Likelihood, Plausibility, and Sola Scriptura
This is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, tentatively titled I Fought the Church (and the Church Won). Enjoy. And play nice. As I continued wrestling through the issues of church authority and its relation to Scripture, one of the questions I kept returning to was that of likelihood. “All things being equal,” I would ask myself, “which is more likely: that Jesus had intended to establish his church in such a way that it was to be governed by Scripture alone (with leaders whose role was to interpret Scripture to the best of their...
read moreAll Law is Not Created Equal
There is no small amount of confusion in Catholic/Protestant discussions over the issue of God’s law. Protestants constantly accuse Catholics of teaching some sort of salvation by law or works, and regardless of how often or how strongly Catholics insist that they believe no such thing, the charges continue. Part of the problem, it seems to me, is that many Protestants — especially Lutherans or those Reformed who lean that way — tend to think of law with a capital L. Law, we often hear, is any command, any verb in the...
read moreOn Gentile Justification and Jewish Jealousy
Former Catholic Timothy Kauffman has written a couple posts about me at his new blog, Out of His Mouth (a blog whose purpose is to “wield the sword of truth in defense of the faith, and refute the errors in which [the author] was once enslaved.” His latest article takes me to task over my “succumbing to Roman arguments about the meaning of Romans 2:13″ (a charge which actually thrills me because it demonstrates that both St. Augustine and N.T. Wright are in fact Romanists). According to Kauffman, “The sheep of...
read moreAppetite for Disruption
One of the issues that distinguishes Catholicism from Protestantism (and which has come up in the last couple threads here) is the relationship of grace to nature. When I was Reformed, I constantly heard that the last thing in the world the gospel did was reinforce what natural man already knew to be true, but rather, the gospel comes in to disrupt, to disturb, and to turn man’s instincts on their head. You see, natural man is Pelagian and believes he can work his way to heaven, and the gospel serves to overturn those natural instincts...
read moreThe Kingdom of God, Forensically Considered
**This is a guest post by Jonathan Prejean** Owing largely to Reformation-era polemics, the application of legal descriptions in the context of historical Christian orthodoxy appears to have been badly misunderstood. The charge is that the Eastern Fathers were pretty much oblivious to legal metaphors, the Western Fathers were cognizant but confused owing to translation errors (specifically the use of iustificare, to make righteous), and only the discussion around the Reformation uncovered the true Biblical teaching about what it meant to be...
read moreSome Thoughts on Romans 4
I’m feeling a little cray cray, like I want to get all exegetical up in here. And stumbling across PCA pastor Nick Batzig’s post, “Abraham and the Time Frame of Justification,” provides me with a perfect opportunity to do so. Plus, some of you have been nagging me to delve back into Romans, so. Concerning the issue of “eschatological justification,” Nick writes: The most significant passage of Scripture in this regard (and yet one that has been often overlooked) is Romans 4:10. In the context of chapter 4,...
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Jason J. Stellman
I was born and raised in Orange County, CA (also known as "The OC" by people not from there), and served as a missionary with Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa in Uganda (’91-’92) and in Hungary (’94-’00). After becoming Reformed and being subsequently “dismissed” from ministry with Calvary, I went to Westminster Seminary California where I received my M.Div. in 2004. After graduation I was ordained by the Pacific Northwest Presbytery of the PCA and called to plant Exile Presbyterian Church in the Seattle area, where I served from 2004 - 2012. On September 23, 2012, I was received into the Catholic Church. I am the author of Dual Citizens: Worship and Life Between the Already and the Not Yet (Reformation Trust, 2009), The Destiny of the Species (Wipf & Stock, 2013), and Here I Fall (forthcoming from Random House).
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