A Short Defense of Sola Scriptura

One common criticism of the doctrine of sola scriptura is that it relies on a “list of books” or table of contents that is not contained in scripture. One way to put this objection is the following: if all doctrine or the “rule of faith” is contained in scripture alone and the list of books …

A Brief History of the Christian Doctrine of God, Part 1: Anselm

Anselm of Canterbury and the Beginnings of “Classical Theism” The Westminster Confession of Faith explicitly endorses reason as well as Scripture as being a source of doctrine, when it says, “The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, …

Bluster without truth or substance

Responding to Andrew McCallum in comments below, Joseph Richardson not only misrepresented what “tradition” really meant in the New Testament, but he went further and congratulated himself for doing a fine job of things, and related it in a standalone blog post. Nevertheless, he showed himself to be making several crucial errors, and demonstrating a …

Two Roman Catholic claims that cannot both be true

When engaging Roman Catholic apologists one often encounters two claims: 1) Roman Catholicism is publicly verifiable, meaning that one can provide sufficient reasons for a nonbeliever to convert to Roman Catholicism (see here for a detailed discussion on this) and 2) that any conclusion concerning the type of church Christ founded that does not secure …

Good Pope John

Paul Bassett sent me the ad nearby. I wrote back to tell him I already have a job: Habemus Papam! Revolution in Rome It’s been a year since the Vatican came under new management. Readers will remember the precipitating event, when Catholic Answers elevated John Bugay to the Pontificate. As a golden parachute, Pope Bugay …

James White is Right vs Wright on the NPP

In his Dividing Line show yesterday, Dr. James White talked about an radio broadcast that he shared with N.T. Wright, of “New Perspective on Paul” (NPP) fame. In the course of the show, Dr. White mentioned that he believes he must spend more time on this topic, and for this I’m grateful. Noting that the …

How do we really know what God wants from us?

In response to a comment asking “how do we know?” I wrote: Who wants their faith to be formed around a legend? I certainly don’t. But that is the legacy of hundreds of years-worth of papal “history”. This the right question to ask. We all want to rest our faith on something certain, that’s not …

Answers for a ‘Desperately Seeking’ Susan

Susan 242 said: I am a brand new convert to the Catholic Church(12-16-2012) I am very sorry to hear this. It’s not too late for you to leave. I did leave, too, after a number of years. Those years now seem like wasted time, much damage having occurred, except that, you know, God has a …

Irenaeus: Scripture Interprets Scripture

According to Avery Cardinal Dulles, “At the beginning of the twentieth century, Maurice Blondel sought to carve out a middle path between post-Tridentine and Modernist theories of tradition….To his lasting credit, he rediscovered the capacity of tradition to transmit what was already known in an implicit way but not yet formulated in conceptual terms.” (From …

A Positive View of Christian Foundations

Jesus said, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the …