2007-03-19

Steve Hays responds to Philip Blosser

Steve Hays as posted a whopper of a response to Philip Blosser's long post on Sola Scriptura. (Blosser, currently Professor of Philosophy at Lenoir-Rhyne College, made an appearance in the comments box of this very blog, here.

I was gratified to see that Hays cited extensively from Peter Lampe's book on the history of the church in ancient Rome, which I've also cited extensively. Lampe's work is a groundbreaking work that does not simply rehash what others have said. Rather, it is a thorough and detailed history of the church as it existed in that city, as he has reconstructed it, beginning with Romans 15, but taking into account virtually all of the history and literature of the period, along with public records, archeological investigations, and tons, tons more stuff.

I would like to see this work get more exposure. It is definitely not favorable to the Catholic "history" of the papacy, and I believe the tremendous treasure of information it provides may have been instrumental in prompting Pope John Paul II to make his unprecedented offer to allow theologians from all denominations to make suggestions about "a new situation" for the papacy, in his encyclical, Ut Unum Sint.

2007-03-03

Calvin on the papacy

...our plan of instruction now requires us to discuss the church, its government, orders, and power; then the sacraments; and lastly, the civil order. At the same time we are to call back godly readers from those corruptions which Satan, in the papacy, has polluted everything God had appointed for our salvation.
John Calvin, "Institutes", 4.1.1.