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Lykken, T. David. The Antisocial Personalities. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers 1995. 259 pp. Per Lykken in The Antisocial Personalities in 1995 put…
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Aquinas’ use of remissio peccatorum in his Aristotelian taxonomy of justification as the “remission of sins” has led some to conclude that ultimately he argues for…
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I have herein summarized and quoted from articles 1-10 of question 113 in the prima secunda of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica: “Of the Effects of Grace.” I…
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I have so far offered mostly praise and appreciation for Julian Baggini’s book Atheism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2003), 119 pp. In my last…
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I have so far offered almost nothing but praise and appreciation for Julian Baggini’s book Atheism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2003), 119 pp. I…
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In the year 2013, all my posts have been a summary of Julian Baggini’s book Atheism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2003), 119 pp. …
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Is Atheism the same as Humanism? If not, what is the difference? Who are the major atheist thinkers of history and what are some of…
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What about arguments for the existence of God? Are they sound? Is the faith of religious believers actually based on such rational arguments? In our…
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In our summary of Julian Baggini’s book Atheism, we have already covered how to better define atheism, explored his summary of the case for atheism,…
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We have examined how to better define atheism and the rational case for atheism according to author Julian Baggini. In our last post, I summarized Julian Baggini’s own…
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We have looked at how to better define atheism and the rational case for atheism. In this post I will summarize Julian Baggini’s own summary of atheist ethics,…
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In this post I will summarize Julian Baggini’s own summary of the case for atheism, presented in chapter 2 of his book Atheism: A Very Short…
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In the next few posts I will be both summarizing and reviewing a book designed to explain and defend Atheism. The book is not written…
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I have summarized highlights of John Chrysostom’s interpretation of the introduction to the book of Romans. I believe they foreshadow much of his interpretation of…
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Remember Francis Shaeffer? The great evangelical apologist who, for example, helped galvanize evangelicals over the issue of abortion? I ran across an old video of…
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Who Are the Unitarian Universalists? It was a customary scene I have been familiar with since my own childhood: first-time visitor parking, greeters at the…
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**UPDATE: My research article has fluctuated from 3% to 6% in the top viewed trophies at Academia.edu. Famous British theologian and philosopher John Hick passed…
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For those of us who tend to think of slavery as merely a historical evil (that is, an evil only to be studied from our…
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The following audio is a book reading about “The Great Questions” from William Portier’s Tradition and Incarnation: Foundations of Christian Theology (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist…
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Do Catholics practice open communion? In the past, I would’ve answered this with a simple: No. And perhaps on the local level for many Protestants…
T h e o • p h i l o g u e 
Wow… surprised I never heard of the New Ecumenism. Glad to hear there is a mutual desire for true ecumenism and not just the watered down “we basically believe the same thing” talk. Without treading too far that way myself, I venture to say that all Christians (Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant) agree on the basic elements of the Gospel: salvation by grace alone through Christ alone, that Jesus is both fully God and fully man, the Trinity, and most of us confess the Nicene Creed without qualification. If we can rest on these truths and acknowledge that all who believe these things are fellow Christians, I believe we can then proceed into areas of disagreement.
After all, why do Cathoilcs and Orthodox share a strong devotion to Mary? Because we believe she is the model Christian who lived on this earth for Christ alone to the glory of God alone. And why do nearly all Protestants reject devotion to Mary as authentic Christian behavior? Because they believe it is a distraction from Christ alone for the glory of God alone. Ironic, eh? 🙂 But, we can acknowledge that we share the same goal and then work back to why we use different practices to get there. It’s a long road, but we can’t lay down our sacrifice at the altar without going to our brothers to heal this wound. I’m excited to hear what Peter Kreeft and John Armstrong have to say on this.
Jason,
Glad you are encouraged by the New Ecumenism. I appreciate your willingness to press toward a deeper unity.
Of course … the Catholics have been working for ecumenical unity for a long time, so it’s the protestants who need more discussion about it. They are more often the one’s who stubbornly hold to a strong spirit of divisiveness with Rome. I have a feeling (hope?) it will become more and more talked about over the next 20-30 years.
I would even say that before and after the doctrine of the trinity was “nailed down,” many who did not think about God in exactly the way the council of Nicea explicated it were and are still Christians. Gospel unity and agreement about the exact nature of the trinity are two different things in my mind. I think there will be many people in the new heaven’s and new earth who were heritics by the standards of the Nicean formula.
Good point. From the Catholic perspective, things are generally open to speculation until the Church makes a definitive statement, such as at the Council of Nicea. Obviously those gathered at the council all recognized each other as fellow Christians. However, today there is hardly any disagreement on the Trinity, save for some pseudo-Christians like Mormons and Oneness Pentecostals, which is part of the reason I specifically mentioned that doctrine as something that binds conservative Christianity. Maybe that explains a little better what I was getting at.