The Catholic Church has stood, since its inception, firmly against the use of any artificial methods of contraception. In fact, it is the only Christian institution that, as a whole, has held this teaching consistently for all of Christian history.

“For this reason Luther’s phrase: “faith alone” is true, if it is not opposed to faith in charity, in love.” – Pope Benedict XVI Reformed Professor R. Scott Clark in response to Pope Benedict: “That conditional, that “if,” makes all the difference in the world. That one little conditional is the difference between Rome and [...]

Here is a simple synopsis of God’s original plan for Adam by Saint Augustine. Notice how Augustine views humanity as “between the angelic and bestial,” since man consists of a immaterial, separable soul and a material body:

As Christians, how is it that we know we are saved by the death and resurrection of the incarnate Son of God? For those raised as Christians, the Sunday School sing-song answer “for the Bible tells me so” may come to mind, and this fairly well summarizes the Protestant teaching on the communication of saving truth.

Non-Catholics (and yes, even the Eastern Orthodox) do not enjoy the ecclesial unity Saint Paul prescribed for the Church of Jesus Christ. Saint Paul is resolute in his conviction that the Church of Christ must be one. Most of his epistles specifically speak against disunity within the Church. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians seems [...]

Would Calvinism be improved if it dropped all this talk of ‘double election,’ the doctrine that God chose some from before all time for salvation and the rest for damnation? Rev. Alvin Hoksbergen, a retired minister in the Christian Reformed Church, proposes in The Banner that a major retooling of election-speak from Reformed pulpits is [...]

Several years ago when I was once a Calvinist, I remember reading this quote by John Calvin and being impressed by it: We must confess, then, that if the representation which God gives us in the Supper is true, the internal substance of the sacrament is conjoined with the visible signs; and as the bread [...]

Jason Stellman, at his provocative blog De Regnis Duobus (Concerning the Two Kingdoms) recently composed a fascinating reflection on Protestant confessionalism entitled “The Complexiities of Confessionalism”. Stellman writes: The options, as I see them, are as follows: confessional denominations like the PCA [Presbyterian Church in America] ]can either (1) broaden our theological parameters to make [...]