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The canon of the New Testament slowly took shape over the first 300 years of Christianity. Some books, like the four Gospels, were widely accepted early on, whereas others were doubted by many for a long time. But by the fifth century, the New Testament canon of twenty-seven books was firmly settled. In spite of this, over a thousand years later, Martin Luther dismissed four of those books when he translated the New Testament into German.Four on the Chopping Block?Martin Luther was excommunicat …

Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code wasn’t the first historical fiction where the history was just as fictional as the story. Émile Zola beat Brown by over a hundred years.Zola was a famous French writer and avowed atheist whose novels and other works had won popular acclaim. In 1892, he decided to write a novel about the amazing cures said to be taking place in the waters of a spring in Lourdes, France, where the Virgin Mary had reportedly appeared to young Bernadette Soubirous eighte …

Purgatory is also found among many non-Catholic Christians. In fact, Christians who reject the doctrine of purgatory, in its consciously articulated form or at least the concepts that undergird it, are of the minority position. As we’ll argue below, such a widespread belief among Christians outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church gives reason to think purgatory is for real and is so intertwined with the sources of Christian revelation that Christians can’t get away from it. Be …