Parchment & Pen Blog

Today, Tim Kimberley and I had the privilege of meeting with an Eastern Orthodox priest here at the Credo House in Edmond, OK. The meeting was called because there is a young man who desires to work as an “under-monk” (barista) at the Credo House. While we are a Protestant Evangelical organization, we often call ourselves [...]

This is the fifth (and long overdue) installment in my series responding to Dan Peterson’s recent article, “Joseph Smith’s restoration of ‘theosis’ was miracle, not scandal.” As explained in the first part of this series, Peterson quotes from the New Testament, the Book of Mormon, an unnamed Jewish source, and a few church fathers to [...]

The Synod of Jerusalem (different than the biblical ”Council of Jerusalem”) was an Eastern Orthodox council which was convened in 1672 to deal with the influences of Reformed theology (particularly that of Calvin) on the Orthodox Church. While this council is not without its modern Orthodox retractors, it was at the time thought to be a definitive [...]

Best of Parchment and Pen On the flight back from Athens last week, I sat in front of a gregarious Irish gentleman. He was a medical doctor in Dallas, but didn’t even come close to losing his native accent. We talked theology most of the flight. He was fascinated by CSNTM’s work of photographing ancient [...]

See updated version here. Protestantism is not perfect. No informed Protestant would claim such. Evangelicalism has major problems. This is nothing new. But Protestants have always thought the strengths of Protestantism outweigh the weaknesses. Otherwise, we would not be Protestant! While I often write about the weaknesses of our system, sometimes complaining about Evangelical shames, [...]

Now I will start to give a brief positive defense of the Protestant doctrine of sola Scriptura. The Scripture implicitly and explicitly speaks of its unique authority and sufficiency. 2 Tim. 3:14–17 “You, however, must continue in the things you have learned and are confident about. You know who taught you and how from infancy [...]

The fifth argument against sola Scriptura: Without the infallible authority of the Church, the Church would be hopelessly divided on matters of doctrine and morals. This would not be the Church that Christ started. The idea here is that when doctrine is left to the “private interpretation” of the individual, this leads to doctrinal anarchy. [...]

The next argument against sola Scriptura: Without the infallible declaration of the Church, there would be no way of knowing what books belong in the canon of Scripture. Since there is no inspired canon of Scripture, the “Scripture alone” is not even enough to establish what Scriptures are truly Scripture. Therefore, the doctrine of sola [...]