A Christian's Road Home to Rome and Journey Onward
Previously we examined the claim made by anti-Catholics that “Catholics cannot interpret Scripture for themselves.” I showed, by the teachings of Vatican II, that Catholics are not only able to read and interpret Scripture, but encouraged to. There are, however, other objections and other texts that I’ve seen raised to pursue this claim. I’d like …
Continue reading “More Objections to Catholic Biblical Interpretation”
A claim that I’ve often heard made by anti-Catholics is that “Catholics cannot intepret Scripture for themselves, but must submit to the Catholic magisterium.” The claim is that the Catholic faithful cannot, are not able, or especially are not allowed to read and interpret the Bible for themselves, but are bound and constrained in every …
Continue reading “The Claim that Catholics “Cannot Interpret Scripture for Themselves””
One of the most frequent charges I hear, when I point out the inherent chaos and disunity of Protestantism, is that “there is a lot of disagreement in the Catholic Church, too” — that somehow disagreements within the Catholic Church are equivalent to, or excuse, the fundamental doctrinal disagreements between diverse Protestant churches. In particular, …
Continue reading “Justification, unity, and papacy: A blind spot”
So as I journeyed to the Catholic Church, sola scriptura didn’t put up much of a fight. I don’t remember ever even considering, at the earliest stages, whether a particular doctrine could be found in Scripture: if it could be found among the teachings of the early Church Fathers, that was good enough for me. …
Today, October 31, is the 499th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation, the day Martin Luther is said to have nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg church door, the beginning of the “protest” — celebrated as, in Lutheran and Reformed churches, Reformation Day. Yesterday was known in those churches …
Continue reading “Reformation Day: Reflections on the Heritage of the Protestant Reformation”
The third and last part of my reflections on grappling with sola scriptura as a Protestant journeying to the Catholic Church. Part 1. Part 2. Part of my ongoing conversion story. This part proved to be really long, but the pieces were so dependent on each other that I wanted to post the rest of …
Continue reading “Grappling with Sola Scriptura, Part 3: An Authoritative Church”
The second part of my account of how I, as an Evangelical Protestant journeying to the Catholic Church, grappled with sola scriptura. I decided to split the post into three, so there is still more to come! Part of my ongoing conversion story. So this idea of authority — which I had never really thought …
Continue reading “Grappling with Sola Scriptura, Part 2: Sources of Authority”
In this post, I relate how, as a Protestant journeying to the Catholic Church, I came to terms with the doctrine of sola scriptura. I have been trying to write this post for months, and have started over from scratch several times — mostly because it rambled at too great length, or strayed into trite …
Continue reading “Grappling with Sola Scriptura, Part 1: Paralysis”
We have examined how the word “priest” in English is actually a translation of the New Testament Greek word πρεσβύτερος [presbyteros] (“elder”), etymologically distinct from the concept of a ἱερεύς [hiereus] or sacerdos, the sacrificing minister of the Old Testament; and thus “priest” is an appropriate title for the office of Christian ministry. We have …
Why do Catholics call their ministers priests? Is this concept of priests as ministers of the New Covenant of Christ valid and scripturally sound? In my last post, I demonstrated that the English word “priest” derives etymologically from, and was originally a translation of, the Greek word πρεσβύτερος [presbyteros]), attested in the New Testament Scriptures …
Continue reading “Ministers of the New Covenant: Why Christian Ministers Are Priests”