December 2014 - To Give a Defense

Does the Mass “overthrow the cross of Christ”? Part 1 of a series on John Calvin’s Institutes IV.18.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • December 26, 2014 • Anti Catholicism; Apologetics

You can fall down laughing at such words, and I often do. But the point of them is to stir an audience to an irrational pitch of wild fear of the Catholic Church. The Church has no power—none—to “overthrow the cross of Christ,” not even if she meant to do so. God is not so weak. But suppose you believed that some church could “overthrow the cross of Christ”? Would that not cause you grave concern? I know it would me. And that is what Calvin wants his readers to believe. That is why his words overstate his meaning. It is deliberate; it is of ill intent.

Which came first? The Bible or the Church?

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • December 20, 2014 • Apologetics; Church History

God gives us the nation of Israel first, and only through it the Old Testament; God gives us the Church first, and only through it the New Testament. The Word of God operated, prior to Scripture, through the nation of Israel and through the Church. The canon does not get finished for two generations after Pentecost. After that, someone had to decide what went into the canon; the Holy Spirit had to inspire someone to get the list right. Why Romans and not the Protoevangelium of James? Why Galatians and not the Epistle to the Laodiceans?

First from Failoni: The really bad argument against infallibility.

BY: Henry Matthew Alt • December 18, 2014 • Apologetics; Papal Infallibility

If this were just the apostrophe-free ignorance of someone who trolls around blogs, it would hardly be worth bothering with. But Mr. F does not just make this stuff up; he actually steals it from people like Dr. John MacArthur, who says the Church teaches that the laity can sin, but that somehow the clergy can not. This idea — that infallibility means that the pope cannot sin — is a howler that is not limited just to the kind of people who rant at the bottom of blogs. It can grip the brain even of someone who should know better but doesn’t, or refuses to, or pretends not to.