On The Implicit

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Abstract

Every theory of doctrinal development makes some appeal to the concept of implicit information. But no theologian or Church historian has bothered to explore this concept philosophically with the contemporary tools for doing so. I refer to tools such as an up-to-date philosophy of language and an up-to-date logic of significance and context. It was to fill this lack that “On the Implicit” was written in the mid-1980s. Continue reading “On The Implicit”

The Defense of Dogma

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The Defense of Dogma

W. H. Marshner

APOLOGETICS
REASONS FOR HOPE
© Christendom Educational Corporation 1978
Christendom College Press

In today’s world especially since the advent of Modernism, it is insufficient to simply define the authority of the pope and leave the faithful to follow his teachings. It is unfortunately fashionable to deny that Church teachings are to be taken literally, fashionable in other words, to retain the precise wording of dogmatic formulations while interpreting them in purely symbolic or metaphorical terms. Therefore, a further defense is necessary, a defense which is at times technical, but nonetheless indispensable: it is the defense that Church teachings mean what they say. And in order to appreciate the ways in which dogma is under attack today—some of them quite subtle—and to meet those attacks, we must begin by taking special pains to be fully clear about exactly what dogma is.

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The Scripture Game II

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The Scripture Game II

W. H. MARSHNER

Triumph
Vol. V. No. 5
May 1970

The first part of this commentary on modem biblical scholarship argued that the Catholic biblical revival is producing suspicious fruits because the philological-critical method of exegesis has been misapplied to the task of Christian exegesis. It remains to show what Christian exegesis is, why it is theologically inevitable and how it can be defended against the charge of obscurantism.

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