Introduction
You may find yourself wrestling with deep theological questions about the nature of the Church, the sacraments, and the true meaning of Scripture. When your faith demands absolute intellectual and spiritual integrity, you might face a painful conflict between your religious community and the evidence you uncover in the Bible.
Scott Hahn and his wife Kimberly faced this exact crisis as dedicated Presbyterian ministers and teachers whose intense anti-Catholic zeal gave way to an overwhelming discovery. A former anti-Catholic Presbyterian minister and his wife discover that the biblical covenant creates a divine family, leading them home to the Catholic Church.
This book traces their remarkable journey through four distinct stages.
- How does the biblical concept of covenant establish a divine family rather than a mere legal contract?
- Why did an unwavering commitment to Scripture force a Protestant pastor to resign his pulpit?
- How do the papacy and the role of Mary emerge directly from Old Testament typology?
- Can a marriage survive the devastating social and emotional trials of a profound religious conversion?
1. From Protestant Zeal to Covenant Discovery
Scott Hahn's early evangelical ministry was fueled by intense anti-Catholic conviction and a rigorous study of Scripture that ultimately uncovered the biblical covenant as a divine family bond.
Conversion and Anti-Catholic Zeal
You start your spiritual journey in high school when a university student named Jack invites you to Young Life meetings. Retreats and books like Paul Little's Know Why You Believe and C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity answer your intellectual questions. You commit your life to Christ after avoiding a longer sentence and receiving six months of probation instead of a yearlong sentence in a detention center.
Your former best friend Dave rejects you after your conversion. You stop by to say goodbye before you leave town, spending two hours talking with Dave before discovering a suicide attempt. Dave has prepared eight feet of rope with a noose at one end, but your unexpected visit leads to a tearful prayer and embrace.
Your early Protestant zeal manifests as deep anti-Catholic conviction. You are driven by the belief that Catholic teachings distort the biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone. Influenced by Martin Luther and anti-Catholic literature such as Lorraine Boettner's Roman Catholicism, you actively seek to correct and convert Catholics whom you view as trapped in works-righteousness and idolatry regarding the Eucharist.
Upon receiving your late Catholic grandmother's religious articles, you tear apart her rosary and prayer books. You hope to free her soul from what you consider superstitious nonsense.
The Discovery of Covenant and Contraception
You enter Grove City College for four years, where you meet Kimberly. You unite your complementary theological convictions, ministries, and writing ambitions, culminating in your marriage on August 18, 1979. Before getting engaged, Kimberly casually asks you how many children you want. She is thrilled when you reply to keep it down to five or six. Five hundred friends attend your wedding.
Through intensive personal Bible study regarding infant baptism, you conclude that the concept of the covenant is the overarching theme uniting the entire Bible. Challenged by peers getting rebaptized, you research infant baptism and discover that God consistently included children in His covenant from Abraham through the New Testament, using circumcision in the Old Testament and baptism in the New. This history spans two thousand years from the time of Abraham to the coming of Christ.
When you present your biblical research on infant baptism to your peers, they refuse to discuss it or alter their emotionally driven decisions.
Marriage is fundamentally a covenant involving an exchange of persons rather than a legal contract exchanging goods and services. While studying covenant theology, you read John Kippley's book Birth Control and the Marriage Covenant. This shifts your perspective on marriage and contraception, arguing that every covenant has an enactment and renewal act. The marital act is the covenant renewal, and using birth control to destroy the potential for new life thwarts the life-giving love of the covenant.
Kimberly studies contraception during her Christian ethics course. She concludes that biblical teaching consistently views children as a blessing, contradicting modern notions of family planning. Fertility should be prized, and using birth control fails to respect the lordship of Christ over the body and the sovereignty of God over family planning.
2. Stepping Down for Intellectual Integrity
In ancient Hebrew scripture, covenants formed sacred family bonds and kinship through the exchange of persons, meaning God's covenant makes believers part of a divine family. Scott discovered that biblical covenants are distinct from contracts because they establish family kinship. The New Covenant established a worldwide family where Christ shares His divine sonship, making justification a matter of becoming God's children rather than a purely courtroom legal exchange.
As Scott mapped out salvation history as a series of covenantal stages of divine fathering, he realized the foundational Protestant pillar of sola scriptura lacked biblical support and chose to resign from his pastorate.
Covenants as Stages of Fathering
The Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone lacks scriptural backing, as Saint Paul taught that justification establishes believers as God's children through grace and active love. Scott found that Paul never taught justification by faith alone and that passages like James 2:24 explicitly state that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. This realization mirrored the theological positions of Dr. Norman Shepherd.
Scott called Professor Norman Shepherd after discovering they shared the same view on justification, and learned Shepherd was facing a heresy trial at Westminster Theological Seminary.
God structured salvation history through a progressive series of covenants that acted as stages of fathering His family, culminating in the worldwide Catholic family. While teaching at a Christian high school, Scott mapped out a timeline where Adam's covenant was marriage, Noah's was a household, Abraham's was a tribe, Moses's formed a national family, David's formed a kingdom family, and Christ's New Covenant formed a universal or catholic family.
Students at Fairfax Christian School pointed out to Scott that his pyramid model of the worldwide family structure closely resembled the Catholic Church and the Pope.
Weekly celebration of the Eucharist serves as the vital renewal of the covenant for God's family, aligning with biblical patterns found in Hebrews and the Gospel of John. After becoming a pastor in Virginia, Scott proposed weekly communion to his congregation, arguing that married couples do not renew their vows only four times a year. The congregation unanimously approved weekly communion and experienced a deeper sense of community.
Scott's church elder Dick agreed that weekly communion resembled regular renewal of marriage vows, leading to the unanimous approval of weekly communion.
Resigning over Authority
The Protestant foundational doctrine of sola scriptura cannot be proven from Scripture itself, as the Bible does not declare itself as the sole authority. When a student challenged Scott on where the Bible teaches sola scriptura, Scott searched in vain for a biblical proof text. Consulting top theologians revealed that sola scriptura is a theological presupposition rather than a proven conclusion.
A student during a Church history class asked Scott where the Bible teaches that Scripture alone is sole authority, triggering a profound theological crisis.
A minister must prioritize theological truth and intellectual honesty over career advancement, even if it means resigning from a pastorate and turning down a deanship. Faced with unresolvable questions regarding Protestant pillars and his own shifting theological conclusions, Scott chose to resign from his pastorate at Trinity Presbyterian Church and decline a full-time seminary deanship to maintain integrity before God.
Scott turned down a dream job as seminary dean at age twenty-six because he could no longer teach without absolute clarity and certainty from God's Word.
3. Searching for the True Church and Rome
Scott's search for the Church led him past Eastern Orthodoxy to recognize the papacy as the Davidic prime minister's office, the biblical roots of Mary, and the reality of the Catholic covenant family.
Scott examined Eastern Orthodoxy by meeting with Peter Gilquist and studying various Orthodox bodies. He concluded they were hopelessly divided along ethnic lines like a family of brothers who lost their father, stagnant in theology, and mistaken in rejecting the filioque clause and papal headship through caesaropapism.
Scott and Gerry Matatics traveled to meet Dr. John Gerstner at the York Steak House in Harrisburg to debate sola fide and authority. Scott pressed on how believers can be certain of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament when fallible church councils and popes compiled the list. Dr. Gerstner conceded that Protestants only have a fallible collection of infallible documents and must rely on probable historical judgments.
The Papacy and the Rosary
In Matthew 16, Jesus gives Peter the new name of Rock, the promise to build His Church, and the keys of the Kingdom of heaven. This parallels Isaiah 22 where the King of Israel appoints a prime minister with the keys, establishing an office meant to be handed down to successors.
Scott locked himself in his office to pray his first Rosary for an impossible petition, which was completely reversed within three months. He overcame his final major obstacle regarding Mary by praying the Rosary and realizing that Christ fulfilled the commandment to honor his mother by bestowing divine glory upon her, and believers imitate Christ by honoring whom He honors. Furthermore, the Rosary fulfills the prophecy in Luke 1:48 that all generations shall call Mary blessed.
Entering the Catholic Church
Covenant theology views God's relationship with humanity not as a mere legal contract, but as a family bond where members share flesh and blood. Christ instituted the Eucharist to enable believers to share in the literal flesh-and-blood bond of His New Covenant family.
Scott wrote a one-hundred-page paper at Marquette University titled Familia Dei: Towards a Theology of Covenant, Family and Trinity.
Despite promising his wife he would wait until 1990, Scott began attending daily Mass at Gesu parish in Milwaukee and developed an overwhelming conviction that delaying obedience to receive Christ physically in the Eucharist was disobedience. He was received into the Church at the Easter Vigil in 1986.
Scott was received into the Church at the Easter Vigil in 1986 by Monsignor Bruskewitz, alongside his friend Gerry Matatics who also converted.
4. Surviving a Mixed Marriage and Reintegration
Converting to Catholicism can lead to profound social isolation, as friends and family members distance themselves or treat the convert with hostility. Scott experienced immediate rejection from former friends, graduate students, and family members who treated him like an imposter or a leper. Unlike joining mainstream Protestant denominations, converting to Catholicism was viewed by his peers as a traitorous misdeed rather than a matter for respectful dialogue.
A devout evangelical graduate student and close friend of Scott became a stranger overnight, and family members grew silent and turned away after he entered the Catholic Church.
A mixed marriage undergoing deep religious division can survive and be sustained only through the supernatural grace of the sacrament of matrimony.
The spiritual chasm between Scott and Kimberly brought their marriage to the brink of collapse, stopping them from sharing spiritual life. Scott relied on the maxim that marriage is humanly impossible on one's own, which is why Christ reestablished it as a sacrament to provide supernatural endurance. Days and weeks passed without Scott and Kimberly sharing anything spiritual together, turning their previous rich ministry partnership into a period of trial and agony.
The Pain of a Divided Home
During Kimberly's third pregnancy, she experienced a dangerous hemorrhage from placenta previa while visiting a Protestant church. Through rapid prayers to Saint Gerard and Saint Joseph, and the miraculous coincidence of an obstetrician visiting the same building, the baby's life was spared.
Dr. Marmion happened to be visiting Elmbrook Church in the basement at the exact moment Kimberly began hemorrhaging on the main floor, allowing for immediate emergency intervention at Saint Joseph's Hospital.
Spiritual leadership in a mixed marriage requires respecting a spouse's conscience rather than forcing premature religious submission. Despite his intense desire for Kimberly to join him at Mass, Scott refused to use his role as spiritual leader to compel her compliance before her mind and heart were ready. He respected her convictions while trusting God to work in her life over time.
When a young man at a home Bible study recited a Hail Mary, Kimberly fled the room in agony; in response, Scott relocated the Bible study outside their home to protect her peace.
Yielding the Heart to God
Surrendering personal plans and praying for the grace to accept God's will breaks self-imposed spiritual barriers and restores inner peace. Kimberly struggled with deep fear that yielding to God's will would force her to become a Catholic against her conscience. Following her father's advice, she committed to praying daily for the grace to surrender fully, which eventually lifted her fear and opened her heart to God's guidance.
Kimberly spent thirty days praying daily for the grace to pray the total surrender prayer, which ultimately unlocked her emotional cage and allowed her to participate joyfully in her daughter's Catholic baptism.
Direct confrontational theological debates and pushing books on a resistant spouse usually fail, whereas backing off from manipulation and focusing on respect, love, and personal feelings allows the Holy Spirit to work. Scott realized that his aggressive attempts to engage Kimberly in theological arguments only resulted in a kiss of death for any books he recommended. Influenced by advice from Opus Dei member Gil Kaufmann, he stopped treating her conversion as a perennial project and chose instead to be loving and respectful, letting go of control.
You can follow practical steps to mend relations:
- Stop using confrontational debate tactics with a resistant spouse.
- Share personal feelings instead of trying to maneuver or manipulate.
- Accept that the other person may never convert and release them as a personal project.
Deep-seated theological resistance and emotional anger toward the Catholic Church are often broken only when a person surrenders personal control, anger, and intellectual pride to God during Lent. Kimberly struggled for years with anger toward the Catholic Church for disrupting her family life and theological framework. On Ash Wednesday, while seeking housing in Steubenville, she felt the Lord ask her to give up herself. Yielding this anger transformed her perspective, allowing her to see that God had been lovingly behind her entire painful journey.
On Ash Wednesday, Kimberly decided to give up herself for Lent instead of minor sacrifices like chocolate, leading to her realization that God was calling her home to the Church that Easter.
The communion of saints is not a theoretical abstraction but an active, present reality where believers are surrounded and supported by heavenly witnesses who have endured similar earthly sufferings. During hospital stays following miscarriages and her daughter's severe fever, Kimberly re-evaluated Hebrews 12:1. Rather than viewing the communion of saints as isolated from earthly believers, she realized they act like former medalists in an Olympic stadium cheering on and interceding for those currently running the race.
While lying in an empty maternity ward recovering from an ectopic pregnancy surgery without her baby or visiting children, Kimberly meditated on Hebrews 12 and experienced the comforting presence of the cloud of witnesses.
Conclusion
Scott and Kimberly Hahn show that discovering the Catholic Church requires following biblical truth wherever it leads, even through intense personal and relational trials. You can integrate these lessons into your own spiritual journey by applying a few practical steps.
- Study Scripture daily to uncover the rich covenantal relationship God offers you as a member of His divine family.
- Examine your deepest convictions with intellectual honesty, willing to surrender personal comfort or professional standing for the truth.
- Trust in the sacramental grace of the Church to heal division, restore your marriage, and sustain you through social isolation.
- Embrace the universal call to holiness by offering every detail of your daily life as a living sacrifice to God.
- Share your faith with patience, love, and respect for the conscience of others, knowing that God works in His own time.
10 Key Ideas
- Scott Hahn and his wife Kimberly discovered that the biblical covenant creates a divine family, leading them away from Protestant ministry and into the Catholic Church.
- Intensive personal Bible study revealed that God established salvation history through a progressive series of covenants acting as stages of fathering His family.
- Recognizing that the foundational Protestant pillar of sola scriptura lacked biblical support forced Scott to resign from his pastorate and decline a seminary deanship.
- Scott concluded that Eastern Orthodoxy was divided and stagnant, leaving him to search for the true Church in Rome.
- In Matthew 16, Jesus gives Peter the keys of the Kingdom, establishing the papacy as an office derived from the Davidic prime minister.
- Scott overcame his final obstacle regarding Mary by praying the Rosary and realizing that believers imitate Christ by honoring His mother.
- Scott's overwhelming conviction regarding the Real Presence in the Eucharist led him to be received into the Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil in 1986.
- The intense spiritual chasm between Scott and Kimberly brought their mixed marriage to the brink of collapse, surviving only through the supernatural grace of the sacrament of matrimony.
- Kimberly's struggle with anger and fear ended when she surrendered personal control and theological pride to God during Lent, opening her heart to His guidance.
- Discovering the Catholic Church requires following biblical truth wherever it leads, trusting in sacramental grace to heal divisions and sustain believers through intense personal trials.