The Reformed know and confess that faith without works is a dead faith, and it cannot save. But knowing and affirming this, they content themselves to dismiss the essential message of James chapter 2. For they say that dead faith is merely evidence that the faith was never faith at all. But this interpretation is […]
This post will answer the question, “Did St. John Chrysostom believe in justification by faith alone?” As in the previous post answering the same question of St. Ambrose, the answer will be in the negative. Before reading either this or that previous post, the reader should be familiar with the points I made in this […]
Introduction This brief post will show that St. Ambrose of Milan did not believe in salvation “by faith alone” as professed by the Reformers, condemned by the Council of Trent, and generally held by most Protestants today. There are two reasons I am focusing on St. Ambrose: 1. He is one of the few Church […]
There is no question more important for the Christian than the question of how we are saved. But the Scripture answers this question in apparently various ways as does the Catholic Church from the beginning until now. Examples of answers from Scripture include:
On April 16, Tim Challies, a Reformed pastor at Grace Fellowship Church in Toronto, Ontario, and co-founder of Cruciform Press, published a post titled “The False Teachers: Pope Francis.” That generated much discussion, as one might imagine. I responded to it in comment #335 of “Does the Bible Teach Sola Fide?” One of the criticisms […]
On November 6, 2013, Dr. Lawrence Feingold, Associate Professor of Philosophy & Theology at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary in Saint Louis, Missouri, 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 a lecture titled “The Motives of […]
On Friday, April 22, 2005, I was sitting at my desk at Saint Louis University, trying to think of a good remaining reason not to be Catholic. I had been investigating the Catholic question intensely for over a year, and one by one I had been discovering that my objections were largely based on straw […]
When Protestants become Catholic, one reason they typically give for doing so is the prospect of attaining unity. They recognize both that the perpetual fragmentation between Protestant denominations cannot be the fulfillment of Christ’s prayer in John 17 that His followers be one, and that this fragmentation is perpetually insoluble by way of sola scriptura […]
Jack W. Sawyer Recently I had the pleasure of coming across an article entitled “Christ’s Test of our Orthodoxy” on Ordained Servant, a Journal published by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. I was a member of this denomination for six years, and the title immediately caught my attention. Pastor Jack W. Sawyer’s article can be read […]
Protestants often caricature the Catholic doctrine on sacramentalism as if it taught that a sacrament was something like a magic wand waved over the recipient regardless of his disposition. But this is not an accurate description of the Catholic doctrine. In this short article, I will explain why. On this day, March 7, 1274, St. […]
