Philosophical Musings

Easter 2010 was a particularly momentous occasion in my life, I was formally received into the Catholic Church; receiving the Grace of Love, that is the Holy Spirit, through my first Sacramental Reconciliation; was sealed by the infusion of grace through Confirmation; and finally made communion with the Universal Church in my first reception of Our Lord in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. I have noticed a growing trend on Catholic Social Media and Blogosphere in response to the purported loss of Catholics to the ‘unaffiliated’—I shall endeavour to say more about this notion of an unaffiliated religious belief in another post—group in the USA in which practicing Catholics give reasons for why they are Catholic.                 Firstly, a little about myself. I am a 22 year old practicing Catholic, who has recently graduated University with a BA (Hons) Philosophy and Theology with the ultimate aim of bei...

So, the following post will be a repeat of much of what I’ve already said in the past about Sola Scriptura. I would like to revisit the argument claiming that Sola Scriptura is Solo Scriptura, and then look at some of the implications that has. So, as I have referred to before, Keith Mathison wrote a book entitled The Shape of Sola Scriptura. Within that book he argued that Protestants were giving up the classical Reformation doctrine Sola Scriptura for the novelty Solo Scriptura. Sola Scriptura states that Scripture is our sole infallible authority on matters of faith and practice. Solo Scriptura states that Scripture is our sole authority on matters of faith and practice. The former allows for secondary fallible authorities. The latter does not. Bryan Cross and Neal Judisch argued that there is no principled difference between the two in a blog post they co-wrote at Called to Communion in 2009. I’ll summarize the argument here. Sola Scriptura sets Scripture up as our sole in...