Today is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. Last year, immediately preceding this Solemnity, Taylor posted “Mary Without Sin (Scripture and Tradition),” and on the Feast I posted “Mary’s Immaculate Conception, in which I included podcasts of Prof. Lawrence Feingold’s lecture and Q&A on this dogma. Those two posts provide evidence for the Catholic dogma, [...]

Today in the liturgical calendar we celebrate the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter the Apostle. According to an ancient tradition, February 22 was the day Jesus changed Simon’s name to Peter, and gave to him the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. (Matt. 16:19) The Catholic Encyclopedia article on the chair of St. [...]

In February of this year Ryan Glomsrud, the Executive Editor of Modern Reformation, invited me to participate in a roundtable discussion on the subject of sola scriptura, with Michael Horton, editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation, a co-host of the White Horse Inn, and the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary [...]

Today is the memorial of St. Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch who was martyred in Rome in AD 107. What does St. Ignatius reveal to us about the Church? According to the early fourth century Church historian Eusebius, St. Ignatius was the second bishop of Antioch (from approximately AD 70 to 107) after Evodius, about [...]

Within the Reformed blogosphere there has lately been put forth some pretty bold claims regarding the structure of the church in the first century, particularly the structure of the Roman Church. Basically the argument is that in the first century the church did not have a monarchical bishop and was instead ruled by a group [...]

Dr. Kenneth Howell earned an M.Div. from Westminster Theological Seminary, an M.A. in Linguistics and Philosophy from the University of South Florida, a Ph.D. from Indiana University in Linguistics and the Philosophy of Science, and a second Ph.D. from Lancaster University (U.K.) in the History of Christianity and Science. He was a Presbyterian minister for [...]

Neal and I offered a brief reply to the tu quoque objection in our article titled “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority.” Here I provide a more thorough reply to the tu quoque objection, and open a forum for discussion of the authority argument and the tu quoque objection.

At the heart of the separation of Catholics and Protestants lies a disagreement about the ecclesial hierarchy. Who are the rightful shepherds of Christ’s flock? This article will examine the Catholic Church’s doctrine of the sacrificial priesthood, and in doing so, will lay the foundation for our subsequent discussion on the critical issue of apostolic [...]

Recently I was asked for my evaluation of Doug Wilson’s article titled “Authority and Apostolic Succession.” For the sake of any others who may be interested in a Catholic evaluation of Doug’s article, I am posting my evaluation here.

Are Catholics, who insist on an apostolic hierarchical continuum, guilty of the continuum fallacy? For those unfamiliar with the term, allow me to illustrate. The continuum fallacy exists when a person denies one of two concepts existing at polar ends of a spectrum because, on account of the continuity or successive stages between them, there [...]