The Council of Nicaea – Where much dialogue took place
I frequent a coffee shop in my area and when you go to the same coffee shop often, you get to know the servers. I had some dialogue with this one server. I knew that he was an Evangelical and had his head on straight regarding a lot of issues but last night we had a dialogue which raised some concerns.
The Pharisees – The Enemies of God
When you engage in apologetics whether online or in person, you need to know the caliber of the enemy you’re dealing with. This has a major effect on how you then communicate. Do you ask more questions? How much charity do you use? What arguments do you use? Even that last question is answered by whom you’re debating.
St. Thomas Aquinas – The Angelic Doctor
If you’ve ever talked to a recent graduate from High School, you’ll realize how intellectually bankrupt our society has become. Our education is completely shot. Pretty much everything that I’ve learned, has come from reading after University. The enemies of God are having a tremendous amount of success promoting evil since the current generation doesn’t know how to think critically.
Matthew Vines is getting pretty cocky these days. I found this talk of his online. It’s his last major talk and it sounds like it was given not too long after the Orlando shooting.
Believe it or not, I actually read his writings
Every year in October, we tend to hear a bit about Martin Luther. After all, when he nailed his 95 Theses to the Castle Church in Wittenberg Germany, it was October 31st. October 31, 1517 is traditionally referred to as the beginning of the Protestant “Reformation”. The reason why I put the word in quotation marks is because it is a mockery of the term. True Church reformers are St. Francis of Assisi, St. Catherine of Sienna and Pope Gregory VII. They actually made reforms in the Church and hence are far more worthy of the title than Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Tyndale, Henry VIII or Servetus. Whether you support these men or not, I think we can all agree that it wasn’t a reformation.
Pope Gregory XVI
In the days long before the liberalism of modern Popes, we had the amazing Pope Gregory XVI who reigned as Pope from 1831 to 1846. He firmly believed in Christian doctrine and did not care what other people thought. This is best expressed in his great encyclical Mirari Vos, which was published in 1832.
Dr. White responded to my post about him last week. I’ve linked to the Dividing Line above and the relevant portion starts at 13:00 and goes for over an hour. I can’t respond to everything since I don’t want to be writing on this topic for a month but I’ll respond to some things.
Dr. White is at it again. Yesterday on the Dividing Line he talked about the development of the Catholic Priesthood. The important part of the above video is at about 19 minutes. He mentions that in the 300’s during the Donatist controversy the question was ex opere operato vs ex opera operantis. He said that no one believed at that time that priestly ordination left an eternal mark on the soul and that this is a later development. I will admit that the theology of the Priesthood developed over time. I have no problem believing that Christians in later centuries knew more about the Priesthood than they did in the fourth Century.
On A Mission: Lessons From St. Francis de Sales
In being an effective debater you need two things. You need proper debating tactics and you need information. Information comes with time and reading but if you never master the proper debating tactics, it’s almost uselss. The key to debating is not to defeat your opponent but to let your opponent defeat himself. This is done by asking the right questions.
Throughout my years of studying apologetics, I have found one thing to be absolutely disgusting. No party is innocent of this. The crime? Writing mock dialogues where your character makes his or her opponent look like a complete fool. Let me repeat: Every religious group is guilty of this, whether it is in the form of an article, a blog post, a pithy cartoon, etc.