century, says in his Letter to the Smyrnaeans, “They [the Docetists] abstain from the Eucharist and prayer because they do not admit that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, which the Father in his goodness raised up.”Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Smyrnaeans 6. This same Ignatius, in his letter to the Ephesians, describes the Eucharist as “breaking one bread, which is the medicine of immortality, the antidote against death, which gives eternal life in Jesus Christ.”Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Ephesians 20.

In a similar fashion, Irenaeus of Lyons, writing shortly after Ignatius, says this about Jesus as Priest and Victim in the Eucharist: “Inasmuch therefore as the Church offers simplicity of heart, her gift is rightly considered a pure sacrifice with God. . . . For we are bound to make oblation to God. . . . And this oblation the Church offers pure to the Creator, presenting to him with thanksgiving from his creation. . . . For as the bread of the earth, receiving the invocation of God, is no longer common bread but Eucharist, consisting of two things, an earthly and a heavenly; so also our bodies, partaking of the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of eternal resurrection.”Saint Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV, 18, 4-6.

I soon began to realize that the Eucharist was essential to the spiritual life, since Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. . . . For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him” (Jn 6:53, 55-66). Yet, I didn’t have the assurance that any Protestant tradition, much less my own, had truly maintained the apostolic tradition faithfully.

I thought perhaps the Anglican tradition had retained it, since the Anglican church claimed apostolic succession for their bishops as well. Some Evangelicals who had become aware of the early Church Fathers’ views on the Eucharist chose to embrace Anglicanism (Episcopalianism), since it was the closest but safest thing outside Catholicism (and considered by some the “halfway house”—the via media—between Protestantism and Catholicism). This suited me best out of all Protestant denominational choices, since it featured prima facie the “best of both worlds”. However, the Anglican church defected from Rome under King Henry VIII, and this meant that the church’s orders were severely compromised and thus illicit (remaining valid but not authorized by the Catholic Church) at best, or invalid altogether at worst, which would invalidate their Eucharistic celebrations.

This led me to read up on the Catholic position on Anglican ordinations. In 1896 Pope Leo XIII, in his letter Apostolic Curae, under no uncertain terms declared “that ordinations carried out according to the Anglican rite have been, and are, absolutely null and utterly void” (no. 36) as a result of the introduction of the Edwardine Ordinal (1562), since it lacked the proper form (that which is essential) to the sacrificial nature of the priesthood, “which is chiefly the power ‘of consecrating and of offering the true Body and Blood of the Lord’ ” (see no. 29); the Anglican retention and practice of the “imposition of hands” (the matter) was not enough to guarantee valid ordinations, argued Pope Leo XIII (see no. 24). My hope that the Anglican tradition safeguarded this apostolic succession was dashed by Rome, and my safe ecclesial halfway house suddenly crumbled.

In short, I was convinced that early Christianity was indeed sacramental and that the center of the worship service was primarily the Eucharist and not necessarily the sermon. The Roman Catholic Church had faithfully practiced this, and, for me, this unquestionably demonstrated her authenticity and historical pedigree. It seemed, therefore, that in the Catholic Church was the guarantee that I could receive what God had intended for his children to receive all along—the most Holy Eucharist as provided by validly ordained men.

Faith Seeking Charity

Catholics and Protestants affirm together that a person is justified by faith through grace, especially that “God forgives sin by grace and at the same time frees human beings from sin’s enslaving power and imparts the gift of new life in Christ.” So, “when persons come by faith to share in Christ, God no longer imputes to them their sin and through the Holy Spirit effects in them an active love. These two aspects of God’s gracious action are not to be separated, for persons are by faith united with Christ, who in his person is our righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30): both the forgiveness of sin and the saving presence of God himself.”Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church, Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, no. 22. Catholics and Protestants are in agreement here.

Protestants, however, emphasize that the righteousness of Christ is our righteousness—the sinner thus at once is granted righteousness before God in Christ through the declaration of forgiveness in justification—and that only in union with Christ is one’s life renewed (through a lifelong process of sanctification, which prepares us for final glorification). The condition for justification is faith alone (sola fide); justification is not dependent (as in Catholicism) on the life-renewing effects of grace in men—that is, the change in status from “sinner” to “righteous” is a “celestial transaction” in which Christ’s righteousness is credited to the sinner; nothing happens intrinsically to the believer at this point. It is forensic in nature. That is, justification is a legal exchange in which we get Christ’s righteousness while he gets our sins (which he bore on the Cross).

Catholic teaching on justification emphasizes the renewal of the interior person through the reception of sanctifying grace imparted, or infused into our soul, as a gift; God’s forgiving grace always brings with it a gift of new life, especially in baptism, in which the Holy Spirit becomes effective in active love (charity). Whereas Protestants separate justification and sanctification, for Catholics, “justification entails the sanctification of [one’s] whole being.”CCC 1995 When one is justified, he is simultaneously sanctified; he becomes a child of God and a partaker of the divine nature and of eternal life.CCC 1996. The emphasis in the Catholic teaching on justification is becoming righteous and not simply being declared righteous, as is taught within Protestant Evangelicalism. In Catholicism, justification is an ongoing process, and in Protestantism, it is a one-time event. The Church teaches that the purpose of our justification is our beatitude—so that we become partakers of God’s beatitude and inheritors of his Kingdom.CCC 1719. “The New Testament uses several expressions to characterize the beatitude to which God calls man: (1) the coming of the Kingdom of God [cf. Mt 4:17]; (2) the vision of God: ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God’ [Mt 5:8; cf. 1 Jn 2; 1 Cor 13:12]; (3) entering into the joy of the Lord [Mt 25:21-23]; (4) entering into God’s rest [cf. Heb. 4:7-11]”; ibid., 1720.

Understanding these two positions on justification also clarified for me why Protestants always emphasize God as a Judge who views us as sinners unable to pay the penalty for our transgressions, while Catholics understand God as a Father who views us as his adopted children through our faith in Christ, and he disciplines us (throughout our maturation process) when we do wrong (Heb 12:6, Prov 3:11; 13:24) and rewards us when we do right (Mt 6:4-6, 16, 18; cf. 2 Jn 8; Rev 22:12), until we are welcomed into his heavenly Kingdom. This also juxtaposes two views of the covenant: the Protestant view sees a covenant as a contract, an exchange of goods, whereas the Catholic sees covenant as a “kinship bond”, an exchange of persons.See Scott Hahn, A Father Who Keeps His Promises, for a popular treatment on the Catholic view of the covenant; see O. Palmer Robertson, Christ of the Covenants, for a classical Reformed treatment on covenant theology.

As an Evangelical, I initially took comfort in the Protestant understanding of justification. I believed that even the faith that I possessed was entirely a gift from God and that my holiness was signed, sealed, and delivered by Christ. I needed only to focus on the practical aspects of my salvation (not on attaining it, as that took place during justification); that is, I needed to grow in holiness and work “to attain a reward in heaven”, which were not synonymous with salvation. The reward had more to do with degrees of “happiness” in heaven. As one professor put it, “While everyone in heaven is happy, not everyone in heaven is equally happy.”

Faith Seeking VirtueThis section and those that follow are written in honor of my sponsor in the faith, John W. Garcia, who inspired me to the study of Catholic moral theology and spiritual warfare (see his excellent work, Tracing Our Sins to Adam and Eve: Healing Our Emotions Through Jesus Christ [Covina, Calif.: Saint Joseph Communications, 2011]).

The Catechism says that “the way of perfection passes by way of the Cross. There is no holiness without renunciation and spiritual battle [cf. 2 Tim 4].”CCC 2015; emphasis added. And that was the problem for me. As an Evangelical, I found myself sometimes defeated, deflated, and discouraged. When I asked my professors and pastors how to grow in holiness, I was told just to pray, read my Bible, memorize Scripture, and seek fellowship.Of course many Evangelicals believe that there is more to the spiritual life than what was mentioned above. For example, charismatic Evangelicals often pursue what is called the “the baptism of the Holy Spirit” (a phenomenon of spiritual empowerment that can happen at the moment of salvation or sometime thereafter, or both), which can be accompanied and manifested by “sign gifts” such as tongues. Conversely, many conservative and mainline Protestants are typically “cessationists” and thus deny that there is such a thing as a spiritual phenomenon called “baptism of the Holy Spirit” apart from salvation. The sign gifts (such as tongues), then, are no longer in use and were exclusive to the time of the apostles during the establishment of the Church. Although all of these are vitally important, and did help me attain a high level of Christian maturity and satisfaction, I still felt empty at times. I would ask myself, “Is this the sum of the Christian life?”

Dread would sometimes consume me. I did not understand suffering and what I was supposed to do with it. When I would experience trials of varying degrees, it certainly did not always feel assuring to be told that “in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28). I often liken my preparation for spiritual battle as an Evangelical to a boxer preparing for a prize fight and being coached only to use jabs—no uppercuts, no power or counterpunches, no combination shots to the body, et cetera.

The Fall of Man and Concupiscence

An SES course on sin and salvation covered the Fall of man and how his original state of uprightness was lost because of his disobedience and lack of confidence (trust) in God.The Church teaches that Adam originally lived in total harmony with God—in a state of holiness and justice, possessing preternatural gifts and supernatural life. See CCC 374ff. The consequences included our inheritance of Original Sin and death from our first parents. We were taught that once we place our faith in Christ, we are no longer guilty of any sin (personal or otherwise). I believed this. But there was no emphasis on the reality of the prevailing bent toward sin (as Saint Paul explicitly mentions in Romans 7:14-24).

I came to the conclusion that Protestant Evangelicalism is devoid of the spiritual resources that God intended to help regulate our concupiscence (or disordered passions). The truth is that we have a human nature that is wounded by sin, and God has provided us with the means to receive healing: the sacraments. Evangelicals are known for encouraging other believers “to be more like Jesus”, but the only way to do this is to partake of the divine nature (becoming more like God) through the sacraments, by which we receive the very life of God into our souls (2 Pet 1:8).

Our Vocation to Beatitude and Desire for Happiness

In one of my philosophy courses, I was introduced to Aristotle’s concept of eudaimonia, which loosely means happiness or the highest human good. I began to wonder what this might be in the Christian life. I didn’t bother to pay attention to this idea again until I began to consider the Catholic faith. Within Catholic circles, conversations would often revolve around one’s vocation in life. The options were primarily the call to religious life or to married life. I soon discovered that these were just the means—the pathways—by which we fulfilled our greater vocation: our call to God’s beatitude. The Catechism says it best: “God put us in the world to know, to love, and to serve him, and so to come to paradise. Beatitude makes us ‘partakers of the divine nature’ and of eternal life [2 Pet 1:4; cf. Jn 17:3]. With beatitude, man enters into the glory of Christ [cf. Rom 8:18] and into the joy of the Trinitarian life.”CCC 1721.

Terry Barber and Jesse Romero, Catholic radio cohosts and mentors of mine in the work of evangelization, often say, “Holiness equals happiness!” They often reiterate during their program that the happiest people who ever lived were the saints—namely, those whose lives were marked by heroic virtue. The saints are often depicted as having lived lives completely dedicated to the service of God. Saints were confronted with decisive moral decisions to renounce this world and to live, and be ready to die, for God. The Catechism says that “true happiness is not found in riches or well-being, in human fame or power, or in any human achievement—however beneficial it may be—such as science, technology, and art, or indeed in any creature, but in God alone, the source of every good and of all love.”CCC 1723. What this means is that, like the saints before us, we are called not to count the cost but to deny ourselves and pick up our cross daily and follow our Lord. In doing so we find true happiness and the fulfillment that our hearts long for. In the words of Saint Augustine, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”Saint Augustine, Confessions of St. Augustine (Totowa, N.J.: Catholic Book Publishing, 1997), 19. On a similar note, I once heard someone say, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”Elisabeth Elliot, Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot (New York: Harper, 1958), 108. This resonates with what our Lord taught: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. . . . For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Mt 6:19-20, 21).

Freedom and Virtue

Saint Pope John Paul II once said, “Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.”Saint Pope John Paul II, Homily during a Eucharistic celebration at Oriole Park, Baltimore, Maryland, October 8, 1995, no. 7, http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1995. So, “the more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just. The choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom and leads to ‘the slavery of sin’ [cf. Rom 6:17]”CCC 1733. I remember having a conversation about sanctification with one of my dorm mates in Bible college, and he opined that when we come to faith in Christ, we become naturally inclined to doing and choosing “the good” freely all the time. Although my heart was willing to accept this, my flesh knew better. The reality is that “doing and choosing the good” does not always come easily or naturally—whether one is saved or not. What is needed is the cultivation of good habits.

It did not take long for me to notice that the Catholic Church constantly produced saints. The saints possessed a habitual and firm disposition to do the good. There were certainly many inspiring and virtuous Evangelicals whose lives were marked by obedience and perseverance—many of whom were my friends and peers at CCBC and SES. But there was no Evangelical theological framework or prototype that provided me with the meaning or motivation to pursue or choose the good. The Church, in nuancing the doctrine of grace, also teaches the concept of habitual grace, which can be described as the firm disposition to live and act in keeping with God’s call.CCC 2000. The Catechism uses the phrase “permanent disposition” in describing habitual grace, but for the sake of clarity and continuity with this writing, the phrase “firm disposition” is preferred here, since this grace can be lost by mortal sin. This assists the faithful to become more inclined to choose the good as well as to grow in beatitude and be more “like God”.In Eastern Orthodox soteriology, following Saint Athanasius, the emphasis on salvation is not justification but divinization (Greek: theosis), becoming like God at the moment we participate in God’s energies, whereas the Catholic Church uses the language “participation in the life of God” (i.e., sanctifying grace). That is, it is a constant supernatural quality of the soul that sanctifies a person inherently and makes him just and pleasing to God.

How then did the saints attain this? They loved God above all else and loved their neighbor secondly. They chose simply to will the good of others as others. They repeatedly chose acts that cultivated the (cardinal) virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. They frequented the sacraments and thus increased in the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. They constantly regulated their disordered passions and allowed their emotions and feelings to be taken up into the virtues rather than be perverted by vices. In short, the saints’ lives were marked by self-denial, self-mastery, and, above all, charity. They had what I had—namely, Jesus—but they clearly walked in the mystery of Christ and habitually chose the good in accordance with a conscience properly formed by reason and divine law. The Catechism sums it up well, stating, “Progress in virtue, knowledge of the good, and ascesis [i.e., self-discipline] enhance the mastery of the will over its acts.”CCC 1734. To be sure, the saints exemplified these well.

The Role of the Blessed Mother and the Saints

I had a candid conversation with my uncle (the Catholic deacon) one evening concerning the nature of the family. He struck a chord with me when he mentioned that the Church is our family. He then mentioned the Holy Family: Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. He patiently explained that Christ’s Mother was our Mother (see Jn 19:26) and that we were called to honor her just as Jesus did (in keeping with the Fourth Commandment). My relationship with Jesus was intact, but I had not made Jesus’ family my own. What role did they have in the lives of the faithful? The Church is our family, my uncle shared: God is our Father, Mary our Mother, Jesus and the angels and saints our brethren. These were the great cloud of witnesses mentioned in Hebrews 12:1. I was told that the saints in heaven are interceding for us—literally cheering us on and praying for our spiritual well-being on our journey. I knew that if they were in fact praying for me, their prayers would be efficacious, since in the epistle of Saint James we hear, “The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects” (Jas 5:16). If Mary and the saints are alive in heaven interceding for the faithful, there is reason to believe that their prayers are beneficial to those who invoke their names.These are the continued bonds that God established to aid the faithful in their journey toward heaven.

As an Evangelical, I and many other believers often defaulted to a “me and Jesus” mentality and practiced a form of Christian individualism. The Catholic Church articulates the exact opposite—the remedy for individualism. The purpose of coming together is as follows: “It is in the Church, in communion with the baptized, that the Christian fulfills his vocation.”CCC 2030; emphasis added. The Catechism provides the reasons for maintaining solidarity with the Church:

From the Church he receives [1] the Word of God containing the teachings of the “law of Christ” [Gal 6:2]. From the Church he receives [2] the grace of the sacraments that sustains him on the “way.” From the Church he learns [3] the example of holiness and recognizes its model and source in the all-holy Virgin Mary; he discerns it in the authentic witness of those who live it; he discovers it in the spiritual direction and long history of the saints who have gone before him and whom the liturgy celebrates in the rhythms of the sanctoral cycle [that is, the feast days, or propers, of the saints].Ibid.

With this rationale, I saw my need to be in full communion with Holy Mother Church for my spiritual well-being. It wasn’t a matter of if, but only a matter of when.

Redemptive Suffering

There are many Bible verses that confound Protestants. One that I found extremely troubling was Colossians 1:24: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church.”Saint Paul in his epistle to the Philippians states, “For [Christ’s] sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ. . . . [And] that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Phil 3:8, 10; emphasis added). I had no idea what to do with this verse. I could not find adequate answers from professors, peers, or commentators. The vexing question was: What could possibly be lacking in the suffering of Christ? This verse made sense only within the Catholic teaching of redemptive suffering.

The Church teaches that as death and suffering entered the world (by the sin of our first parents), Christ’s obedience to the will of his Father made it possible for our afflictions and sufferings to be endowed with redemptive power in a participatory way. As one Catholic writer explained, “By virtue of our being made one with Christ in Baptism, we can join our suffering to that of Our Savior on the Cross at Calvary and thereby assist in His work of salvation for the entire world. The suffering of illness and dying brings the Catholic a grace-filled opportunity to offer prayer for oneself, for loved ones, and for the whole human race. Christ is with us during our illness and shares in our suffering as we share in His.”National Catholic Bioethics Center, “A Catholic Guide to End-of-Life Decisions: An Explanation of Church Teaching on Advance Directives, Euthanasia, and Physician Assisted Suicide” (Philadelphia: National Catholic Bioethics Center, 2011), 1; emphasis added. In view of this, Saint Paul’s words are really a positive statement on the participatory nature of our sufferings with Christ’s sufferings and its redemptive value for us and for others.As well as the Church Suffering, i.e., the souls in purgatory. For the apostle Paul, then, nothing is lacking in the Cross of Christ (since our Lord’s merits are infinite) except Paul’s afflictions and those of the entire Church (as Christ and the Church are one mystical person).Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch, eds., Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: New Testament (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010), 366. Hahn and Mitch note that Saint Paul’s words “could be misunderstood to mean that the suffering of Christ was not sufficient for redemption and that the suffering of the saints must be added to complete it. This, however, would be heretical. Christ and the Church are one mystical person, and while the merits of Christ, the head, are infinite, the saints acquire merit in a limited degree.” Hahn and Mitch, Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, 366; emphasis added.

The question every believer must face then is: What shall I do with my suffering? God chose to permit each one of us to participate in Christ’s work for our salvation. For the merits of Christ’s Passion to be applied to us, we need to cooperate by bearing the sufferings that come to us, i.e., by taking up our cross and following Christ (“He who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” [Mt 10:38]). Ultimately, salvation requires that we accept what Christ has merited for us, and that means accepting the suffering that comes to us in our daily lives as Christians in the world, both the minor things (such as the annoyance of delayed gratification) and the heavier things (such as crises relating to grief and loss); therein lies the reason why our suffering is rightly called “redemptive”.See Saint Pope John Paul II’s apostolic letter “On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering”, Salvifici Doloris, February 11, 1984. Evangelical apologists often do a fine job of answering the problem of evil (i.e., If God exists, why does suffering exist?), but very little attention is ever given to the practicality of suffering. Only in the Catholic Church does suffering become something of value. It is not something to be feared or avoided; on the contrary, it is something to draw you closer to Christ and his Passion. And for me, this mysterious, troubling verse finally made sense in light of Catholic teaching on redemptive suffering.Saint Clare of Assisi (1194—1255) echoes Saint Paul the apostle: “If you suffer with him [Christ], you will reign with him. [If you] weep [with him], you shall rejoice with him; [if you] die with him on the cross of tribulation, you shall possess heavenly mansions in the splendor of the saints and, in the Book of Life, your name shall be called glorious among men.” Cited in Magnificat 16.16 (August 2014): 152; emphasis in the original.

The Rosary and Sacramentals

A friend of mine, Charlie Aeschliman, who is a popular Catholic speaker and former Navy SEAL, once told me that trying to find success in the spiritual life and fare well in the spiritual battle without the Church is the equivalent of trying to put out a forest fire with a squirt gun. The Catholic is equipped with a variety of prayers and spiritual exercises, such as sacramentals,The New Saint Joseph Baltimore Catechism defines sacramentals as “holy things or actions of which the Church makes use to obtain for us from God spiritual and temporal favors”. According to this classic catechism, “the sacramentals most used by Catholics are: holy water, blessed candles, ashes, palms, crucifixes, medals, rosaries, scapulars, and images of Our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, and the saints.” The New Saint Joseph Baltimore Catechism, rev. ed. (New York: Catholic Book Publishing, 1966), 171. meditation, and contemplative prayers.See CCC 2700-24. I was accustomed to praying only extemporaneously as an Evangelical. I deepened my prayer life with the Rosary and the Divine Mercy Chaplet, which encourage the faithful to meditate on the lives of Jesus and Mary (in the Rosary) and on the mercy of Jesus (in the Divine Mercy Chaplet). These devotions have brought me a great deal of comfort during crises as well as during the course of my ordinary day.

The words of Saint Peter in his second epistle came to life when I considered the treasure trove of spiritual resources found in the Catholic Church. It is written that God “has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness” (2 Pet 1:3). It is God’s desire that all should come into full communion with the Church, so that we can be best equipped to live a life of virtue and happiness and thus become the “best version of ourselves”, as Matthew Kelly says, and reach our ultimate end: the Kingdom of heaven.

Conclusion

I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would be a Catholic, especially in the light of the fact that I had dedicated my master’s thesis to undermining the truth claims of the Church. By God’s grace, after six years of inquiring and studying the faith, seeking the spiritual resources to become what God had intended for me as his child, I was received into full communion in 2011 at the Easter Vigil at Saint Paul the Apostle Church in Chino Hills, California. The transition for my family to become Catholic was relatively seamless (for which I’m grateful, since that was not the case for some of my peers, as demonstrated in their chapters in this book), although they followed me into the Church a year later. For my wife, Carolina, having been raised Catholic and having become an Evangelical later in life, the return to the Church was rather smooth, and our decision to raise our children Catholic was almost natural.

Rome is the true Church, and God desires everyone to come home to it. My journey home to the Catholic Church was not only an intellectual one (especially theologically, philosophically, and historically) but also one of healing and reconciliation (morally), and I will be forever grateful to God for giving us the Church and the sacraments. I am grateful for my Evangelical roots, as they gave me a love for Christ and his Word. This has not changed since I have become Catholic. Now I possess a love for Christ in the Eucharist and his Church too. My Catholic faith and convictions are all the more grounded as a result of my Protestant beginnings. I am also grateful that whatever suffering I experience in this life isn’t for naught. The truth is that when an Evangelical becomes Catholic, he loses nothing and gains everything.