Wheaton College, being evangelical and finding itself containing a professor who had decided to convert to Catholicism, fired him. The college has a twelve-point mission statement, clearly written from an evangelical point of view. But the professor had claimed that he could agree with all twelve points. Could a Catholic reasonably agree with Wheaton's twelve points? There has been much discussion, in different places on this. I see that two approaches are possible: firstly, one might look at the statements, decide that they were written (in part) to exclude particular evangelical understandings of what Catholics believe, and consequently a Catholic would have to disagree. Alternatively, one might say that the agreement has to be with what the words say, and not with what others may hold in their head as to their meaning. In which case, a Catholic might possibly look at the words, and decide that they could be agreed with — though a Catholic might have more to say.

For example, one of the statements has:

the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are verbally inspired by God and inerrant in the original writing, so that they are fully trustworthy and of supreme and final authority in all they say.

According to the first way of looking at things, one might say that the statement is intended to eliminate appeal to the Catholic magisterium, and consequently disagree. On the alternative view, one might wonder what "final" and "supreme" actually mean. In the absence of an explanation included with the point, it is not clear. Scripture is true — how can there be something more supremely true than an ordinary truth? What is an authority? I doubt that evangelicals would be able to define that in a way that they would all agree. So, if a Catholic professor says that he can agree with the Wheaton wording, that seems like a reasonable claim.