I’ve already noted how He did this in the case of the rich young ruler: which passage appears immediately before the one we will shortly examine: Jesus vs. “Faith Alone” (Rich Young Ruler) * Dialogue: Rich Young Ruler & Good Works * Now here is what our Lord and Savior and His disciples say after that famous incident: Luke 18:26-30 (RSV) Those who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?” [27] But he said, “What is impossible with men is... Read more
Mark Martinson is a Lutheran (WELS). He showed up on my Facebook page under my link of a talk I gave on the radio (11-9-18) on sola Scriptura, or the Protestant rule of faith. Sola Scriptura entails the denial of papal and Church infallibility. Presumably, that’s why he challenged those doctrines in this particular thread. At first I thought he was a Catholic (perhaps a reactionary one: because they think so much like Protestants). I have edited a bit (the whole... Read more
I. The Dilemma of Competing Ecclesiologies: the Visible vs. the Invisible Church If Anglicans have any sort of notion of “indefectibility” — whereby the true Christian Church (or a valid portion of the universal catholic church, etc.) cannot and will not fall into rank heresy; being protected by the Holy Spirit, then it would be quite difficult for traditionalist Anglicans to square that concept with what is happening in liberal Anglican and Episcopalian circles today. If one takes a view... Read more
***** Cassidy McGillicuddy, who goes by “Captain Cassidy” runs a blog called Roll to Disbelieve. She describes herself and her views as follows: “I was raised Catholic by a very fervent family, converted to evangelicalism in my teens, and became a full-on fundamentalist shortly thereafter, . . . But shortly after college I figured out that my religion’s claims weren’t true. . . . I’m a humanist, a skeptic, a freethinker, and a passionate student of science, mythology, and history. . . .... Read more
Lutheran pastor and blogger Paul T. McCain has written a post decrying historic Calvinist iconoclasm and intolerance against Lutherans (citing in turn a reader’s translation of a German website about Lutheran history [link now defunct] ): All those Lutherans out there pining about what’s so “wrong” about orthodox Lutheranism’s supposed stubborn and unloving attitude toward non-Lutheran churches need to keep in mind that finally there is no possibility of agreement between those who deny the chief parts of the Small Catechism and those... Read more
A left-wing pro-lifer is a thing to discuss in and of itself (and I do quite often). I’m critical of the new pro-life movement (NPLM) in many ways (mostly when its adherents try to run down other pro-lifers, and who they vote for), and have repeatedly written about it in no uncertain terms. Here, however, I’m making the basic point that they are pro-life, which some folks want to deny. They have as much right to start a sub-movement with certain... Read more
I am so blasted tired of controversy and in-fighting among Catholics (mostly about political nonsense these days) that I could spit. While I defend Catholicism, I also defend Christianity in general over against atheism and today’s rampant cultural secularism, and I am ecumenical, too. I rejoice in the many things we Catholics have in common with other Christians, and I try my best to treat them with respect, as brothers and sisters in Christ. Hopefully, my energies are channeled into... Read more
I stumbled upon this solution today in a flash of inspiration. It’s one of those moments of figuring out something that is so simple that it was overlooked. Somehow, the President’s advisors: folks like Kellyanne “Goehring” Conway and Sebastian “Himmler” Gorka neglected to give him this rather obvious advice. If he had done what I will suggest, today he’d be loved and adored by liberals and their lapdog useful idiot RINOS and Never Rational Never Trumpers, who manage to (amazingly)... Read more
Trump is the worst President ever, nuts, an egomaniac and incompetent stooge who hasn’t done one good thing for the country. We need to get him out of there so we can get back to business as usual in Washington, with a Democrat who cares so much about people and African-Americans and women and Muslims and Mexicans. We need to get unemployment as high as we can again and hinder business with regulations as much as possible, so no one... Read more
The following exchange was taken from comments concerning an old paper now split into two different ones: Word “Protestant” Stemmed from Intolerance of Catholic Worship / Philip Melanchthon’s Agony Over Protestant Sectarianism. “CPA” is a Lutheran professor of history, with whom I have had many fruitful, amiable dialogues. His words will be in blue. ****** If the United Nations offered the Christian world a deal whereby we agree to tolerate both Christianity and Islam as equal religions in Europe and America, but Islam... Read more
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