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“It [the Church] firmly believes, professes, and proclaims that those not living within the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics cannot become participants in eternal life, but will depart ‘into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels’ [Matt. 25:41], unless before the end of life […]

UPDATE: A Catholic Response.
C. Michael Patton from The Theology Program and Reclaiming the Mind Ministries has a wonderful series going at Parchment and Pen defending the Protestant stand on Sola Scriptura.
Today’s episode deals with the basis for claiming the canon of scripture- your Bible’s table of contents- is inspired, even though that list is not […]

UPDATE: OK. Here we go again. I’m not putting up with it this time. You want to respond respectfully, great. But anything less than calm and reasonable isn’t going to make it.
If you don’t know about my wrestlings with Catholicism, I can’t catch you up. Hit the search engine or ask someone who obsessively reads […]

***sigh***
When someone says I’ve written something I shouldn’t have written, you can be almost certain that I’ve written something using the language of lament. L-A-M-E-N-T.
All of you that just said “huh?” please step into the side room. If you came in a bus, they’ll wait. It’s time for a lesson on some of the most […]

Two questions that are crucial to anyone studying and teaching scripture in a Jesus-shaped, Jesus centered way:
What would I have thought if I were there when Jesus taught, did miracles, engaged in conversations, meals, etc.?
What do the same events and words mean now that I have the entire Bible to bring all of scripture to […]

UPDATE: Here’s a post that has a perfect feel for the idea of heaven that I grew up around- and that still surrounds me here in the mountains. (PHC= Pentecostal Holiness Church.)
The message of many evangelistically focused conservative Christians is about heaven: How to get there. What will heaven be like. Why heaven is our […]

I’m not a literature scholar, but I play one in the classroom several hours a week. That is, when I’m not teaching the Bible to kids from all over America and the world, I teach AP English. Mostly Shakespeare and poetry. The interaction of the two brings some stimulating questions to my mind from time […]

Matthew 13:27-30. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ 28 He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to […]

This is the last post on the subject of the Church: Flawed and Finished. The others are directly below. I will be doing an F.A.Q. post on the topic.
1, 2, 3, 4.
What is the connection between the flawed church in history and the completed, finished perfect body of Christ?
Is it the fact that God […]

Before moving on into more posts on the relationship of the historical church and the ideal church, I want to ask and briefly answer some questions.
1. To what extent is the historical church flawed?
Like the human beings that make up the church, the historical church is fallen, sinful and affected by sin in every way […]

This series looks at how imperfect and flawed congregations can possibly be the church of Jesus. The first two posts in the series are here and here.
When scripture speaks of the church in ideal terms, it is always from the viewpoint of God’s finished work of love and new creation that begins and ends with […]

The introduction to this series is here. I was somewhat “motivated” recently when a Protestant convert on EWTN said “Protestants have Christ, but they don’t have his bride.” I found the statement quite…..interesting, especially in view of how I believe the scriptures describe the church in history and in God’s plans.
This second post deals with […]

Some recent comments on EWTN drove me back to my Bible and some time thinking through my concept of how the church is both fallible and perfect; flawed and finished; historical and eternal. I’ll share several brief posts walking through the relationship between a very human and flawed historical reality and its relationship with the […]

At the ministry where I work, we have a little guy I’ll call “Charles.” A middle-schooler growing into a young man.
Charles is a church kid, and he’s a Christian. He’s also very, very serious about impressing the adult Christians around him.
He wears a tie every day. Almost no one on our staff does that, and […]

There are lots of Luther resources available from our sponsor, New Reformation Press.
I attended Southern Seminary in 1979, 1982-84, and 1986-87. I earned the M.Div and 36 hours of doctoral work. During that time, I studied with Dr. Timothy George in several classes. One J-term- I believe it was summer- I took Dr. George for […]