[.ca] By What Authority? an Evangelical Discovers Catholic ... (ISBN 0879738510)

Concise and compelling:
By What Authority is a wonderful read. Shea's prose is witty and his argument is compelling. He describes how as a young evangelical Christian he encountered the writings of revisionist theologians who compose the "Jesus Seminar." After studying the Jesus Seminar's attacks on the central tenets of Christianity, Shea gradually realized that the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura could not provide a sufficient basis of authority to adequately defend his Christian faith. Shea's book marvelously describes his faith journey to the Catholic Church how and why the Church has an articulable and authentic basis of authority on which one can confidently stake one's faith. This is a refreshingly quick read (it took me a day) but the argument is timeless.

Are you thinking about Catholicism?:
If you are an evangelical thinking about Catholicism, maybe for the first time, or because you have encountered some Catholic traditions and theology that pique your interest? READ THIS BOOK. As an evangelical, I found it very palatable, in that I understood Mark Shea's allusions to scripture and writing style better than I did some other Catholic writers who do not have the "advantage" of an evangelical background.

A breeze to read and top notch content:
This book is deceptively easy to read, the style is so engagingly casual. However, the book is full of insights and leaves the reader with a heightened sense of the profoundness of Christianity. It also sheds light on many aspects about Christianity that people take for granted but are actually not found in the Bible - for instance, why the "Sabbath" now falls on Sunday (whereas, properly speaking, would have been Saturday as it still is in Judaism), how the concept of the Trinity emerged, why so many Christian denominations agree that abortion is wrong, and how we even got the Bible, to name but a few. Many think being a Christian is just a matter of "the Bible and me". Find out why there's more to it than that.

Some follow-up reading...:
...might interest some of you. James White, a Protestant apologist debated Mark Shea on this book in the bit.listserv.catholic newsgroup. I found this debate very interesting, as it adds further knowledge to the issue, and allows the Protestants to state their counter arguments. If you are interested, go to: http://groups.google.com and copy the next line (including quotation marks): "authority and canon" "mark shea" "james white" and paste it into the search box. The main debate is in "Authority and Canon: Let's Begin". Hope this is useful.

A breeze to read and top notch content:
This book is deceptively easy to read, the style is so engagingly casual. However, the book is full of insights and leaves the reader with a heightened sense of the profoundness of Christianity. It also sheds light on many aspects about Christianity that people take for granted but are actually not found in the Bible - for instance, why the "Sabbath" now falls on Sunday (whereas, properly speaking, would have been Saturday as it still is in Judaism), how the concept of the Trinity emerged, why so many Christian denominations agree that abortion is wrong, and how we even got the Bible, to name but a few. Many think being a Christian is just a matter of "the Bible and me". It pays to have an open mind: find out why there's more to it than that.