Tag: Protestantism

“What Still Divides Us?” Debate

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A high-powered Catholic/Protestant debate! Held before an audience of over 1,000 people at Lake Avenue Congregational Church in Pasadena, California in March, 1995.

Dr. William Marshner joins Patrick Madrid and Bob Sungenis, a team of three Catholic apologists, against a three-man team of Protestant apologists: Dr. Robert Godfrey (Calvinist; president of Westminster Theological Seminary, Escondido), Dr. Rod Rosenbladt (Lutheran; professor of theology, Scripture, and apologetics at Concordia University), and Dr. Michael Horton (Reformed Episcopalian; author and host of “The White Horse Inn” radio show).
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Three Problems in Calvinism

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Three Problems in Calvinism

W. H. Marshner

Suppose God pulls me up by my armpits to make me stand. If my legs stay jelly, does He succeed in making me stand? No. My muscles and sinews must become such that, in real terms, I am standing on them. The same is true when we take ‘stand’ more broadly to refer to our being alive and upright before God spiritually. God lifts me up by His grace to make me alive and upright. If my inner faculties remain dead as doornails, does He succeed in making me alive? If they remain utterly prostrate in sin, does He succeed in making me stand? No. My mind and will must be-come such that, in real terms, I am living-for-God in them. This point Calvinism recognizes (against Luther) and rightly so: in those whom He is saving, God accomplishes a real work of sanctification.

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The Development Of Doctrine

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The Development of Doctrine

W. H. Marshner


REASONS FOR HOPE
© Christendom Educational Corporation 1978
Christendom College Press

That which is enunciated by God and that which is proposed by the Church: dogma is both. As enunciated by God, dogma is the outcome of revelation in the strict sense; as proposed by the Church, dogma is the outcome of doctrinal development. ‘Doctrinal development’ is just the name for the process by which the Church reaches certitude that a given proposition, p, states exactly what God has said and hence may be proposed to the faithful as obligatory for belief. Thus a theory of doctrinal development is the obverse of a theory of revelation.[1]

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Membership In The Church: Fundamental Questions

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Membership in the Church: Fundamental Questions

by WILLIAM H. MARSHNER

FAITH AND REASON
Vol. 2, No. 3
Winter 1976
Christendom College

A pressing question before the Church today is precisely “Who is a member?” The importance of this matter, which seems on the surface to be rather obvious, stems from two scandalous but simple facts. First, the division of Christianity into competing sects has created the difficulty of defining the relationship of these sects to the true Church. Second, modern Catholics who deny even the most basic of Church teachings often confuse the issue by refusing to admit that they have left the Church. It is in this context, then, that F&R publishes the following rigorous, careful and technical treatment of Church membership by William H. Marshner. The argument demands and deserves careful reading and rereading with full attention to the notes. It is true that the casual reader will find certain traditional attitudes toward Church membership reinforced by the author’s conclusions. But the painstaking student of this article will find much more, for presented here are basic distinctions which go far toward ending the confusion about who is a member in good standing of the Catholic Church and who, in fact, is not.
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Ecumenism in Crisis

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Ecumenism in Crisis:

Some Catholic-Political Considerations

W. H. MARSHNER

Triumph
Vol. VIII No. 4
April 1973

The question whether the Catholic Church in this country should join the National Council of Churches is now in the final stages of study. At the same time, all ecumenical undertakings have been given a new cast by the January 22 Supreme Court decision on abortion. These two circumstances define the present moment as uniquely propitious for a careful rethinking of the entire ecumenical engagement.

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Biblical Theology in Crisis

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Biblical Theology in Crisis (Review)

Review of Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology in Crisis (The Westminster Press, 1970).

W. H. Marshner

Triumph
Vol. V. No. 9
November 1970

“The strain of using orthodox Biblical language for the constructive part of theology, but at the same time approaching the Bible with all the assumptions of Liberalism, proved in the end to cause an impossible tension” (p. 103). B. S. Childs, professor of Old Testament at Yale and a major figure in Protestant biblical scholarship, has exploded a theological bomb in this work. Continue reading “Biblical Theology in Crisis”

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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The Scripture Game

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The Scripture Game

W. H. MARSHNER

Triumph
Vol. V. No. 4
April 1970

No Christian can object to increasing the knowledge or the influence of Sacred Scripture. Yet the wide diversity of benefits that are expected to flow from the current “progress” in biblical studies suggests anything but unanimity as to how the subject ought to be approached. Continue reading “The Scripture Game”