Today we celebrate St Athanasius, and can somebody beam him down? The place is crawling with Arians again. The simple version is that Arius--a Bishop of Alexandria--taught that Jesus Christ was not fully divine. Nearly the whole church followed this new teaching. It made sense, after all for lots of reasons it was a bit of [...]
Do Catholics pray to Mary? It sure looks that way! But there is more to it than that. An increasing number of Protestants are ready to be more open minded about this controversial topic. "I'm ready to honor Mary more than we usually do" said a Protestant friend, "but I'm not going to pray to her." [...]
The ceaseless smiling Mormon ads on Patheos have generated a fair bit of discussion on these blogs, and I have learned a good deal about this new religion. One of the details was the authorship of the Book of Abraham--one of the books in the Mormon scriptures. It's a fascinating story. In 1830 or thereabouts a [...]
Is there a contradiction in the gospels? In John 6 Jesus is asked the question, "What must we do to accomplish the works of God?" Jesus answers, "Believe on the one whom he sent." But in Matthew's gospel in the parable of the sheep and goats, Jesus says we will be judged according to our works--"Inasmuch [...]
I've enjoyed welcoming a good number of new readers to the blog since coming over to Patheos. The comment box has been filled with lively discussion, and I always enjoy attracting some of the err, more eccentric readers who are out there. Here's a comment in response to a picture post I had of Pope Benedict. [...]
One of the basic assumptions of Protestantism is Primitivism. This is the idea that the Catholic Church became corrupt at some point and that the Reformers need to 'restore' the simple, primitive faith of the early Christians. Primitivist movements have been around since the beginning of the church, the Protestant Reformation threw up a good number [...]
Does truth of the Catholic faith matter, and what is more important, what you do or what you believe? This debate has come up in the comboxes on this blog in two different ways: The first is with a reader who is a Catholic but asserts that what is most important are the good works people [...]
Now that the geeks at Patheos have give us such a snazzy new re-fit, I am going through and moving a good number of my archived articles from my website to my blog. I hope readers will explore the 'Archived Articles' tab to see what's there. I'll be updating it regularly with old articles and with [...]
My godly Evangelical mother used to "witness" when we were out shopping. She'd ask the store keeper, "Have you been born again?" If the conversation got going she'd relate the story of the conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus in the third chapter of John's gospel. I don't know if she ever succeeded in making convert, but [...]
The Catholic faith has been around for a long time, and believe it or not, these questions have been asked before.