Reviewing what is probably the most significant manifesto on it, Swain and Allen’s Reformed Catholicity: The Promise of Retrieval for Theology and Biblical Interpretation, I notice that the most they will purport is “that there are Reformed theological and ecclesiological warrants for pursuing a program of retrieval,” “numerous examples of thoughtful appropriation of the catholic tradition,” and “principles of classical Reformed orthodox prolegomena” that “provide a salutary framework within which a Reformed dogmatics of retrieval might be developed.”

Previously I reflected on some questions confronting the effort to advance the concept of catholicity’s recognition in Reformed and evangelical churches. There is more to be said on the matter. Two practical questions confront Protestant theologians on this point. One is the relationship between orthodoxy and catholicity. Another is the extent or content of each of those two attributes.

These are questions which are unique to us and which would likely be out of place to Rome. For she asserts the church is infallible, so that all her doctrine is orthodox and is now what it always has been (in principle, if not all particulars). Orthodoxy and catholicity, if not strictly synonymous, are so nearly related as to make the question practically pointless.[1] What is catholic is orthodox, and vice versa, and both are inherent in her communion and its dogma and practice. To distinguish them, as though something could be orthodox but not catholic does not seem to align with her thinking on this point, albeit with the caveat that she conceives catholicity as admitting of a matter of degree.[2]

Thus, also with the East. She refers to herself as Orthodoxy, thus identifying her church institutions with their belief and practice, and regarding all as being of divine origin and authority. Confessing the Creed, she says that she is catholic, meaning the church “embraces in itself all people who believe in the Orthodox way wherever they might live on earth.”[3]

For many radical Protestants the questions are also irrelevant. They have their own orthodoxy (whether or not they would call it that) and ignore or reject catholicity as irrelevant due to a low view of the church as institution or an emphasis upon the local church versus the church universal. But magisterial Protestants like the Reformed, and also those evangelical theologians who are associated with churches that tend to be radical or independent, but who aspire to a magisterial disposition for their churches – notably, some affiliated with the Southern Baptist seminaries – must consider the questions formulated above.

And at present it is not clear that it has occurred to the proponents of increasing catholicity’s recognition to ponder such questions at all, much less to give them a coherent, scriptural answer. Reviewing what is probably the most significant manifesto on it, Swain and Allen’s Reformed Catholicity: The Promise of Retrieval for Theology and Biblical Interpretation, I notice that the most they will purport is “that there are Reformed theological and ecclesiological warrants for pursuing a program of retrieval,” “numerous examples of thoughtful appropriation of the catholic tradition,” and “principles of classical Reformed orthodox prolegomena” that “provide a salutary framework within which a Reformed dogmatics of retrieval might be developed.”[4] Indeed, they say their “purpose here is not to develop a full-blown dogmatics of retrieval but rather to offer exploratory excursions into . . . where we have found examples and principles of Reformed theology that might commend an embrace of Christian tradition (both catholic and Protestant)” and that “Reformed catholicity is a theological sensibility, not a system.”[5]

To which one feels inclined to say that if it is a sensibility, it is so after the manner of Marianne Dashwood in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility: immature and too quick to give approval on the basis of superficial acquaintance where there are grave problems with the character of whom it approves. (O for the “sense” of her sister Elinor!) For literary allusions aside, those warrants, examples, and principles do not seem to have since been developed into a systematic theory or “dogmatics of retrieval” by anyone. And if that has been done somewhere, it certainly seems either to have been done poorly, or else to have been promptly forgotten. Absent a “salutary framework” to govern its course, the actions that have attended the ‘retrieve and emphasize catholicity’ movement are bearing some bad fruit.

Amongst other things, it has led to confusion in ecclesiastical and theological classifications. In Reformed Catholicity the authors refer to Hans Boersma as “a Reformed theologian,” which was doubtful already in 2015 at publication,[6] but which is no longer accurate: “Father Boersma” now teaches at Nashotah House, “a seminary rooted in th[e] Benedictine and Anglo-Catholic tradition,” from which he dismisses sola scriptura, commends reading Jesuits, and advances Platonism. Regrettably, people still refer to Boersma, who joined Nashotah in 2019, as Protestant. Carl Mosser did so in Credo magazine in 2022, and Boersma’s present about page at Nashotah’s website says “Fr. Boersma has emerged as a leading voice among Protestant and evangelical theologians exploring and appropriating the riches of the Catholic tradition,” which suggests they still regard him as Protestant. This confusion might seem minor, but when scholars and institutions cannot make such a simple distinction as that between a de facto Romanist and a Protestant, it invites all manner of concern that there will be further and worse confusion on larger matters.

To our larger point, it doesn’t suggest catholicity and retrieval is going well when Boersma, whom Allen and Swain mention by name as an example of a ‘retriever,’ followed such retrieval right out of the Reformation. He is not the only example that raises concern. Part of their argument for catholicity is that many other movements are engaged in retrieving the past, so that “our call toward Reformed catholicity is not that of a lone voice calling in the wilderness.”[7] A reader might be forgiven for regarding that as a mere appeal to popularity.

However that may be, one trend that is mentioned is “ressourcement Thomism,” i.e., the movement to recommend the reading of Thomas Aquinas which has been so popular as of late. Reading Aquinas apparently was significant in Evangelical Theological Society president Francis Beckwith rejoining the Roman communion. Again, a fact like that demonstrates that the catholicity movement is in need of a clearer framework to keep those that are on it from going astray, especially since ‘ressourcement Thomism’ is no longer a parallel movement to Reformed catholicity but has established a prominent hold in it.[8]

Or again, in Reformed Catholicity’s afterword J. Todd Billings mentions City Church of San Francisco as “an example of a ‘catholic-Reformed’ approach” to ministry, contrasting it with Bill Hybels’s Willow Creek Community Church and its more generic “seeker-sensitive” approach to argue the former is superior because, being grounded in tradition, “the felt needs of the culture do not drive its agenda.” Reformed Catholicity appeared in January, 2015; two months later City Church announced it was abandoning the scriptural prohibition against a type of immorality that is prominent in San Francisco because it “was causing obvious harm and has not led to human flourishing.” So much for “a catholic-Reformed approach” preventing “the felt needs of the culture” from determining its agenda.

Now to return to my original subject, I do not propose a full answer to my opening questions. I am not a theologian, and increased recognition of catholicity is a project of some members of their guild. I am however a member of the church which such theologians are meant to serve, and from my standpoint the project of catholicity and retrieval, not being well-grounded, has gone awry and can only be ‘retrieved’ and conformed to the historic belief and practice of the church catholic by answering the opening questions in light of scripture.

Here I reiterate and expand a question from my previous article. How are we to regard Rome and the East? Are they in sufficient possession of orthodoxy that we may regard them as part of the church catholic? The present proponents of catholicity seem to presuppose that they are and have no qualms collaborating with them in books, conferences, journals, etc., even giving them platforms to teach authoritatively and commending their doctrinal works.

It would seem to me that to conceive catholicity in that way has required narrowing orthodoxy to the two points of theology proper and Chalcedonian Christology. Because Rome and the East adhere to the Trinity, classical ideas about God (incomprehensibility, simplicity, etc.), and Christ’s two natures, people are prepared to regard them as part of the church catholic, their egregious departure from sound doctrine in soteriology, authority, ecclesiology, Christ’s work, and many points of practice notwithstanding. Exactly how that comports with the Reformation and its main points of concern (the solas), especially that ‘justification is the article of the falling and standing of the church,’ I cannot see. It seems an entirely different conception of orthodoxy and catholicity from that of the Reformers and other earlier Protestants, one which is so eager to ‘retrieve’ classical theism that it is in a terrible danger of forgetting nearly everything else, including many things which our forefathers cherished and for which they died.

And it clearly does not comport with scripture. Rome, the East, and some mainline Protestants adhere to classical theism and Nicene trinitarian theology, and on that account many evangelical Protestants are prepared to associate with them. To which a pew-dweller such as myself feels compelled to nearly weep in frustration and ask: have you never read James 2:19, how he says “you believe that God is one; you do well” and then immediately dismisses all notion of salvific virtue in such knowledge because “even the demons believe—and shudder!”

Rome and the East have a finely-developed theology proper and Christology that accords with the early creeds and councils, and on that account our present retrievers think highly of them. And then they abet that sophisticated doctrine with the most superstitious practice, the idolatrous worship of images, which God names a ‘work of the flesh’ (Gal. 5:19-20), whose participants “will not inherit the kingdom of God” (v. 21; 1 Cor. 6:9-10) but are punished in the Lake of Fire (Rev. 21:8). As for those who do such things, he says “not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater” (1 Cor. 5:11), and he warns, “keep yourselves from idols” (1 Cor. 5:21).

Or again, concerning the mainline Protestants, they abet that doctrine with social activism that dissolves the gospel in political agitation and makes the kingdom of God a matter of justice in this world. Indeed, ten years on and Billings’s arguments in Reformed Catholicity have soured because of subsequent affairs in the mainline Reformed Church in America (RCA) with which he and his institution (Western Theological Seminary) are affiliated. He presents Western as an example of a self-consciously catholic and Reformed entity (154) in his argument that “the Catholic-Reformed Tradition” is a “corrective” to things like the errant doctrine of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (151). The RCA is dying – it lost half its attendance from 2021 to 2023 – torn apart by the disagreement over whether or not to approve that immorality that City Church permits. Western is “fully egalitarian” and has a professor who is involved in the Revoice movement to normalize the experience of that previously-alluded aberrant desire. Both of those come from culture and are in absolute contradiction to both scripture and two millennia of church practice: few things are less catholic than the notions that women should be shepherd-teachers and that perverse sexual desire ought to be anything other than unthinkable in the Christian community.

We know things by their fruits. The present drive for catholicity is bearing bad fruit. As with the RCA and Western, it has either failed, or else it was all along a self-deceiving pretense under cover of which conformity to the world proceeded apace. The only way to turn it to a good purpose is to clearly define catholicity and orthodoxy and their relation in light of scripture, and to do all research and retrieval in light of that clear framework. Whether our theologians will do that well is a timely question, and it is to be feared that they will continue on their present course, in which they are so busy hobnobbing with Rome and Constantinople and the mainline that they forget to call them to repentance.

Tom Hervey is a member of Woodruff Road Presbyterian Church, Five Forks (Simpsonville), SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation

[1] Hence New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on orthodoxy says:

Orthodoxy (orthodoxeia) signifies right belief or purity of faith. Right belief is not merely subjective, as resting on personal knowledge and convictions, but is in accordance with the teaching and direction of an absolute extrinsic authority. This authority is the Church founded by Christ, and guided by the Holy Ghost. He, therefore, is orthodox, whose faith coincides with the teachings of the Catholic Church. [emphasis mine]

[2] The idea that appears in her  catechism, section 834, where she says “particular Churches are fully catholic through their communion with one of them, the Church of Rome.” Partial catholicity is possible, in other words, in which the catholicity is real but incomplete.

[3] From p. 78 of a local Greek cathedral’s catechetical materials here: https://stgeorgegreenville.org/our-faith/catechism/

[4] Pp. 12-13 of the Kindle edition.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Already by that time anyone who didn’t know he was a professed Protestant would have struggled to guess it from the books he was writing, such things as Nouvelle Théologie and Sacramental Ontology: A Return to Mystery (2009), a book about the nouvelle théologie movement in mid 20^th century Roman theology in which he suggests marriage is a sacrament in the preface (a notion Protestants of all stripes reject) and uses a quote from the Roman theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar as the epigraph. 

[7] Reformed Catholicity, p. 4.

[8] Quite a lot of Reformed people have joined the Aquinas craze: David VanDrunen; Carl Trueman, Kelly Kapic, and Michael Horton; R. Scott Clark; Derrick Brite; as have many Baptists, and that in spite of the fact that Aquinas taught the propriety of idolatry and was criticized on that ground by many of our Reformed forebears like John Owen (A Vindication of the Animadversions upon Fiat Lux, pp. 85-86) or William Perkins (A Reformed Catholike, p. 180).