Sam Scriber

Below is the script I wrote for a Catholic apologetics video geared toward lay people. The video is also linked below with all of the sources I used for this script in it's description. Why do Catholics say that Peter was the first Pope? One of our main starting points is the gospel of St. Matthew. In chapter 16 we find Jesus with his disciples in Caesarea Philippi. He asks them, “But who do you say that I am”.   Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” ~ Matthew 16: 16-18 In this passage we find the basis and beginning for why we say Peter was put in charge of the Church that Christ founded. We also find scriptural basis for the fact the Christ founded a Church period, a fact which

In a short essay, Flannery O’Connor quotes St. Cyril of Jerusalem, “The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon.” This wise saying encapsulates well the fiction and philosophy of Ms. O’Connor. Her stories often deal with darkness and pain, her characters could be described as grotesque and profane, yet grace and redemption shine through and make themselves evident in a world populated by falleness. In another essay, Ms. O’Connor remarks, “I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil.” The author has come to recognize that this world truly is as it is described in the Holy Scriptures. Darkness has befallen the Earth and surrounded the human race, yet the light of divinity still finds a way to gleam into the lives of her often macabre anti-heroes. Growing up a Catholic in

The Book of Genesis is a source for many topics of interest. In it one can find fascinating perspectives on history, regaling dramas between gods and men, and a multitude of controversial points of discussion. The text itself though was never meant to be a mere cache of water-cooler conversation matFerial. Its purpose is to shape the way that people understand the world around them and their relationship to God. Its dramatic telling of the creation of the world, of God’s struggle with chaos in nature and in men’s hearts, and of the interactions between the different human tribes, is meant to give people a picture of who they are in light of the God of Genesis. Many people see Yahweh as a stoic figure, sitting atop a Holy Mount and unapologetically handing out divine wrath and judgment. Others see God as an absentee creator, one who put things together and then took off leaving men to fend for their selves. Both of these views suffer from a lack of a careful reading of what Genesis is

To begin to understand the Christology of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christology must be defined and Dietrich Bonhoeffer must be known. In his book The Christology of the New Testament, Oscar Cullman notes that biblical inquiries about Christology, “…do not simply place Jesus in a general human category, but attempt rather to explain his uniqueness.” It is not simply a pragmatic defining of the different roles Jesus functioned within, i.e. prophet, healer, Rabbi. Those are but miniscule pieces of a very large answer. Both the Christologies of Jesus and of Dietrich Bonhoeffer deal with what makes the Christ unique, transcendent, and the unifying force of being. What does Christ mean to existence? The man who asked this question most courageously in the twentieth century, did so not only with his pen, but also with his life.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a brilliant German theologian who earned his doctorates degree at the age of 21. After a vibrant yet short career of shaking the foundations o

Among the writings of the New Testament, the Johannine examples are filled with portents of humanity’s final destination more than the others. The study of these prophecies (along with the rest of the Biblical prophetic writings) is commonly called eschatology, which basically just means the study of the last. This field in American Christianity usually finds its foundation in the Book of Revelation and there is no shortage of contradictory and divergent views on exactly what the fulfillment of these writings will look like. For a modern evangelical Christian, it is very valuable to undertake a scholarly study of Biblical eschatology and escape from the endless myriad of doomsayers that plague the mass culture. Eschatology deals with ultimate reality; this is why it holds such a grip on the imaginations of so many. Most people desire to know their future and the future of their loved ones, biblical prophecy seems to hold the best chance to gain that knowledge. As a result, the field