An Evangelical Assessment of the Roman Catholic Gospel

In the 2005 book Is the Reformation Over? Noll and Nystrom argued that “evangelicals can embrace at least two-thirds” of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Later, they admit that when the Catechism speaks of Christ, it interweaves him to the Church to the point of making them one, which is unacceptable for evangelicals. So, on the one hand, there is an apparent “common orthodoxy” presumably based on a common understanding of the Gospel; on the other, there is a profound difference on the meaning of its basic words (e.g. Christ, the church, grace, faith, salvation, etc.). So the question remains: is the Roman Catholic Gospel the “same” or “another” Gospel? The talk explores the contours of the Gospel as they emerge from the long tradition of the Roman Catholic Church but especially from the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) up to Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel, 2013). The talk provides an evangelical assessment of the Roman Catholic Gospel as far as its biblical foundations and apologetic significance are concerned.