The Christian Vanguard

Some Protestants have cited the following from Aristides , a 2nd century Christian, against the doctrine of Original Sin.  And when a child has been born to one of them, they give thanks to God; and if moreover it happen to die in childhood, they give thanks to God the more, as for one who has passed through the world without sins. Does this show that Aristides taught children (some translations have "infancy" instead of "childhood", while other translations, like the Syriac, doesn't have it at all!) don't have original sin? Not at all, and to think that it does is to read it into the text. So, the Protestant wants to say that if a child dies in infancy, then he dies without sin. And he can only die without sin if he has no Original Sin. This is not true. Catholics believe in Original Sin and we also believe that infants can die without sin. How? Through baptism. An infant who is baptized can pass through this world without sin. It isn't true that t...

Chapters four and five deal with the same theme: soteriology, or, salvation, and the relationship between faith, works, grace, repentance, etc. I’ll be dealing with chapter four and appendix II here, and chapter five in my next post. It doesn’t take a paragraph before Ferguson begins to salivate at the thought of straw-men. He writes, “Although their theologians can quote certain writings which seem to support a more biblical position regarding works and grace, the average Catholic has little grasp of the biblical message.”