It strikes me as odd that, if we are essentially God’s marionettes, doing what God has scripted us to do, our actions appear to us so much like choices. I think you have to engage in a particularly profane act of self-deception to convince yourself that the words you speak, the food you eat, the clothes you wear, the things you do, are not your own choices but were chosen for you beforehand: to convince yourself that God threw a rope around you rather than you choosing him because you were drawn and fell in love. If you can tell yourself these things, eisegesis followers as the night the day.
Does Ephesians 1:4–5 teach limited atonement?
BY: Henry Matthew Alt • September 12, 2019 • Apologetics; Exegesis
John 6:44 certainly teaches prevenient grace: “No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him.” Apart from being drawn by grace, we would be powerless to come. “And I will raise him up on the last day.” But — and this is important — Christ’s raising on the last day is dependent not just upon being drawn, but on coming to him. Not all who are drawn will come. And that presupposes free will. With that in mind, we can turn to John 6:37: “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” Calvinist’s read eternal security into this text. 
Before we get to Hebrews 10:14, dear reader, let us look ahead to Hebrews 10:26. “For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins.” This text, like 1 Cor. 10:12, warns of the danger of apostasy; and that’s a tricky concept if you believe in once saved, always saved. Some Calvinists try to nuance this by saying that only those who were never saved in the first place can apostasize, but that’s nonsense: If you were never saved in the first place, there’s nothing to apostasize from. 
In an absolute sense, “limited atonement” is not contrary to Catholic teaching, if you mean only that not all will be saved. By rejecting the “L” of “TULIP,” the Church does not teach universalism. Many are called but few are chosen. The Council of Trent makes that clear: “But, though He died for all, yet do not all receive the benefit of His death, but those only unto whom the merit of His passion is communicated.” It is communicated only to those who, by free will, cooperate with the grace of God working in them. Thus Canons 4 – 6 pronounce anathemas upon those who deny human free will.
For decades, bishops have shielded priests who were known to them to be abusing minors. Chile’s bishops finally did one right thing and resigned en masse. (The pope accepted three of them.) And earlier this year, Pope Francis laicized Archbishop McCarrick, himself an abuser. After a while, things like this appear like token gestures, as bishops make a display of “demanding accountability” and “taking steps to ensure,” and then return to business as usual. Except sometimes they look up from the cozy trappings of clericalism long enough to notice: Gee, people are leaving the Church. Why?
The short answer to the question is: No. The Church is bound to the Scriptures and to the deposit of faith and its own judgments in the exercise of its teaching authority; it must elucidate Scripture and the deposit of faith and apply them to new questions; no more. That is what Catholic apologists mean when they say that the Church is the servant of the Scriptures and the servant of the deposit of faith. Now. Protestants think in the paradigm of sola; so upon learning that Catholics reject sola scriptura, they conclude they must practice sola ecclesia. But no. 
I have said multiple times on this wery blog that, if one were to piece together a definition of sola scriptura based only upon quotations from the Church Fathers said to support it, you would come up with something no Catholic would disagree with. And you would never think to use the word sola in connection with it. If you go about it this way — if you start with the quotations and work your way to a definition — you would not get sola scriptura. If you worked in reverse, however — if you began with the definition and only then pecked around for quotations — you would be sure to find many words that superficially sound like it.
This is a continuation of a long-dormant series on a 1997 debate on sola scriptura between Dr.* James White and Gerry Matatics. Dr.* White finds two quotations in St. Augustine which he thinks are arguments for sola scriptura, but they amount—like his other quotations from the Church Fathers—to cherry-picking words out of context. Dr.* White’s definition of sola scriptura is very precise, and yet the quotations he chooses don’t come near that precision. It’s like he’s throwing darts and missing not just the target but the whole board. He really needs to do a better job at this. 
The valuable Mike Lewis at Where Peter Is has the story on Cardinal Burke’s latest brazen declaration of dissent from the Magisterium. I’ll get to all that, but first it’s necessary to remind ourselves that Burke has gone down this road before. Back in 2016, Burke spoke with reporters and declared that we can overlook Nostra Aetate because it’s “not dogmatic.” Of course, it does not matter whether it’s “dogmatic” or not; it’s the teaching of a Church council, and Burke is on indefensible ground if he thinks Catholics can just wave their hand at that.
Ye olde debate over Limbo has been resurrected because Fr. Richard Heilman shared this article of mine from the National Catholic Register. “Four Reasons I Don’t Believe in the Limbo of Infants” — that was the title. I can’t remember whether the title was mine or the Register chose it; it doesn’t matter. Immediately the Limbo apologists crawled like spiders over Fr.‘s post, and one declaimed that it was a scandal indeed to share my article on this, since the INFALLIBLE Council of Florence had declared otherwise. Uh. No. It did not. 
The Vatican is implementing the Abu Dhabi statement, and the Faithful Catholic™ freak-out continues apace, Athansius contra Magisterium. “The spread of this document in its uncorrected form,” Fake Site writes, quoting ACM, “will ‘paralyze the Church’s mission ad gentes’ and ‘suffocate her burning zeal to evangelize all men.’ ” ACM went on and said that if the pope does not correct the “erroneous affirmation on the diversity of religions,” then “men in the Church not betray Jesus Christ as the only Savior of mankind.” That’s wild.
I don’t doubt that Mr. Hays thinks that RadTrads and “avant-garde Catholics” are both “hopelessly wrong.” But so do I — if what Mr. Hays means by “avant-garde Catholics” is what I think he means. And I would guess that 90% of all Catholics would say both are wrong too. I get the feeling that Mr. Hays would reduce politics to the alt-right on one hand and “leftists” on the other, without regard for the fact that 90% or more fall between those extremes and loathe both. If by “avant-garde Catholics” Mr. Hays means what I think he means, these are people who are no less selective.
Frequently someone who hates Pope Francis will call me a “papalolator,” or a “papal positivist,” or an “Ultramontanist,” or whatever the slur of the week is. Supposedly I think everything a pope says is infallible, or I think everything this pope says is infallible. And now this week, a Protestant apologist has decided that I think the papacy is “useless.” How wildly does Alt change with every new wind that blows! Said apologist is known on this blog as Steve “Purple” Hays. We’ve dueled before. Once upon a time, he imagined that I was trying to promote him to a bishoprick.
Exsurge Domine was the bull excommunicating Martin Luther; and the pope lists forty-one “errors,” but takes care to point that the errors fall into different categories. “Some of these,” he says, “have already been condemned by councils and the constitutions of our predecessors, and expressly contain even the heresy of the Greeks and Bohemians. Other errors are either heretical, false, scandalous, or offensive to pious ears, as seductive of simple minds, originating with false exponents of the faith who in their proud curiosity yearn for the world’s glory …” 
A few months ago, when Taylor Marshall’s book Infiltration had just come out, someone asked me if I intended to write a review of it. I had no such interest, and already knew that Dave Armstrong planned to do so. But it occurred to me that it might help to put together, in a concise way, a documentation of Dr. Marshall’s frequent attacks on Pope Francis. (And as it turns out, he goes back in time and attacks every pope from Pius XII forward, as well as Vatican II.) I thought others might find this a valuable resource.