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Magisterium More Sufficient than Scripture? (Part 2)
[Cont’d from previous section] Is the Roman Catholic Magisterium More Sufficient than Sacred Scripture?Bryan Cross answered on the subject of the ability of the Scripture to interpret Scripture sufficiently, from Scripture, reason, and tradition. (Part 2) The fact that obscure Scriptures are obscure and “need” (in some sense) clarification does not imply that the clear…
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Magisterium More Sufficient than Scripture? (Part 1)
Is the Roman Catholic Magisterium More Sufficient than Sacred Scripture?Bryan Cross answered on the subject of the ability of the Scripture to interpret Scripture sufficiently, from Scripture, reason, and tradition. (Part 1 – Meaning of “Scripture Interprets Scripture”) Augustine (about A.D. 354-430) commenting on Psalm 145:13: The Lord is faithful in all his words, and…
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Didn’t Augustine Say That He Wouldn’t Believe the Gospel but for the Catholic Church?
I anticipate a response to my post on the Augustinian approach of seeking the Church through Scripture. The response is to provide the following quotation: But should you meet with a person not yet believing the gospel, how would you reply to him were he to say, I do not believe? For my part, I…
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Seeking the Church through the Scriptures – the Augustinian Approach
The following quotations, all of which are drawn from Augustine’s work entitled “On the Unity of the Church,” help to show that Augustine made his appeal to the Scriptures alone. This, of course, is a striking difference from the approach suggested by many Roman Catholics today. Thanks to David King for his assistance in preparing…
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John Calvin and the Fathers on Baptism
I’ve been told that John Calvin invented a justification for infant baptism that was new. I’m not fully persuaded that, in its essence, Calvin’s justification was new. My impression is that the main argument is that Calvin was departing from medieval Western tradition that viewed baptism essentially as regenerative by virtue of its operation. However,…
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Perspicuity of Scripture Contra Bellisario – Part 8
I’m responding to a post from Mr. Matthew Bellisario (see my first post for the introduction). In this post, I address Mr. Bellisario’s response to my quotation from Augustine. Mr. Bellisario has put my words in italics, and I have attempted to reproduce them as he provided them, within the quotation box below. His own…
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Augustine on the "We Gave You the Scriptures" Argument
One argument that we sometimes hear from Roman Catholic apologists is an argument that Roman Catholicism gave us the Scriptures, in the sense of preserving them for us over the centuries. This claim is, of course, anachronistic (the folks who preserved the Scriptures from the 4th decade to the 4th century, for example, could hardly…
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Bad to Quote Lactantius?
Roman Catholic reader Mike Burgess commented on yesterday’s post (link), which quoted from Lactanatius, thus: St. Jerome, whom you enjoy quoting when the occasion suits, said of Lactantius, “If only Lactantius, almost a river of Ciceronian eloquence, had been able to uphold our cause with the same facility with which he overturns that of our…
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Don’t Be Surprised if You Make Some Mistakes
Jerome wrote: And if the ingenuity of perverse men finds something which they may plausibly censure in the writings even of evangelists and prophets, are you amazed if, in your books, especially in your exposition of passages in Scripture which are exceedingly difficult of interpretation, some things be found which are not perfectly correct? –…
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Augustine vs. Rome – Definition of Grace
“Mercy and judgment I will sing to thee, O Lord, for it is only through unmerited mercy that anyone is freed, and only through deserved judgment that anyone is condemned.“(Augustine, On Faith, Hope, & Charity, as provided in Fathers of the Church, Volume 2, p. 447) The Reformed doctrine of grace, because it is drawn…