Protestants do not regard “majority depth” as insignificant or unimportant. On the contrary, it is a behemoth, a force to be reckoned with. But they do maintain that what is finally decisive is the original teaching of the apostles, and that there are practices and beliefs that occasionally become mainstream despite departing from apostolic teaching. On this view, what is deepest is what is oldest and thereby most plausibly rooted in the first-century apostolic deposit. This view is also interested in what remains most constitutive of basically all Christians throughout church history (what C.
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