If Protestantism is True...
- the canon of scripture is the assertion everything else depends on:
- Sola Scriptura claims that everything for faith and holiness in contained solely in scripture and Priesthood of all Believers implies that each person should be able to do this.
- If scripture is all that is required for all knowledge of faith and holiness, then knowledge of the limits and boundaries of scripture is supremely important.
- Since all Protestants reject much of the decisions made before the canon was first defined in the early church, one cannot look to it to define the canon
- Picking and choosing various council's decisions to agree and disagree with smacks of being Ad Hoc unless one can define a clear historical event or line of reasoning why to accept some but not others (or other things those people believed)
- All arguments based upon Literary Criticism or "Criteria for Canonicity" are circular in nature. They assume the thing and then use it to prove itself. A believer in 300 AD could use none of them to determine what is scripture.
- I find no other way of sustaining the canon beyond claiming it as the root assertion of Protestantism.
- Yes, this puts us in the terrible position of an assertion that is spelled out in more detail here.
- Yes, this means I have no real basis to stand against a Mormon who claims their canon as an assertion.
- No, this doesn't make me feel much better.
- for at least 1100 years (formation of canon till reformation) the entirety of the Church, the body of Christ, was dangerously wrong on many important topics: Canon, Baptism, Communion, Church Authority
- What does this tell us about the providence of God? For 1100 years God chose to allow Christians everywhere to lack:
- A true understanding of scripture, which is "the sole and infallible source of truth about faith and holiness".
- A true understanding about Baptism, which is the act that scripture teaches us all believers should undergo. How many children were baptized as infants incorrectly over 1100 years?
- A true understanding about Communion (see below)
- A true understanding about church authority, following leaders who they believed to be the very successor of Peter. God allowed believers everywhere to follow leaders, who must not have been appointed, to lead them into error (see above).
- during those 1100 years many great Christians lived and died, none of which the Holy Spirit either told or had the courage to object to these incorrect beliefs strongly enough to be recorded in history.
- I just finished a study on Francis of Assisi and even if one tenth of the historical record is true, this was a man who sought to follow Christ more fully that I ever could.
- The article here has a quote from Francis which seems to imply he very much believed the church's teachings on communion.
- While I can find records of many of the heresies of the time, none outside a dispute about the "Real Presence" (communion) have any possible match with modern Protestant doctrines. [1 (see Berengarius section)]
While not directly flowing from the core assertions made by Protestantism, I believe the following also follows given mainline interpretation of scripture by protestants:
If Protestantism is True...
- Eucharistic adoration is disastrously wrong and very likely idolatry.
- Eucharistic adoration is the worship of communion itself, which is claimed to have the "Real Presence" of Christ: Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.[2]
- The charge of idolatry is a charge of treason itself within the Christian community. No higher mistake could one level against another to claim they are worshiping something that is not in its nature God Himself.
- Catholics everywhere since 1264 (Transiturus De Hoc Mundo) are guilty of this.
- It was not until the reformation (240 years) that this was corrected. God allowed a vast majority of Christians everywhere for 240+ years to unknowingly be in such a state.
- If this is true, what sort of heresies could I be caught in right now? If for 240 years God allowed believers in all of the Christian lands be guilty of such a serious error, what hope do I have?
The more I study about Catholic doctrines and history, the more I realize how different Protestant are; which implies how wrong Catholics must have been for 1100+ years. If God allowed everyone living for 1100 years to mess up so much about the faith, does He really care about our doctrine at all? How certain, knowing what I know about the turbulent times of the reformation, do I think they got it right? It even took the generation after Luther and Calvin to fully reject Regenerative Baptism, Communion of Saints, and various beliefs about Mary.[3][4]
Here I end up again, with more questions than answers. Think my logic is faulty? My sources of information and history incomplete? I don't like these consequences very much myself, but I believe they must flow from the assertions the Protestant Reformation if it was true. Please write in comments, I'm searching for the truth and welcome any help I can get.
