“It must therefore be firmly believed as a truth of Catholic faith that the universal salvific will of the One and Triune God is offered and accomplished once for all in the mystery of the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the Son of God.” Those words were written by then Cardinal Ratzinger, in the Declaration [...]
Has the Catholic Church changed her doctrine concerning “no salvation outside the Church?” Dr. David VanDrunen recently penned a brief historical survey of what he sees as Catholicism’s “change” from soteriological exclusivisity to inclusivity. VanDrunen is a Westminster Seminary California professor and minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC). His article appeared in the OPC’s periodical [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
“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 [...]
When I was younger, I used to think that God actually could lie if He wanted to, but He simply chose not to because of His goodness. I didn’t realize, and I think many people still don’t, that He literally cannot lie. Some theological errors can be avoided by understanding that God cannot lie. For [...]
This post originally appeared at the Canterbury Tales blog. Let me begin by saying that I am honored to have received a response from N.T. Wright in Christianity Today last month. He is a giant and he has probably influenced me more than any other living theologian (yes, even more than Ratzinger/Benedict XVI). At the [...]
Last week as I was preparing to go out of town for a conference, I received an interview request from Michael Spencer (aka IMonk) regarding the recent announcement by the Vatican concerning the establishment of Personal Ordinariates. These Personal Ordinariates will allow former Anglicans to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while retaining distinctive [...]
This is the first of what will eventually be a three part series on assurance of salvation. My intention is to use St. Thomas Aquinas’s treatment of the theological virtue of hope in his Summa theologica and Francis Turretin’s discussion of the certainty of faith in his Institutes of Elenctic Theology to help us focus on some aspects of Christian assurance. The [...]
