"Protestantism teaches?"Eph. 4:11.Certainly. All men are fallible, save the Son of Man. But as a RC you’re told by your Magisterium that your Magisterium is infallible and as a RC you must believe it. It’s what’s makes you distinctly a RC.
Yes, Protestantism teaches private judgment.
Protestantism historians until modern times used to say there were two fundamental principles of the Reformation, an objective and subjective one. The former was the unique authority of the Scriptures, independent of tradition; the latter justification by faith alone without good works. While still considered important, these principles are now subordinated to a deeper issue from which they were both derived. Underlying them was the Protestant belief in the inspiration of the individual and the corresponding right of private judgment in matters of faith. Consequently, the real point of difference between Protestants and Catholics was not the canon or authority of the Scripture, but who has the right of interpretation. Catholics believe the infallible Church, Protestants said the inspired or enlightened individual.
The dichotomy has not substantially changed. Against the Church’s claim that only she has the right to explain the inspired text, contemporary Protestants hold the opposite. They may not agree on the conditions required for valid interpretation, but on one point thay all concur - it is not an ecclesiastical body and least of all the Catholic Church.
Though widely different and apparently contradictory, two streams of thought came out of the original Lutheran concept of private interpretation. Divine grace through Jesus Christ speaks directly to the heart of the believer. Consistent with this principle, Luther threw out the so-called Apocryphal books, declared that in many places the Scriptures had erred and even conceded that another New Testament might be written to improve on the first one. His fundamentalist followers blandly teach that " Christians are individually taught by the Spirit of God, so that they are slaves to no one as they study the Scriptures. Each individual believer is able by the grace of God to read the Scriptures for himself, receiving the benefit of divine illumination." Extreme forms of this illuminism are found among the minor sects of Pentacostals, the Holiness movement and, on a more respected plane, among the Quakers.
A variant form of Bible individualism dispenses not only with special guidance of the Holy Spirit but with any kind of scientific inquiry into the proper meaning of the text. Since, “the entire Christian doctrine is revealed and set forth in Scripture passages so clear that the learned and unlearned alike can understand them, they do not stand in need of exegesis for explanation. If Scripture did not have this quality, it would not be for all Christians ‘a lamp unto their feet and a light unto their path,’ nor would all Christians be able to establish the truth of their faith by Scripture and in the light of Scripture to mark and avoid false teachers.” As an expression of biblical Protestantism, this statement could scarcely be improved. Sectarians who wished to hold onto to some form of dogma could not follow Luther to the conclusion of his premises; that way led to chaos and the end of organized Christianity. Neither would they accept the Catholic magisteium. They took the middle course of setting up the Bible as the only and ultimate norm of Christian belief. Thus authority was met with authority, a book against an institution or, as the fundamentalists prefer, the word of God, instead of the word of man.
However, the more common idea of private interpretation took Luther at his word. It seemed a trifle to insist on a special illumination for interpreting Scripture. Enough to know that every one has a spark of the divine within him to sift the wheat from the chaff in the Bible and derive what he can from the wisdom of the ancients. His tools in the process are historical and literary criticism. With these he recovers the true Jesus of history. Following the lead of men like Harnack, for whom the Gospels are “not altogether useless as sources of history,” and Bultman, who marvelled, “what a primitive mtholog, that a divine being should be incarnate,” liberal Protestants still use the vocabulary of dogmatic Christians, but they no longer believe in the concepts. No major denomination has escaped the solvent of rationalism, not excluding traditional conservative bodies. Lutheran churchmen/women tell the people “with a new light and more adequate interpretation of the biblical writings, changes in doctrine are not only anticipated but necessary,” and although highly recommended as the literature of a nation, “the Protestant Episcopal Church does not ask you to make a formal statement of belief in the Bible.” You may, therefore, be a professed Christian and believe in the Scriptures, but you are not obliged to accept them as divinely inspired and still less hope to find there any secuity of doctrine.
Yes, Protestantism teaches private judgment.
We basically established modern education, you know.