Category Archives: Apologetics

The Epistle of Straw

06 Wednesday May 2009

Posted by in Apologetics, Sacred Scripture and Tradition: Sources of Revelation

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“St. James’ Epistle is really an epistle of straw, for it has nothing of the nature of the Gospel about it.” — Martin Luther

That Martin Luther called the Epistle of St. James “an epistle of straw” is a well-known fact. Those just learning it should not be surprised when they read it, though. After all, in making up his new religion, Luther’s ultimate recourse was to his own intellect. About the nicest thing we can say of such a criterion for truth is that it was not given a divine promise of inerrancy. Continue reading →

The Devil’s Doctrine

04 Monday May 2009

Posted by in Apologetics, Grace

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There is a doctrine so diabolical, so sinister and wicked that it deserves, in this author’s opinion, a unique claim to the name “The Devil’s Doctrine.” This teaching is sheer poison to the soul which embraces it. Like a spiritual AIDS, it kills the soul’s built-in immune system, the conscience, and it convicts the sinner in his sins and errors almost without hope of conversion. It either throws the sinner into a bottomless despair for his sins, or (more often today) it forces him into another sin against the virtue of hope: the deadly sin of presumption. The doctrine is none other than the familiar Calvinist one of “perseverance of the saints,” commonly expressed by that snidely presented query: “Are you saved, brother”? Continue reading →

The Church of History

04 Monday May 2009

Posted by in Apologetics, Church History

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Of all the “churches” calling themselves “Christian,” can any one of them irrefutably claim to be the Church founded by Jesus Christ? Does any conform to the clear, precise terms by which this Church of Christ is described in Holy Scripture: “the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim.3:15); or the “One Body” of which St. Paul repeatedly speaks (Rom.12:4-5; 1 Cor.10:17; 1 Cor.12:12-20; etc.); or the “Kingdom of Heaven” of the synoptic Gospels, and the “Kingdom of God” of Saint John’s? Continue reading →

In Defense of Christmas

04 Monday May 2009

Posted by in Apologetics, Liturgy, Modernism

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Today’s skeptics, who seem to reject something traditional just because it’s traditional, cannot sit still during the holy season of Christmas without mocking the notion that Christ would have been born on December 25th.  If it were just the unbelievers who engaged in this mockery, it would be expected, since unbelievers, by their very nature, are not expected to believe. Continue reading →

Praying to Saints

04 Monday May 2009

Posted by in Apologetics

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I’ll never forget sitting at a table outside a café in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, while a Pentecostal street preacher screamed his odd form of Christianity at the passing college students. He had the sort of rhythmic drive that Black Baptist and Pentecostal preachers cultivate, based on repeating one line over again, (e.g., Jesse Jackson’s “I am somebody”) then saying a couple of other lines, and finally repeating the “lead line.” Continue reading →