Dustin Ashe

Catholic convert from Presbyterianism. Mother of God apologetics. Dad & Husband. Tech, improv, & writing. Mother of God conversion memoir incoming.

[Dustin Ashe @DustinAshWrites]

This is Lee Strobel.

Atheist. Legal editor at the Chicago Tribune. He set out to disprove the resurrection and dismantle his wife's new faith. The evidence converted him instead.

Execution. An early creed dated within months of the cross. An empty tomb even the enemies conceded.

Eyewitnesses who died for what they saw. He followed it where it led and it led to a risen Christ. He's right. The resurrection is the best evidenced event in ancient history.

Then he stopped.

I followed the same evidence as an adult convert and it didn't stop at the empty tomb.

If God raised a real body in public, in history, with witnesses, then He still acts that way. So look at Fatima. October 13, 1917. Three children announced the date months ahead. Roughly 70,000 people came, believers and skeptics alike.

Portugal's most influential newspaper, O Século, was anticlerical and pro-government. Its lead reporter had mocked the children in print. He stood in that crowd and wrote that the sun danced beyond all cosmic laws. A hostile witness, on the record.

A predicted, dated, mass-witnessed miracle. The same kind of public evidence Strobel used to prove the resurrection.

And here is the part a Protestant cannot follow me onto. Fatima isn't generic. The apparition asks for the rosary. For Eucharistic reparation. She points to her Son and to the sacraments.

The miracle that meets Strobel's own evidence standard is Catholic in its content.

The evidence that carried him to Jesus carried me past the door he stopped at. To the Eucharist. To the Mother who appears because her Son is risen. To Rome.

The resurrection is not the finish line.
It's the door. And Fatima is what's on the other side of it.

My piece on the canon is up now, on whose authority decides what counts as Scripture. My next one goes deep on Fatima and how it points to Rome.

Subscribe so you don't miss it. Link below.

[Dustin Ashe @DustinAshWrites]

How many books are in the Bible?

[Dustin Ashe @DustinAshWrites]

This is Lee Strobel.

Atheist. Legal editor at the Chicago Tribune. He set out to disprove the resurrection and dismantle his wife's new faith. The evidence converted him instead.

Execution. An early creed dated within months of the cross. An empty tomb even the enemies conceded.

Eyewitnesses who died for what they saw. He followed it where it led and it led to a risen Christ. He's right. The resurrection is the best evidenced event in ancient history.

Then he stopped.

I followed the same evidence as an adult convert and it didn't stop at the empty tomb.

If God raised a real body in public, in history, with witnesses, then He still acts that way. So look at Fatima. October 13, 1917. Three children announced the date months ahead. Roughly 70,000 people came, believers and skeptics alike.

Portugal's most influential newspaper, O Século, was anticlerical and pro-government. Its lead reporter had mocked the children in print. He stood in that crowd and wrote that the sun danced beyond all cosmic laws. A hostile witness, on the record.

A predicted, dated, mass-witnessed miracle. The same kind of public evidence Strobel used to prove the resurrection.

And here is the part a Protestant cannot follow me onto. Fatima isn't generic. The apparition asks for the rosary. For Eucharistic reparation. She points to her Son and to the sacraments.

The miracle that meets Strobel's own evidence standard is Catholic in its content.

The evidence that carried him to Jesus carried me past the door he stopped at. To the Eucharist. To the Mother who appears because her Son is risen. To Rome.

The resurrection is not the finish line.
It's the door. And Fatima is what's on the other side of it.

My piece on the canon is up now, on whose authority decides what counts as Scripture. My next one goes deep on Fatima and how it points to Rome.

Subscribe so you don't miss it. Link below.

[Dustin Ashe @DustinAshWrites]

@Burgess7281975 @rickbrennanjr Mother of God

[Dustin Ashe @DustinAshWrites]

Strobel's later books are still Protestant apologetics, friend.

That's the point, not a gap in mine.

He made the evidential case for the resurrection better than almost anyone and remained Protestant.

I'm saying the same evidence, followed further, goes to Rome.

Disagree with that if you like. But "deceitful or ignorant" is just the part where your argument ran out.

[Dustin Ashe @DustinAshWrites]

This is Lee Strobel.

Atheist. Legal editor at the Chicago Tribune. He set out to disprove the resurrection and dismantle his wife's new faith. The evidence converted him instead.

Execution. An early creed dated within months of the cross. An empty tomb even the enemies conceded.

Eyewitnesses who died for what they saw. He followed it where it led and it led to a risen Christ. He's right. The resurrection is the best evidenced event in ancient history.

Then he stopped.

I followed the same evidence as an adult convert and it didn't stop at the empty tomb.

If God raised a real body in public, in history, with witnesses, then He still acts that way. So look at Fatima. October 13, 1917. Three children announced the date months ahead. Roughly 70,000 people came, believers and skeptics alike.

Portugal's most influential newspaper, O Século, was anticlerical and pro-government. Its lead reporter had mocked the children in print. He stood in that crowd and wrote that the sun danced beyond all cosmic laws. A hostile witness, on the record.

A predicted, dated, mass-witnessed miracle. The same kind of public evidence Strobel used to prove the resurrection.

And here is the part a Protestant cannot follow me onto. Fatima isn't generic. The apparition asks for the rosary. For Eucharistic reparation. She points to her Son and to the sacraments.

The miracle that meets Strobel's own evidence standard is Catholic in its content.

The evidence that carried him to Jesus carried me past the door he stopped at. To the Eucharist. To the Mother who appears because her Son is risen. To Rome.

The resurrection is not the finish line.
It's the door. And Fatima is what's on the other side of it.

My piece on the canon is up now, on whose authority decides what counts as Scripture. My next one goes deep on Fatima and how it points to Rome.

Subscribe so you don't miss it. Link below.

[Dustin Ashe @DustinAshWrites]

@bikerbutter @piratecapt16 Go mow that lawn, friend.

And I mean it about holding each other to it. If I ever come off wrong, call me on it too.

Talk tomorrow.

God bless you, Raymond.

[Dustin Ashe @DustinAshWrites]

The Assumption isn't Mary leaving the Cross behind.

Look where the angels hold the Cross.

She rises because of the Cross.

(Saint-Sulpice, Paris France)

[Dustin Ashe @DustinAshWrites]

That's exactly my point.

Strobel followed the evidence to the resurrection and stopped there.

I followed the same evidence further, to Rome.

The post isn't "Strobel is Catholic." It's "the evidence that converted him doesn't stop where he stopped."

His not being Catholic is the whole reason the post exists.

[Dustin Ashe @DustinAshWrites]

Respect that, and I mean it.

Knowing you're anti-Catholic and saying so up front is more honest than most conversations I have on here.

I'd rather talk with someone who tells me where he stands than someone who hides it.

I'm not here to make you Catholic. I'm here to make sure that when you disagree with it, you're disagreeing with what it actually teaches and not a cartoon of it. Sounds like that's what you want too.

Respectful and polite always goes both ways.

Glad to keep talking whenever you like, friend.

[Dustin Ashe @DustinAshWrites]

The E's are the strongest case there is. I came to faith following exactly this evidence.

One thing worth adding. The resurrection isn't only proof that it happened.

It's the moment Christ purchased His Church with His own blood and walked out of the tomb to make our salvation real. The evidence gets us to the empty tomb. The empty tomb gets us to a Lord who bought us.

Appreciate you laying it out so clearly.

[Dustin Ashe @DustinAshWrites]

Fair on Epiphanius. His conclusion is "no one knows." I'll grant it. Notice you didn't answer the other half: in the same work he says not everything comes from Scripture, that Tradition is needed. You cited a Father who denies your rule.

But here's the real problem, and you wrote it yourself. You said the canon was "tested by the same Scripture principle."

Test the books against Scripture to find out which books are Scripture? That's the circle.

There is no Scripture to test against until you already know the canon.

You accused me of circularity while standing in a tighter one.

And "the books demonstrated themselves" doesn't survive the history. Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, Jude, and Revelation were disputed for three centuries. Luther wanted James gone.

They didn't self-authenticate. They were received, by Hippo in 393 and Carthage in 397, the same councils, the same sessions, that received the seven books you reject.

You keep half their ruling and throw out the other half. By what principle, except that you already agreed with one half?

That's the question. Not Mary. Authority.

Answer it and the Assumption answers itself.

[Dustin Ashe @DustinAshWrites]

Ave Maria

[Dustin Ashe @DustinAshWrites]

The Assumption isn't Mary leaving the Cross behind.

Look where the angels hold the Cross.

She rises because of the Cross.

(Saint-Sulpice, Paris France)

[Dustin Ashe @DustinAshWrites]

The Seven Books and the Test the Synagogue Couldn't Pass

https://t.co/xpaPZjh610

[Dustin Ashe @DustinAshWrites]

Fair question, and I respect you asking it instead of assuming.

The room is the church building itself. The tabernacle is the gold box in the sanctuary, and we believe it holds the Eucharist, which we believe is the body of Christ, the Word made flesh.

So everything around it, the architecture, the gold, the art, is built to honor what's inside it. The same way Israel built the Temple around the Ark.

We're not putting Jesus in a small box to shrink Him. We're doing what Israel did with the Ark, building the most beautiful space we can around the presence we believe is really there.

If we're right that it's truly Him, the beauty makes sense. If a Protestant thinks the bread is only a symbol, then yes, the gold box looks like idolatry. So the real question underneath yours isn't the architecture. It's whether the Eucharist is what we say it is.

That's the actual disagreement, and it's an honest one. Happy to get into it if you want.

[Dustin Ashe @DustinAshWrites]

Epiphanius is real and I won't dodge him. He says no one knows her end, and Scripture is silent on it. Granted.

But you stopped reading too soon. In the same passage he leans toward Mary being taken "like Elijah, who was taken up and has not seen death." Your witness for uncertainty was privately inclining toward bodily assumption.

And in the same work, Epiphanius says not everything can be drawn from Scripture, that Tradition is needed too. The Father you summoned to prove "no doctrine without a verse" denies sola scriptura in the same book. You quoted my witness, not yours.

On your three verses: Deuteronomy 4:2 guards the Mosaic Law. Revelation 22:18 guards the book of Revelation. 1 Corinthians 4:6 points back to the Old Testament texts Paul just cited. None of them says "no doctrine without an explicit verse." That rule still has no verse.

And silence doesn't prove a negative. Scripture never records Mary's death, her burial, or any relics. By your own logic that silence means she never died. In an age that fought over saints' bones, no city ever claimed Mary's body. That absence is the evidence, not the gap.

So the question stands and you haven't answered it. By what authority do you receive the 27-book New Testament, which has no proof-text and which Epiphanius says needs Tradition? Answer that, and you've answered Mary.

[Dustin Ashe @DustinAshWrites]

The angels present the cross because it's the cause of her assumption, not because it's beneath her. She rises by its power.

That's the image. But the real question is your second point, so let's go there.

You said it yourself: Enoch and Elijah were bodily taken, explicitly, in Scripture. So bodily assumption is biblical. God does this.

You've granted the category. The question isn't whether it's possible or pagan, it's whether it happened to Mary.

"No verse, therefore false" only works if doctrines require an explicit verse to be true.

Where's the verse for that rule? It refutes itself. And the belief isn't 1,900 years of silence. The Church was celebrating Mary's Dormition liturgically by the 6th century, on the calendar for over a millennium before 1950. Pius XII defined it as dogma in 1950.

He didn't invent it, the same way Nicaea didn't invent the Trinity in 325.

Definition isn't invention.

So: where's the verse that says a doctrine needs a verse?

[Dustin Ashe @DustinAshWrites]

@ThinkonitW @piratecapt16 Mary is the Ark of the Covenant and the Word made flesh was inside her

The Word is God

[Dustin Ashe @DustinAshWrites]

Conceive means a new human life begins in the womb. Mary conceived a person.

That person is God the Son. So she conceived God, the same way she bore God, the same way she nursed God and buried God and saw God risen. Not the divine nature originating in her, the divine Person taking flesh in her.

"Bearer but not conceiver" splits the conceiving from the bearing as if two different beings were involved, one she made and one that moved in.

That's Nestorianism. Ephesus condemned it in 431. The council ruled Theotokos, God-bearer, precisely because you cannot separate the Christ she conceived from the God he is. One Person. She's the mother of the Person. The Person is God.

A mother conceives a person, not a nature. You're trying to make her mother of half a Christ. There isn't one.

@Burgess7281975

[Dustin Ashe @DustinAshWrites]

You quoted 969. Finish it. The same paragraph says her role "neither takes away from nor adds anything to the dignity and efficacy of Christ the one Mediator." Rome defines her mediation as totally dependent on his, in the sentence right after the one you stopped at.

She "brings" salvation the way the moon brings light. Reflected, dependent, real, not its own source.

The Father and Spirit are the living God.

So is the Son she conceived.

That's the whole point of "Mother of God" — she conceived the One who is God, by the power of the Spirit, sent by the Father. Calling her his mother is the opposite of calling her God.

A mother is not her son.

[Dustin Ashe @DustinAshWrites]

Look at the statue you're quoting. The angels hold the Cross. She rises by its power.

The Cross isn't beneath her in rank — it's beneath her as the cause.

Rome teaches Christ's sacrifice is the sole source of salvation and Mary is its first and greatest beneficiary, saved by it more completely than anyone.

"Mary is your salvation" is your sentence, not ours.

Show me the Catholic document that says it.

[Dustin Ashe @DustinAshWrites]

@jessesmith88796 Glad it's clear. 🙏

[Dustin Ashe @DustinAshWrites]

I listened to the whole part on X. One honest observation, then a real question.

You set the topic as John 6 exegesis, then spent most of it telling him to "get to John 6" while not letting him build the argument he was making. He was trying to show John 6 reads off Mark 6 and 14 that's not a dodge, that's standard exegesis, and you cut it every single time.

But here's the part I actually want you to answer on the record:

his core point never got touched. "Spiritual" doesn't mean "not literal." John 6:63, "the Spirit gives life," doesn't cancel 6:55, "my flesh is true food" - alēthēs, true, not symbolic.

And in 6:66 Jesus lets the crowd walk rather than soften it. He doesn't call them back and say "it was a metaphor."

So: if it was only ever a symbol, why did Jesus let them leave over a misunderstanding He could have corrected in one sentence?