What if religion is a relationship? To make the claim, that Christianity is a religion – and not just a relationship with Christ, is very countercultural in today’s world. Subversive even. Everywhere we look we are confronted with slogans which assert that, “Christianity isn’t a religion – it’s a relationship with God.” We are told that, “Religion kills, but Jesus saves.” And…
Tag: Church
Built Upon The Rock
I remember being quite taken aback when I first encountered the claim made by the Catholic Church stating that, “The Church is catholic: she proclaims the fullness of the faith. She bears in herself and administers the totality of the means of salvation.”1 What arrogance! How condescending to other Christians! The fullness of the faith?! The totality of the means…
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The First “Rocky”
Often my Protestant friends will allege that when Christ declares, “I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it.”1 – that He wasn’t really referring to Peter. They will talk at length about the difference between petra and petros in the Greek, and declare…
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The Catholic Trilemma
— 1 — It is an odd thing to find yourself within a society as schizophrenic as ours. A society which worships at the altar of science while simultaneously denying the existence of absolute truth. A society with an intense craving for “spirituality” and yet one that dismisses out of hand anything that cannot be materially proven. Truth claims – especially…
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The Marks of the Church
The Church which Christ established has no name other than that of its founder. It is known simply by His name and that of His followers; it is known solely by the name of Christian. While it has no “denominational” name to identify it, it does possess identifying marks. Historically and Scripturally there have been four marks by which the…
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One in Christ
In St. Paul’s epistle to the Galatians we are reminded that, “…in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in…
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Do You Follow the Pope or Jesus?
— 1 — “Do you follow the pope or Jesus?” I was actually asked this question the other day. It came about in a rather indirect manner with a friend asking my mom what she thought my answer would be. Since I never had the chance to respond directly to the person who had asked the question, I would like to do…
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Sola Scriptura – Logically Flawed
In a previous post I covered reasons why the doctrine of sola Scriptura was anachronistic – i.e. a belief that couldn’t fit within a chronological history of the Church prior to the time of the Reformation. In this post, I would like to look briefly at why I also feel that the doctrine is logically flawed. There are many orthodox Christian doctrines…
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Thoughts on Superhero Jesus and Baptizing Martians
So, let me start by admitting that I’m a bit of a nerd. But, believe it or not it’s the Pope who’s raising these issues not me. Both of these subjects actually came up last week during Pope Francis’ daily Mass homilies. On May 15th the Pope said, “Jesus Christ did not fall from the sky like a superhero who comes to…
