1993 Christendom College Summer Institute Guest Lecture Series
Copyright 1993 Christendom Educational Corporation
Tag: scripture
Grace And Sin At The Dawn Of Moral Experience
Grace and Sin at the Dawn of Moral Experience
William H. Marshner
2006
In a notorious article of the Prima Secundae, Aquinas claimed that the first moral decision of an unbaptized child could not result in a venial sin. If the decision was bad, the sin could only be mortal. On the other hand, if the decision was good, the same unbaptized child was freed from original sin. The common doctor’s argument for these claims wove together threads of psychology, moral theology, and eschatology, to fashion a controversial doctrine — elegant, but hard to defend, and in conflict with his own work on faith and justification. This paper will unravel the threads and propose a revised doctrine, less elegant but more plausible, and free of conflict.[1]
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“What Still Divides Us?” Debate
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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Concept, Judgment, and Dogmatic Relativism
Concept, Judgment, and Dogmatic Relativism
W. H. Marshner
1993
It is a central claim of Christianity that certain teachings formulated in the Mediterranean world two thousand years ago are divinely revealed. It is also a central claim that this revelation has been grasped and repeated ever since as the “same Gospel” — an achievement which heresies did not prevent and from which legitimate developments did not detract.
Traditionally, these two claims have been understood to demand the following explanation: the expressions used in formulating the original teachings have been understood within the main body of the Church with enough invariance, over all the intervening centuries and in widely different civilizations, to ensure that the “same doctrine” has been handed down.[1] Continue reading “Concept, Judgment, and Dogmatic Relativism”
Three Problems in Calvinism
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.
The Structure Of Platonism And The Dogma Of The Trinity: Some General Considerations
The Structure of Platonism and the Dogma of the Trinity: Some General Considerations
WILLIAM H. MARSHNER
FAITH AND REASON
Vol. XI, Nos. 3, 4
1985
Christendom College
For centuries the philosophy of Plato has deeply attracted religious thinkers. William H. Marshner offers here a fine analysis of the structure of Platonic thought. Mr. Marshner probes the difficulties raised by the Platonic doctrine of participation and Oneness when applied to the relations existing between Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the Trinitarian dogma.
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The Morality Of Political Action: Biblical Foundations
The Morality of Political Action:
Biblical Foundations
An edited transcript of 3 lectures held June 22,
June 29 and July 6, 1983 at the Free Congress
Research and Education Foundation
William H. Marshner
Enrique T. Rueda
The Free Congress Research and Education Foundation
Officers and Board Kathleen Teague, Chairman Dr. Charles Moser, Treasurer Margaret Johnson, Secretary Dr. Robert J. Billings Senator William L. Armstrong William Marshner Michelle Laxalt
Foundation Staff
Paul M. Weyrich, President
Connaught Marshner, Executive Vice President
Eric Licht, Vice President for Operations
Laurie Ramsey, Vice President for Development
John Grecco, Comptroller
The Morality of Political Action: Biblical Foundations
Copyright © 1984—The Free Congress Research and Education Foundation 721 Second Street, N.E.
Washington, D.C. 20002
Library of Congress Catalog Card No: 84-82044
First Printing Price $4.00
The Free Congress Research and Education Foundation is a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt, research foundation, engaged in educational projects in two separate areas of concentration.
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The Authenticity of the New Testament
The Authenticity of the New Testament
W. H. Marshner
REASONS FOR HOPE
© Christendom Educational Corporation 1978
Christendom College Press
In order to examine Christ as the ultimate Revelation of God, and to prepare for a consideration of his teaching, purpose and divinity, one must establish the authenticity of the documents which give us our information about his life. And when one inquires about the authenticity, historicity or reliability of the New Testament. there are at least three different fields of research about which one might be asking. These are the textual, the literary or form-critical, and the theological fields.
The Development Of Doctrine
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]
The Defense of Dogma
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.
Criteria For Doctrinal Development In The Marian Dogmas: An Essay In Metatheology
CRITERIA FOR DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT IN THE MARIAN DOGMAS: AN ESSAY IN METATHEOLOGY
By WILLIAM H. MARSHNER
MARIAN STUDIES, Vol. 28 (1977)
University of Dallas
Irving, Texas 75061
Synopsis
As a critique of recent proposals by E. J. Yarnold, S.J., and R. E. Brown, S.S., to re-think the “meaning” of certain Marian dogmas, a method is proposed for establishing the sense and reference (hence verifiability conditions, falsifiability conditions, axiomatic connexions, and metalinguistic “properties”) of these and other dogmas. It is shown that such a method forms an integral part of a general criteriology for doctrinal development. At the outset, then, the possibility and necessity of such a criteriology is defended against certain “theological theories” of doctrinal development, especially that of K. Rahner, S.J. Finally, the relevance of Henri Bouillard’s problematic of “reconceptualization” to the here proposed method and general criteriology is evaluated. Several philosophical and theological issues closely related to the main thesis are handled in footnoted discussions.
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The Wright Intervention
THE WRIGHT INTERVENTION
W.H. MARSHNER
THE WANDERER (Section Two)
November 2, 1972
In September of 1971, a “joint assembly” of priests and Bishops met in Madrid to adopt guidelines on pastoral action. When they were finished, a week later, they had approved a gigantic document, divided into seven parts (ponencias — an untranslatable word which means both “theses” and “chapters”). Each part consisted of a long body of texts followed by 50 or so “propositions” or conclusions, each of which had been voted on separately. The finished document was held to be a milestone in Spanish Church history, and its approval by the full hierarchy of the national conference was thought to be a rubber stamp affair. Continue reading “The Wright Intervention”
Biblical Theology in Crisis
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
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.
The Scripture Game
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”