Month: December 2014

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.

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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?

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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.

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