We ain’t gonna lie. Many of us on Called to Communion were drawn to the Catholic Church after we had reassessed the “salvation issue” through the lens of the “New Perspective on Paul.” Three years ago, a few friends of mine (including Sean Patrick of Called to Communion) were lamenting that there wasn’t a book […]
Today, November 23, is the memorial of St. Clement I, pope and martyr. St. Clement was the third bishop of Rome, after St. Peter. He is known to us mostly through his famous letter to the Church at Corinth. Here I present a brief summary of what we know from later Fathers about St. Clement, […]
Recently a friend reminded me of a common Protestant analogy regarding salvation and merit. The analogy is that sinners have a ‘bank account’ wherewith to ‘pay’ for their eternal salvation. The problem is that man cannot possibly have enough in this account to pay the ‘amount due.’ Faith in Christ is equivalent to having a […]
The impetus for this brief post is Bryan’s recent response to Rose in the thread on St. Augustine on Law and Grace. Rose asks about the contention she has heard from Protestants that St. Augustine did not understand the meaning of δικαιόω (dikaiow), which means, according to the Protestants, to count righteous rather than to […]
Dr. Ligon Duncan is an adjunct professor of theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi, and also the senior pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Jackson. At this year’s “Together for the Gospel” conference, held April 10-12 in Louisville, Kentucky, he gave a talk titled “Did the Fathers Know the Gospel?” Here I examine […]
One way to help reconcile Protestants and Catholics to full communion is to consider together the writings of the early Church Fathers, because in the Fathers Protestants and Catholics share a common history and a common patrimony. One of the most fundamental points of disagreement between Protestants and the Catholic Church concerns the relationship between […]
N. T. Wright’s Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009) is a somewhat polemical response to his Reformed critics, in which Wright summarizes and defends his understanding of St. Paul’s doctrine of justification. For me, the book has proven to be both illuminating and frustrating. This post began as a chronicle […]
According to PCA pastor Wes White, the doctrine of baptismal regeneration is “impossible in the Reformed system.”1 By noting this, he intends to show that we should reject the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. But if the evidence for the truth of the doctrine of baptismal regeneration is stronger than the evidence for the truth of […]
Just kidding, the Catholics don’t have anything wrong about justification; I was just getting your attention. :-) Now to be serious. The primary way we both [Catholics and Protestants] talk about justification and about any of God’s operations is based on the way that the Scriptures speak of God. Let me say at the outset […]
According to the Reformed Protestant doctrine, on the cross Christ paid the penalty for all the sins of all and only the elect. And when those persons first believe in Christ, that redemption is applied to them such that all their past, present and future sins are forgiven, and Christ’s perfect righteousness is permanently imputed […]
