Heiko Oberman on Historical Method

One of the reasons why a historian may be suspicious of the use of the term Forerunner, while operating freely and frequently with its Latin equivalent “antecedent,” is its possible causative connotation. It might seem to imply a concept of history which presupposes determination by a pre-established divine plan or by its secular equivalent, immanent …

The Doctrine of God: An Introduction

Jesus Christ is “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3), but he is such within the context and background of the Old Testament. Jesus himself noted this to his disciples: “beginning with Moses and all …

Roman Catholicism on Trial: Evidence and Assumptions

Protestants who engage Roman Catholics often leave the discussion in frustration. It seems that Roman Catholic apologists have an answer for everything. At times,  Roman Catholicism appears to lack falsifiability. The idea of falsifiability will be in the background of this article, but my primary purpose will be to show that, given its theological system, …

How the Counter Reformation Operated

This is merely one example of the absolute repression of the Roman Catholic Church of the Reformation era. In 1543 a little book was published in Venice with the title Trattato utilissimo del beneficio di Giesu Christo crocifisso i cristiani (A Most Useful Treatise on the Merits of Jesus Christ Crucified for Christians), written by …

Review of “Canon Revisited” by Michael Kruger

I recently finished reading “Canon Revisited” by Michael Kruger.  The author answers the question, “How can Christians have confidence that the 27 books of the New Testament are the correct ones?” Michael J. Kruger (PhD, University of Edinburgh) is professor of New Testament and academic dean at Reformed Theological Seminary, and the author of a …

John Bugay on Catholicism: Some Older Blog Posts

My name, John Bugay, has some notoriety in the world of Catholic apologetics, and as a result, the word “anti-Catholic” has appeared in connection with my name in some search engines. This blog post is in response to several items that appear in conjunction with searches for my name. I am “anti-Catholic” in the sense …

The Fictional Beginnings of Papal Infallibility, Part 1

It is no stretch at all to call this fictional. The concept of “papal infallibility”, the foundation of the Roman Catholic IP, the epistemological foundation of certitude for a narrow band of Roman Catholics, never existed for the first 1200 years of church history. Michael Liccione wrote of “papal ratifications of dogmatic canons issued by …

On mining for support for doctrines “after the fact”, and finding “100% certainty” “under certain conditions”. Or: “Dogma-appreciation 101”.

This is something that Nathan Rinne picked up on a couple of weeks ago: Earlier in the thread [the “Visible Church” thread], in post # 221, John Thayer Jensen wrote: “… people often seem to me to make the mistake of deciding, first, what things are true – which implies some external canon – and …

Straining at a gnat, while swallowing the camel of centuries’-worth of ‘distinctively Roman accretions’

Continuing with my very long discussion with Michael Liccione at Called to Communion: Mike 286: That remark is as good a place as any to start for the sake of explaining what’s wrong with your approach at the most fundamental, philosophical level. There is nothing wrong with my approach at any level, much less “the …

“Suppressing the Truth by Wickedness”

John Thayer Jenson, you asked in Comment 271: I don’t see how this helps me to know which of us is right and which is suppressing the truth by his wickedness. I believe God’s Voice has told me the Catholic Church is His Body and men can be saved only through it; you believe – …