Category: Catholicism

Does the Church think that Scripture is important?

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During my various apologetic endeavours I have often heard the assertion that that Catholic Church doesn’t think much of Sacred Scripture. I have been told by well-meaning non-Catholics that the Church doesn’t care about God’s word and that our clergy do everything they can to keep the Bible out of the hands of their congregations.

When meeting with these assertions, I invite my interlocutors to peruse the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which is the official compendium of all that we believe as Catholics. The section concerning Sacred Scripture begins at paragraph #101. It draws heavily from a Second Vatican Council constitution “Dei Verbum” (“Word of God”) and is a nice summary of that conciliar document.

So, what does the Church actually believe and teach about Sacred Scripture?

Bible

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OSAS & Three Cups of Tea: Cup 3

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In the last two blog posts I critiqued the Scripture interpretations of Mack, a commentator on my Once Saved, Always Saved post. Mack had responded to my article, claiming that I had been misapplying Scripture passages to support my argument that it is possible to lose your salvation. If you would like to read my two previous replies, they are available here and here.

We have nearly finished looking at Mack’s commentary, so please pour yourself one last cup of tea and we’ll take a look at the final two passages…

tea

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OSAS & Three Cups of Tea: Cup 2

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In the last post I began to examine the responses of Mack, a recent commentator on my Once Saved, Always Saved post who offered some constructive criticism concerning the Scripture passages I presented.

I previously looked at Mack’s commentary of 1 John 5:16-17 and 2 Peter 2:20-22. I will now look at his analysis of several other passages which I offered in defense of the idea that it is possible to lose one’s salvation. Mack basically attempted to disqualify these texts since they were drawn from letters addressed to groups of people.

So, grab another cup of tea and we’ll look at what he had to say…

tea

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OSAS & Three Cups of Tea: Cup 1

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I recently had some comments on my Once Saved, Always Saved post by a chap called MackQuigley. In that post I presented several passages as evidence that it is possible to lose one’s salvation. Mack disagreed with my article and said that I had misapplied these passages and that they did not, in fact, support my case.

In his final comment, Mack went through each of the passages I quoted and gave a brief summary of his own interpretation in an attempt to prove that it is not possible to lose one’s salvation. Since he graciously took the time to explain his position and challenged my post in a charitable manner, I would like to return the favour and offer a reply.

I’m going to break up my response into a few different posts, collecting together the passages where Mack used similar argumentation to disqualify the texts. For each passage, I’m going to quote the Scripture under examination, append Mack’s comments and finally offer my own rebuttal.

There are quite a few Scripture passages to address here –  seven in total – so this’ll take a little bit of time. It’s probably a good idea to put on the kettle and brew up a nice cup of tea before we continue…

tea

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