Author Archive for: TurretinFan

Mr. Matthew Bellisario has, as far as I can tell, only a single blog post directly on issues relating to the papacy (although there are a number of contra-Lutheran and contra-contraceptive posts that mention the papacy)(link to MB’s post). Even in this instance, however, Mr. Bellisario is merely providing a quotation from another author. The author Bellisario quotes is Cornelius

Mr. Matthew Bellisario is still planning, as far as I know, to come on the Dividing Line this Thursday. Hopefully he has already benefited from the detailed resource list (posted here). There are, however, some additional resources that may be helpful. These are video clips taken from some (two, I believe) of Dr. White’s previous public, moderated debates on the

I’m pleased to report that Mr. Matthew Bellisario has agreed to come on the Dividing Line program on Thursday and discuss the papacy. Specifically, he states that he plans to discuss Matthew 16:18-19 and “other passages” that refer to Simon Peter and his “special place amongst the apostles” as well as to discuss the papacy in the early church fathers,

People sometimes like to think that if you go back to the earliest fathers you’ll get very good accounts of extra-scriptural tradition. There is a certain amount of intuition to back this up. After all, the earliest fathers were closer in time to the gospel accounts than we are. Intuition is wrong – at least to some extent. One reason

To a certain extent I’m treading on Mr. James Swan’s toes in posting this episode to the “We Have Apostolic Tradition” series. Mr. Swan had noticed that Roman Catholic apologists often let us know how crucial it is to have an infallible magisterium and church Tradition in order to interpret the Bible correctly. With so many Roman Catholic apologists now

One may recall that Patrick Madrid has a web forum called Speak your Mind Apologetics Forum. He uses the URL “SurprisedByTruth” for his web site. I noted with little surprise that he had recently decided to stop my friend who uses the nick “Algo” from speaking his mind and surprising the Roman Catholics in that forum with the truth of

Introduction One branch of Apologetics deals with responses to the challenges to the faith brought by Catholicism. Since one apologist for Catholicism has recently posted a list of unsound arguments that are sometimes used by those defending Catholicism, I thought I’d post a similar list that at least identifies some areas of caution for Reformed apologists addressing Rome. 1. Eschatological

Within Roman Catholicism (and within some other churches as well) there are prayers that are made for, through, and to the dead. We, as Reformed believers, reject all three of these categories but on different grounds. In discussing these issues with Roman Catholics it may be useful to be able to understand the different categories and to explain why it

This is the sixth and final section on Turretin’s discussion of Middle Knowledge. This section delves into the philosophical arguments that undermine the concept of middle knowledge, demonstrating that the concept of middle knowledge leads to inevitable self-contradictions. 1. Two categories of knowledge are all that are required, because all true objects of knowledge are things possible or things actual

This is the fifth video in the series, of which (for those already weary of the series) there are six videos. This section deals with alleged proof texts of Middle Knowledge: (1) 1 Samuel 23:11-12 This is the place where David asked God whether the men of the city would deliver David up if David stayed in the city, and

This is the fourth section of the discussion of Middle Knowledge taken from Turretin’s Institutes. This section deals with Turretin’s six main objections to Middle Knowledge: (1) Two categories of knowledge are enough, because all things are either merely possible or actually future, (2) Untrue things cannot be foreseen as true, (3) God’s exhaustive providence precludes the possibility that mans’

This is the third video in the series on Middle Knowledge. This section presents the “state of the question.” That is to say, it helps describe what exactly is under consideration. Thus, in this video we distinguish the issue from the issue of God knowing all possible contingent things, of God knowing necessarily contingent things (like “if the sun rises,

This is part 2 of the series. The first part of the series can be found here (link). The first part discussed the true doctrine of the knowledge of God, but this section defines the erroneous doctrine of middle knowledge and describes its history. As is discussed in the video, Molinism was the brainchild of Lessius, Fonseca, and/or Molina (three

This is the first part of what is planned as a multi-part discussion on middle knowledge and free will. This part discusses the fact that God’s knowledge is intrinsically simple (undivided) but can be divided extrinsically (as to its objects) into two categories: natural and free. These two categories exhaust all the objects of God’s knowledge. To summarize what I’ve

Dr. White has already responded to Mr. Ray’s latest (see here) but I wanted to address a particular line from Mr. Ray’s comment: “Every time I have tangled with him in the past I felt like I needed a shower with a good bar of antibacterial soap.” Now, in context, Mr. Ray means to insult Dr. White. That’s perfectly clear,

Mr. Steve Ray, whom you’ll remember from Dr. White’s video in the immediately preceding blog post, despite supposedly “fasting from blogging and blog reading for Lent,” has provided two recent blog posts in which he illustrates the fact that Roman Catholic apologetics can impair one’s ability to think straight: a) According to Ray, Warren flip-flopped on homosexuality because he lacks

I have almost started to feel sorry for Mr. Ray. He keeps peddling the same snake oil, and it is hard to say whether this is simply because he lacks the acumen or patience to deal honestly with the Early Church Fathers or whether it is because he is simply the sort of person who makes a living profiting from

In a previous series (link to series index), we documented Steve Ray (and others) misquoting Athanasius (i.e. citing a spurious, or (at best) dubious, work as though it were authentic). Mr. Ray’s inaccurate citations, though, are not limited to Athanasius. Mr. Ray also misquotes Gregory Thaumaturgus (Thaumaturgus means Wonderworker).

After posting some updates to my original article (link), I stopped by Mr. Albrecht’s video page, hoping against hope that Mr. Albrecht might have had the sense to apologize for his own (and his fellow apologists’) misquotation of Pseudo-Athanasius as Athanasius. My hopes were dashed.

I was sad to see that rather than correct his quotation of a spurious work attributed to Athanasius, the man who Steve Ray has set forth to defend Mr. Ray’s miscitation of a spurious source (Mr. William Albrecht) has continued his campaign of misinformation and insult (link to video). Mr. Albrecht spends the first two minutes of his video complaining

Introduction As you may recall, we recently identified a spurious quotation from Athanasius that a number of apologists for Rome had been using, including Mr. Steve Ray. Sadly, rather than correct his error and be honest with his readers, Mr. Ray has chosen to pretend the problem doesn’t exist, directing his readers, once again, to the video musings of Mr.

One common attack used by the apologists of Rome is to assert that a Protestant’s ultimate authority is private judgment or, as they sometimes pejoratively label as being “protestant personalism” or a person being his own “mini-pope.” Supposedly, this problem of private judgment is solved by referring to an infallible magisterium. In fact, however, the recourse to the infallible magisterium

It’s very popular among Rome’s apologists today, to make claims that famous church fathers, those that “Protestants” would have heard of, held to the same views as Rome teaches today. Unfortunately for Catholicism, history is not her friend. So, while occasionally a church father or two will provide some seemingly helpful material for the apologist for Catholicism, these sorts of

Dr. White is human. To those of us who know and love him, this is no surprise. We realize that he is a man, just like us, and that consequently he makes mistakes. As Alexander Pope said, “To err is human, to forgive divine.” Dr. White is human and he, from time to time, errs. Recently a lay apologist for

This is part 13 of the thirteen part series in response to Jay Dyer. The previous part may be found here (link). Throughout the series, we have seen the Calvinist position explained with respect to each of the eleven accusations leveled against Calvinism, we have seen the accusation refuted in most cases (the exception being labeling us, like Moses and