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Faith and Reason: Both Come from God Both the truths of faith and truths of reason come ultimately from God, who is the truth. The Catechism, citing the first and second Vatican Councils, puts the point as follows: “Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth.” “Con …

Pope Leo X Condemns Luther’s Teachings In Exsurge Domine, the bull in which Pope Leo X formally condemns Martin Luther’s heretical teachings, the pope refers to Luther as “the wild boar from the forest” who seeks to destroy the vineyard, “an image of the triumphant Church” entrusted to Peter. The comparison of Luther to a wild boar is appropriate for two reasons: (1) wild boars are aggressive, short-tempered, and easily provoked, and they will not hesitate to attack h …

Everett Ferguson on Early Christian Baptism Everett Ferguson, a Protestant elder, biblical scholar, and Church historian, has written what’s perhaps the definitive work on the subject, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries. Ferguson spends hundreds of pages carefully combing through the evidence to expose the first five hundred years’ worth of Christians thought about baptism. His findings are neatly summarized on page 854: …

The Author in his own words:C.S. Lewis’s Trilemma: Liar, Lunatic, or Lord In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis famously poses a trilemma, sometimes called the Liar, Lunatic, or Lord argument, which works like this: Jesus presents himself as the Messiah, as the Son of God, and even as God. Given this, the three ways we can make sense of him are to conclude that he was delusional (believing he was God when he wasn’t), deceptive (knowing he wasn’t God but duping his followers into believing he w …

The Argument for the Great Apostasy If the early Church was the Catholic Church, why can’t we say that Christians just lost their way early on? That’s the argument many Mormon and Protestant theologians make. In Mormon theology, this idea is expressed in terms of a Great Apostasy that followed the death of the apostles: Following the death of Jesus Christ, wicked people persecuted and killed many Church members. Other Church members drifted from the principles taught by Jesus Christ …