C
Contarini
Guest
Well, that should make you very cautious about claiming “Protestants believe” this or that. As for how it is? Well, you guys have a pretty good answer–we don’t have a unified authority to decide points of disagreement. Perhaps even more tellingly, we have in our memory the fact that once we thought it necessary to reject what we had previously believed to the point of schism (we would generally claim that your side was also responsible for much of the schism by its intransigent attitude, but still, clearly we made plenty of choices that led to schism as well). While some over-zealous Catholic apologists will try to accuse the Orthodox of doctrinal confusion due to their lack of a “Magisterium,” that doesn’t seem to be the case for them. This is because they do have a conception of a unified Church that has always held to the Faith, even though their unified Church is defined (in a more Protestant style) as the Church that teaches true doctrine rather than the other way round.
For me at least, the question is not whether Protestant disunion is an evil, but how great an evil it is. Is it so great an evil that it must automatically muzzle any doubts we may have about Catholicism? In the end I tend to think not. But it’s a tough issue. For me at least the unity of the Church is the single biggest reason to be Catholic. It is the reason why I will never be entirely comfortable as a Protestant.
One other point–bear in mind that “Protestants” don’t necessarily define themselves first and foremost as “Protestants.” Anglicans and Lutherans, and sometimes Methodists, may see themselves as having more common ground with Catholics (on at least some points) than with many other Protestants. And then you have Baptists and Pentecostals who reject historic Protestantism outright (not all Baptists do–perhaps not all Pentecostals either–but many do). I’m not denying that all these groups are historically Protestant. My point is that Protestants don’t necessarily claim to have unity *as Protestants. *
I think that there is a central Protestant position, though, and it can be clearly discerned historically. It’s the tradition known as “Reformed” or “Calvinist.” There is far more to this tradition than the infamous “five points”–Methodists, for instance, are historically “Calvinist” in their sacramental theology but not in their soteriology (though obviously the one influences the other–Methodists are more open to baptismal regeneration because they don’t believe in the Calvinist doctrine of perseverance). In other words, Protestants who disagree with the Reformed tradition on one point will find themselves agreeing with it on another. On the whole (with the ironic exception of predestination, which is the one doctrine most commonly associated with the Reformed in most people’s minds), the Reformed do a good job of presenting those doctrines most likely to be held in common by Protestants. And even on predestination, their position only became a minority one with the rise of 19th-century revivalism and humanitarianism.
Edwin
