Ligonier Ministries recently posted an excerpt from the late John Gerstner’s Primer on Justification.  This article, taken together with things he has written elsewhere concerning the nature of faith, manifests an interesting and important inconsistency in Dr. Gerstner’s thinking about justification. Before turning to that problem, I want to make a few comments on the [...]

Towards the end of Leo Tolstoy’s literary masterpiece, Anna Karenina, we find Konstantin Levin, the book’s male protagonist, grasping his way towards an explicit faith in God. Along the way, Levin considers the faith of the Church, but finds himself unable to fully accept her testimony to divine truth.

The following sentence is a bad way to open a post, so I am writing this bit to cover over. Now off we go: Given what Sacred Scripture actually affirms concerning baptism, no reasonable interpretation of any other part of Sacred Scripture establishes a sufficient reason for denying the Catholic interpretation of Scripture’s teaching on [...]

Every story features an action, carried out by a protagonist, who is hindered by an antagonist, which makes for an essential conflict, the development and resolution of which constitutes the basic structure of the story. The larger the scope of the action, the more potential a story has for “greatness.” Every human life, on this [...]

Fr. Dwight Longenecker has written a nice summary (in two sentences!) of J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic novel, The Lord of the Rings. I was moved to comment there, and now to post a greatly amplified version of that comment here. One justification for the latter move is that the subject has some bearing upon recent discussions at [...]

There were all kinds of doctrines that I already believed before coming into full communion with the Catholic Church. Many of these were things that the Catholic Church taught. Some of them, however, were not taught by the Catholic Church. And some of my beliefs were contradicted by the Catholic Church.

The words “Thomas Aquinas” and “summa,” when they spark recognition, are apt also to produce rather visceral reactions. This is quite incongruous with the modus operandi of St. Thomas’s  Summa theologica and Summa contra gentiles themselves. But there it is. Ironically, St. Thomas’s meticulous and dispassionate M.O. often has something to do with the more [...]

Neal Judisch’s post on Wednesday, September 30 was post number one hundred at Called to Communion. I would like to take the occasion of reaching this auspicious number to reflect upon the first seven months of our new venture. By “our,” I am including everyone who reads, comments and writes at CTC.

Recently, some Reformed bloggers have been discussing the relationships between sacred and secular, cult and creation.

This is the first of what will eventually be a three part series on assurance of salvation.