¶1As a Protestant, I'm happy to concede there are some really forceful good criticisms of Protestantism. And I'll give you the top three at the end of this video, but there's also a lot of low tier ones. And I would love for these to be retired so that we can elevate the discourse. So, if you've used any of these, don't worry about it. This the spirit of this video is not fingerpointing, but more fun and reflection and just elevating the discourse.
¶2I've used bad arguments in the past, too. Let's go through 10 of the bad ones and then how they could be better also along the way, but then three of the best. Number one, Jesus founded a visible church, but Protestants believe in an invisible church. Yeah, you hear this over and over, but there's some basic uh misunderstanding here. Um, often in these critiques, first of all, visible is conflated with institutional.
¶3If you listen carefully to how the argument is unfolding, as you can see on screen, these are completely different things. But the more basic issue is that affirming an invisible church is not denying a visible church. This is a distinction between two different aspects of the church. But both halves of the distinction are being affirmed. There is the church as we see her, and then there is the church as God sees her.
¶4God knows hearts and he knows who's actually mystically united to Christ as opposed to baptized hypocrites that the church doesn't know are not actually united to Christ. So the visible invisible distinction is not a reference to two different kinds of churches or something like that that Francis Turretan pointed this out. It's kind of encouraging that these things have been going on and he calls it a slander against us. Uh you know for hundreds of years we've been having to work at these things. Um, but I'll just try to keep belaboring this point.
¶5Maybe here's a way I can gain uh sympathy for my concern here is if we took a a different issue like the distinction between the church triumphant and the church militant and imagine if you said the church triumphant is resting in glory and someone said are you denying the existence of the church militant? You'd say, you know, come again. [laughter] uh trying to not not laughing in mockery but trying to draw out the the thinking here is in referencing one side of a distinction we are not denying the other side of that distinction they're both there we're just distinguishing so for more on that see this video in all of these topics I'm going to try to reference other videos for fuller treatment if you want to chase this down where I make my full case this video is more in the way of overview number two of the 10 bad arguments against Protestantism My church. You've heard this one. I guarantee you've heard it.
¶6You've seen it on the internet. [laughter] My church, by the way. So, I'm not trying to annoy anybody here. I'm going to do another video. Let me know in the comments if you want this.
¶710 worst arguments against Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy or something like that or 10 worst arguments for Protestantism or something like that. [snorts] Trying to trying to do this in all directions. Uh, number two, my church was founded by Jesus. yours was founded by Martin Luther or fill in the blank Henry VIII, Billy Graham, whoever it may be. Um, you'll also hear sometimes the appeal, where was your church until 1517?
¶8Or what is a little better but problematic still if you don't go further, if Protestantism were true, then the church must have died somewhere along the way in those first 1500 years of church history. Sometimes you'll even hear people say, "If Protestantism is true, it was dead that whole time." Now, there is a better argument hiding somewhere inside this bad argument, which is going to be true for a lot of these. I'm going to try to pull out the better argument if I can. Again, we're in the spirit of we're not really trying to settle anything in this video as try try to elevate the discourse. There's lots of reasons I was thinking about this and how hope genuinely hoping this video would would be useful for people, but you need to get to the better argument by saying more.
¶9And I'm going to return to that at the end of this video because if you want to critique something, you need to understand what it is that you're critiquing. And so to critique a Protestant view of church history, the Protestant paradigm needs to be engaged, which does not hold that the church died or a new church was founded by Luther or anyone else or anything like that. In the first chapter of my book, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals, I survey the reformers and other later Protestant Lights, and basically show none of them believed the church had died. None of them believed it needed to be relaunched. They were emphatic on this point over and over, affirming the indeibility of the church.
¶10She shall never die. She shall never fail to achieve her end. You find this all over the place. Here's an example from John Calvin. I' I've referenced that so many times.
¶11You can pause the screen and read that if you want. And there's so many other statements like that. The claim rather was that the true church of Christ is not designated by the Roman Catholic hierarchy. And therefore, she exists. She's there.
¶12In fact, she's bigger than just that which is under the jurisdiction of Rome. It includes these various Eastern traditions as well potentially. But the Protestant effort was to reform that thing already in existence. And therefore, there's not a new church being born. Here's how Turretan put it.
¶13Uh, Francis Turitan. The Reformation is indeed new, but not on this account by this reformation was a new religion or church instituted which had not existed before. Rather, that which existed already was made better by the ancient rule to it, the word of God. In other words, the claim was and the the claim is not an invention of a new church, but a bettering of the one that already existed. Now suppose you think Turretan is out to lunch.
¶14This is crazy. This is obviously bad. And no, the Protestant Reformation made things worse, not better. It didn't go back to the word of God. It went further away from the word of God and so on and so forth.
¶15Fine. But say that uh and then we have a really good debate about, you know, what's an interesting question. If you did the did the Protestant Reformation make Christianity better or worse? If you're a Christian in Western Europe in 1516, what was your understanding of the gospel likely? What access did you have to the scripture?
¶16Uh how often did you receive the Eucharist and so forth and we go through what and I think a good case can be made that the reformation furthered the knowledge of the biblical gospel in the church and that it's good that people like Luther and Tindale and so many others did what they did. But that's a debate to have and it not even getting into if all we say is something like where was your church or something like that. That just seems to suggest that the the opposing paradigm has not been understood. So hopefully we retire that or we have the other debate. I'm I'm really not trying to be snarky in any of this.
¶17Um I I I'll try to watch my tone and I I really want my videos to to feel in good taste. So I that's the effort. Number three, every Protestant is their own authority. Another related and common point you'll hear is Protestants leave all doctrine to private judgment. Now, again, there is a forceful point hidden inside this, which I'm going to return to at the end of this video.
¶18But in saying we are our own authority or that private judgment is the is the rule for all doctrine, I I think I would just need to say that is just verifiably incorrect. Just, you know, take a look, right? Um, if I deny the Trinity, I am excommunicated and barred from the Lord's Supper. If I violate my ordination vows, I lose my ministerial credentials. They have real authority over me.
¶19And historic Protestant traditions have always required submission to the authority of confessional standards enforced by ecclesiastical courts. They have different views of what those courts should be, but the authority is there. And so we keep saying this and but but I think what happens here the the the thinking on the other side that perhaps makes this one hard to get through is if you don't conceive of ecclesial authority as we do then it's not any real kind of authority at all. But the better argument would be Protestant ecclesial authorities are inferior to their alternatives. And here's the argument why.
¶20Pragmatically, historically, theologically, etc. the claim that we're our own authority as individuals or we don't submit to church authority is just you know it's just not the case. Um so I you know hopefully we'll keep making that and we get it to the better thing. Also the best appeal in this regard will distinguish between the different Protestant traditions. So I'm a low church guy a Baptist reformed Baptist and I defend that a lot but I also kind of want to stick up for I understand the high church traditions are embarrassed to be lumped together with us.
¶21So it's like, hey, okay, yeah, fair enough. Let's recognize the Lutherans and the Anglicans are their own thing and so forth. So um what will also need to happen here is not treating Protestantism as a singular ecclesial institution. Uh you you hear this language, I just heard this the other day, reference to the Protestant church, which is at best very imprecise and kind of confusing language because there isn't one singular Protestant church. Protestantism is an umbrella category for distinct Christian traditions that have common ground on doctrines like solos scriptura and solid and many other points.
¶22But we're not all one church or one denomination or something like that. So criticisms need to recognize those differences and not do the apples to oranges comparison of Catholic versus Protestant as though these were two uh parallel realities. That's not what Protestants believe we are. Okay. Number four.
¶23But baptism isn't just a symbol. Now, I I hear this over and over. Now, now most people will recognize and appreciate that many Protestants affirm baptismal regeneration. So, that's one of the problems here, but usually that'll be recognized. The deeper point I want to press forward here is that just a symbol and baptismal regeneration are not the only two options.
¶24and therefore refuting just a symbol doesn't itself establish baptism or regeneration. But that false binary is the constant framing. I hear this over and over and over. It's like if you said, uh, the Baltimore Orioles are really, really bad and therefore you should be a fan of the Minnesota Twins. And you might say, what about the other teams?
¶25You know, and uh, I belabored this point in an older video. this I'll just play this because it has the graphic up on screen. Let me put up just another way you could frame it. This is how Francis Turretton basically puts it. He's a reformed scholastic theologian and he has basically three options.
¶26He uses the the phrase sign and seal for his own reformed view and he distinguishes that from the Susinian view on the one side where you have the sacraments as external badges of profession and on the other side the Lutheran and Roman Catholic views which he calls uh sacraments as vehicles and vessels containing grace and physical means or real and instrumental causes. So reformed Christians like Turitan are just one example of those who say that the sacraments are not just a symbol. They are efficacious signs. Baptism saves. In the Eucharist, we feast on Christ.
¶27And I've done lots of videos explaining a reformed perspective on all these things. But they also don't fall into the bucket of baptismal regeneration proper. Now let's suppose you say someone like Turitan or Calvin in their view of baptismal efficacy is wrong. You might say actually that view collapses down to just a symbol. You can make that argument.
¶28Or you might say just a symbol and reformed view of sign and seal, efficacious sign, they're both incorrect. You can make that argument. But if all you say is baptism isn't just a symbol as though that established baptism regeneration, then it's unclear that the historical options typically in the debate have really been envisioned. And yet you hear this over and over all the time. The video I just cited has a thumbnail like this if you want to chase that down more.
¶29I make try to make my case there. All right, number five. Hopefully you'll agree with this one. Hopefully this won't get too much push back. There are 30,000 or 33,000 or 40,000 Protestant denominations.
¶30Now to address this, I would encourage you to read this article which is written by a Roman Catholic. And what it shows is that the same criteria leading to this figure uh means that there are 242 Roman Catholic denominations and 781 Eastern Orthodox denominations. Then it takes a bunch of non-Christian groups and throws them into the picture. It adds all of that together, not just Protestantism, all that together to get to 33,000 denominations. So, um, you know, hopefully just that alone can show this statistic genuinely deserves retirement.
¶31And yet, the reason, by the way, to lay my heart on the table, the reason I'm making this video is being on the internet, you do realize that sometimes falsehoods persist. And so, this video is in the spirit of a friendly like, you know, again, I'll do the same thing for my side. We we do the same thing, too. But some of these things we really need to retire. And this statistic, we really do because I hear this not only persisting, but increasing and the numbers going up.
¶32That's why I'm making this video to address these points so we're all equipped because we all stand to benefit when criticism from one Christian tribe to another has accuracy and charity and understanding and and just good style and good taste. Right? So this is one we can retire and thankfully there are lots of people by the way on the other side of these issues who could agree with all all of these points or many of these points. On this point um Trent Horn has done a video where he explicitly calls this out which I appreciate. We know the encyclopedia makes this kind of error because it falsely claims that there are 242 different denominations of Catholicism, but that doesn't mean there are 242 separate denominations with conflicting belief systems within the Catholic faith.
¶33That's not true at all. >> Okay. Number six, without the fill-in-thelank church, you wouldn't even have the Bible. Now again in many of these there's a kernel of truth here or if if not truth there's there's a historical issue underneath this that is important and fair and I'll come to that at the end of this video but as stated in this popular slogan type way the claim equivocates between the historic church and the contemporary claimments to be the one true church such as the Roman Catholic Church the Eastern Orthodox Church and many others. And therefore because that is the whole point of dispute.
¶34And so that would need to be argued for not just assumed. And uh because here's the thing is we all agree that the church was given the task of recognizing for example the New Testament canon. Um but it needs to be showed that the particular ways that happened actually favor one option over the various rivals today that claims to be that church. So, for example, if the New Testament cannon had been determined by an ex cathedral statement from a pope, that would be pretty decisive. That would not be the only way to score a point on the Roman Catholic side, but it would be one way to certainly do that.
¶35But if it turns out that the New Testament canon came to be recognized through a gradual bottom-up cumulative organic and fallible process, then at the very least more needs to be said to establish a meaningful continuity between the contemporary claimment of being the church and the actual on the ground reality of how the canon was recognized. You can make that argument. Uh but that's the argument to be made. What can't be done is simply the assumption that it's either the Roman Catholic Church that was that church back then or the Eastern Orthodox Church that was that church back then. You need to kind of establish over and against the rivals uh why our church has the better claim.
¶36And again, you can try to do that, but so often we that is and I've been doing these conversations enough I realize a lot of people are are just making that assumption. Okay, here's number seven. Soloscriptura isn't in the Bible. Therefore, it is self-refuting. Now, this criticism is targeting a related doctrine, the sufficiency of scripture, which is conceptually distinct from most and I think the best definitions of solos scriptor, but historically has been seen as derivative from it.
¶37So, we just need to be aware solos scriptor is not a catch-all phrase for everything Protestants believe about the Bible like the perspectuity of scripture and other things like that. Um the word solah is a part of this particular idea. But um leaving that aside, the sufficiency of scripture just doesn't claim that everything needs to be in the Bible. Um it's the sufficiency of scripture is construed a little differently in different Protestant traditions, but in none of them does it mean that every doctrine falls packaged and ready to go out of the pages of scripture. Um, more modest definitions of the sufficiency of scripture can be found in article six of the 39 Anglican articles, which you can see on screen.
¶38Lutheran statements about scriptures sufficiency that touch on this point right now are also pretty modest and pretty careful. It's the reformed tradition, my own tribe, that generally offers the strongest articulations of the sufficiency of scripture. But even here, they're carefully nuanced. So the Westminster Confession of Faith says, "The whole council of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith and life is either expressly set down in scripture or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture." Now the whole point of having an eitheror is so you can do either one, right? Uh the other way to say that is to say it's denying that you always need an express or explicit affirmation of these various doctrines referenced there.
¶39But what happens a lot of times is people come along with a very sharp number two pencil and they cross out those words by good and necessary consequence. Sometimes they'll also inflate the all things necessary. So you get basically the whole council of God for everything is just expressly set down in scripture as though that's what Protestants believe. And that is just not what we believe. You know, if if you think you can refute this massive reality called Protestant Christianity with something that you can kind of see in 5 seconds, there's probably people who've thought of that.
¶40And and these are some of the things where I'm wanting to say let's raise it up and look at these historic I I realize and some of the dialogues I have done and other things I I do I realize many people have simply never studied Protestantism. Uh and yet they're speaking about it very costically and so but they've never read Herman Bavink. They've never read Richard Hooker. They've never really gone in and and and done the homework. And so, um, and now our our side as Protestants can do the same thing, you know, but and so I always try to call that out in both directions, but, um, I want to call us to to to elevate the discourse and really engage each tradition at its best.
¶41The better criticism here is not to say solar scriptura is self-defeating because it's not in the Bible, but rather to say solos scriptura and other Protestant doctrines concerning scripture cannot be deduced from scripture. That would be a problem at least for the reformed tribe if you said the consequential reasoning here is bad and unnecessary rather than good and necessary. That would be a problem. So that'd be more the the critique maybe to focus on. All right.
¶42Number eight, Protestants removed seven books from the Bible. Now again, there are issues we can get into that there's legitimate sophisticated debate about. But as stated, the problem here is it assumes that the dudero canonical books were in the Bible. Uh you cannot remove something unless it's already there. But the status of these books was disputed.
¶43And in this video, I try to give a walkthrough of the data here. I look at church fathers like Athanasius, Jerome, Molito, a lot of the Eastern fathers. I look at different canonical registers. What do we mean by the word scripture? And then I look at medieval usage and even Roman Catholic cardinals in Luther's own day.
¶44And the point is there wasn't just one view of the Old Testament canon prior to Luther. So the better argument here would be to say not we we took books out of the Bible. It would be to say the Catholic view of the canon has more support or better support in church history and in other respects than the Protestant view of the canon. And the Protestants shouldn't have followed Jerome. They should have followed Augustine and uh so on and so forth.
¶45And then we get into the debate. By the way, regarding Jerome, I did a follow-up on the video I just mentioned to correct the really problematic claim that Jerome again changed his mind at the later in his life somehow without ever telling us. and without anyone in the medieval era ever knowing. Uh yeah, people say that, but no, Jerome Jerome's position is clear on the shorter Old Testament cannon. All right, number nine.
¶46Last two are going to be quick. Luther invented justification by faith alone. Um this is not the case. There are different views among Christians prior to Luther about justification. By the way, I have a video that's pretty old and less known about justification.
¶47Sometimes so many of the comments over and over I get comments can you do a video on fill in the blank and it's I already have so just search on YouTube it'll come up but in that video which is a pretty ecumenical video I'm pointing out that some of our differences have to do with terminology and so forth but I I work through uh John chasm's homalies on Romans another interesting example is actually Hillary but if you read through John you're going to find statement after statement after statement like the following the declaring of God's righteousness is Not only that he is himself righteous, but that he does also make them that are filled with the putrifying sores of sin suddenly righteous. Doubt not then, for it is not of works, but of faith, and shun not the righteousness of God. For it is a blessing in two ways, because it is easy and also open to all men. Lots of quotes like this that I then exedute the quote. Uh I know there's a lot to say about all of that.
¶48I I go through that in my book a little bit too. But the the the point is it's not something that is completely freshly concocted by Luther. There's legitimate debate about certain aspects of justification and how much precedent they had. But the deeper issue of course is going to be going back to scripture because the claim of invention doesn't just pertain to um church history but also scripture. And the view that I would defend is that Luther's position represented a genuine encounter with the writings of the Apostle Paul in passages like Romans 4:5.
¶49To the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. And the Greek verb for counted there is significant. Of course, there's Catholic views on this verse, but I'm just saying those are the kinds of texts you got to get into. So if you if you disagree with Luther on justification, the thing to do is to dive into these uh historical points and do what people like Eric Ibara do in this book where he gives really smart engagements with the Protestant arguments. That's one reason I like engaging with Eric is he's pretty familiar with the best of the Protestant tradition like a Herman Boink or Johan Gearhard or Richard Hooker and these kind of folks.
¶50But that requires going beyond just the assertion of invention and and just working through the data. All right, here's a last one. The early church was obviously fill in the blank. Usually this will be said about Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. Um I hear this a lot so I need to kind of address it.
¶51Uh the problem here is partly the the word obviously which does a lot of work but then just the lack of argument. And I do actually understand where people are coming from uh based upon their own experiences, especially when they have maybe grown up in like a a very evangelical um ah historical context and they start reading the church fathers and they they are swept away and they're convinced of something. Um and there are real points of continuity between Catholic and Orthodox views and the early church. The problem is there are also massive questions of development and unfortunately sometimes there is naivity about those issues of development. Now I actually think the Roman Catholic side does a little better than the Eastern Orthodox on this front.
¶52That's why I answered Laya Rose's question to me uh in this way. >> If you couldn't be Protestant, would you be Orthodox or Catholic? >> Oh man. No, no, no. So, well, this is I have thought about this.
¶53And the caveat is when people hear me answer this, they're going to say, "Oh, so he must be on his way to I think I know what you're going to say, but >> so it's not the case, but I would be Catholic." And that surprised me when I looked at >> that surprises me. I actually thought you I I thought you might say Orthodox. >> I thought I would land there because of the Oh, I mean, I have tremendous respect for so many Christians in that tradition as well. And there's such beauty to it. And the this the emphasis upon mysticism, prayer, the body, the role of the body in prayer.
¶54I've learned so much from that tradition. I love studying the essence energies distinction, all that. Sorry, this is supposed to be rapid fire. >> No, I love it. >> It'd be Catholic because of the filioquay and a whole host of other issues.
¶55And I do appreciate the Catholic traditions. I mean, the rich spirituality that's developed >> to the to the and in the way it it has it is more ecumenical. That is so I couldn't submit to any system that says salvation is just in this one institution. I think the e more ecumenical posture of Roman Catholicism is is uh is much better and I appreciate that. So the ecumenical posture of contemporary Roman Catholicism I regard as a recognition of reality today and the theory of doctrinal development which is more robust in Catholicism though sometimes has little glimmers here and there in Eastern Orthodoxy at least in scholarship orthodox scholarship I regard that to be a recognition of reality over time and even if I'm not persuaded of that system I appreciate that these theories are are going beyond the simple assertion of obviousness like here there's that and there's that and just obviously they're the same thing.
¶56You got to get into the challenges of how the church has changed over time which we all have to reckon with. [snorts] But one of the things to observe here is just how many people say this about different groups. So an Eastern Orthodox person and a Roman Catholic person, they will both say this. They'll say it's obviously us and not them. And then there's other groups as well.
¶57And you know the challenge there is they can't all be right especially about the obviousness point. And the more basic point I'm trying to make here is just we got to get beyond these kinds of rhetorical assertions which sometimes seem more psychologically useful for the speaker than um logically useful in the dialectic. And it, you know, you just got to like for myself, I am deeply convinced that Protestantism is true. I don't really have any doubts about that. But my conviction about that is not an argument.
¶58I don't go around saying, "Well, obviously Protestantism is true." For one thing, it annoys people. For another thing, the assertion doesn't advance the discussion. An argument needs to be appended. So for example, if you say the early church is obviously the Roman Catholic Church, you need to follow that up with an argument that addresses and shows awareness of the pressure points like papal infallibility and the Marian dogmas and indulgences and things like that. You know, you need to be aware.
¶59You're going to have to make a case to try to show a living development. And that's what people like Newman with doctrinal development are trying to do. So many times we don't even get to that point, though. If you think that the early church was obviously the Eastern Orthodox Church, you're going to have to deal with the pressure points. And this is why I talk about issues like icon veneration and the invocation of the saints and things like this, which thoughtful historians can recognize even if you think in my view against the data that it existed in the year 200 AD and thereabouts, it's at least not obvious.
¶60you know, you can at least understand why people are kind of scratching their heads and saying, "Where did you get this?" So, those are the kinds of arguments that need to be appended to the claim of obviousness. Another version of this that I hear is argument by means of personal narration. So, it'll be like, "I read the church fathers and it was just so persuasive for me." A friend of mine was telling me about seeing someone say this and they were pointing to their addition of petristic texts implying that the Protestants cannot deal with these texts. And the person may have not realized that the scholarly pioneers and architects who produced that addition are Protestants. Philip Chaff and many others.
¶61And so the point is what is convincing for you personally may not be convincing for others. You need to bring an argument. But there are good arguments to be brought. Let me say to try to be fair-minded here and and and wrap it around. What are some of the good arguments against Protestantism?
¶62And there's a lot more that I could say than just these three. Let me clarify that what I mean by a good argument is not necessarily a successful argument. An argument is good if it is forceful and well constructed and it moves you and it's challenging and it makes you a sharper thinker. You know, so for example, uh whereas a a successful argument actually establishes the conclusion. So as a I'm just explaining how I'm using these terms.
¶63A parallel issue would be I would say the problem of evil is a good argument in the sense that it's a it's a very challenging issue even if I'm ultimately still a Christian still a theist and not persuaded that it is ultimately successful. Okay. So let me mention three good arguments against Protestantism. Uh the canon conundrum the fragmentation impulse and the what I'm going to call these are all my own labels the antiquity plus authority appeal. First, the canon conundrum.
¶64Uh, put it like this. How do you know for sure that second John is in the Bible? And here we get into all these issues which many of you will be familiar familiar with about a fallible list of infallible books and this kind of thing. Now, I do think there are some answers to these concerns, but they're not easy to answer. And this is a a forceful and often very well-made appeal.
¶65And it really does shine a light on an area where many contemporary Protestants are very weak. Uh and that is epistemology or the theory of knowledge. So I'm going to resist in this video giving any answers whatsoever. But lest you're disturbed by this and want answers, I'll just point you to where I've addressed this. This video is the starting point.
¶66If you want a shorter version for the cliffnotes in less than 10 minutes, you can see this video. And then I've done other particular videos niching down to particular topics like malito. in this video and I also have an some older interviews like this one with John me who's a great scholar on this topic. A second really good argument against Protestantism that has force and gets traction understandably is the fragmentation impulse and this is what I what I mean by this is simply Protestantism's tendency toward fragmentation and splintering and rupture. And I think this is something we need to take very seriously.
¶67By the way, did you know that you can be a Protestant and not think the Protestants are perfect? Earlier I mentioned Philip Sha. This is one of the things I love about being a Protestant is you can just be ruthlessly honest with church history and the church today and just basically completely acknowledge the truth and respond to it as you are. Whereas it seems to me that in some of the other systems there's often this sense we need to preserve greater sense of continuity and so forth. Um, so Philip Schaffef as an example, the great Protestant church historian was very critical of much contemporary Protestant practice in his own 19th century context.
¶68As you can see in this quote on the screen, this video is going a little longer than I planned, so I won't read through this, but for the podcast listeners, he's basically saying a lot of Protestantism has overreacted to medieval Roman Catholicism, which I think is a plausible claim for many Protestant traditions. And Protestants are simply free to admit that and and talk about our our sins and errors. Um, my next video on my own channel is going to be a critique of John Calvin for his role in the burning of Michael Cervitus. comes out Monday, Lord willing. And in my book, What It Means to be Protestant, I talk all about this and I give some more examples.
¶69Here's a third forceful and good argument that is often made and can be made against Protestantism. I'm going to call it the antiquity plus authority appeal. Both of these on their own can be very forceful. Many criticisms of Protestantism appeal to antiquity, especially the Petristic era. And many critiques appeal to authority.
¶70How does ecclesial decisionmaking happen? The antiquity appeal is focused on the issue of ecclesial continuity. So this is a huge question. The philosophy of identity. Um the paradox of thesis is a ship.
¶71Is it thesis? I think it is. So if you have a ship in a harbor and one by one you take every piece off and put it on another piece. So that after 50 years, every piece has been changed, but gradually and successively, is it still the same ship? That's a fun thought experiment to try to get into.
¶72What is it that makes something itself? And [snorts] then moving to the church, we say, what is it that makes the church herself as she changes over time? Just like a human being doesn't look the same when they're four years old as when they're 40, but they're the same person, but they look totally different. The church does look different in various important ways over time. So we're trying to discern how do we mark the continuity amidst that change and a very forceful appeal can be made against Protestants here especially some Protestant traditions like my own Baptists just in terms of the sheer optics and kind of the whiff test of like you know look at how serial of Jerusalem is functioning when he's speaking to these cateans and look imagine yourself like Augustine hearing Ambrose of Milan sermons and just think about how that church function and so forth and look at all the differences and I I really understand how people could be persuaded by this and this is forceful and it's a fair appeal even if I don't think it's finally conclusive but what happens is you can take that and combine it with the authority arguments and this is a forceful appeal so the authority critiques against Protestantism often appeal to the enforcement of decisions in the church for both faith and practice and the word binding comes up you know where what decisions are really binding.
¶73Uh the best critiques of Protestantism on this point recognize that historic Protestant traditions have ecclesial decision-making that is binding. And we, you know, the best critique here is going to engage those Protestant models and positions and statements. But when you combine these two, this is a very forceful appeal to ask how did ecclesial authority work in the early church versus today, especially in light of the rapid evolution of bishops and the role of councils. Very forceful appeal. And if I were arguing against Protestantism, that'd be one of the things I'd just take a hammer and just just smack it over and over and over.
¶74I think it's okay to acknowledge that in this complicated landscape there are pressure points in all directions and try to receive the pressure points against our own position. And these are just three of them. There's others, too. So, I'm going to leave it at that. I'm not going to respond to these objections because I've done it elsewhere.
¶75If you want a video on Protestantism and church history, you can see this one. If you want one on bishops and apostolic succession and questions of authority, you can see this one. But I'm not going let's let's I don't want to be defensive. But I'm just trying to give overview here. All right, two questions to finish with.
¶76What would you add to either of these lists, the 10 or the three? Put it in the comments. I'm curious. And second, do you want me to follow up with a a video called top 10 worst arguments for Protestantism or top 10 worst criticisms against Cathol Roman Catholic and Orthodox? And I I always try to include the Oriental Orthodox and the Assyrian Church of the East as well.
¶77So maybe I'll do a video like that. Let me know if you want that in the comments. Hopefully this has not annoyed you because the internet is annoying and it amplifies all the normal human annoyances. I'm just trying to to call out some of the the the things that where we can elevate the discourse. That's the goal of this video.
¶78All right. God bless you. Thanks for watching everybody.