The Protestant's Dilemma (8 page)

BECAUSE CATHOLICISM IS TRUE,

God ensured that all Christians could have conscience-binding certainty in the canon.

Other Protestants
³⁶
are not comfortable with Sproul’s admission that the process to determine the canon was fallible. They realize that if the canon of Scripture is not inerrant, then there is no use claiming that the books themselves are inerrant. Sproul himself recognized that he had no principled reason to believe with certainty that the all too fallible Church of the early centuries correctly selected the books of the Bible, or that the likewise fallible Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century did, either. Hence his supremely unsatisfactory formula, which has become an uncomfortable perch upon which some Protestants try to find rest from answering the question of the canon.

The main difficulty with this position is that even as it correctly identifies the problem with accepting the discernment of an “apostate” Church, or fallible reformers, or the subjective internal assessment of believers, it nonetheless accepts their conclusions in a lump. In fact, Sproul and other sympathetic Protestants believe that their Protestant canon
is
inerrant, that the list of books is exactly right, even though they flatly reject the belief that God protected from error any of the people who actually did the discernment. They are trying to produce a certainty from these various fallible sources that is somehow greater than the sum of its parts, but that is mere wishful thinking. It is not an assent of faith supported by solid reasoning but rather a fideistic leap off unstable rocks.

As for the Jews, although it’s true that they did not have an infallible magisterium and that their canon grew over time as God sent more prophets to them, it’s also true that the New Covenant is greater than the Old in every way. The Israelites ate manna in the desert, but the new people of God feed on Christ himself in the Eucharist. The Jews were given the Law to help them know and follow God’s will, but members of the Church are given God’s Spirit to help them live in the freedom of Christ. In like manner, God went beyond the Old Covenant when it came to the canon of Scripture, guiding his Church in the New Covenant to discern which books he had inspired and which he had not.

The discernment of the canon was a messy process that took centuries, during which time the Church had to sift through numerous proposed alternatives. And then, about a thousand years afterward, the Protestant Reformers came along to edit the Old Testament list of books. Sproul, one of Protestantism’s foremost apologists, has taken the incredible position that though this very human-looking process was not guided by God, it somehow got the books of the Bible exactly right. I would submit that Sproul’s belief is a much wilder (and less probable) article of faith than simply believing as Catholics do in a Spirit-guided Church.

THE PROTESTANT’S DILEMMA

If Protestantism is true,
then the basis for all of our Christian beliefs, the Bible, may well contain books that God did not inspire, or it may leave out books that he did. At best we can be
somewhat
sure that
many
of the books of the Bible are
probably
inspired. According to the influential Protestant voice of Sproul, the canon was not infallibly selected. Therefore it may contain error. That’s an unsettling thought, because if Protestantism is true, the Bible is all we’ve got.

11: SOLA SCRIPTURA AND CHRISTIAN UNITY

IF PROTESTANTISM IS TRUE,

Protestants should be united in their interpretations of the Bible.

Protestants hold the doctrine of
sola scriptura
: The Bible alone is the authoritative source of Christian truth. A corollary of this doctrine is the belief that the Bible’s teachings are clear—at least to true Christians, whom God guides in their reading of Scripture. In theory, then, all Protestant groups that subscribe to
sola scriptura
ought to be united in belief, since they’re all drawing their teachings from the one clear Scripture and are guided into truth by the same Holy Spirit. Yet Protestant churches disagree with one another on many doctrines.

Protestants Agree (Sort of)

To explain this apparent scandalous discrepancy, some Protestants insist that their beliefs are substantially similar to each other’s, at least on the
important
issues: that Jesus is God, for example, and that he died for our sins and rose again. And if that is the bar for achieving unity of belief, I grant that they clear it.

But how to tell which are the “important” doctrines? Some will respond by saying “those that affect our salvation”—a reasonable place to start. Since Jesus and the apostles didn’t make an explicit list of those teachings, Protestants scour the Bible (since, according the
sola scriptura,
that’s where the answer has to be) for passages about salvation and strive to interpret what the inspired author is saying. Unsurprisingly, this results in conflicting conclusions even about the “essential” points of justification, sanctification, and salvation.

The Lord’s Supper is a perfect example of such disagreements and how Protestants claim to resolve them. Lutherans believe that Jesus is substantially present “with” the bread and wine. Reformed Protestants believe that Jesus is spiritually present. Baptists believe that the bread and the wine are only symbolic. And some Protestants, based on their reading of Scripture, don’t even celebrate the Lord’s Supper.

Do these differences matter? Is the Lord’s Supper an important area, one that affects salvation? When questioned about these obvious differences, some Protestants I’ve corresponded with have said it is, and maintained that
their
church’s particular belief on this issue is correct. Others have shrugged their shoulders and said that since the relevant biblical passages can admit differing interpretations, doctrinal differences over this issue are acceptable. Some of them even say that this kind of latitude of interpretation makes for a laudable “Big Tent Christianity” that doesn’t go out of its way to exclude a variety of beliefs.

In short, Protestants disagree not only on the meaning of specific doctrines but also on whether those disagreements are important or not. For some, agreeing to disagree
is
unity, the only kind of unity possible this side of heaven.

BECAUSE CATHOLICISM IS TRUE,

Sola scriptura
has not led to unity but to endless divisions that show no signs of ceasing.

If, as Protestants claim, the Reformers both revived the doctrine of
sola scriptura
and restored the correct canon,
finally
basing their beliefs on the Bible alone without the taint of man-made traditions, we would expect to find perfect doctrinal unity, or at least a high level of unity, among them. Yet the historical reality is completely the opposite. Doctrinal disagreements erupted in every place Protestantism took hold: Luther’s compatriot Melanchthon drifted from his more literal eucharistic beliefs; Zwingli’s colleagues didn’t think he went far enough fast enough in his changes to the Mass; the radical Reformers (Anabaptists) contradicted all the magisterial Reformers on infant baptism; Calvin contradicted Luther on church governance; and the Anglicans incorporated a hodge-podge of the continental Reformers’ ideas into their own unique blend of Catholic-Protestant teachings, resulting in a theology abhorrent to the Puritans.

Although members of these Protestant groups all believed that they received the Holy Spirit, and were honestly doing their best to follow what they thought God was saying in Scripture, they came to different interpretations on almost every important issue. The Anabaptists, for example, rightly noticed that there was no explicit mention in the New Testament of baptizing infants, a practice that dated to the beginning of the Church and which Luther and Zwingli accepted as orthodox. That this practice was part of Christian tradition was not good enough for the Anabaptists, so they rejected infant baptism and re-baptized all Christians who joined their group (Anabaptist means “re-baptizer”).

The Anabaptists did not stop there: Based on their reading of Scripture, they isolated themselves, rejecting private property on the grounds that the Bible said early Christians held everything in common. Many radical Reformers also rejected the dogma of the Trinity, arguing that it was not explicitly stated in the Bible but was a later invention of theologians. For the Anabaptists,
sola scriptura
meant relying on
no
tradition from the early centuries of Christianity (other than the tradition of the canon of Scripture, an inconsistency they apparently didn’t consider). The magisterial Reformers, however, thought that the Anabaptists had gone too far; surely the Church Fathers and early councils could generally be relied upon to interpret Scripture faithfully. But who could say which side—concerning what surely must be “essential” teachings on baptism and the divine nature—was right?

Luther and Zwingli’s famous dispute at Marburg
³⁷
over the meaning of Holy Communion demonstrated that the Reformers, at any rate, did not think that differing interpretations of the Lord’s Supper were insignificant or non-essential. Instead, they argued bitterly over it, refusing to admit the other’s interpretation was acceptable.

Time has not smoothed over the divisions but has only brought new ones, particularly over modern issues such as same-sex marriage and women’s ordination. But even the old doctrines are still subjects of dispute. The Oneness Pentecostal movement, which claims tens of millions of adherents, rejects the traditional doctrine of the Trinity, instead adopting a position close to the heresy of modalism.
³⁸
The issues are just as essential as the ones that divided the Reformers, but just as there was no workable method of resolution then, none exists today, and the divisions increase. No honest religious historian can deny that the result of
sola scriptura
has been doctrinal chaos.

THE PROTESTANT’S DILEMMA

If Protestantism is true,
then God intended for Christians to base all their beliefs on the Bible alone. The Holy Spirit would work in their hearts and minds—even overcoming the shortcomings caused by sin—to unite them in the true interpretation of the sacred text, fulfilling the perfect unity that Christ prayed for in John 17. Yet anyone who examines the array of conflicting teachings present in Protestantism from its inception until today, even in essential areas, can see that the Protestant experiment has not achieved that unity nor will ever be able to.

12: THE PRINCIPLE OF INDIVIDUAL JUDGMENT

IF PROTESTANTISM IS TRUE,

We all decide for ourselves what God’s revelation means.

God inspired the books of the Bible to communicate his saving revelation to us in written form, culminating in his revelation of
himself,
in Jesus Christ. If, as Protestants believe, the Bible is the sole infallible rule of faith, God must have ensured that its meaning, at least on matters essential to salvation, would be clear to any Christian who reads it. He could not have allowed the Bible to be mysterious, obscure, or even slightly vague—even to people who weren’t fluent in Greek or Hebrew. This clarity would ensure unity of doctrine among all Bible-believing Christians throughout time. As we have seen, though, such unity does not exist. This is because, in the absence of an interpreting authority, every person is left to decide Scripture’s meaning for himself.

Clear Biblical Passages?

Scripture abounds with interpretative challenges. Let us consider two passages from 1 John. “If we say, ‘We are without sin,’ we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). A bit later we read the apostle say: “No one who remains in him [Jesus] sins; no one who sins has seen him or known him” (1 John 3:6).

An apparent contradiction exists here. From the first passage, it is clear that if we claim we don’t sin, we are liars, because we do sin. But the second passage seems to say that if we remain in Jesus, we do
not
sin. What gives? Since most Protestants (along with Catholics) believe the Bible to be inerrant, this contradiction must be only an apparent
one. How, then, can these two verses be reconciled?

Many Protestants who read this passage decide that in the second passage John must mean “persists in sinning” or “sins and doesn’t repent.” Otherwise, it would mean that if we commit a sin, which most of us do fairly often, we do not know Jesus—which sounds pretty harsh. Yet if we apply this interpretation to resolve the seeming contradiction, we are mentally interjecting new words into God’s Word.