53 articles from the existing collection.
The New Testament teaches that true religion begins with faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Savior of humanity. This faith is not merely intellectual assent but a living trust that shapes one’s entire life. John 3:16 underscores that belief in Jesus leads to eternal life, emphasizing the centrality of faith. However, fa…
The four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—are foundational to the Christian faith, serving as divinely inspired accounts of Jesus Christ’s life and mission. The Catholic Church holds that these texts, written under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, convey the truth necessary for salvation (CCC 107). Each Gospel writer, or ev…
The New Testament provides evidence of a distinct rite involving the laying on of hands to confer the Holy Spirit, as seen in Acts 8:14-17 . In this passage, Peter and John travel to Samaria, where newly baptized believers had not yet received the Holy Spirit. The Apostles prayed for them, laid hands on them, and the Samaritans …
The Catholic Church firmly holds that the early Christian community was a unified body, not divided into separate Jewish and Gentile sections with distinct heads. Christ established one Church, as evidenced by his prayer for unity in John 17:20-21 . The apostles, under Peter’s leadership, worked together to spread the Gospel to …
St. Matthew’s Gospel, written primarily for a Jewish-Christian audience, emphasizes Jesus as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. The account of the dead rising at Christ’s death ( Matthew 27:52-53 ) is part of a series of extraordinary signs accompanying the crucifixion, including the darkening of the sky and the tearin…
He was sincere. He was not a mere humanitarian. The humanitarian is merely kind to his fellow men from motives of human and natural sympathy, not from motives of religion. St. Paul tells us the uselessness of humanitarianism from the religious point of view when he writes, “If I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, a…
I maintain that it contains part of God’s full revelation. All that is contained in the Bible has been revealed by God, although further information is given us in other ways. That the Bible contains very mysterious doctrines I admit.
St. Paul did not believe that the end was near. In 1 Thess. IV., 16, he says that the Lord will certainly come again, adding, “Then we who are alive, who are left, shall be taken up together with them in the clouds to meet Christ.” But he does not say that he himself and his listeners would still be living when Christ comes. He …
Nor did he. And the expression “till” in Hebrew usage has no necessary reference to the future. Thus in Gen. VIII., 7, we read that “the dove went forth from the ark and did not return till the waters dried up.” That expression does not suggest that it returned then. It did not return at all, having found resting places. Nor doe…
He means that through Christ alone can man attain to everlasting happiness. That he intends, not immortality as such, but a happy immortality is clear from his immediate addition of the words, “dwelling in the light,” as opposed to the unending darkness of eternal misery.
The text warns us against wrong traditions, but in no way condemns traditions which are not merely of human invention, but which are according to Christ. St. Paul does not contradict his own teaching.
That does not suggest that a Bishop must be married, but belongs to the same context as that which you have just quoted. If a man who has been married, but not to more than one wife, be chosen, he must be one who has been faithful and who has ruled well his own house. That discipline was most wise at a time when such a man could…
That intensifies the force of the arguments for hell. Only a grim reality could have forced Him to speak as He did. He taught heaven and hell equally. You cannot have heaven because you like it and reject a hell taught with the same authority because you do not like it. Think of His passion and death. If there were no hell to sa…
Nowhere did Jesus ever tell us to heal. As for your comparison of St. Paul with Jesus, remember that every word of the New Testament is the inspired word of God. We are to believe both St. Paul and Jesus, and their doctrines never conflict. If they did conflict the New Testament could not be God’s word, and you could not use it …
Jesus was not the natural son of Joseph. But Mary, who was the Mother of Jesus, was related to Joseph, whose genealogy was also her own. It was a Jewish custom to record descent only through the male line.
No. We read of some adult baptisms, but they were not administered precisely because the subjects were adults, but because they happened to be converted as adults. Acts XV commemorates the reception of two complete households into the Church by St. Paul, and we are not told that the adults only in those households were received.…
She is not a reliable witness. Her whole record is criminal. She died in 1903, but not before becoming a celebrity on the Protestant platform. Under the name of Miss Douglas she was arrested for forgery, and served sentences on other counts under the aliases of Parkyn, Edgerton, and Margaret Shepherd in Bodmin, Cornwall, and Lon…
St. Paul does not say that a Bishop must be the husband of a wife, but insists upon the expression “one wife.” Had he meant that it was necessary to have a wife, he would have been violating the law himself. In the early Church, owing to the scarcity of single men eligible for the Priesthood, married men who wished to be ordaine…
It would not, unless it were the penalizing of one man against his will for another’s crime. But who would condemn me if I chose to pay the fine of some poor man who had offended against the laws of the state?
The English version has the words, “This enrolling was first made by Cyrinus, the governor of Syria.” But a better translation of the Greek would be, “The first enrolling was made by Cyrinus, the procurator, or quaestor, of Syria.” St. Luke knew of two distinct enrollings under Cyrinus, the first when he was procurator under Var…
Even had not St. Paul seen the risen Christ personally, his evidence would not be unreliable. If we demanded that no historian should set down anything except that which he had actually witnessed for himself very little history would be written. So long as the historian knows that the source of his information is reliable he is …
It is praiseworthy to safeguard justice, and yet at the same time to exhibit untold love and mercy. Christ is God. Mercifully He took a human nature, and in that human nature expiated the sins of all those who wish to avail themselves of His generosity by fulfilling the conditions He appointed.
Some of them have made uncertain and vague claims, but none has made any precise claim in the full sense in which Christianity declares Christ to have been the Son of God. Nor is there a shred of evidence to show the reality of their claims, vague as they are.
No. He desired to show us that he knew the future by revelation, but that he was not free to manifest all that he knew to us. He explicitly says, “Let him that hath understanding count the number.” The understanding required is not merely human wisdom, but an understanding on the same high plane as was the very revelation given …
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