Category: Columns
What do Roman Catholics believe?
This is the second in a four-part series on Roman Catholicism.
Read part one: Who are Roman Catholics?
While Roman Catholics and evangelicals agree on a number of Christian doctrines, as we learned in the last column, there are profound differences between the teachings of Rome and the revealed word of God in Scripture.
As Protestant theologian Harold Brown once warned, while Catholicism holds to key fundamental articles of the faith, the church “so overlays them with extraneous and sometimes false doctrines that the foundations are no longer accessible to the majority of Catholic believers.”
Roman Catholics embrace at least seven doctrines that evangelical Christians reject as inconsistent with Scripture. In this article, we explore five of these divergent doctrines, with two more doctrines to follow in the next installment.
The Apocrypha. While evangelicals hold to the “canon” of 66 books in the Bible, Catholics argue that the apocryphal books – seven books and four parts of other books – belong in the canon. They call them deuterocanonical – literally, “second canon.”
The Council of Trent (A.D. 1545-1563) canonized these books, which include Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and 1st and 2nd Maccabees. Among other things, these books support such Catholic teachings as prayers for the dead and justification by faith plus works.
Who are Roman Catholics?
This is the first in a four-part series on Roman Catholicism.
The Roman Catholic Church traces its beginning to the apostle Peter, claiming he is the rock upon whom Jesus built His church (Matt. 16:18). Following Peter is an unbroken line of successors stretching to Pope Francis today.
Non-Catholics establish the beginning of the Roman Catholic Church at A.D. 590 with Gregory I, who consolidated the power of the bishopric in Rome.
In any case, the Catholic Church is the world’s largest Christian denomination, with 1.2 billion members. The Catholic hierarchy includes cardinals and bishops and is led by the bishop of Rome, also known as the pope.
The Catholic Church teaches that it is the one true church divinely founded by Jesus Christ. In addition, it claims that its bishops are the successors of Jesus’ apostles, and that the pope, as the successor to the head of the apostles (Peter), has supreme authority over the church.
Categories of Catholics
While the Catholic Church claims to be the one true church, Catholics worldwide hold to a diversity of beliefs. Researcher Ken Samples, cited in Christian Research Journal, has concluded that there are six primary categories of Roman Catholics:
When a question is better than an answer
Has anyone asked you:
“Why are all Christians homophobic?”
“Why should I worship a God who allows children to starve?”
“If Jesus is so great, why are so many of His followers jerks?”
Tough questions, to be sure. And making matters worse is the questioner’s tone, implying that he or she is not really looking for an answer.
So how should we reply?
Christianity without hell
John Shore recently authored a commentary for Patheos entitled, “What Christianity Without Hell Looks Like.” Patheos is a website providing information about various religions.
Reprinted in TIME Ideas and complete with a photo of a dove soaring in the sunlight, the article’s main point is that Christianity without hell “would allow Christians to point upward to God’s love.”
Shore is a popular Christian blogger and author, yet his column features a string of shockingly bad theological statements that nevertheless resonate well in today’s relativistic culture.
Let’s look at just four of his false statements.
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Original sin and the Imago Dei
In Colonial days students learned to read from The New England Primer, which featured a number of Christian maxims such as, “In Adam’s Fall, we sinned all.”
This statement, like others in the Primer, incorporated biblical truths into basic education. From childhood, students came to understand that all human beings are sinful and fallen creatures.
While many schools today abandon these truths in favor of relativism, syncretism, and multiculturalism, many Christian parents instill in their children the reality that sin has marred the Imago Dei – or image of God – in their lives.
We use Scripture to explain our depraved state: “We all went astray like sheep; we all have turned to our own way” (Isa. 53:6); “The heart is more deceitful than anything else and desperately sick” (Jer. 17:9); and, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23).
These truths go against the grain of our feel-good culture but are intended to drive us to the foot of the cross, where the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. And for that, we owe an eternal debt of gratitude to our great God.
At the same time, both Scripture and experience remind us that while we await glorification, we must engage in a daily battle between the flesh and the indwelling Spirit (Gal. 5:17).
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