Fifteen dialogues, drawn from five years of real Internet discussions with educated evangelical Protestants, on the three questions that divide Catholics and Protestants most sharply: how the Bible and apostolic tradition relate, whether the Church can be infallible, and how a person is saved. Dave Armstrong’s words appear essentially as he wrote them at the time; his interlocutors’ arguments are paraphrased — but, he insists, faithfully and without straw men.
Inside: the premises of sola Scriptura, perspicuity of Scripture, the nature of the Church, Catholic “grace alone,” justification by faith, repentance, baptismal regeneration, infant baptism, and a long appendix tour through Trent on justification, Luther on the canon, and Newman on biblical hermeneutics.
The dialogue partners are sharp — three with advanced theological degrees, others from Bible colleges, all of them able representatives of Presbyterian/Reformed, Baptist, Reformed Baptist, and Lutheran evangelicalism. Apologetics as Socrates, Paul, and Aquinas practiced it: think out loud, with worthy opponents, in front of readers.
Inside this book
- Five dialogues on sola Scriptura — premises, perspicuity, formal sufficiency, whether the Bible teaches its own clarity
- Five on apostolic tradition and the Church — including a “dialogue” with the Reformed Belgic and Second Helvetic Confessions
- Five on salvation and justification — Catholic “grace alone,” faith and works, repentance, infant baptism, baptismal regeneration
- Six appendices: Trent on justification (full canons), Luther on the New Testament canon, Newman on Antiochene hermeneutics, Karl Adam on non-Catholics
- Eleven sharp dialogue partners — three with advanced theological degrees, drawn from Presbyterian/Reformed, Baptist, and Lutheran traditions
