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Journeyman
A Journal for the Inquiring Christian
Vol. 2, No. 1, January 2003
Is Protestantism just a negation of Catholicism?
| Overview: "Strangely enough, Protestant apologists spend most of their efforts trying to disprove Catholicism rather than attempting to show that their particular version of Protestantism is the true form of Christianity." |
Nobody likes to be wrong. This is especially true for serious minded
conservative Christians, who unlike their liberal counterparts in these
post-modern days actually believe in such unpopular concepts as the
existence of absolute truth and orthodox Christianity. Perhaps it is
for this reason that the many lively debates between Catholic and
Protestant apologists are so interesting. Fundamentally these debates
are between conservative Christians over the specifics of orthodoxy
Christianity. Of course neither Protestant nor Catholic apologists will
admit that their respective churches hold to unorthodox doctrines and
they both spend considerable amounts of time and effort defending their
positions from the Bible and church history. And apologists on both
sides sometimes get overheated and say silly things, which in many ways
is part of the tradition of the Protestant-Catholic dispute Luther
began in the 16th century.
One often overlooked aspect of the Protestant-Catholic disagreements
is not biblical or historical evidence, but the methodology and
mentality both sides use in arriving at their differing
interpretations. Catholic apologists tend to begin with the early church
and from there attempt to show how their church is the heir to the
orthodox consensus of the early church. They in turn accuse the various
Protestant churches of breaking with and deviating from this historic
orthodoxy. Protestant apologists on the other hand generally try to
punch holes in this grand narrative of church history and Catholic
theology by alleging that this or that Pope was a heretic by Catholic
standards. This of course ignores the fact that this alone wouldn`t
disprove papal infallibility. Protestant apologists also try using a few
quotes from this or that church father to show that some of the fathers
supposedly held to sola scriptura, though somehow they don`t deal with
similar quotes from the same fathers in support of Tradition as well as
such nefarious Catholic ideas as apostolic sucession, baptismal
regeneration, the Real Presence, etc.
Strangely enough, a good many Protestant apologists spend most of
their efforts trying to disprove Catholicism rather than attempting to
show that their particular version of Protestantism, which is
frequently a variation of Reformed theology, is the true form of
Christianity passed down by the apostles. This could be a marketing move
as such catchy titles as "The Church of Rome at the Bar of History" and
"The Roman Catholic Controversy" undoubtably sell better than "Why
everything but pure Reformed theology is heresy" or "The Methodist
Church at the bar of early church Reformed orthodoxy". While such later
titles would cause most Protestants, not to mention Catholics to double
over in laughter, the former serve as apologetic works for Protestants
of various denominations and thus for people with differing and
contradictory versions of what orthodox Christianity is in the first
place.
This underlines a painful problem for Protestantism. Lets face it,
getting Protestants to agree on what orthodoxy is, even sometimes
Protestants in the same denomination is like herding cats. Even
formulating a list of "essential Christian doctrines" required for
"mere Christianity" and shared by all conservative Protestants would
create all kinds of disputes about what items should end up on the
list. Indeed, it is highly unlikely that such Protestants could come
to an agreement on Sola Scriptura or Sola Fide, which are supposedly
the cornerstones of the Reformation. The various Protestant
schools of theology and denominations assign different meanings to
these terms, as Keith Matthison demonstrates in regard to Sola
Scriptura. Therefore, defining orthodox Christianity, even amoung
conservative Protestants becomes a difficult task. The only item that
conservative Protestants could safely agree upon is a statement
proclaiming Catholicism, and by extension Eastern Orthodoxy as a
corruption of apostolic teachings.
This leads one to wonder if Protestantism in general is merely a
negation of Catholicism, and as its name and origin suggest a
"Protest". Yet protests aren`t very constructive if they only address a
set of problems without offering a viable and realistic solution. This
was the case with leftist anti-war demonstrations against the recent
U.S. bombings and intervention in Afganistan. Peace is great, but
holding talks with Osma bin Ladin to end terrorism would only happen
in a fantasy land of liberal imagination.
For Protestantism, perhaps the sense that "we are not Catholic"
and of continuing the protest against Catholic error is somehow
wrapped up in the very nature and identity of Protestantism. Hence
the burning need for Protestant apologists to reveal Catholic
falsehoods. Pointing out the supposed wayward ways of Catholicism,
however, does not necessarily guide us to a clearer view of
orthodoxy. Theoretically, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, as well as
all versions of Protestantism could be distortions of what Jesus and
the apostles taught. Furthermore, attempting to disprove Catholicism by
enlisting some of the church Fathers as teachers of Sola Scriptura
doesn`t vindicate any version of Protestantism, nor does it give
Protestants free reign to go off and interprete the Bible any which
way the want, which no matter what its true shape is what Sola
Scriptura boils down to in the end.
In reality trying to force Sola Scriptura, or any other Protestant
doctrine upon a few of the Fathers only muddies the water. Clearly
the Fathers held to quite a few rather Catholic sounding beliefs.
Maybe the Catholics and Orthodox have deviated from their teachings,
but no sophisticated Protestant apologists with any sense will argee
that the Fathers were orthodox Protestants. The theory that the early
church was a "proto-Protestant church" which after Constantine or
at some other point in history was overun by paganism or Greek
philosophy is a silly idea, and luckily most intelligent Protestant
apologists today seem to know that. Protestant apologists, however,
have sidestepped the question of why no church Father at any era could
be considered entirely orthodox by any current version of Protestantism
by creating an image of the early church as theologically diverse to
the point in which it was unable to come up with much of anything
beyond the creeds as a shared version of orthodoxy. So in a sense
with the mysterious absence of denominations, maybe the early church
had more in common with today`s Protestants that we think!
But blurring the orthodox consensus of the early church, whatever
that consensus might be doesn`t prove much either. If Catholicism and
Eastern Orthodoxy are corrupt versions of Christianity, Protestant
apologists cannot simply win the argument over what orthodox is and
how it has been maintained over the ages by default. This reversed
St. Augustine`s idea that falsehood and evil are like the shadows
to truth and holiness. By way of analogy, few Christians today upon
hearing a debate between a Muslim and a Hindu would jump up and exclaim
"That settles it! I`m becoming a Muslim!" Why not? Because for
Christians while Islam and Hinduism may contain grains of truth, they
are both ultimately false religions.
We Christians believe that the Gospel is true because God revealed
it to man, most supremely in the incarnate word who is Jesus Christ.
Thus, orthodox Christianity, whatever that may be, could not disappear
from the face of the earth. Perhaps it existed for centuries surrounded
and oppressed by falsehood and perhaps it doesn`t completely rise to
St. Vincent of Lerin`s famous maxim of "ubique, semper ab omnibus," but
it must have endured the ages and been held throughout
the ages, even if only by a small band of believers. Protestant
apologists` idea that orthodoxy only appeared piece-mealed and
sporatically in the 1,500 years before the Reformation doesn`t give us
much assurance of that. One might begin to wonder if the gates of Hell
really have prevailed against the church Christ founded and that we are
all just playing games.
With this in mind, Protestant apologists should
stop acting the role of nay-sayers and get busy showing how their
version of orthodoxy existed somehow in an unbroken line from the time
of the apostles to the present. That is, and still assuming that both
Catholics and Eastern Orthodoxy are false-that they are simply the
equivalents of Muslims debating Hindus.
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