Mr. Litfin goes to Marion

Dr. Duane Litfin, president of Wheaton College, was on campus yesterday. He seems a very honorable man and was very gracious even when uncomfortable questions were asked him by one particularly dogged member of our current faculty. You all might remember that Wheaton fired a professor for converting to Roman Catholicism last year. I am sincerely torn on whether Litfin did the right thing for Wheaton.

I respect the right of private religious institutions to set ideological boundaries around their faculty and students, as long as it is done from true conviction and not from hate or prejudice of an emotive sort. Don't ask me how to parse that legally. I do indeed find it a difficult issue. Would I allow for a Nazi school that taught Jews, homosexuals, and African-Americans should be killed?

Again, these are difficult days to know how the legalities will play out. For many in the broader culture, prohibiting a homosexual from teaching is tantamount to the same thing. Perhaps one solution is in ethical standards. There seems no harm, for example, it prohibiting anyone from teaching who has sex, period. So surely there is no harm in prohibiting anyone from teaching who has sex and is not married (then you have the wrinkle if gay marriage becomes legal). Some of you out there will have to argue these cases. It is an important issue to wrestle with at some point.

I do believe, however, that there is one serious flaw in Litfin's arguments for why he had to fire the man who converted to Catholicism. More than once yesterday Litfin implied that sola scriptura was in the "Statement of Faith" of Wheaton. If this were the case, then I think I would have to concede that you cannot be Roman Catholic and teach at Wheaton. I say this even though the very concept of sola scriptura is an impossibility of language, especially given the fact that the Bible is not a single book and it was written concretely to ancient audiences (meaning it was not written in the format of a timeless theological tractate). Those of you who read me regularly know my line of thought here.

There are two reasons why these comments seem to me logically flawed:

1. I double checked Wheaton's Statement of Faith and this does not seem to be the case. Here is Wheaton's statement:

"WE BELIEVE that God has revealed Himself and His truth in the created order, in the Scriptures, and supremely in Jesus Christ; and that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are verbally inspired by God and inerrant in the original writing, so that they are fully trustworthy and of supreme and final authority in all they say."

There is nothing here about sola scriptura, and the man had no problem affirming this statement. In my opinion, Litfin had an insufficient basis to fire the man in terms of this statement.

2. However, Litfin might have fired him on the basis of this statement, also in the statement of faith: "The statement accordingly reaffirms salient features of the historic Christian creeds, thereby identifying the College not only with the Scriptures but also with the reformers and the evangelical movement of recent years."

Ah, the professor's understanding of the phrase "supreme and final authority in all they say" does not fit with the what "the reformers and the evangelical movement of recent years." So perhaps Litfin might legally fire the man on this basis.

BUT, he has thereby deconstructed his sola scriptura claim thereby! The statement clearly identifies--and Litfin by firing him affirms--that the problem is not with this man's faith in the Bible, but in the particular magisterium to which he subscribes.

The magisterium of Wheaton is "the reformers and the evangelical movement." They are Wheaton's pope and council. So be honest, Litfin. The sola scriptura argument is a bit of a smoke screen. By making recourse to the reformers (extra scripturam) you have deconstructed your own argument. The problem you have with this man is mainly that he's Catholic, not evangelical.