Archive for category: Roman Catholicism

But let us hurry to the real issue: Armstrong wrote, “…Christians were, therefore, bound to elements of Pharisaical teaching that were not only nonscriptural, but based on oral tradition, for this is what the Pharisees believed.” Armstrong assumes no distinction between practice, interpretation, or doctrine, regarding the teaching of the Pharisees, ignoring the function of the seat of Moses in

Regular readers of this blog are already well aware of the fact that in almost every instance of apologetic conflict with the various religions of men the issue comes down to either the validity and accuracy of the Bible as the Word of God, or, to the proper exegesis of the text of the Bible itself. And surely that is

Dave Armstrong “shows his cards” so to speak, and in so doing reveals the true motivation behind his use of Matthew 23, in these words: Thirdly, because they had the authority and no indication is given that Jesus thought they had it only when simply reading Scripture, it would follow that Christians were, therefore, bound to elements of Pharisaical teaching

At this point Armstrong opines, It reminds me of the old silly Protestant tale that the popes speak infallibly and ex cathedra (cathedra is the Greek word for seat in Matthew 23:2) only when sitting in a certain chair in the Vatican — because the phrase means literally “from the bishop’s chair” — whereas it was a figurative and idiomatic

I would like to expand, momentarily, on a thought with which I closed the last installment in this series. Mr. Armstrong is right to say that the text does not provide us with a direct listing of what the Pharisees did or did not teach when speaking in the synagogue. That can only be determined on the basis of other

We continue reviewing Dave Armstrong’s comments on Matthew 23. He continues with a citation from my book, The Roman Catholic Controversy, p. 101, on p. 47 of The Catholic Verses. However, he does not provide some key elements of the material he is citing, so I will provide the paragraph, but will bold what was skipped, or not included, in

In the previous installment of this series I provided an introduction and the comments I made in The Roman Catholic Controversy regarding the use of Matthew 23:1-3 by Roman Catholic apologists. Let’s make sure we understand what is required of the Roman Catholic apologist in order to substantiate their claims. First, there needs to be an identifiable oral tradition regarding

The Great Debate X will be June 9th. I will be debating Bill Rutland, a lay Catholic apologist, on the topic of salvation as laid out by the modern Roman Catholic Catechism, in particular, in passages such as these: 841 The Church’s relationship with the Muslims. “The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first

This will be my final installment in response to Dave Armstrong’s The Catholic Verses. It is not that there are not many more passages that could be addressed, it is just that there is so very little actual exegesis in the book that the real essence of its self-enunciated claim to provide a defense of the Roman Catholic exegesis of

As we were working to set up the next debate on Long Island we had contacted Tim Staples about joining the long list of Catholic apologists who have, over the past ten years, engaged in The Great Debate series. We were informed that he was joining the staff of Catholic Answers, and that they wanted him to take a year

I had not seen the sample pages of the CASB (the Catholic Apologetics Study Bible) at Sungenis’ website, but Eric Svendsen started poking around and comments on one of the offered notes here. I looked at the other pages, and since none of the interesting notes had enough context to really comment, I have to ask myself: do I want

…then why do we find Roman Catholics debating about the nature of the central act of worship in Roman Catholicism? This is one debate I may well find time to attend myself. Sungenis vs. Matatics on whether the Novus Ordo Mass is valid. But Rome is all united because of its tradition and the Papacy, yes? Hopefully a few Roman

I recently invested a few blog articles in demonstrating that Mark Bonocore of The Catholic Legate is an unrealiable source of apologetic argumentation. Immediately following the section on Isaiah 22, Bonocore, in his own inimitable style, responded to a statement I had made. My words come first: You wrote: “Now, while it is true that, in Matt 18:18, Jesus bestows

I continue reviewing the attempted defense of the modern usage of Isaiah 22:20-22 by Roman Catholic apologists, responding to Mark Bonocore. In our previous installments we have examined Bonocore’s use of patristic sources in reference to Irenaeus and John Cassian. We continue with his presentation: I believe the reason we don’t see Isaiah 22 used more extensively is that it’s

Context, context, context. Cassian is writing against the Nestorians on the Incarnation. In chapter 11 of Book III he transitions from a primary use of Pauline texts to some derived from the Gospels. He briefly alludes to Martha’s confession of Christ in John 11:27, but quickly moves to Peter’s testimony in chapter 12, from which Bonocore quotes. Let’s look at

I return now to my response to the articles by Mark Bonocore, noted in the blog responses on Dave Armstrong’s page. The article that was sited was on Apolonio Latar’s site (http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/num18.htm). But since it had been a very long time since I had taken the time to track down what Mark Bonocore was up to, I did a little

   HUMOR ALERT! HUMOR ALERT! Granite-faced Calvinists and frigid cold Catholics need not continue reading, or even look! As some of you know, Dave Armstrong at first tried to reply, somewhat, to my review of his book, The Catholic Verses. Then he pulled the plug on responding to “anti-Catholics,” again, as he has done in the past, as Eric Svendsen so

Now, having reviewed the context of Irenaeus’ teaching about the age of Jesus at his death, we turn to the calm, kind, rational commentary offered by Mark Bonocore on the same issue, found here. Let’s look at his comments. After I had noted very briefly what I explained more fully above, Bonocore writes, Well, you’re proving that you are not

Responding to some “writers” just goes against sound wisdom and judgment. There are some who are simply so ill-behaved, so nasty of temperament, that to respond to them is tantamount to poking a rabid dog with a stick: don’t be surprised when you get a consistent response of growling and slobber. And so it is against my better judgment to

Jonathan Prejean has offered some comments on the first sections of my interaction with Dave Armstrong. Since they are brief, I will be brief in response. As he quotes me extensively, I will put my original words in blue, his replies in red, my replies are in purple. Intro Now, of course, DA will respond with text files (liberally salted

Thanks to all of you who wrote to let me know what a “git” is. Silly naive me: if I had known this fellow was a student of Art Sippo, I would have thought the worst, but since I didn’t, and there were numerous other problems with the spelling of his insulting invective, it seemed logical to look for another

I never dreamed just how appropriate the terminology I chose was. For a number of years I had experienced the constant hatred and attacks of Paul Owen, first when he was a student in seminary, then when we was off in Scotland working on his doctorate, and now that he has returned and his spreading his unique variety of theology

A poster using the name “BenYachov (Jim Scott 4th)” writes in response to MarieP, who protested that there’s a whole lot of accusing going on, but precious little proving: Well in his Bible Answer Man debate with James Akin the smarmy git implied the merits of our suffering in purgatory where from our own efforts & not from the Grace

The RC pep rally and general back-slapping rave going on at DA’s blog has continued unabated for a few days now, though I think eventually even these folks will get tired of repeating the same mantras over and over again. “Wow, that James White, we sure have refuted him, haven’t we!” “Yeah, sure did! Wow, he’s as dumb as a

      Mr. Armstrong has just recently noted, in reference to myself and others, Carry on, fools . . . we’re all watching, and it is high entertainment, believe me. You think you will get me to change my mind by these childish tactics and colossal errors of fact? You go right ahead. I’m documenting every vacuous, vapid insult and dumb

David Pacitti wrote to me (publicly, on DA’s blog): What is amazing to me is how James White and his followers actually think that he is write about anything. I have read James White work and have compared it to yours and others such as Steve Ray and Bob Sungenis and White’s work does not stand up to the evidence.

It was the late 1980s. Remember them? Yes, well, things were developing in the Roman Catholic apologetics arena. Benny Diaz, a former Roman Catholic, and one who was working with us in reference to Jehovah’s Witnesses, kept pushing me to study the claims of the Roman Catholic Church. He introduced me to Catholic Answers and the materials they were producing.

I was not blogging when Scott Hahn’s Hail, Holy Queen: The Mother of God in the Word of God came out. I did, however devote two Dividing Line broadcasts to a review of it. The book set new “groan” records for its horrible, never-ending, “please, have mercy, it stopped being funny four chapters ago” use of pun-filled subtitles. It truly

Quick note: yesterday, when Dave Armstrong first posted his “I’m done with critics” stuff, his blog showed exactly two articles. Everything else was gone. Later in the day the rest of the material re-appeared. Obviously, at some point, an error was made in posting material (a common enough event). I’ve seen something similar happen at PowerLine, where all of a

As I noted in Part I, Dave Armstrong’s attempt to substantiate the sinlessness of Mary is one of the longest sections in his book. We have noted that he specifically claims to be offering sound exegesis and analysis of Luke 1:28, but so far, we have not found his comments to live up to the claims he makes for them.

Interestingly, though I presented these passages and this objection in the same section from which Dave Armstrong quoted, he did not address them. He did, however, make one of the most common errors one encounters in literature such as this: the “let’s look at a really basic definition in a Greek grammar and hope it applies to our particular text”