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Should Protestantism Still Be a Thing?

/ Paul Burkhart / 3 Comments

Roger-Smith-cc-rosary-bibleFor years now, I have described my place in the Christian family as a “Protesting Catholic“. I love Catholicism (by the way, Orthodoxy, I’m so sorry you are so frequently left out of these discussions–I’m as guilty of doing this as any). I love the entire Church family, in fact, and I can’t think of a tradition from which I have not benefited greatly from it nuancing, sharpening, refining, or deepening my theological thinking in some way. A friend posted this interview with Stanley Hauerwas, on his new book on the “end times”. It’s a brief interview with some nice quotes and sentiments from the elder public theologian, but this set of lines particularly caught my eye:

My suggestion [that Protestantism may be coming to an end] is meant to be a reminder that Protestantism is a reform movement. When it becomes an end in itself it becomes unintelligible to itself. Protestants who don’t long for Christian unity are not Protestant. There is also the ongoing problem that Catholics have responded to the Protestant critique in a way that the Protestant critique no longer makes much sense. Accordingly, the question is: why do we continue to be kept apart?

I wholeheartedly agree with Hauerwas about the heart of Protestantism and how it should long for unity and, eventually and hopefully, end. So why is Protestantism still a thing I embrace? Why am I not fleeing to Rome, to our Mother Church? Let me offer a few words. Continue reading →

National Coffee Day: an homage from Pope Clement VIII [QUOTE]

/ Paul Burkhart / Leave a comment

philly-coffee-reflection-building

“Why, this Satan’s drink is so delicious it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it. We shall fool Satan by baptizing it and making it a truly Christian beverage.”

–Pope Clement VIII upon tasting coffee for the first time. I’m happy to say the Church has heeded his call.

And….We All Have a New Pope! (Catholics Aren’t Crazy)

/ Paul Burkhart / 8 Comments

pope-funny-bigMere minutes ago, a new Pope emerged from the conclave in Rome after Pope Benedict’s surprising resignation several weeks ago. The new Pope is the cardinal formerly-known as Jorge Mario Bergoglio.

But now, he is Pope Francis.

Now, I am fully and securely a Protestant, as most of the readers of this blog are. But for those of us that find ourselves in that Protestant tradition, we often forget a little detail of that name: Protestant.

It means, literally, “the protesting ones”. We are “protest-ant” about many of the practices and teachings of the Catholic Church. But to “protest” something does not necessarily mean you are no longer a part of it.

This is why I describe myself, denominationally, as a “Protesting Catholic”. (Okay, I stole that from Austin Ricketts.)

And you should to.
Continue reading →

Weekly Must-Reads {01.02.11}

/ Paul Burkhart / 1 Comment

  • Human evolution: The old man of the mountain returns | The Economist

    This is so cool. The findings in this field evoke so much wonder, awe, and worship within me. So much joy in Christ comes from these studies by these scientists. Thank you, Christ, for your book of revelation known as Nature!

    tags: share evolution science

    MONEY QUOTE: For the necessary interbreeding to have happened, Dr Paabo’s new species would thus have to have been spread over a vast area of Asia. Yet it has left no previously identified traces.

    • Continue reading →

Catholics on Scripture and Inerrancy

/ Paul Burkhart / 8 Comments

Oh, the Bible. It’s the lifeblood of the Church. It’s our backbone. But there’s so much we don’t get, and the culture both within and without the Protestant Church hasn’t helped. In its response to the Enlightenment, Evangelicals adopted the ground rules and assumptions that undergird modernism, namely, that Truth must be something that has a one-to-one correlation to things in created reality (as opposed to Ultimate Reality–God Himself), therefore making science and history the only vehicles for this Truth. This has caused so many problems with the rest of the world when talking about a little doctrine: Inerrancy which means, at its simplest level, that the Bible contains no “errors”. What does that mean?

Catholics can help us answer this. I fear that Evangelicalism is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the current discussion on nearly every front because of these improper assumptions about Scripture.   Catholics, though, were having these discussions in the Middle Ages! They have largely already dealt with the things that we Protestant are only now encountering issues with. This gave them a foundation that let them maintain intellectual and biblical credibility in light of the Enlightenment and now modernism. Here’s what they say about Scripture in the Catholic Catechism:

Continue reading →