Ecclesiology

Last updated on: May 29, 2017 at 3:50 pm By Dave Armstrong

(vs. Nathan Rinne) Lutheran church in Wittenberg, Germany where the Protestant Revolt began, with Martin Luther [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license] * * * (10-17-11) * * Nathan’s words will be in blue. * * * * * I concede that just because an early church father argues from Scripture this does not necessarily mean “that only Scripture has authority to rebuke error and bind people…”. Not necessarily. But – do we find the church fathers consistently... Read more

Dialogue with a Lutheran: Salvation and Miscellany

Last updated on: May 30, 2017 at 3:14 pm By Dave Armstrong

(vs. Nathan Rinne) Lutheran church in Wittenberg, Germany where the Protestant Revolt began, with Martin Luther [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license] * * * (10-14-11) * * Nathan’s words will be in blue. * * * Dave, I appreciate your approach and your clarity with which you write, but at the same time, it seems to me that right from the get-go you have not been nuanced enough in your presentation. You have, I believe unintentionally, misrepresented Chemnitz’s true position. ... Read more

Dialogue with a Lutheran: Church Fathers & “Sola Scriptura”

Last updated on: May 30, 2017 at 3:24 pm By Dave Armstrong

(vs. Nathan Rinne) Lutheran church in Wittenberg, Germany where the Protestant Revolt began, with Martin Luther [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license] * * (10-13-11) * * * Nathan’s words will be in blue. * * * * * First, I understand your frustration about Chemnitz questioning the sincerity of RCs, especially as regards their love for the Scriptures and their concern to interpret it properly. He does seem rather harsh, even if in his day he was not, and... Read more

Dialogue with a Lutheran: Introductory Matters

Last updated on: May 30, 2017 at 3:28 pm By Dave Armstrong

(vs. Nathan Rinne) Lutheran church in Wittenberg, Germany where the Protestant Revolt began, with Martin Luther [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license] * * * (10-12-11) * * Nathan Rinne (words in blue in this paper) is a friendly and able Lutheran apologist, with whom I have been having cordial discussions. He first showed up on my blog with a comment under a post of mine about Luther. Nathan then started expressing interest in replying to my (five) critiques of Martin... Read more

Debate with Lutherans Regarding Luther’s Mariology

Last updated on: May 30, 2017 at 3:32 pm By Dave Armstrong

. . . Including my Citation Mistake from 1994 (Clarification and Retraction) Posthumous Portrait of Martin Luther as an Augustinian Monk (after 1546), from the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons] * * (10-2-11) * * * I am not “anti-Luther.” I am opposed to tenets of Luther’s theology that I deem to be erroneous from a Catholic perspective. Catholics argue for Catholic theology; Lutherans for Lutheran theology. That’s not rocket science. But honest differences do... Read more

Defending the Historical Adam & Eve of Genesis

Last updated on: January 6, 2022 at 3:22 pm By Dave Armstrong

Adam and Eve Are Driven out of Eden (1866), by Gustave Doré (1832-1883) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons] *** (9-25-11; rev. 1-6-22) *** Words of Eric S. Giunta will be in blue. * * * * * The encyclical I cited (Humani Generis) allows the possibility of evolution, but it states that one must believe in a literal first human pair (rejection of polygenism) and that God creates a human soul at each conception. So this doesn’t follow from evolution per se.... Read more

Historicity of Adam and Eve

Last updated on: January 6, 2022 at 2:01 pm By Dave Armstrong

Ven. Pope Pius XII’s encyclical, Humani Generis (12 August 1950) was designed (in the subtitle) to counter “some false opinions threatening to undermine the foundations of Catholic doctrine”: 37. When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural... Read more

Protestant Errors Regarding Luther & the Biblical Canon

Last updated on: May 30, 2017 at 3:44 pm By Dave Armstrong

. . . and Anti-Catholic blaming of Catholic apologists for them Posthumous Portrait of Martin Luther as an Augustinian Monk (after 1546), from the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons] * * * (8-27-11) * * * It’s simply amazing, the amount of misinformation, disinformation and propaganda anti-Catholics dish out. They make Baghdad Bob (remember that clown?) look like Abraham Lincoln. I would have thought that my previous copiously documented examination of this nonsense had laid to rest... Read more

Martin Luther’s View of the Book of Esther

Last updated on: May 30, 2017 at 3:48 pm By Dave Armstrong

Anti-Catholic Attempts to Blame Catholics for a Questionable Luther Citation Passed Down by Three Admiring Protestants Photograph by “Bernd1968” [public domain / Pixabay] * * * (8-20-11) * * I wrote a paper on Luther’s view of the book of Esther (24 March 2007). In it I explained (right at the top) that I had made an honest mistake, and was correcting it (unfortunately, it made it into my book, A Biblical Defense of Catholicism, completed in 1996 and... Read more

Protestants, Contraception, the Pill, and NFP

Last updated on: May 30, 2017 at 3:50 pm By Dave Armstrong

An intact human embryo at 6-week embryonic age (or 8-week gestational age), from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy case [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license] * * * (8-12-11) * * * Sometimes, in order to justify use of contraception, the advocate will attempt to equate NFP with it, as if there is no essential difference. It’s the same dynamic as running down annulment as “Catholic divorce” as if it is not essentially different, either. I think we can state... Read more