“Once you have grace, you are free. Without it, you cannot help doing the things you know you should not do, and that you know you don’t really want to do. But once you have grace, you are free. When you are baptized, there is no power in existence that can force you to commit …
Tag Archives: grace
The Other Side of Calvin
I’m about to enter the scriptorium exeuntis, the paper-writing cave, from which there may be no return. But I suppose I shouldn’t leave everyone (all one or two of y’all?) hanging. Here is the second half of my post about Calvin. I have felt pretty bad about the tone of that last post. I very …
Discovering Calvin
Last Christmas, I received a couple of books of theology: For Calvinism by Michael Horton and Against Calvinism by Roger Olson. I had asked for them; they had come highly recommended. I had never given Calvinism a fair shake, I felt. Every time I had tried to approach it through personal study in the past, …
Thinking about Sin
As I’ve been pondering theology lately, it occurred to me: All this time I’ve been charging that theology is human, man-made, artificial; that it is only man’s attempt to comprehend the mysteries of God in his own feeble, limited, human mind. And we cannot possibly fully comprehend God. And that is true. But that doesn’t …
Salvation by Grace Alone
One of the most frequent charges I’ve heard from Protestants against Catholicism, who attack it as a heresy or a “false gospel,” is that the Catholic Church teaches “works’ righteousness,” or “salvation by works.” This is what I grew up hearing and believing, so I know the thinking well. Protestants think that Catholics believe they …
Cum Sancto Spiritu: The Holy Spirit Reveals Christ
Okay, so it’s increasingly clear that I won’t have time anytime soon either to research or to write a thorough, comprehensive post about the role of the Holy Spirit in the Catholic tradition. But for several reasons, I thought it important that I go ahead and move on this, if only in spurts and gasps. …
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“Coming out”
I apologize to all of my reader(s) for having fallen off the blogosphere. School and research and paper-writing has swept me away entirely. I have posts burning holes in my head that I have wanted to share, but I’ve been unable to justify taking the time away from work to write them. The second part …
Sin and Punishment
Tonight I’m struggling with Purgatory. I guess I haven’t really thought much about it before. Like Mary did, it came upon me rather suddenly. Father Joe mentioned Purgatory briefly at RCIA on Sunday. I’ve been thinking lately about the nature of salvation, and the differences between the Catholic and evangelical Protestant conceptions of it. I’ve …