taking Protestant theology seriously

[Don_Quixote]

I was actually referring to my students - it’s a bad idea for me to mention Protestant errors in my classes, because it confuses my students. My students are good Catholics, or at least, they hope to become good Catholics. But they confuse easily.

I don’t judge individual Protestants. I assume and hope that they are sincerely doing the very best that they can.

They don’t have access to it. Their ancestors cut them off from it, and then lied to them about where it is to be found.

**
It must be terrible to have lying ancestors.

How can they ever know the truth? **

 

[Goblin_Taters]

Catholics definitely need to take Protestant theology seriously, especially the Protestant theology of the original reformers. The first Protestants did not just pop anew out of the ground but were firmly rooted in the theological milieu of the Western Church. Many of their causes were not original, for even before the Reformers there were theological traditions that competed with other traditions later adopted by the Church.

For me, personally, I find Protestant theology very helpful because it addresses head-on many Catholic claims that appear to be challenged by history and by present circumstances. For example, the Roman Catholic Church claims to be the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. Yet, the Eastern Orthodox Church claims the same, to the exclusion of the supposedly heretical Roman Catholics; and the Oriental Orthodox also claim this title. If the Roman Catholic Church is the true Church, then what of the post-schism Greek Orthodox saints? Are they schismatics and not members of the true Church outside of which there is no salvation? Vatican II has attempted to tackle this sensitive question with the Church of Christ/Catholic Church “subsists in” distinction. But, I might ask, what did the Church Fathers say of this? What would a 17th century Pope have said about extra ecclesiam nulla sallus?

When I read early Protestant theology (such as Luther and Calvin), I discover God-fearing men who have a perception that looks beyond what they have learned and received, men who discern a great difference between the age when Christians suffered and died for their faith, and the age when bishops, priests, princes and peasants commercialized the faith, making additions to and distorting the faith to this end. These men were not black shadows lurking with daggers in hand after white-trailing pontiffs, but instead held God’s Word in their hearts and risked their lives in their desire that God’s Word be spread and received in fulness and truth.

We Catholics often take for granted the infallibility of the Councils and the Popes. We oftentimes discourage discussion of the contrary: for to even question the Pope’s superior authority over a council is a big no-no. To even suggest that Papal authority over the Church was a human invention and not the direct bestowment of Christ to Peter and the bishops of Rome–well, that’s pure apostasy! And yet the concilliarists are a promiment group in the history of the Western Church, as are the later Hussites, and the Orthodox, who have roots and traditions just as old as the Roman Catholics. Protestants demonstrate the fact that the history of the Western Church is not simply a perpetual one of EVIL HERETICS versus CHRIST’S ARMY UNDER HIS VICAR, THE POPE, but is instead much more complicated than that.

This said, I believe Protestants today have some things to learn from Catholics (and Orthodox as well). The Catholic traditions–spiritual, liturgical, theological, sacramental, hermeneutical–have in many cases been completely jettisoned by modern day Protestants, and these Protestants can learn much from Catholics in this regard.

 

[Kitty_Chan]

nice post!

well said, if we all took this approach rather than one upping.