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CONVERT’S INSIGHTS SHED LIGHT ON CATHOLIC FAITH

“Born” Catholics get the Truth handed to them on a silver platter.  Scott Hahn had to undergo a mighty struggle to get to the Truth, and in doing so, saw it revealed with a sharpness and brilliance that few are graced to experience.

Dr. Hahn, a former Presbyterian minister who is now a professor of Theology and Scripture at Franciscan University in Steubenville, shared the story of his struggle with a rapt audience of 450 at St. John’s Catholic Church in Westminster September 17.

In his three-part lecture, Hahn described how, though years of intense Biblical and theological study, he came to understand the scriptures, the Sacraments and the Eucharist in a way that led him inexorably from evangelical Protestantism to Catholicism.

“I wasn’t raised in a strong Christian family,” he told his audience.  “I had a strong conversion experience – one that kept me out of juvenile court!”

As a high schooler in the 1970s, Scott abandoned his delinquent ways to become a fervent evangelical Presbyterian, studying and reflecting carefully on the Bible.

“The formation I was receiving was decidedly anti-Catholic,” he said.  

“For me, the idea that one man was Peter’s successor was religious tyranny.  I felt it was my duty to liberate Catholics from this tyranny, and I did it rather effectively.”

The big picture

Majoring in theology at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, Scott began to read the Old Testament more carefully.  He wanted to get “the big picture:  the story, the plot, and the main characters” of salvation history, he explained.

He began to understand that “only when you read the Old and New Testaments together do you understand the plot.”

A professor helped him to see that the Old and New Covenants were the key to understanding, and that the word “covenant” meant more than a contract.

“In a covenant you make a promise, you add an oath, invoked in the name of God.  Jesus and the twelve Apostles thought about covenants this way.”

After graduation and marriage to his college sweetheart, Kimberly, the two went on to Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, where Scott deepened his understanding of the covenants God had made with his people.

God fathered his family down through the ages through six covenants:

• His covenant with Adam was a marriage.
• The covenant with Noah was a household.
• The covenant with Abraham was a tribe.
• The covenant with Moses made the 12 tribes into a national family.
• The covenant with David established Israel as a national kingdom family.
• Christ made the New Covenant to be God’s worldwide, or “catholic” (universal) family.

But with Hahn’s new understanding came some troubling thoughts.

“I wondered, where is this ‘international’ family?  There are 29,000 Protestant denominations, all of whom think they are interpreting God’s word correctly.”

After receiving his Master of Divinity in 1982, Hahn became pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Fairfax, Va.  

He also taught at a nearby Presbyterian seminary, where a student – an ex-Catholic – asked him, “Where does the Bible teach that ‘scripture alone’ is our sole authority?”

“What a dumb question!” snapped Hahn.

“Well, go ahead and give me  a dumb answer,” the youth shot back.

Hahn floundered for an answer, but he could not defend sola scriptura – the Protestant dogma that scripture alone forms the basis for belief – either to the student’s satisfaction or his own.

Hahn realized he had reached a crisis in his faith.

“I resigned my pastorate and went in search of a church that fit the job description:  an international church.”

He got an administrative job at his old alma mater, Grove City College, and spent his evenings studying Catholic theology books.

Poring over the Bible one night, he found a startling parallel:  in Isaiah 22, Hezekiah makes Eliakim his new royal minister by giving him “the keys of the kingdom.”

So when Jesus gave Peter “the keys of the kingdom,” he was following Jewish tradition.

“I was, like, wow!  This is like the cereal decoder ring:  I have found that the ‘international family,’ the Catholic Church, has Biblical grounds.”

Hahn enrolled at Marquette University’s doctoral program in theology on full scholarship with a teaching assistantship.

He became a Catholic in Easter, 1986.

Attending Mass on the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, he heard the readings:  Isaiah 22 and Matthew 16:13-21 – the same passages that he had “discovered” on Hezekiah and Eliakim, Christ and Peter.

“I realized, this is the way the Catholic Church has been reading the Bible for centuries.  I had reinvented the wheel!”

He wondered how many Catholics there were out there who “don’t connect the dots.

“But I am convinced that Catholics understand the Bible a lot better than they think they do,” he said.

The Mass is saturated with scripture, he pointed out.

“The Catholic Church is scripture’s home, and scripture’s home is the Liturgy.”

Swear to God

As an evangelical Protestant, Scott had believed that the Catholic Church’s belief in seven Sacraments was superstition, akin to paganism.

“I would ask my Catholic friends, ‘Where do you find sacraments in the Bible?  Where do you even find the word, “sacrament”?

“ ‘And where do you get off having seven of them?’ None of my Catholic friends had any answers.”

Focusing on covenant-making and oath-swearing in his three-year Master’s program, however, Hahn  had made some important discoveries.

He learned that the Latin word for covenant was “sacramentum.”  He also learned that the Hebrew word that means to swear a covenant oath has a second meaning:  to “seven” oneself.

“Seven is the number of covenanting,” he noted.  

God created the earth in six days, and established a covenant on the seventh day.  The Hebrews celebrated seven festivals each year.

Citing instances from the books of Job, Samuel and Joshua, Hahn said, “I discovered that the Old Testament is filled with these sevens, and whether [men like Saul, David and Joshua] swore and kept their covenants with God.”

In the New Testament, he said, “You can find sevens all over the place:  seven petitions in the Lord’s Prayer, the seven Beatitudes, the seven woes in Matthew 23.”

Moreover, he said, “I discovered that oath-swearing and oath-keeping is the tie that sweeps history along.  St. Augustine said that you cannot find any society that is not held together by oaths.”

Oaths are a part of the history of every civilization, going back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, he said.  In modern law, jurors, the President, every member of Congress, and all federal, state and local officials swear oaths.

Just as a secular society is held together with oaths, said Hahn, “The seven Sacraments are like supernatural oaths to form a divine kingdom.”

Hahn came to see the seven sacraments as signs of God’s covenant with humanity.

“Secular sacraments that we call oaths help us to become good citizens, with God’s help.  The seven Sacraments enable us to become saints.”

When Catholics receive the sacraments, they make a covenant with God that has weighty implications.

“St. Augustine said, the sacraments don’t make holiness easy; they make it possible,” said Hahn.

The Lamb’s Supper

As a young evangelical, Scott had been fascinated by the Book of Revelation.

Runaway best-selling books like Hal Lindsey’s The Late, Great Planet Earth and the Left Behind series saw end-of-the-world scenarios in John’s visions in Revelation, in which Christians would be taken up to heaven in the “Rapture,” while unbelievers would be “left behind.”

“You Catholics were numbered among the unbelievers left behind,” Hahn told his audience.

But when Scott finally attended Mass for the first time, he discovered the true meaning of Revelation.

He saw the candles, the incense, the white robes, the open Book.

When the priest elevated the Host, and the congregation chanted, “Lamb of God . . .” three times, and they recited, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord, God of power and might,” words taken straight from Revelation, “It was like a eureka moment,” said Hahn.

After the priest said the Benediction and everyone left, he remained sitting in the chapel, stunned, for 45 minutes.

“I realized that I had just seen and heard what John was describing about heaven in Revelation!  This is it, this is the Lamb’s Supper.

“The fulfillment of the Revelation of John isn’t just futuristic; it is liturgistic!  We don’t have to wait for heaven.  If we go to Mass, heaven is where we are.”

In 1990, four years after Scott joined the Church, his wife Kimberly, daughter of a Presbyterian minister, after much struggle, became a Catholic as well.

She said that Scott’s discoveries comparing the Mass and John’s visions of Revelation did more to open up the Mass to her than anything else.

Said Hahn:  “This truth is so beautiful and compelling, and it is there every Sunday:  heaven comes to earth every time Mass is celebrated.

“If you could see what is really going on in Mass through the eyes of our guardian angels, you would know I’m not exaggerating, but falling short.”

For more information on Scott Hahn’s writings and work, see www.SalvationHistory.com.