Dan Chapa

Pope Francis recently said:   “The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the blood of Christ. All of us, not just Catholics. Everyone!” he declared. “‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! And this blood makes us children of God of the first class! We are created children in the likeness of God and the blood of Christ has redeemed us all!” “And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace,” Francis continued. “If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter. We need that so much.” “We must meet one another doing good,” the Pope asserted. “‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good. We will meet one another there.” ( link ) The Pope is of course equivocating two vital terms ("Sons of God" and "meeting there") to teach universalism or a...

The election of a new Coptic Pope is a good reminder that Rome isn't the only ancient church claiming to be the one true church.  ( link ) Rome and Alexandria split over a bit of theology that would by today's standards look trivial.  Same with Rome and the East.  Makes you wonder, did they take theology more seriously back then?  Or were the theological issues only the pretext and the political autonomy was the real goal?  Probably both.  In any case,  the ancient church was not perfectly united in the idea that the Pope in Rome was the boss. 

Jimmy Akin’s book the Father’s Know Best provides hundreds of quotations from the Church Fathers on various topics allegedly showing the link between the early church and modern Roman Catholicism. Of greatest interest to me were the 143 quotations from the Fathers in support of the Papacy. Reading the book gave me an opportunity to learn more about the Fathers. Below is a matrix of the results of my review. However, given my review I will risk providing some overall conclusions. I didn’t find anything in the Fathers that explicitly taught Papal infallibly or got into ex cathedra vs. non-ex cathedra statements by Popes. So right off the bat I would say the Fathers were not Roman Catholic. However, that doesn’t mean they were Southern Baptists either. Many times they were somewhere in-between. As such, I categorized each quotation from the Fathers Know Best on the Papacy in degrees of agreement. My categories were: 1. No objection 2. No biggie 3. Don’t like the wording, but OK ...

The formating wasn't great so here's a link to a google docs format: http://www.danchapa.blogspot.com/2011/05/review-of-fathers-know-best-on-pope_10.html Jimmy Akin’s book the Father’s Know Best provides hundreds of quotations from the Church Fathers on various topics allegedly showing the link between the early church and modern Roman Catholicism. Of greatest interest to me were the 143 quotations from the Fathers in support of the Papacy. Reading the book gave me an opportunity to learn more about the Fathers. Below is a matrix of the results of my review. However, given my review I will risk providing some overall conclusions. I didn’t find anything in the Fathers that explicitly taught Papal infallibly or got into ex cathedra vs. non-ex cathedra statements by Popes. So right off the bat I would say the Fathers were not Roman Catholic. However, that doesn’t mean they were Southern Baptists either. Many times they were somewhere in-between. As such, I categorized eac...

I recently discussed the Immaculate Conception with a Roman Catholic friend. I started with the obvious argument that the idea that Mary was sinless contradicts Paul’s teaching that all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. He responded ‘Mary is an exception’, but his reasoning was based on official catholic teachings, not on the context of Romans 3. I needed to get past the official teachings of the Catholic Church since authority is somewhat of a discussion stopper. Perhaps Papal infallibility doesn’t hit the same impasse. I understand that not all Catholic doctrine is suspended on the Pope’s decisions. Certainly some Catholics held to the Assumption of Mary and the Immaculate Conception before the Vatican Council of 1870 officially declared the Pope infallible. I am not trying to use the Pope as a scapegoat or red herring or the sort. Rather, my purpose is to get at a baseline difference between Catholics and Protestants; epistemologically one that cannot be referr...

Scripture is authoritative, meaning it is worthy of us believing its teachings and obeying its commands. Its authority comes from its Author: God, based on His truth, power and sovereignty. What the scripture teaches comes with all the authority of “thus saith the Lord”. Denying the authority of scripture is denying God’s authority, because the scripture is God’s Word. Catholics, in my opinion, indirectly undermine the authority of scripture, because: They teach errors, and claim exemption from the scrutiny of scripture. People are not allowed to look in scripture to find out if submission to the Pope is necessary for salvation. They subject scripture to another authority, the church. In practice they are not equivalent authorities. If you think scripture is telling you to do X and the church says do Y, you must do Y (and also unthink that the scripture said to do X). They use and teach the use of eisegesis (as opposed to exegesis). Instead of turning to scripture for the meanin...