Among the intensely interesting dynamics of the Christian life as envisioned by Reformed theology is that it can easily, and with perfect theological consistency, tip towards either presumption or despair. On the one hand, salvation according to the Reformed is supposed to be a graceful, no-danger of being disinherited, sort of thing. On the other […]

I want to follow up on a topic briefly raised in Tim Troutman’s article on Holy Orders, and in Jonathan Deane’s recent post. The topic is consecrated celibacy, as required for religious life and the higher Orders of Catholic clergy.

In an article on the ecclesiology of the Ravenna Document, Ansgar Santogrossi, O.S.B., mentions four ways in which the Church (or some sort of religion) and the state (or some form of the body politic) have been related. Fr. Santogrossi presents this material in the course of explaining the philosophical assumptions under-girding the “ecclesiology of […]

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 Catholic Church dogmatically affirms that Sacred Scripture indeed teaches the salvific efficacy of baptism, where “baptism” refers to the sacrament in which a person is washed with water in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and “salvation” refers to the bestowal of gifts whereby a person […]

Every story features the action of a protagonist who is hindered by an antagonist. This makes for an essential conflict, the development and resolution of which constitutes the basic structure of the story. Every human life is very much a story. Each person is the protagonist, and the enemy is death.

Fr. Dwight Longenecker has written a nice summary 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 this website. More fundamentally, […]

There were all kinds of Catholic doctrines that I already believed before coming into full communion with the Catholic Church. These include the doctrine of the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, the full deity and full humanity of the one Lord Jesus Christ, and the divine inspiration of the Bible. The similarities between some of my […]

The names “Thomas Aquinas” and “Summa,” when they spark recognition, can also produce rather visceral reactions. St. Thomas’ meticulous, dialectic method of exploring theological questions (the “scholastic” method) probably has something to do with the more than (and less than) intellectual reactions to the man and his works. Many folks find the scholastic method to […]