What It Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Always-Reforming Church

by Gavin Ortlund

Supposedly infallible teachings don’t have a good track record in church history. We have already seen changes to the doctrine of “no salvation outside the church” in both Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions. Another example is Roman Catholic teaching concerning the death penalty. In their 2017 book on the topic, Edward Feser and Joseph M. Bessette documented the overwhelming support for the legitimacy of the death penalty in principle in Scripture, tradition, and church teaching, showing that this doctrine clearly qualifies as part of the infallible, irreformable teaching of the church.29 One year later, under Pope Francis’s leadership, the Catechism of the Catholic Church was changed to affirm that “the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person’, and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.”30

Touché.