From Calvinist Prosecutor to Papist Apologist

From Calvinist Prosecutor to Papist Apologist 
| David
Deavel | Catholic World Report


Convert
Jason Stellman's new old-fashioned apologetic explains that we are
“hard-wired for heaven”

Sunday,
June 21, marked the 90th anniversary of the Scopes Monkey
Trial decision. The questions surrounding evolution—meaning, in
particular, the origins of humans—still raise large and important
questions for how we understand human nature and the doctrine of
original sin. But Jason Stellman thinks that the obsession with our
physical origins, though understandable, is perhaps theologically
off-kilter. Where we've come from biologically is not as important
as where we're heading. It's not the beginning of the journey,
man—it's the destination. Stellman's The
Destiny of the Species (Wipf
and Stock, 2013) is a brief,
rollicking, and readable apologetic, notable not just for turning the
question of origins on its head, but also for pioneering a slightly
different route from the path taken by many Catholic converts in
their first books.

From Prosecutor to Papist

Stellman's
own personal story is compelling. Born and raised in Orange County,
California, Stellman came to serious faith in the context of the
Evangelicalism of the California preacher Chuck Smith's Calvary
Chapel ministries. He served as a Protestant missionary in both
Hungary and Uganda before turning to a more theologically rigorous
form of Protestantism: Calvinism. Stellman attended Westminster
Seminary in Escondido, California and began ministering in the
Presbyterian Church in America, the largest conservative Presbyterian
denomination in the U.S., planting Exile Presbyterian Church in
Woodinville, WA in 2004. Stellman's name came into the limelight
when he was chosen to serve as the chief prosecutor in the 2011
heresy trial of fellow Presbyterian minister Peter Leithart, a
Calvinist writer and scholar known to readers of journals including
First Things and
Touchstone. Leithart's
views were accused of being in line with a school of Presbyterian
thought known as the “Federal Vision,” and he was tried for,
among other charges, allegedly failing to distinguish justification
and sanctification, divine law and divine grace, and teaching that
baptism confers grace and divine adoption. In short, Leithart was on
trial for being too Catholic.

Although
Stellman's work as prosecutor was acknowledged as solid at the time,
Leithart was acquitted by the Northwest Presbytery. In the time
after this trial, however, Stellman himself began to question certain
historic Protestant beliefs like sola scriptura and
sola fide.

Continue reading on the CWR site.