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 [...]
Sacramentalism is a soteriological position, according to which the Christian sacraments are effectual means of grace. It is primarily, though not exclusively, by these means that the covenant-making, covenant-keeping God accomplishes his salvific purpose of uniting all things in Christ (Ephesians 1:7-10). The sacramentalist affirms that God, according to his sworn word of promise, because of [...]
John Kincaid Tom Riello interviews CTC’s newest member, John Kincaid, on his conversion to the Catholic Church. John Kincaid is a doctoral candidate at Ave Maria University. This is more than a typical conversion story and a bit longer than our previous podcasts but well worth the listen. John shares some insightful theology and gives [...]
St. Augustine, God rest his soul, can’t be happy about how Western Christians have been fighting over the rights to his theological legacy for the last five hundred years. This in-fighting notwithstanding, a few issues make Augustine stand out as decidedly Catholic. Recently we discussed the issue of the canon, and Augustine clearly supports the [...]
In his third book of the Institutes of the Christian Religion (chs. 21-24), Calvin articulates his developed doctrine of predestination and reprobation. In chapter 21 in particular, Calvin denies that God’s prescience (“foreknowledge”) is the cause of predestination.
