Introduction One of the biggest issues with Sola Scriptura (the idea that the Bible alone is the ultimate authority for faith and morals) is that the Bible nowhere says that it alone functions as the ultimate authority for faith and morals (or anything else). This makes Sola Scriptura an authoritative extra-biblical tradition (the very thing it was supposed…
Introduction Some kind of “apostasy narrative” is required to explain why a group that did not exist for nearly 2,000 years can consider itself the true expression of Christianity. Obviously, if the Church founded by Jesus did not go into apostasy, there would be no excuse to create a new group or “restore” what was “lost.” Unlike…
Introduction In another post, I detailed some of the more egregious theological errors being supported by the the Jehovah’s Witnesses mistranslation of the Bible (the New World Translation, or NWT). Those are issues that should concern all Christians. There are others, however, of special interest to Catholics that are less well-known and rarely discussed. Some of these are…
Introduction In other posts, I detailed some of the more egregious theological errors being supported by the the Jehovah’s Witnesses mistranslation of the Bible. Now I want to touch briefly on the issue of Jehovah’s Witnesses and Hell (mostly because the title and headings are funny). Hell No! It is well known that Charles Taze Russell,…
Introduction When teaching Introduction the the New Testament at my Evangelical seminary, I always got a kick out of starting the first class by asking the students to turn to 1 Maccabees. Reactions ranged form confusion to uncertain laughter – “Silly professor, that’s a Catholic book!” To keep from being reported to the Dean, I always explained…
Introduction I had two young Mormon (LDS / Latter-Day Saint) missionaries come by my house the other day. Although I have had many meetings with Mormon missionaries in the past, this time I wanted to take a different tack than before. I wanted more than a contentious theological response that basically boiled down to “I have beliefs that disagree…
Introduction Peter Kreeft once noted that, “When Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote his great Summa Theologica, he could find only two objections to the existence of God, even though he tried to list at least three objections to every one of the thousands of theses he tried to prove in that great work” (Fundamentals of the Faith, p.…
Introduction After numerous faculty and alumni from Southern Evangelical Seminary became Catholic, the school finally offered a class on Roman Catholicism being taught by Norman Geisler at Southern Evangelical Seminary. Given that so many of his associates and students have become Catholic over the years (including the co-author of his latest book on the subject!), this was not…
Introduction While treated as synonymous with “sweet” in today’s common speech, the term “angelic” actually describes beings that are far more amazing than any of their various depictions (each of which is related to particular angelic qualities – none of them complete). When angels appeared to men in the Bible, the reaction was often one…
Introduction “I want to know one thing: the way to heaven. God himself has condescended to teach me the way. He has written it down in a book. Oh, give me that book! At any price give me the book of God.” (John Wesley) Walk into any bookstore and you can probably find “a Bible”…
Douglas Beaumont 