Archive for category: Roman Catholicism

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

   I wanted to follow up on James Swan’s observations regarding the state of popular Roman Catholic apologetics. I was reminded of an incident from 1999 as I read the thread on the Catholic Answers web boards. I debated Hamza Abdul Malik that year after having debated Robert Sungenis. As the crowd came into the building, I noticed some ladies sitting

   A person over on the Catholic Answers forums is looking for help refuting Bart Ehrman: “will somebody who is an authority on textual criticism answer dr. bart ehrman’s thesis. or please recommend sites where i can find intelligent refutations agains his writings.”    One would think, the alleged “true” church would have her top scholars working on such a project,

   Benjamin Douglass and others have put together a list of common Roman Catholic arguments that, well, shouldn’t be common at all. Now, posting something like this, given that it would decimate the arsenal of the most popular Roman Catholic apologists on the web and on radio today, can’t make Mr. Douglass and his associates the most popular Roman Catholics around,

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

   I was directed to this report on a talk given by Frank Beckwith. I found the following line most interesting: Following his return, Beckwith’s faith was changed in more than name only. “I started reading the Bible much more,” he said. “I used to read the Bible looking for arguments. I now read and look for wisdom.”    This does not

   I was looking through the materials we have on Roman Catholicism in our articles section and I noted a lengthy discussion of Augustine’s Sermon 131. I noticed the date: April 11, 2000. Why is this significant? Recently I have noted, in the context of his unscrupulous behavior and actions, the many errors of Steve Ray. Examining his writings and claims

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,

   Seventy percent of Roman Catholics do not understand the Eucharist? There’s that anti-catholic James Swan again, making stuff up about the one true church. Everyone knows, those who are members of the one true church have the benefit of the infallible magisterium. The papacy has God-given authority keeping Catholics unified!    Actually, what most who may think this about me don’t

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

    A few days ago I mentioned some of the problems with the notes found in The New Catholic Answer Bible. Recall, the author, Catholic apologist Dave Armstrong, referred to them as “the notoriously liberal notes for the NAB,” written by “heterodox, liberal dissidents.” Because of these notes, I felt it would be fitting to rename his book, “The New

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

   By the way, after recording this I took note that Dave Armstrong decided to join in the fun on the far side of the Tiber. Of course, that’s hardly surprising, though no less reprehensible.

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,

   I fully expected Steve Ray to avoid any meaningful response to a critique of his many errors and falsehoods, and he has not disappointed. Nor am I surprised that instead of standing up and actually defending his reprehensible behavior and his simple dishonesty, he has chosen to let someone else, a layman without the first semblence of meaningful training in

   As Tur8inFan noted a clear example of Ray’s double standards earlier today, I just ran across another example here. Ray notes that Tony Blair, who converted to Rome in 2007, has criticized Rome’s teachings on homosexuality. He opines, “We want more Protest-ants to convert and join us, but not if they bring their ‘protest’ with them. Leave it behind or

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

It was a little over year ago while skimming through the books at Borders that I came across The New Catholic Answer Bible (Wichita: Fireside Catholic Publishing, 2005). Similar to someone impulsively looking at dogs and cats on pet adoption day, I couldn’t resist, and took it home with me. It wasn’t until I did a few web searches that

   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 Catholic apologists now commenting on sacred scripture, I thought it would be interesting to provide their commentary on the Bible. Let’s see how they’ve been able to rightly divide the word of

    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 Catholic apologists now commenting on sacred scripture, I thought it would be interesting to provide their commentary on the Bible. Let’s see how they’ve been able to rightly divide the word

   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 Catholic apologists now commenting on sacred scripture, I thought it would be interesting to provide their commentary on the Bible. Let’s see how they’ve been able to rightly divide the word of

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

   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 Catholic apologists now commenting on sacred scripture, I thought it would be interesting to provide their commentary on the Bible. Let’s see how they’ve been able to rightly divide the word of

   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 Catholic apologists now commenting on sacred scripture, I thought it would be interesting to provide their commentary on the Bible. Let’s see how they’ve been able to rightly divide the word of

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).