Trueman and Rome: Co-belligerency Against the LGBTQ+ Fails to Uphold the Gospel

By Jonathan Peters

The Napa Institute (NI) exists to “empower … Catholic leaders to renew the Church and transform the culture.” As their website states: “We believe that now is the time to advance the re-evangelization of the United States. Yet many yearn for the foundation they need to advance Christ’s mission. At the same time, leaders and benefactors yearn to support Catholic causes. The Napa Institute acts as a conduit so all can courageously and eloquently defend our faith in the public square.” NI seeks to accomplish this goal by providing conferences, pilgrimages, and events worldwide.

For their 2021 conference, NI invited Carl Trueman, a professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College and an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. In his lecture at the institute, Trueman declared that “Christianity is a dogmatic religion. On that much the greatest theologians across the Christian spectrum agree, from [the Protestant] Martin Luther to [the Catholic] John Henry Newman” (emphasis added).

After the lecture, the senior editor of the National Catholic Register (NCR) interviewed Trueman and asked how he, a Presbyterian minister, became a keynote speaker at NI. Trueman answered (emphasis added):

Over the last couple of years, I’ve developed good friendships with Catholics.

There are significant differences between us over things that we believe. But as we move into this new phase of cultural engagement, or cultural war, I see significant common ground between myself and my Catholic friends both on the affirmation of the supernatural against those who deny it and on the need to stand in opposition to the dominant mores of the cultural elites—two issues that divide me from my liberal Protestant peers.

Recently, another Catholic organization, the Leonine Forum (LF), asked Trueman to speak at one of their sessions in Washington D.C. At the conclusion of his lecture, Trueman was asked: “Why are you not a Catholic?” After all, the inquirer noted Trueman “expressed love [in his presentation] for the early Church Fathers, admiration for Thomas Aquinas, and an approach to ethics that resonated with [the late Pope] John Paul II’s theology of the body.”

On December 12, Trueman explained his response in a First Things article (emphasis added throughout):

It’s hard to answer such a question in brief compass at the end of a lecture. Many issues are important in my commitment to Reformed Protestantism: authority, salvation, the nature of the ministry, and the significance of sacraments are just a few of the more obvious. And while I am open to the criticism that Protestantism hasn’t given Mary her due, I believe the Catholic Church has given her a significance that is well beyond anything the Bible would countenance. But above all, at the current moment, Catholicism doesn’t appeal to me because of the man at the top: Pope Francis. In my answer, I did try to be respectful of my audience, but I could not help but observe that the present pope seems to be nothing more than a liberal Protestant in a white papal robe. And as a Protestant, I am acutely aware of the damage such people do.

Furthermore, he said:

I have numerous friends who have swum the Tiber over the last decades, mainly for intellectual or aesthetic reasons. Ironically, the intellectual heft of historic Catholicism and its enviable aesthetic achievements seem to be the very things that the pope regards with indifference. And both of these seem to connect to that telltale sign that always presages trouble in Christian circles: a loss of the transcendent in favor of the immanent.

Trueman concluded:

Confessional, orthodox Protestants should take no satisfaction in Rome’s increasing resemblance to the old enemy of liberal Protestantism. Rome still has the money and institutional weight to make a difference in these great struggles over what it means to be human. If Rome equivocates and falls on these issues, the world will become colder and harsher for all of us. To quote Elrond, our list of allies grows thin. And Pope Francis is not reversing that process.

Orthodox Protestants should be greatly disturbed by Trueman’s actions listed above. They certainly should abhor theological liberalism and moral perversion, but this should not cause them to neglect their duty to stand against other false religions, with or without Pope Francis at the helm (Rom. 16:17-18, Gal. 1:6-9, 2 Tim. 3:1-9, 1 John 4:1-3, Jude 3-4). Traditionally, Catholicism has had a better view than liberalism on matters like the Trinity, the person of Christ, and supernaturalism, but as Kevin Bauder has noted, Rome’s “grasp of both the nature of spiritual authority and the application of salvation are [still] fatally flawed.”¹ Unfortunately, Trueman has downplayed these facts and promoted an unbiblical ecumenicity with culturally conservative Catholics to fight against the LGBTQ+ community.

His friends’ conversions to Rome and the NCR and LF inquiries should have been wake-up calls to Trueman. His presence on Romanist platforms, his assistance in Catholic education, his compliments of Rome,² and his failure to clearly preach against Rome’s soul-damning theology, have compromised the gospel and caused confusion. He has condemned one enemy of Christ (a progressive pope) while granting Christian fellowship to others (traditional Catholics). He has therefore “unequally yoked [himself] together with unbelievers” (2 Cor. 6:14) and become a “partaker of [their] evil deeds” (2 John 9-11). Protestants must be acutely aware of the damage such people do.