Dr. Robert Sungenis

Discussion with Dr. R. Scott Clark of Westminster Theological Seminary and other Protestants on David’s Justification in Romans 4:5-8 A Bellarmine Theological Forum patron alerted me to a discussion taking place on a Protestant blog regarding the topic of Justification. He said that one of the participants was Professor R. Scott Clark of Westminster Theological Seminary (WTS) in Escondido, CA. As many BTF patrons know, I graduated from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, PA, so I am well familiar with the caliber of men that teach there and the approach they take toward theology. The topic of the conversation was the radio interview I had about a year ago with another professor at WTS named Michael S. Horton. Professor Horton interviewed me on his radio program as I gave the Catholic understanding of Justification from my book Not By Faith Alone (Queenship Publishing, 1996). (Michael and I had previously debated this topic in front of a public audience of...

Interview of Robert Sungenis by Protestant Dr. Michael Horton  on the Topic of Justification Venue: The White Horse Inn, a Protestant radio show broadcasted to over 50 stations nationwide, which includes a bi-monthly magazine titled Modern Reformation. Comments by Robert Sungenis: In this interview, Dr. Horton inquiries, once again, into the Catholic understanding of Justification – how a person is justified before God from his sins so that he can go to heaven. Twelve years ago, Dr. Horton, along with his colleagues Robert Godfrey and Ken Rosenblatt, had a debate against Robert Sungenis, Patrick Madrid (now editor of Envoy magazine) and William Marshner (professor at Christendom College). Since that time, there has been no movement from either side in modifying their position on Justification. In the September/October issue of Modern Reformation, Horton devotes the whole magazine to promoting the Protestant Reformed beliefs of Justification, and does so mainly by...

A review of Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives Author: Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict Published by Random House, 2012 ISBN: 978-0-385-34640-5 Reviewed by Robert Sungenis Headlines were made round the world a few months ago in the secular newspapers reporting that Pope Benedict apparently squashed a 2000-year old Catholic tradition as he rejected the belief that Jesus was born on December 25, 1 BC or 1 AD. The newspapers further remarked that the pope believes Jesus was not born in a manger and there were no animals at his birth. They had their fun with it. Now let’s get serious. In reading the reports one gets the impression that the pope wrote a lengthy treatise on Jesus’ birth date and concluded from his vast research that Catholic tradition was not to be trusted. The secular press would be quite happy with such a conclusion since it would bring yet another blow to the traditional faith and mores of the Catholic Church and add to the cultural distance the mo...

Review of Jesus of Nazareth, Part Two, by Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI 362 pages, published by Ignatius Press, San Francisco, CA, 2011, ISBN: 978-1-58617-500-9. Reviewed by Robert A. Sungenis, Ph.D. Quo Vadis, Petrus? In the history of the Church it’s not often that a private book is published by a reigning pope, but Vatican II popes apparently started a trend. John XXIII published a couple of books; Paul VI doubled that; John Paul II doubled Paul VI, and now Benedict XVI has almost doubled John Paul II, and in half the time. Prior to Vatican II hardly any pope wrote a private book on theology. I’m not sure of the reason for this trend. I am more concerned with the fact that it tends to foster what E. Michael Jones calls the “I/We dichotomy” which “demeans the papacy by allowing the pope to become a celebrity” for the purpose of “establishing the bounds of permissible discourse according to a political agenda…”1 In other words, what cannot be said officially beca...

Review of On the Third Secret of Fatima, authored by Kevin J. Symonds,  ISBN: 978-0-9988940-5-8, published by En Route Books and Media, 2017 Although Jeff Langan recently wrote a review of Symonds’ book for Culture Wars’ July-August issue, I asked Mike Jones if I could do a counter-article on Symonds’ book. Whereas Mr. Langan’s review was more or less positive, mine is rather critical, but as you will see, for good reason. Perhaps some in the Culture Wars audience may not like or agree with my approach, but I think we should all at least be aware of what is commonly called, ‘the other side of the story.’ DOWNLOAD PDF

The Old Covenant is Revoked USCCB Removes Heretical Sentence From Its Catechism By and large, Culture Wars is a voice crying in the wilderness in this day and age of decadence and faithlessness. Most of CW’s articles point out the deficiencies in the church and society that few others are willing to mention, much less investigate. Because CW’s message is so critical, you might wonder just what kind of impact it is having. Are people listening? Are lives changing? Is society becoming more aware of the evils surrounding it? I’m sure it is to some extent, but sometimes we receive direct evidence that our voice is being heard and things are changing. As most of you know, about a decade ago Culture Wars decided to confront the anti-Christian Jewish influence in our society head on. Amongst the many issues it has covered, CW published an article in January 2008 titled: “The Old Covenant: Revoked or Not Revoked?” In it we took to task the Catholic prelature for caving into Jewi...

“The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Impact on World History” A Review  By Robert A. Sungenis, Ph.D. (NB: This review appears in the May 2008 issue of Culture Wars) http://www.culturewars.com/ • Hardcover: 1,200 pages • Cost: $48.00 plus $8.00 S&H • ISBN: 0-929891-07-4 • Publisher: Fidelity Press • Order #: 574-289-9786 Reviewing a work as long (1000+ pages), as detailed (1000+ footnotes), and as provocative (the Jews) as E. Michael Jones’ book, The Revolutionary Jew is certainly no easy task, but it has been one of the most enriching and mind-opening endeavors I have ever undertaken. To do justice to this wonderful work would take a book in itself. I will quote from it extensively if for nothing else than to lead you to those pages and its surrounding context so that you will read them for yourself. So packed is it with mind-numbing facts and insightful commentary that one is tempted to embark on a trip to a remote place and lock oneself up in a ...

Review of : The Controversy of Zion by Douglas Reed ISBN: 0-945001-38-X First Published: 1978 Reviewed by Robert Sungenis In his day, “Douglas Reed was on everyone’s lips; his books were being sold by the scores of thousand, and he was known with intimate familiarity throughout the English-speaking world…one of the world’s leading correspondents,” says the writer of the Preface, Ivor Benson. But by the end of the 1940s Reed had almost vanished from the scene. The likely reason for his exile was Reed’s book, Far and Wide, which took a critical look at the history of the United States. We might say the second and decisive reason was his discovery of Israel’s connection to that history. Of himself Reed says, “I am a fairly obscure person and when I went to America in 1949 was almost unknown…the publication of most of my books having been prevented by the methods above described. I found that the ADL watched me like a hawk from my arrival and from this first realized its i...

The Old Covenant: Revoked or Not Revoked? A Review of the PBS Documentary: Jews and Christians: A Journey of Faith By Robert A. Sungenis, Ph.D. More and more Catholics, Protestants and Jews are seeking to overturn 2000 years of Christian teaching concerning the Old Covenant. Although the Church has always taught that the Old Covenant is revoked, what we are now being told by theologians, clerics and lay persons in high places is that it has NOT been revoked. These critics, who refer disparagingly to the traditional doctrine by such names as “supersessionism,” “replacement theology,” “revocation theology,” etc., are all seeking for one thing – to establish the position that: (a) the Jews retain legal possession of the Old Covenant; (b) that this covenant is independent of, but runs concurrently with, the New Covenant; and (c) most hold that the Old Covenant is the means by which God provides salvation to the Jews. We are hearing this new teaching from almost every quarter...

Book Review of : The Israel Test by George Gilder reviewed by Robert Sungenis, Ph.D. “Israel has fewer flaws than perhaps any other nation—Israel is the pivot, the axis, the litmus, the trial.” George Gilder on the Jews “As far as my experience goes they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.” Albert Einstein on the Jews “All critics of Jews should not be tagged as anti-Semites…that the Nazis are brutes does not make us angels....Criticism is not the same as hatred, and critics are not our enemies. The greatest friends of a people are not those who praise but those who honestly find fault. A people without criticism is either a dictatorship or a community so deeply embedded in smug self-satisfaction as to be on the road to decadence.” William Zuckerman, Jewish author. Perhaps the best place to start in reviewing The Israel Test is wit...

Book Review of Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism Author: Paula Fredricksen,  published by Doubleday, 2008, 488 pages. ISBN: 978-0-385-50270-2 Reviewed by Robert Sungenis Paula Fredriksen is a Jewish professor at the Religion department of Boston University. She resides both in Boston and Jerusalem. She has written a number of books about Christ and Christianity, including Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity, which won her the 1999 National Jewish Book Award, and From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Christ, which was used as a working document for a popular Frontline documentary. In addition to Augustine and the Jews, she has also written Augustine on Romans. In 2004, she was highly critical of Mel Gibson’s, The Passion of the Christ, claiming, inter alia, that the movie was “inaccurate” in many places. It is my understanding that Ms. Fredriksen does not claim ...

Jesus Teaches Us How to Interpret the Bible – Catholic Style By Robert Sungenis, Ph.D. Driving in my car the other day, I turned on the radio and came across one of the local Protestant stations. A preacher was expounding on John 3:5 where Jesus says, “Unless a man is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” In his exegesis, he was absolutely sure that John did not mean physical water. Instead, he proposed that John’s water referred to the “word of God.” He cited Ephesians 5:26 and claimed that because Paul referred to “washing her with water by the word,” water was a symbol for Scripture. He transferred this meaning back to John 3:5 and concluded: unless one is born of the word of God (hearing and believing the Bible) and the Spirit (being “born again” by accepting Jesus in your heart) he cannot enter the kingdom of God. So, forget baptism with water as a necessity for salvation. But how can this radio Bible preacher be so sure that his exe...

The Anti-Catholic’s Trump Card written by Robert Lockwood for This Rock magazine of  Catholic Answers for the July-August 2009 issue. Reviewed by, Robert A. Sungenis, Ph.D. The attempts by Catholic apologists to produce the ultimate apology for the Catholic Church’s confrontation with Galileo never ceases. The latest attempt comes from Robert Lockwood writing in the July/August 2009 issue of This Rock published by Catholic Answers. Evidently, there is something about the Galileo affair that continues to bother good Catholics, and rightly so. A haunting question persists no matter how good the latest apology purports to be: how could the Catholic Church, who is guided by the Holy Spirit, be so blind to the scientific belief of heliocentrism in the very magisterial ranks it reveres as the harbinger of truth? A hundred and one reasons for the antinomy have been given over the course of the last 400 years – everything from “ecclesiastical bureaucracy” to “deliberate chicaner...

A Review of David Klinghoffer’s: Why the Jews Rejected Jesus (Doubleday, 2005) by Robert Sungenis, Ph.D. “No authentic Messiah would inspire a religion that ended up calling upon the Jews to reject the manifest meaning of Sinai. It is really that simple.” David Klinghoffer, Why the Jews Rejected Jesus, p. 215. As we can see from the above citation, Klinghoffer has thrown down the gauntlet against Christ and Christianity. To set the stage for his treatise, Klinghoffer tells us that his book is the fruit of a twenty‐year interest. In college he was challenged by a very astute Christian who concluded that Klinghoffer really didn’t understand his own reasons for not converting to Christianity. After college, Klinghoffer considered marrying a very spiritually minded Catholic girl with whom he had many theological discussions, but he was still quite ignorant of his own Jewish religion. This changed when he met his future wife, a Jewish girl who, after being baptize...