Hello,
Every Protestant I have spoken with about the way Protestant ministers are trained seems to describe a very similar practice. The names vary, but I think that the most accurate title would be Bible College. They primarily study the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments and learn to interpret them via their denominational and professorial viewpoints. The is the vast majority of what is taught. Then you get a little bit of other information, depending on what school and professor you learn from. This may include proving Catholicism and particularly the Pope is the Anti-Christ, or it may be to study what the reformers taught and wrote, or it may be some philosophy, etc., etc.
Then you are mistaken. Or your contact with Protestants is too limited for you to be making pseudo-apodictic pronouncements about all of them based upon your own narrow experience.
Most Protestant Seminaries also teach Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic and a full course in Church History as well as Confessional Dogmatics.
Again, this is what I have been told by Protestants, some of whom have attended such schools. Not one has said that they were taught the Early Church Fathers, Ecumenical Councils, ancient heresies and why they were wrong, etc. Some didn’t even know what an Early Church Father was or who they were - and these were the men and women who came out of a Protestant education.
Then again, you’re dealing with the wrong Protestants and certainly not ones that are emblematic of the whole.
But we were talking about Christology.
There is a fundamental difference. The Catholic Church teaches what it teaches, and those who err from that are separating themselves from the Church. In Protestantism, with its general doctrines of Sola Scriptura and private interpretation, every person, in effect, becomes their own denomination.
And confessional Protestants deal in exactly the same manner with pastors and teachers who depart from confessional norm. They excommunicate them.
The rest of this commentary sinks under its own ponderous weight of jingoism.
There is nothing in Sola Scriptura requiring on the one hand the bogeyman of “Private Interpretation” or, on the other, a necessary departure from historical moorings.
You really should leave behind your comic books and step into the gallery of real history and theology.
What exactly are you saying? Please clarify.
What I am saying is that for all the theological problems and debates that exist between Protestantism and Catholicism, the nature of Christ as true God and true man is not really one of them, nor has it ever really been one and your effort to make it one is ridiculous.
What do you mean by “orthodox” Protestant? Does this even have meaning? Even mainstream Protestant denominations are currently subscribing to what may be described as liberal and historically un-Christian ideals and positions.
Generally I mean a confessional Protestant, which is to say a Protestant who subscribes to a detailed external statement of doctrine such as a Lutheran or a Presbyterian or in the majority of cases a Baptist. This is the vast, vast majority of Protestants.
Here is the Christological confession of every Protestant:
Jesus Christ is 100% God and 100% man, the natures are distinct without ever being separable. He is the second Person of the Trinity which they also confess.
I challenge you to find an official Protestant document or confession that denies this.
Presbyterians and Lutherans even affirm the doctrine of the Theotokos because they are so consistent in their Christology that they understand that the natures are, in the incarnation so inseparable that to say that Mary was the mother only of the man but not of God would be nonsensical.
That some Protestants haven’t fully worked this out only means that they are inconsistent, not that they are deficient because they remain better than their inconsistency and confess with us the doctrine of Nicaea and Chalcedon though they may not feel particularly compelled to use exactly the same language we do to express it.
The attempt to reduce a whole group to the terms of its lowest denominator is an effort to demonize and really is an expression of a lack of charity since it reveals an effort to objectify what is really a living individual. You shouldn’t do it.
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After all it is God’s love letter to us
