Given our recent discussions on the nature of the atonement and predestination, here’s an opportunity to apply this to something concrete at the popular level: a rap song

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.

There is a classical dispute in the law of contracts, the underlying problem of which also bears on the doctrine of sola Scriptura.  Can one really look to an authoritative text alone without at least impliedly resorting to extrinsics during interpretation? Suppose you enter into a contract to purchase a home from a seller, and […]

A recent post titled “Off-Duty Megachurches” on Christianity Today’s blog, led me to Joe Johnson’s Mega Churches gallery (at the gallery, click on “projects”, and then click on “Mega Churches”). The photos almost made me feel sick. (What I say below assumes that the reader has looked at the photos.)

Undoubtedly we must answer:  she is enormous but her dogmas wield the precision of a razor.  It would be fallacious to say that this sort of exactness in thought were a Western peculiarity or confined to Roman Christianity as if the largeness of truth could rid this point of its power.  We might as well […]

In his treatise In On the Divine Names, Dionysius directly asks whether there can be such a thing as “total depravity”. He answers that there cannot be total depravity because that which is totally deprived of all goodness would also be deprived of all existence since anything created is also ontologically good–as confirmed by the refrain of Genesis chapter 1 “and God saw that it was good”.

I was recently in a discussion in which someone was claiming that the beatific vision was natural to unfallen man.1 He was at the same time advocating a complete separation of Church and State, and denying the notion that the State resulted from the Fall. Here I argue that those three claims are incompatible with […]

The Bible tells us that we, as Christians, are types of soldiers. For instance, Paul tells the Church at Philippi that he has decided to “send back to you Epaphroditus, my brother, fellow worker and fellow soldier.”1  In 2 Timothy, we are reminded to “[e]ndure hardship…like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving […]

As I was reading Calvin’s refutation of the Seven Sacraments, I found his argument against Extreme Unction especially unusual. Calvin recognizes that the Anointing of the Sick has its origins with Christ (Mark 6:13) and was performed by the Apostles (James 5:14-21).

In Summa theologiae II-II, q. 4, a. 4, Saint Thomas Aquinas examines James 2:24 and the faith that does not justify. Thomas distinguishes between “faith formed by love” and “faith not formed by love”. Thomas says that the faith of each is one and the same. They are not two different kinds of faith. Rather, […]