Archive for November 2011

Moving from a Reformed Congregation to a Catholic Parish

Nov 30th, 2011 | By | Category: Blog Posts

Stories of conversion from the Reformed faith to the Catholic Church abound. When I was Reformed, and was contemplating the claims of the Catholic Church, I read many conversion stories. I searched them and I probed them, looking for that nugget by which I could understand why the particular story’s author had gone off the […]



Lawrence Feingold: A Catholic Understanding of Predestination and Perseverance

Nov 26th, 2011 | By | Category: Blog Posts

Over the last three months, Professor Lawrence Feingold of Ave Maria University’s Institute for Pastoral Theology and author of The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas and his Interpreters and the three volume series The Mystery of Israel and the Church has been giving a series of lectures to the Association of […]



From Calvin to the Barque of Peter: A Reformed Seminarian becomes Catholic

Nov 21st, 2011 | By | Category: Blog Posts

This is a guest post by Jason Kettinger. For the past ten years Jason Kettinger was a member of the Presbyterian Church in America. He received baptism in 2001, and spent his college days as a fruitful member of Reformed University Fellowship, before graduating from the University of Missouri-Columbia with a degree in political science […]



We don’t need no magisterium: A reply to Christianity Today‘s Mark Galli

Nov 19th, 2011 | By | Category: Blog Posts

Mark Galli is the senior managing editor of Christianity Today. Two days ago he published an article titled “The Confidence of the Evangelical: Why the Spirit, not the magisterium, will lead us into all truth.” Galli notes that a number of well-known Evangelicals have become Catholic, and acknowledges the attraction of the Catholic magisterium for […]



Lawrence Feingold on God’s Universal Salvific Will

Nov 16th, 2011 | By | Category: Blog Posts

“It must therefore be firmly believed as a truth of Catholic faith that the universal salvific will of the One and Triune God is offered and accomplished once for all in the mystery of the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the Son of God.” Those words were written by then Cardinal Ratzinger, in the Declaration […]



The Doctrine of Merit: Feingold, Calvin, and the Church Fathers

Nov 14th, 2011 | By | Category: Blog Posts

It has been said that “the reformation was mainly a struggle against the doctrine of merit.” Protestants such as Luther and Calvin denied the possibility of merit, whereas the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent taught that believers in a state of grace can merit eternal life, if they persevere in faith until death. […]



Why John Calvin did not Recognize the Distinction Between Mortal and Venial Sin

Nov 10th, 2011 | By | Category: Blog Posts

Catholics and Protestants agree on many points regarding sin, but the Catholic Church makes a distinction generally not found in Protestant theologies: the distinction between mortal and venial sin. John Calvin rejected the distinction between mortal and venial sin, and Protestantism has largely followed Calvin on this point. Calvin rejected it because he did not […]



How Quickly Catholic Heresy Took Over the Church (Immediately)

Nov 9th, 2011 | By | Category: Blog Posts

Brantly Millegan at ‘Young Evangelical and Catholic’ has posted something worth visiting here.



Ecclesial Unity and Outdoing Christ: A Dilemma for the Ecumenism of Non-Return

Nov 6th, 2011 | By | Category: Blog Posts

In an article titled “Finale: A Unitive Vision of Christendom,” PCA pastor Mike Hsu, the pastor of Grace Chapel in Lincoln, Nebraska, recently claimed that I would treat a call for “united hearts” rather than “united ecclesial structure” as ecclesial deism. In that same article Mike then wrote, “The problem with Cross’ argumentation is that […]



Lawrence Feingold on Sanctifying Grace and Actual Grace

Nov 3rd, 2011 | By | Category: Blog Posts

Recently Professor Lawrence Feingold of Ave Maria University’s Institute for Pastoral Theology and author of The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas and his Interpreters and the three volume series The Mystery of Israel and the Church gave two lectures on the subject of sanctifying grace and actual grace, to the Association […]