What's the Difference? Disunity in Catholicville and Protestantland

A while ago I made a post about the “Chaos Problem” wrought by Sola Scriptura.  That is, Sola Scriptura say the only infallible rule of faith are the Scriptures and it rules out the possibility of an infallible Church which interprets the Scriptures on behalf of the public.

As a side effect, however, each individual must shoulder the burden of testing everything against Scripture and deciding for himself the true content of the Christian religion.  This leads to a situation of inevitable, unresolvable disunity which Martin Luther himself remarked upon in his letter to Antwerp, saying:

“There are nowadays almost as many sects and creeds as there are heads.”

One common retort to this Catholic critique goes like this:

“Ya’ll point to the disunity in the Protestant world as proof that Sola Scriptura failed and the Protestant experiment is a bust.  But you ignore the disorder in your own house.  

In the Catholic world here are progressive parishes and conservative ones.  What good is the Pope and Bishops if you never know what you’re going to get when walking into a parish.  If they’re supposed to be the answer to Protestant disunity, then it would seem the Catholic way isn’t working either.”

How do we respond to this?

How Does a Catholic Read: Romans 9:1-24

In previous posts I have highlighted the importance of free-will being a real element in the Christian doctrine of salvation.  If there is no room for human freedom, then we’re left to conclude that there are some folks whom God doesn’t want to save.  And yet, it would seem that scripture teaches the opposite.

However, our Calvinist friends will point out that Scripture does indeed teach this intolerable conclusion.  Namely, in the first half of the 9th chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans.

Today I wanted to look at this most troubling set of passages.

TLDR: Male and Female He Created Them

Recently the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education released a document spelling out some important principles for Catholic educators in the modern world.  It is called "Male and Female He Created Them".  It discusses the ideology known as "gender theory" and how it needs to be opposed with a robust understanding of Christian anthropology.

However, we're all very busy people with limited attention spans.  So I've gone ahead and given it the TL;DR treatment - reducing the text to 1/5 its original size.  Here we go:

Adam, Eve, and Anthropology

The Christian faith is sometimes called a "historical religion".  This means it isn't just a philosophy of life.  It makes claims about world history, claims which need to be true for its teachings to have any merit.  Among these are the creation of the universe, the resurrection of Jesus, and a real Adam and Eve.

The first one seems to have checked out pretty well, the second has received robust defenses, but the third one... not as much.  My feeling is it’s something many Christians would rather not look at for fear of being wrong.

So this year I thought I'd read a couple books on the subject and see whether the Catholic understanding of Adam and Eve had bit the dust.

An Anti-Semitic Shooter, Bad Theology, and Romans 11

On April 27th (2019) there was as a shooting at the Chabad of Poway Synagogue in California.  It left one dead and several others injured.  Prior to the shooter the shooter released a document online revealing his motivations.

Today I want to take a brief look at a couple things he said and compare them to an important passage from the New Testament.

Three Techniques for the Typical Pro-Life Discussion

In Pro-Life circles January is known as “sanctity of life” month.  This is due to anniversary of Roe vs. Wade.  So with that on my mind, today I want to share (what I think) are the three most important techniques in discussing abortion.

Let’s get to it.

Who is Isaiah's Suffering Servant?

In the eighth chapter of Acts we read the account of Philip’s interaction with the Ethiopian eunuch.  The eunuch was reading Isaiah 52 and needed help understanding what the passages were talking about.  The deacon Philip came alongside him and told him about Jesus Christ.

Since the earliest times, Christians have understood the “suffering servant” of Isaiah to be a direct reference to Jesus.  You can see this again in 1Peter 2:24, where the Apostle says:

“He himself ‘bore our sins’ in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; ‘by his wounds you have been healed.’"

However, the most common counterargument to the Christian claim – particularly from a Jewish perspective – is that we’re misunderstanding the image of the Suffering Servant.  The Servant was not a particular historical man, but rather a symbol of Israel.  He is the nation literarily personified.

Today we’re going to look at the relevant portions of Isaiah to see if that’s true.