A Christian's Road Home to Rome and Journey Onward
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”
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”
Hi, I’m back in school now and still trying to organize my time. I haven’t had much of a chance to sit down and write, especially not about any large subjects; but in today’s Mass readings, an idea hit me forcefully that I think I might be able to comment on quickly. This will be …
This originated as an off-the-cuff reply this morning, in this thread. I thought it came out rather well. I think you’re overlooking the very crux of the matter. “Sola scriptura” is more than just a claim that Scripture is an infallible standard: it’s a claim that it is the only infallible standard. And if we …
The following is a response to John Bugay’s review of Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books by Michael J. Kruger, in which John announces, “Attention Roman Catholics: ‘Sola Scriptura’ is in the Bible.” It proved too long for his comment box, so I thought I would put it in …
Protestants argue that Scripture itself is sufficient to support the doctrine of sola scriptura — but a more important question to ask is if one, not having held such a doctrine before, could come to a doctrine of sola scriptura by Scripture alone. The “Great Apostasy” thesis presumes, first of all, that “true” Christianity originated …
Continue reading “Reading Church History as a Protestant: The Epistemology of Sola Scriptura”
[Part of a series on Baptism in Depth] One of the clearest evidences to me of the existence of Sacred Tradition — of the idea that the Divine Revelation of Christ is not contained wholly and exclusively in Sacred Scripture, and that essential elements of Jesus’s teachings were not written down explicitly by the Apostles …
Continue reading “Baptism in the Early Church: Proof of Extrascriptural Tradition”