Books by Dave Armstrong

The present work mainly uses reason and Holy Scripture in order to explicate Catholic moral theology, in the areas of sexuality, gender, and the family. Far from being a merely "moralistic" or "puritanical" or "Victorian" sort of outlook (often perceived by many as a set of unnecessary, stifling, negative rules), Catholic moral theology is based on what God has revealed to us in His inspired Word, the Bible, and is a positive teaching about who man is, and what fulfills him, in accordance with God's purpose for His children, made in His image. It is my hope and prayer that this book will help Catholics to better understand the rationale behind their own Church's sometimes difficult-to-live-out beliefs concerning personal and institutional morality, and aid non-Catholics in finding common ground with Catholic moral teaching, and to better appreciate it, even where they find themselves in disagreement.

C.S. Lewis, the famous Anglican writer, once wrote: "The very possibility of progress demands that there should be an unchanging element . . . the positive historical statements made by Christianity have the power . . . of receiving, without intrinsic change, the increasing complexity of meaning which increasing knowledge puts into them" ("God in the Dock," Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI, 1970, 44-47). Doctrine clearly develops within Scripture ("progressive revelation"). Examples: doctrines of the afterlife, the Trinity, the Messiah (eventually revealed as God the Son), the Holy Spirit (Divine Person in the New Testament), the equality of Jews and Gentiles, bodily resurrection, sacrifice of lambs evolving into the sacrifice of Christ, etc. This book serves as an introduction to the notion of doctrinal development, written from a popular lay apologetics standpoint.