Book Count: 78
The Catholic Verses : 95 Bible Passages That Confound Protestants By: Dave Armstrong
Non-fiction: Religion, Bible study, apologetics 225 pages 2004
First, I like that this book was written with a realistic goal in mind, that goal being to hopefully create understanding for Protestants on where in the Bible various things deemed Catholic come from. (A number of the things talked about some Protestant groups would agree with already like the role of baptism and a few only reasontly have Protestants and Catholics started disagreeing on like contraception.) It also reminds Catholic reader of the problems with any attempt to talk with other Christians on these things. And does so in a fair way, by pointing out while some people will not agree with you on anything just because its what Catholics think and there for is automatically wrong, many are just used to understanding things a certain way, making it hard for them to see what your ideas are. (I found this especially nice having to deal many times with the second issue and a few with the first. My favorite one being some one who argued that Bible quoting wasn’t even to be used in showing what you believe as anyone could randomly throw out quotes, not that I was misinterpreting the Bible, just in her “Just Jesus and me, faith alone” mindset even the Bible was suspect if it didn’t agree with her.) It also set about to use 95 passages as a sort of response to Martin Luther’s 95 thesis, so many of that number are supporting text that most people agree on the meaning that use the same word, style, or mirror the text in question to show that a consistent translating or understanding would mean X. (X being the Catholic idea on what this means.) It also quotes the leaders of the Reformation a lot, which is where it gets a bit confusion, as sometimes the quotes are used to show modern Protestant thought on a subject and sometime to show that even the leaders of the Reformation agreed with Catholic thought on a passage. The book is divided into 16 chapters, each covering an area of disagreement. Those areas are: the church, divisions and denominationalism, Bible and tradition, the Papacy, justification and salvation, judgment and good works, baptism, the Eucharist, penance, the communion of saints, relics and sacramentals, purgatory and prayers for the dead, Mary, clerical celibacy, divorce and contraception. And because as soon as I saw the book, I had to ask “So, what are these verses, besides the book of James and a good part of the 6th chapter of the Gospel of John?” Here are some of them if you are curios too. (Note: I’m writing this while feeding the baby, so it’s possible I’ll typo a number or two. If you turn to a passage and it doesn’t seem to relate to anything, that’s most likely a typo.)
Acts 16:4, Galatians 1:1-6, John 17:20-23, Romans 16:17, 1 Corinthians 1:10-13, Acts 8:27-31, 2 Peter 1:20, 2 Thessalonians 2:15, Matthew 16:18-19, James 2:24, Luke 18:18-25, Philippians 2:12-13, Hebrews 5:9, Matthew 7:16-27, 2 Corinthians 5:10, Acts 16:3, John 3:5, Luke 22:19-20, John 6:47-66, Matthew 26:27-28, 1 Corinthians 10:16, Romans 8:17, Hebrews 12:1, Revelation 6:9-10, 2Kings 13:20-21, Acts 19:11-12, 1 Corinthians 3:11-15, 2 Timothy1:16-18, Luke 1:28, Matthew 19:12, Matthew 19:9, Genesis 38:9-10.
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