On the old churches, and why Protestants are still right.

On the old churches, and why Protestants are still right.

(A response to a friend)

Well it’s a tough one, because those of a Greek orthodox persuasion are very into being Greek, and so the Greek theology is closely tied in with their sense of themselves and their thoughts of their own identity as a people. What I mean is, for them the fact that their theology is old and Greek, or old and Russian, or old and Armenian, or whatever is a powerful argument for it being correct, whereas for others those things hold no rational weight.

Every major heresy in the heretical canon of heterodox belief was born and flourished in the first few centuries of the Church, so for the thoughtful person, a doctrine being old is not necessarily good. Most old thoughts are bad ones. Arianism. Pelagiansim. Gnosticism. Etc. How would we know? What would the reasonable person think would be the deciding factor in a delineation of belief when there are competing interpretations of ancient lineage? Well, some would say, the judgment of the Church. But the Church was often persuaded by heterodox belief and later repented. Sometimes there were only a handful of Christians holding to the orthodox belief on the Trinity or the deity of Christ, for example. It often took centuries for the institutional Church to give up historically heretical content, if ever. The historical Church has been a notorious promoter of heterodox thought through the ages. That is not an arguable matter; it’s just history.

The Protestant view is that the only infallible resource, the ultimate arbiter in every matter of faith and morals, will always by necessity be, the writings of the Prophets and Apostles themselves, that we call the Holy Scriptures; the Bible. There is no avoiding it being the beginning and end of every theological conflict, because it is the content of every theological conflict. There is no amount of authority or power in an earthly office (the church) that can make them say what they don’t say or not say what they do say. And so they judge the decisions of men and even Church councils. All human decision can and will err, but the Scriptures cannot and do not err, therefore they themselves are the ultimate and final authority.

Someone will say to you about this, that that makes everyone judge for themselves what the Scriptures mean, and so it is by necessity. Even if someone chooses to believe that whatever the Church says must be correct, they have chosen what to believe. The question is, have they believed the right thing for the right reasons. The Church saying that the Church is right because the Church is right is not a reason, it is a confusion. It is an arbitrary act of power without rational justification and Christians are a reasonable people.

So if they want to make the claim, they will need to justify their authority. And how will they do it? How will they justify the identity, nature, offices, authority, and powers of the Church in history? There is no other option. They will need to argue from the Scriptures. And when they do, they have practically admitted what Protestants have simply revived as the dominant Christian knowledge tradition. That the Scriptures themselves are the ’sole infallible rule in all matters of faith and practice’. What we call “sola scriptura”, the fundamental article of the Reformation.

You can’t even know there is a Church unless Scripture tells you so.

And if someone says, you can’t know what the Scriptures are apart from the Church telling you what they are, we would need to ask, “What Church?”, and “How do you know that?”. If they say it is from the Scriptures, they have shown their argument to be circular and fallacious, because they would have needed to reference Scripture itself in order to know what Scripture was, which is the Protestant position; that the Scriptures carry their own authority. If they say it is not from the Scriptures, you may kindly disregard it as an argument from an improper authority, since nothing has the authority to justify the words of God.

Christopher Neiswonger

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