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February 10 - February 26, 2025
Quickly I realized there was a huge need for greater Protestant representation. For one thing, there were simply fewer Protestants involved in these conversations. Beyond that, I noticed that traditional Protestant argumentation was often not articulated in the contemporary conversations, such that historic Protestantism was misunderstood or altogether invisible.
First, there is currently an enormous amount of interest in church history. Many evangelicals, in particular, are currently exploring more sacramental, liturgical, and historically conscious traditions. It’s hard to convey how strong this hunger for historical rootedness is right now. People are aching for the ancient, the transcendent, the stable, the deep.
The second thing I noticed is that, among evangelicals, there appears to be insufficient awareness of, and response to, this phenomenon. This is not to say there are no evangelical Protestants engaging in these conversations. But the resources available to struggling Protestants are shockingly sparse. On the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox side (especially Catholic), there is a huge body of literature, social media presence, and apologetics ministries that are unmatched on the Protestant side. Just do an Amazon search for books in the genre of “Roman Catholic apologetics,” compare that
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On YouTube the sociological dynamics I encountered were the opposite: I began to encounter huge numbers of people who were mystified at how anyone could be Protestant. Slowly I learned to see Protestantism through their eyes. What was once obvious as a recovery of the gospel, I could now understand as they saw it—a historical deviation and oddity.
Evangelicals have no idea what is coming at them.
I also began to see the complexity of the issues better. Let me put it plainly: The issues that divide Christendom are rarely if ever so obvious that everyone will come to the same conclusion about them if only they would study them long enough with a good will. Rather, sincere and intelligent people will and do disagree about them because they are not simple. They are enormously complex—historically, theologically, and in terms of the range of values and concerns represented on each side.
Didn’t Jesus say the Spirit would guide us to the truth?
this journey has helped me understand the powerful allure of these non-Protestant traditions and burdened me that they are often not treated with sufficient respect and thoroughness.
There is large-scale ignorance of historic Protestant creeds, confessions, catechisms, and major canonical theologians. In many cases, low-church, evangelical Protestantism (predominantly Baptist and nondenominational) is equated with Protestantism as a whole. And many particular Protestant views are mangled by caricature. (I have especially noticed this with sola fide and sola Scriptura, but it happens in other areas as well).
Most of the Reformers affirmed the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and opposed transubstantiation on the grounds that it represented a departure not only from Scripture but also from patristic testimony.
The Protestant effort was to reclaim the Eucharist, not replace it. Lay Christians in the late medieval West hardly ever partook of the Eucharist. For most it would have been only once a year, if that, and even then, it was generally in one kind only (the bread, not the wine). For many the Eucharist had become more of a spectacle, and its celebration was plagued by superstitious beliefs. One of the central, animating concerns of the Protestant Reformation was to reestablish for lay Christians a meaningful and frequent participation with the Eucharist in both kinds.
Of course, the differences among Protestant denominations are important, and each of us must consider which particular church we will join. But many people are wondering whether they should be any kind of Protestant, or whether the very idea of Protestantism makes sense. It is those kinds of readers whom I hope to help.
This feels weak. If I am the one choosing the church I “feel” or like the most, than it becomes inherantly impossible to have a “one, true church”. This is one of Protestantism’s flaws.
I do not maintain that these various non-Protestant traditions have entirely lost the gospel, but I do believe, with conviction, that the gospel has been both obscured and added on to in them. I also maintain, as will become evident, that Protestantism (despite its many imperfections) is best positioned to maintain a truly catholic vision of the church today amid its current fractures and divisions.
critics of Protestantism sometimes allege that there is no such thing as mere Protestantism, since Protestants (it is claimed) agree on nothing except their criticisms of other traditions. Related to this, some fault Protestantism for having a merely negative identity—for being constituted only by what it is against, not what it is for.
At the heart of the Protestant movement are the five solae, particularly sola fide and sola Scriptura (more on these two doctrines in a bit). Additionally, other doctrines have (with few exceptions) united the various historic Protestant traditions, such as belief in two sacraments, the priesthood of all believers, a shorter Old Testament canon, church discipline as a mark of the church, an emphasis on preaching in worship, a celebration of lay participation in communion in both kinds (both bread and wine), an affirmation of the right of clergy to marry, and many other points.
Some of Protestantism’s core doctrines.
From this it is clear that in Schaff’s vision, Protestantism is not a mere assertion of itself over and against the rest of the church; rather, Protestantism takes its peculiar shape and character in order to serve the renewal and betterment of the entire church.
Schaff was particularly burdened by the sectarian spirit he detected within American Protestantism. He spent many pages railing against what he called the two primary “diseases” of Protestantism: rationalism and sectarianism.10 He felt that many Protestants, especially in America, had overreacted against the excess of Rome: As Catholicism toward the close of the Middle Ages settled into a character of hard, stiff objectivity, incompatible with the proper freedom of the individual subject . . . so Protestantism has been carried aside, in later times, into the opposite error of a loose
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It is a disease in Protestantism to have so many denominations.
Schaff calls justification by faith alone the “life principle” of the Reformation. He denied that this doctrine was new to the Reformation; rather, he argued that it came into greater clarity and apprehension within the church as a result of the Reformation.
Segundo McGrath, Sola Fide não era conhecida até Lutero.
However, Schaff faulted the actual practice of the Roman Catholic position for sliding into various kinds of overemphasis on works. For example, he faulted its affirmation of supermeritorious good works that may be deposited into the treasury of merit and deployed by the church to help other Christians or souls in purgatory.18
Isto é esquisito.
Schaff thus argued that the Council of Trent ultimately represented a departure from catholicity. By making herself the final arbiter of Scripture and tradition, the Church of Rome not only blocked communion with any and all Christian traditions dissenting from her pronouncements, but also removed the possibility of any meaningful internal reform of her own prior magisterial teaching.
By defining itself as infallible it makes possible errors uncorrectable.
“The Church of Rome under the credit of apostolical tradition had smuggled into her communion the most shocking errors, and brought the word of God almost entirely into oblivion, had repeatedly prohibited it to the laity indeed in express terms.”23 Thus, sola Scriptura brought both a renewed contact between the Bible and laity as well as the possibility of ongoing accountability and reform in the church according to the Word of God.
Was it the Reformation or the printing press? They are highly correlates and that does not mean causation.
Responding to an inquiry about baptism from two pastors, Luther critiqued the Anabaptist practice of rebaptism. His rationale for this position reveals his view of the status of the Church of Rome: There is much that is Christian and good under the papacy. . . . In the papal church there are the true holy Scriptures, true baptism, the true sacrament of the altar, the true keys to the forgiveness of sins, the true office of the ministry, the true catechism in the form of the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the articles of the creed.26
If there is so much good in Rome, then in some aspect the Reformation failed because it was not able to achieve its goal of ammend the acumulated errors within the Church.
Why leave?
Later in the sixteenth century, a group of Lutheran theologians wrote to Jeremiah II, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, to send him a copy of the Augsburg Confession and engage in theological correspondence. The Lutherans treated Jeremiah respectfully, addressing him with titles like “the Most Honorable Lord,” “the All-Holy Ecumenical Patriarch,” and “God-Beloved Sir.”36 The Lutherans opened the dialogue with an assertion that Eastern Orthodox Christians possessed a common salvation in Christ and expressed their earnest desire for a closer unity with the Orthodox Church.37 The subsequent
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So much in common, and yet so many differences.
Who is right?
What distinguishes the Protestant view of the church is not a denial of the visible church but rather the claim that this visible church coheres within multiple institutions. To put it negatively, Protestantism denies the claim that any one institutional hierarchy constitutes the “one true church.”
One can also find arch-traditionalist Orthodox groups like the True Orthodox Church (or Genuine Orthodoxy) that have severed communion with mainstream Orthodoxy, claiming it has been corrupted by heresy no less than the Catholics, Protestants, and others. Current changes in how “no salvation outside the church” is understood within Eastern Orthodoxy are one example of how Orthodoxy’s claim to be the “unchanged church” that represents the consensus of the fathers is ultimately unconvincing.
This is a strong punch against EO chads. If the Church is unchanged, why did it change?
Unam Sanctam was an early fourteenth-century Bull on papal supremacy issued by Boniface VIII related to a dispute he was having with a king of France. Drawing from the ark imagery for the true church, it restricted salvation to those in submission to the pope: “Now, therefore, we declare, say, determine and pronounce that for every human creature it is necessary for salvation to be subject to the authority of the Roman pontiff.”18
Is this an infalible statement?
“Nobody can be saved, no matter how much he has given away in alms and even if he has shed his blood in the name of Christ, unless he has persevered in the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church.”22 Again, post–Vatican II Roman Catholics have to interpret this passage differently from the way virtually everyone interpreted it when it was written. For example, people will speak of being unknowingly within the church. But medieval Christians had no more conception of the possibility of being unknowingly in the true church than they did that those drowning in the flood could be unknowingly on
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Besides representing a potential falsification of the Roman Catholic claim of infallibility, changes in the “no salvation outside the church” doctrine raise a practical concern about the actual value of an allegedly infallible magisterium. For example, we are often told we need an infallible magisterium to interpret the Bible, but much less appreciated are the intractable problems of interpreting the magisterium itself. Is such an entity really the solution to division and confusion if nearly everyone can misunderstand it for six hundred years? How do we know that current universal
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Ortlund is right. The problem is not the authority, it is the interpretation of such authority.
Imagine a remote village in the Middle East where a number of Muslims begin having dreams in which Jesus appears to them and reveals himself as Lord. They respond with repentance and baptism, and a small community of worshiping Christians is formed. Is this a valid church, and do they have a valid Eucharist? While some in the non-Protestant traditions may want to make such allowances, this generosity is not consistent with their churches’ historical teaching.
Though understandable, this argument misses the point. There will always be exceptions, but the theology must deal with the ordinary.
Because it does not claim to be the “one true church” but instead positions itself as a renewal movement within her, Protestantism is prepared to discern the true church wherever Christ is present in word and sacrament. Therefore, for Christians seeking to recognize the church in her fullness as we move into the middle of the twenty-first century and beyond, awaiting the return of Christ, Protestantism offers the most promising pathways by which to cultivate and pursue catholicity.
What must be appreciated is how common it was for indulgences to fund simony (the buying or selling of ecclesiastical privileges), as well as other clerical abuses. At the turn of the sixteenth century, indulgences were a booming industry. To give some immediate context, Raymond Peraudi, who collected funds for indulgences throughout Germany just prior to Tetzel, was able to raise more than half a million guilders (the basic monetary unit in that place) between 1486 and 1503 to support crusades.3 Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, indulgences also funded the luxurious living of
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The first documented plenary indulgence—a remission of all temporal punishment for sin—was probably offered in 1095 by Pope Urban II for those taking part in the First Crusade. Pope Eugene III’s offer of indulgences for participation in the second crusade went further, extending indulgences for the remission of temporal punishment not only in this life but also in purgatory.15
This does not look good neither to the Church nor to the crusades, but it does highlight that the latter was viewed as a “good work”.
Shirrmacher, observing how the practice of indulgences preceded the theology of indulgences at virtually every point, notes that “the first certain attestation of papal approval of indulgences for the deceased (there are numerous falsified documents) comes from Calixtus III (+ 1458).”19
When the man who is about to die turns to look at the king, we are told that the embarrassed monarch ‘blushed deeply and turned red’ but never uttered a word.31 This monarch was King Sigismund of Luxembourg (then king and later Holy Roman Emperor). He was embarrassed because he had offered safe conduct to Hus.
The cowards will not inherit the kingdom of heaven.
This is why it is so offensive and wrong when people claim it was secular authorities rather than the Roman Catholic Church who killed Hus. Roman Catholic prelates jailed Hus, tried him for heresy (at an ecumenical council), and then handed him over for execution in consequence of their guilty verdict. On the day of Hus’s sentence, the proceedings opened with a sermon from the bishop of Lodi, who preached from Romans 6:6, “that the body of sin must be done away,” in which the bishop proclaimed—using lurid imagery like rotting flesh, cancer, and poison—that the extermination of heretics was
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What was the truth Hus proclaimed that led to his conflict with Roman Catholic hierarchy? Hus’s deepest grievances were ecclesiological and moral. He was horrified by ungodliness in the clergy, especially the rampant practice of simony, the tendency of priests to have mistresses, and the use of indulgences to motivate military action. Hus also opposed the theology of exterminating heretics, appealing to Augustine to argue that heretics should be appealed to with Scripture and reason. From the pulpit, Hus railed against these practices, proclaiming that we must bless our enemies rather than
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Luther’s colleague Friedrich Myconius described how Luther’s own parishioners came to him with letters of indulgence from Tetzel, complaining that he would not absolve them because they “did not want to desist from adultery, whoredom, usury, unjust goods, and such sins and evil.”2
Justification was, for Luther, a forensic declaration of our status before God, grounded solely on the imputed righteousness of Christ, received by the empty hands of faith.6
Was this the historical understanding of the Church?
in Roman Catholic theology, justification means “making righteous.” It thereby includes what Protestants think of as sanctification. As the Catechism puts it, “Justification is not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man.”8 Roman Catholic theology also distinguishes between initial justification and ongoing justification. Thus, good works are not necessary to come into an initial state of reconciliation with God.
This is useful information for any protestant who wants to talk to a catholic.
“the Reformers did not thereby exclude the process of becoming holy. Rather, they argued that through union with Christ we receive both justification and sanctification, and these distinct acts must never be confused or separated.”9 Thus, the historic Protestant position is that good works are necessary for salvation as the fruit of a true saving faith.
Most pastors would deny this while tearing their clothes.
Although Luther was ultimately excommunicated and much of Protestant theology was met with anathemas at the Council of Trent, the subsequent Catholic tradition recognized that Luther (and Protestantism generally) cannot simply be rejected. This is evident not only in the lifting of anathemas and the affirmation of sola fide in recent ecumenical dialogue but also in the willingness to acknowledge that something valuable was recovered in the sixteenth century.
Stated responsibly, sola Scriptura is a modest doctrine. The core idea is that Scripture is the church’s only infallible rule. A rule is a standard that governs the church’s faith and practice. Infallible means being incapable of error. So sola Scriptura is essentially the claim that Scripture is the only authority standing over the church that is incapable of error.
When stated like this, as it should, Sola Scriptura presents itself as almost common sense.
Does the church possess any rule other than Scripture that is infallible? Sola Scriptura is simply the conviction that this question must be answered in the negative: Popes, councils, and all other postapostolic organs of the church are fallible. As Anthony Lane puts it, “Sola Scriptura is the statement that the church can err.”3
I dont like to think the church can err. Is the Constantinople-Nicene creed fallible? Is the canon fallible?
Conceptually, this basic idea shouldn’t be hard to grasp, because it has a lot of similarity to how many religions work. The idea that there is one supreme text and then subsequent, ongoing, authoritative bodies that are subordinate to that supreme text—this is generally characteristic of how Muslims regard the Koran, how most Jews treat the Hebrew Bible, and how Hindus, Buddhists, and Sikhs treat their respective sacred texts. So the broad idea that a religion’s founding texts have unparalleled authority shouldn’t be difficult to grasp.
This is actually an argument against Sola Scriptura. No other religion claims to be the body of Christ or be the Spirit’s dwelling place. That would theoretically make the Church capable of inerrancy.
When it comes to the nature of Scripture, Protestantism has much agreement with other Christian traditions. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, teaches that “Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit.”15 In Roman Catholic theology, Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition together constitute the Word of God, but in different ways—Sacred Tradition is not inspired by the Holy Spirit in the way Scripture is.16 Similarly, while the magisterium is entrusted with the role of interpreting the deposit of faith contained in both Scripture and
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One can express this concern at a more metaphysical level: God is unique; therefore, his speech is unique. Why should we accept that which isn’t the speech of God to have equal authority to that which is the speech of God? If you want to put something else into the “infallible rule” category alongside the very words of God, you will need a good reason.
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
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Touché.
It’s simply astonishing that a practice with universal support throughout Scripture and church history can now be called “an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” Why was this never taught before? What practical good is an allegedly infallible magisterium that can evidently be misunderstood for so long, by so many?
At the end of the day, there is simply no good biblical or historical reason to conclude that the post-apostolic church possesses ongoing capacities of infallibility.
There are a few good arguments, let’s be honest.
For Protestants, the church’s charge extends not only to recognizing the canon but also to protecting the Scriptures during times of persecution and to translating, teaching, and proclaiming them. Thus, Protestants have spoken of the church as not only a necessary witness to the Word of God, but also the custodian and herald of the Word of God.2
“The goldsmith with his scales and touchstone can distinguish gold from copper and other metals; wherein he does not make gold . . . but only indicates what is gold. . . . In like manner the Church acknowledges the Scriptures and declares them to be divine.”5
Was the Church’s canon recognition infalible?
