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Exploring Jesus in World Religions When I was deciding whether or not I should be a Christian, I made sure to read about as many other religions as I could. At first it was overwhelming to compare the teachings of faiths like Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism to Christianity, but then I noticed they all had one thing I could compare: a teaching about Jesus Christ. Almost every major world religion has a teaching about the identity of Jesus. Jews say Jesus was a human teacher, Muslims say he was a …

The Canon of Scripture and Its Origin The clearest example of a sacred Tradition that both Catholics and Protestants accept is the canon of Scripture. The word canon comes from a Greek word that means “rule,” and refers to the Church’s official list of inspired writings. You can find this list in the table of contents of every Catholic or Protestant Bible.The canon of Scripture was first declared in Rome in A.D. 382and was later defined at two Catholic councils in North Africa(Hippo in A.D. 3 …

The Question of "Where is that in the Bible?" “Where is that in the Bible?” This is the most common question I receive when I discuss the Catholic faith with Protestants. They ask me questions like: “Where is purgatory in the Bible? Or the Mass? Or the pope? Or the rosary?” These questions assume that Christians should only believe a doctrine if it is explicitly taught in Scripture—what is called sola scriptura (“by Scripture alone”). The 1647 Protestant Westminster Confession of Faith expr …

As the number of Christian books grew, so did the need for the Catholic Church to discern which were truly authoritative, which were merely helpful, and which were positively harmful. This resulted in a process that gradually clarified which books did and didn’t count as Scripture.The guiding principle for Christians was Jesus Christ himself, so the question became which books he would consider authoritative. Since he presented his ministry as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, this …

Despite the ruins of the Sexual Revolution being all around us, many Protestants are doubling down—not only continuing to support contraception, but starting to embrace other related practices that have historically been considered grave sins. And as usual, theirsola scripturaapproach is allowing them to re-interpret Scripture to find justification. For example, the debate over homosexuality and same-sex “marriage” in Protestantism is taking an almost identical trajectory to t …