Dr Paul Allen

Last week Cripplegate received positive response about, “Why Evangelicals and Roman Catholics Cannot Be Together,” some seem to not quite grasp the reason for it. After all, they say that they have neighbors or family members who really love Jesus, who attend a Roman Catholic Church. While I have spoken to many Catholics and have yet to meet one who can explain the Gospel, I am sure that there has to be some believers who Sunday after Sunday are attending RCC’s. If you are one of these people, here are four reasons you need to leave today. Or if you know someone whom you believe to be born again, here are four reasons you need to encourage them to leave. You are severed from the Church body The weekly Church gathering is not about evangelism. It’s about worship, fellowship and equipping (Eph 4:11-15). We love for unbelievers to come to Church and see the radical difference between how Christians love one another and how the world loves one another. We love for unbelievers to come...

In view of the question posed during the Reformation , what about the Roman Catholic Church today? Is it a true church? Here it seems that we cannot simply make a decision regarding the Roman Catholic Church as a whole, because it is far too diverse.  To ask whether the Roman Catholic Church is a true church or a false church today is somewhat similar to asking whether Protestant churches are true or false today—there is great variety among them. Some Roman Catholic parishes certainly lack both marks: there is no pure preaching of the Word and the gospel message of salvation by faith in Christ alone is not known or received by people in the parish. Participation in the sacraments is seen as a “work” that can earn merit with God.  Such a group of people is not a true Christian church . On the other hand, there are many Roman Catholic parishes in various parts of the world today where the local priest has a genuine saving knowledge of Christ and a vital personal rela...

In its true spiritual reality as the fellowship of all genuine believers, the church is invisible. This is because we cannot see the spiritual condition of people’s hearts. We can see those who outwardly attend the church, and we can see outward evidences of inward spiritual change, but we cannot actually see into people’s hearts and view their spiritual state—only God can do that. This is why Paul says, “The Lord knows those who are his” (2 Tim. 2:19). Even in our own churches and our own neighborhoods, only God knows who are true believers with certainty and without error. In speaking of the church as invisible the author of Hebrews speaks of the “assembly (literally, “church”) of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven” (Heb. 12:23), and says that present-day Christians join with that assembly in worship. We can give the following definition: The invisible church is the church as God sees it. Both Martin Luther and John Calvin were eager to affirm this invisible aspect of th...

Scredit: Wikipedia ) Hebrews 12:18–24 “You have come to…the city of the living God , the heavenly Jerusalem , and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn” ( vv. 22–23 ). Many Protestants wonder why they profess belief in the “holy catholic church” when they recite the Nicene Creed . Is this a confession of allegiance to the pope? If a church is not in communion with the Roman Catholic Church , why would it affirm this part of the creed? The answer, of course, is that the “holy catholic church” and the “Roman Catholic Church” are not identical. The term catholicsimply means “universal,” and in the creeds of the church it refers to the reality that the one church of Jesus Christ is not limited to any particular geographical region, ethnicity, economic class, age group, historical era, or sex. When we say that we believe in the “catholic church,” we are simply affirming that the church is made up of people from all kinds of backgrounds. Anyon...

Stained glass at St John the Baptist's Anglican Church http://www.stjohnsashfield.org.au, Ashfield, New South Wales. Illustrates Jesus' description of himself "I am the Good Shepherd" (from the Gospel of John, chapter 10, verse 11). This version of the image shows the detail of his face. The memorial window is also captioned: "To the Glory of God and in Loving Memory of William Wright. Died 6th November, 1932. Aged 70 Yrs." (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Hebrews 12:18–24 “You have come to…the city of the living God , the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn” (vv. 22–23). Many Protestants wonder why they profess belief in the “holy catholic church” when they recite the Nicene Creed . Is this a confession of allegiance to the pope? If a church is not in communion with the Roman Catholic Church , why would it affirm this part of the creed? The answer, of course, is that the “holy catholic chur...

Jesus H. Christ (Photo credit: angelofsweetbitter2009 ) How is a person justified? Luther ’s controversial position was that we are justified by faith alone . When he said that, many of the godly leaders in the Roman Catholic Church were very upset. They said, "Does that mean that a person can just believe in Jesus and then live any way they want to live?" In other words, the Roman Catholic Church reacted fiercely because they were afraid that Luther’s view would be understood as an easy-believism in which a person only had to believe and never had to be concerned about bringing forth the fruits of righteousness. It was crucial that those who were involved in the Protestant Reformation carefully define what they meant by saving faith. So they went back and did their studies in the New Testament , specifically on the Greek word pistein, which means "to believe," and they were able to isolate three distinctive aspects of biblical faith. The first is the Lat...

emblem of the Papacy: Triple tiara and keys Français : emblème pontifical Italiano: emblema del Papato Português: Emblema papal. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I think Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT) and similar efforts to make common cause with Roman Catholics are based on a fundamental misunderstanding of where the Roman Catholic Church is theologically and what it actually teaches. There is no question that the Roman Catholic Church has changed since the sixteenth century.  But the changes have not closed the gap between Rome and Protestantism . Indeed, the differences are greater now. For instance, the formally defined proclamation of the infallibility of the pope and all of the Mariology statements have come since the Reformation . Neither has Rome backed down from any of the positions it took in the sixteenth-century debate. In the updated Catechism of the Catholic Church, released in the mid-1990s, the treasury of merit, purgatory, indulgences, justification ...