"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
The March For Life in Washington DC is quickly approaching, so for the next week or so I’m going to be posting exclusively on the subject abortion, even dispensing with some of my “regularly scheduled programming”, such as Music Monday and Friday Frivolity.
To kick off this series of posts, here’s a video of Catholic Apologist Trent Horn speaking with Dr. Malcolm Potts on “Issues on Reproduction”:
(Unfortunately, the audio quality isn’t good, but the content is great)
A few days ago I published a post of a debate which Trent Horn from Catholic Answers had on the subject of abortion. Today’s post is of another debate in which Trent recently engaged, this time with the famous mythicist, Dr. Richard Carrier:
I was fortunate enough to ask a question Dr. Carrier a question concerning Ignatius of Antioch. There other question I wanted to ask though. Given that Dr. Carrier regards the Gospels as large works of allegory, what does he make of all the New Testament scholarship which explores the different senses of Scripture, one of which is the allegorical sense. Wouldn’t that mean that we have allegories inside allegories?
I will certainly say that Dr. Carrier knows his stuff, but by the end of this debate I was honestly bewildered by his position. Not only is it rather complicated, he has to go to great lengths to explain away the all the evidence which points to a far simpler narrative: that there was a man named Jesus of Nazareth who lived in the First Century whose followers claimed rose bodily from the dead.
If any of you have watched or listened to debates on atheism, you will have, no doubt, come across William Lane Craig. He is an analytic philosopher, Christian apologist and the driving force behind ReasonableFaith.org.
If you’ve ever heard him debate, you’ll know that he’s very clear, calm and persuasive. In fact, noted Atheist Sam Harris described him as “the one Christian apologist who seems to have put the fear of God into many of my fellow atheists”.
It was therefore with great curiosity that I listened to an interview where he discusses Catholicism:
The interview was rather interesting. Catholics were praised for seeming to read the Bible more these days, and Craig spoke about Catholic liturgy in exalted terms. On the whole he was pretty positive about Catholicism, although he of course still disagrees on certain points, otherwise he wouldn’t still belong to a Protestant denomination.
In the interview he raises two objections to Catholicism. The first is a classic, Justification. When speaking about this topic, Craig fails to understand how Catholics can speak about the involvement of works in salvation, yet at the same time assert that we are justified by grace.
The other issue raised was another old favourite, the Blessed Virgin. The interviewer, Kevin Harris, tripped up early on, saying “There was a move a while back to really elevate Mary, to almost equality with Christ, co-redemtrix. I don’t think that ever got off the ground in the Catholic Church, but there was a move there…”. This is misleading on two points. Firstly, although it’s not dogma, you’ll still find that title used a lot in reference to Mary, even although it isn’t as established as other titles, such as Mother Of God. Secondly, co-redemtrix does not indicate equality with Christ, simply that Mary has a role in redemption, much in the same way a pastor who leads a person to Christ participates in that person’s redemption.
On both of these issues, Craig seems to find a gap between official Church teaching and the belief of the Catholic faithful, some of which I find understandable.
I’d invite you to have a listen. What do you think of the interview?
I actually had this post scheduled for mid-November, but I thought I’d post it a little early because of the recent media storm concerning pressure over classroom crucifixes from Muslims at a private Catholic University. In this entry I have a video of a debate Peter Kreeft had on the subject of Islam. He tells a story at 35:09 that I think is particularly relevant to the current controversy.
I have devoted quite a lot of time to studying Islam and probably read in total about a third of the Qur’an. Despite the fact that Islam is a major world religion, I often find awareness of basic Muslim beliefs rather lacking among Christians. A little while ago I produced a series of posts about Islam in an attempt to provide a basic introduction to the religion.
I often have rather animated conversations with another member of the Catholic community here in San Diego on the subject of Islam. A lot of these conversations revolve around how Islam should be viewed by Catholics. I was therefore delighted the other day when I stumbled upon a debate Professor Peter Kreeft had on this very subject…