"In fact, I discovered that nowhere did Saint Paul ever teach that we were justified by faith alone! Sola fide was unscriptural!"-Catholic apologist Scott Hahn (page 31)
John Mark sent me a copy of Scott Hahn’s Rome Sweet Home. The book documents Hahn’s conversion to Roman Catholicism. I will probably be writing an entry for Team Apologian on a few points made in the book. In the meantime, here is a link to an article by John Robbins:
The Lost Soul of Scott Hahn
Robbins is indeed polemical- and comes off as uncharitable toward Hahn’s conversion ( for instance, I would not have made the same accusations Robbins did in the first paragraph). As I’ve been reading through the book, Robbins does counter-balance the Hahn story. I may have not said things the same way Robbins does- but I would have made certain points that he made.
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And for a contrary viewpoint, please see:
http://members.aol.com/dpinstitut/John_Robbins_on_Scott_Hahn.html
Rome Sweet Home is well worth reading. Here are a few interesting quotations from it:
From page 6:
Let's face it, anti-Catholicism can be a very reasonable thing. If the wafer Catholics worship is not Christ... then it is idolatrous and blasphemous to do what Catholics do in bowing before and worshiping the Eucharist.
From page 62:
Both of us [i.e. Hahn and Matatics] shared the conviction that the Catholic Church was totally unlike certain Protestant denominations, such as the Methodists, the Lutherans or the Assembly of God--all of which we thought were a little off here and there, on this or that point of doctrine.
But if the Catholic Church was wrong, it was more than a little off, because no denomination on earth made the kinds of outrageous claims that Rome made for itself. For instance, the Methodists never claimed to be the one and only true Church founded by Jesus; nor did the Lutherans claim to have as their head a Pope who was Christ's infallible vicar on earth; nor was the Assembly of God run by leaders claiming an unbroken line of succession going all the way back to Peter.
Like Cardinal Newman before us, Gerry and I could see that if the Catholic Church was wrong, it was nothing less than diabolical. On the other hand, if it was right, it must have been divinely established and preserved; but that was hardly a serious option for either of us.
From page 142:
Mrs. Hahn, on deciding whether to kneel before the monstrance in a eucharistic procession, says:
This situation highlighted what Scott had said all along: the Catholic Church is not just another denomination--it is either true or diabolical.
The book is an example of the shallowness and misleading character of much RC apologists.
I have to wonder how Hahn write some of what he writes and maintain how informed a Protestant & Presbyterian he was, and how well he really listened to Gerstner. Either that or he's being dishonest in some places--although it's possible he fooled himself.
But read the book if you know your stuff and want to see the type of wrguments used by RC's.
As someone who made the opposite journey I was not impressed.
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