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Ratzinger, Material Sufficiency? (by David King)
(The following is a guest post by my friend, Pastor David King) Cardinal, now Pope, Joseph Ratzinger, while commenting on the documents of Vatican II (article nine of Dei verbum), stated that “no one is seriously able to maintain that there is a proof in Scripture for every catholic doctrine.” See Joseph Ratzinger’s “The Transmission…
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List of Things Necessary to Salvation
One objection that is occasionally addressed to the Reformed doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture, and also sometimes to the doctrine of the sufficiency, formal and material, of Scripture, is a request that we provide an exhaustive list of the doctrines that are necessary to salvation. After all, we claim that all the things that…
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Thomas Aquinas, William Webster, and Scripture against Bellisario
Over in the comment box of the Beggars All Reformation blog, Bellisario has attempted to take on William Webster (source). Pastor Webster is not there to defend himself, instead Bellisario is responding to a blogger named Rhology. Bellisario writes: “Scared of Webster! Are you serious?” Of course Rhology’s serious that it seems that folks are…
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Athanasius to Marcellinus: How Sufficient are the Psalms?
Athanasius wrote a letter to Marcellinus regarding the Psalms (full text). Athanasius wouldn’t have fit into post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism very well for a lot of reasons, but one reason is his comment in this letter: “the knowledge of God is not with [the heathen and the heretics] at all, but only in the Church.”…
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Aquinas: Rule of Faith ("sola canonica scriptura est regula fidei")
Thomas Aquinas’ expression, “sola canonica scriptura est regula fidei” at first glance sounds a lot like the Reformation maxim that the rule of faith is only the canonical scripture. Here’s an English translation of the relevant portion: It should be noted that though many might write concerning Catholic truth, there is this difference that those…
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Aquinas and the Formal Sufficiency of Scripture
I’ve previously noted Aquinas’ apparent [FN1] view of the primacy of Scripture (link) as well as other comments from Aquinas on themes generally related to Sola Scriptura (link). The following quotation, however, comes close to expressing not only the material sufficiency of Scripture, but also the formal sufficiency of Scripture. Thus in Holy Writ no…