Does my title confuse you? Or, does it make you think? The first part "Does Protestantism Need To Die?" comes from the title of the article below. In this blog, I am only offering excerpts from that
article. I would highly recommend reading the full article on their
web site, shown below. And, it sort of reflects what I have always felt
- that the Christian church, the body of believers which began on the
Day of Pentecost 33 AD, should be the only Christian church, worldwide.
Yes, I would long for, pray for, and desire one unified Christian body, one Christian church, around the world. But, knowing that we humans are a flawed species, we know that will never happen - until Christ returns and establishes His Millennial Kingdom on earth. Then we will be unified.
Until then, we need to keep emphasizing that there are specific Christian doctrines, i.e., Essential Christian Doctrines, which determine our position as regenerated and saved believers in Christ. And, there are many Non-Essential Christian Doctrines which do not affect our salvation - but, are important in making us more mature in our Christian faith and in our knowledge of God's Word.
The second part of my title “The only good Protestant is a catholic Protestant?” - comes from within the article below - and it is true if we apply the true meaning of the word "catholic" - which only means "universal." In other words this is only saying what I wrote above: "that the Christian church, the body of believers which began on the Day of Pentecost 33 AD, should be the only Christian church, worldwide. Yes, I would long for, pray for, and desire one unified Christian body, one Christian church, around the world." That is the true meaning a "catholic" or universal church.
But, man being flawed man, that can never happen until the return of Christ. Local churches and denominations, and this includes the Roman Catholic church, was begun by a man, or men, coming together around a desired theology - and then forming their organization by selectively choosing Scripture verses or passages, and for some even choosing non-canonized sources, to establish a church or denomination based upon that desired set of Scripture verses or passages, or other writings.
Although my Roman Catholic Friends will disagree with me, if they will honestly think about it and not just accept what church leaders have told them - they will realize that the church of Rome (not the Roman Catholic church) began when believers spread from Jerusalem to other parts of the Roman empire, including Rome. The catalyst for the beginning of what became the Roman Catholic church was the influence, from his mother who had become part of that migrating Christian faith, and what Constantine perceived to be a miracle in battle - leading him to begin his version of the church of Rome.
To make his new church palatable to all his Roman citizens (the first ecumenical movement), Constantine allowed them to bring parts of their pagan religions into his new church. And, to later justify those inclusions the leaders had to go outside of Scripture to find supporting texts. Thus we find a large portion of their doctrines coming from non-canonized written sources, i.e., the apocrypha.
So, with that intro, let's get into the article which inspired this blog:
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Does Protestantism Need To Die? Or to Recover Its Riches?
Christianity Today / October 21, 2016
By Fred Sanders
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/november/does-protestantism-need-to-die.html?utm_source=ctweekly-html&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_term=18195569&utm_content=479633242&utm_campaign=email
(Fred Sanders teaches theology at Biola University’s Torrey Honors Institute. He is the author of "The Triune God" (Zondervan), which releases in December.)
Two Protestant Luminaries Look At The Legacy Of The Reformation, 500 Years Later.
Now and then, Protestants are stirred to ask whether the Reformation might be bad for the church and the world. Five centuries downstream from 1517, old objections come with the burden of knowing where things occasionally went wrong.
As Reformation heirs prepare to celebrate our 500th anniversary, we do so with a remarkable capacity for self-criticism. At its worst, Protestant self-critique can be a tiresome self-flagellation, a dreary round of virtue-signaling and posturing over the sins of others. But at its best, it can be a time for soul-searching, a source of insight, and a promise of revival. These books are profound exercises in the most salutary kind of protestant self-critique.
Two new books show the range covered by the best Protestant self-critique. Peter Leithart’s "The End of Protestantism: Pursuing Unity in a Fragmented Church" (Brazos) ~ and Kevin Vanhoozer’s "Biblical Authority after Babel: Retrieving the Solas in the Spirit of Mere Protestant Christianity" (Brazos) ~ come to the task from very different angles. Vanhoozer comes to the conversation from a deep dive into the depths of the Gospel. Leithart comes back to it from the future.
Future Church: The End of Protestantism is the long-awaited expansion of the provocative shorter remarks Leithart has made in this vein over the past few years. He hasn’t exactly softened his tone. Here, he announces, “Jesus bids Protestantism to come and die.” But there is more: “He calls us to exhibit the unity that the Father has with the Son in the Spirit.” That is, “we are called by our crucified Lord to die to what we are now so that we may become what we will be.” What draws all of Leithart’s arguments forward is essentially a syllogism: Jesus prays for the church’s unity, and Jesus will get what he prays for, so the church will be united. . . .
As visionary, Leithart poses the question “What should the future church look like?” Fully admitting he is not a prophet and does not know how to get to the destination he describes, Leithart nevertheless lays out a vision of a global network of congregations all reading the Bible earnestly, taking the Lord’s Supper weekly, keeping the same calendar, honoring Mary without venerating her, trading in denominational names for geographical labels, and working for the common good. . . .
Leithart is sometimes interpreted as calling for Protestants to abandon ship; that’s because he is. He wants us to bail out of our sectarian boats. But he is not calling for anyone to transfer their allegiance to another vessel. For example, he warns evangelicals not to try to join the future church by joining the current Roman Catholic Church.
That, he argues, would only cause greater sectarianism, since it would require denying the reality of their churchly existence so far, and it would preclude sharing the Lord’s Supper with family and friends. The ship we should row for, according to Leithart, is not Rome or Constantinople, but what he calls “future church,” when we will all be in the same boat. . . .
Home Sweet Home: Kevin Vanhoozer, on the other hand, offers less a summons to set out on a journey and more a reminder of how good, and how unappreciated, home is.
In "Biblical Authority after Babel," Vanhoozer responds to Protestantism’s conventional criticisms without being defensive or dismissive. He focuses on “the fissiparousness (tending to break up into parts) that has dogged the Protestant commitment of sola scriptura.” Fissiparous means “inclined to cause or undergo division into separate parts or groups.” It’s a word he never comes across “except in the descriptions or criticisms of Protestantism.” What most draws his attention is not the multitude of confessions and denominations, but the underlying crisis regarding “Bible, church, and interpretive authority.”
Vanhoozer’s solution is to retrieve the classic Protestant theology of the five solas: sola gratia (grace alone), sola fide (faith alone), sola Scriptura (Scripture alone), solus Christus (Christ alone), and soli Deo Gloria (the glory of God alone). Compared to Leithart, Vanhoozer may sound past-oriented, but he says that “to retrieve is to look back creatively in order to move forward faithfully.”
Perhaps we could picture him looking downward, into the depths of the reality that underlies the solas. He views them “not as doctrines in their own right as much as theological insights into various facets” of who God is, how he makes himself known, and what his purposes are.
This comes through clearly in his discussion of the first sola, grace alone. God shares his eternally self-sufficient life, light, and love, makes himself known to us in the Son and the Spirit, and forms a redeemed community. That is a wealth of theological riches, all from the first sola. Readers who have come to think of the solas merely as post-Reformation slogans may be surprised at how Vanhoozer excavates so much from them.
By the sheer profusion of doctrinal delights, Vanhoozer makes good on his claim that “the solas are essentially positive, rather than negative, insights into the presuppositions, implications, and entailments of the Gospel.”
In Vanhoozer’s analysis, “faith alone” points to the framework of responsibility and trust underlying all biblical interpretation, which is necessarily communal.
“Scripture alone” points to the priority of God’s Word and its freedom to correct the church, rather than vice versa;
“Christ alone” points to the Gospel as the announcement of just how much there is “in Jesus Christ.”
And “the glory of God alone” is fulfilled only when redemption is made known publicly by the people of God.
“Discord on Evangel Way,” writes Vanhoozer, “impedes the final purpose of the Gospel, and the glory of God.”
Vanhoozer asks how each of the solas can help us “retrieve the promise of the Reformation but not its pathology.” One way he does this is to draw out their implications for the crisis of biblical interpretation and authority. But another way he shapes each of the solas is by introducing “a virtual sixth sola: sola ecclesia.”
Knowing that “church alone” does not sound like a very Protestant thing to say, Vanhoozer hurriedly clarifies: “The church alone is the place where Christ rules over his kingdom and gives certain gifts for the building of his living temple.”
So in its own way, Vanhoozer’s discussion wends its way toward the doctrine of the church. Leithart’s book is essentially one vast ecclesiology, a book about the church that also makes room for a few other doctrines that undergird ecclesiology. Vanhoozer’s book is more nearly a brief systematic theology of the Gospel, which includes consideration of the church and its public face. . . .
Vanhoozer’s presents seem, at first, to be things that Protestants have possessed all along. But he emphasizes how the five solas are “seeds for a perennial reformation.” In other words, they must bring about change in whoever cultivates them. For all their differences in style and substance, Leithart and Vanhoozer recommend similar practical steps (public cooperation among churches, a focus on shared central doctrines underlying disagreements, hospitality toward the goods of other Christian traditions, etc.).
Reading both books at the same time, I found myself sometimes forgetting which author made which claim. Who said, “The only good Protestant is a catholic Protestant?” Answer: Vanhoozer. How about, “Fissiparousness is no match for the gravitational pull of the gospel toward oneness in Christ?” Also Vanhoozer. But either time, it could have been Leithart.
The great Methodist theologian William Burt Pope once posed the question, “What objections may be urged” against sola Scriptura? He answered this way: “Only such objections as may rather be turned into cautions,” and went on to warn about the ways sola Scriptura can be, and has been, wrongly applied. . . .
From another source:
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
My Friends, I pray you have found this blog useful and that it will encourage us all toward more unity within our Christian churches - as we faithfully await the day He will return and establish His Millennial Kingdom, His truly unified worldwide church.
But, let me caution you regarding much found in the ecumenical movements we see today.
Just as a Christian believer cannot join in worship and prayer with folks from world religions, we cannot join with those in cult religions which teach false doctrines such Universalism, another Jesus Christ, or which deny the Trinity, the full authority of the Bible, etc.
And, we cannot join in worship and prayers to anyone other than our Biblical God and His Son, Jesus Christ. To pray to or worship anyone else would be to deny the First and Second Commandments - given to us by God Himself.
If you agree with this writing, please feel free to share it. If you disagree, let's talk.
God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,
Bill
Yes, I would long for, pray for, and desire one unified Christian body, one Christian church, around the world. But, knowing that we humans are a flawed species, we know that will never happen - until Christ returns and establishes His Millennial Kingdom on earth. Then we will be unified.
Until then, we need to keep emphasizing that there are specific Christian doctrines, i.e., Essential Christian Doctrines, which determine our position as regenerated and saved believers in Christ. And, there are many Non-Essential Christian Doctrines which do not affect our salvation - but, are important in making us more mature in our Christian faith and in our knowledge of God's Word.
The second part of my title “The only good Protestant is a catholic Protestant?” - comes from within the article below - and it is true if we apply the true meaning of the word "catholic" - which only means "universal." In other words this is only saying what I wrote above: "that the Christian church, the body of believers which began on the Day of Pentecost 33 AD, should be the only Christian church, worldwide. Yes, I would long for, pray for, and desire one unified Christian body, one Christian church, around the world." That is the true meaning a "catholic" or universal church.
But, man being flawed man, that can never happen until the return of Christ. Local churches and denominations, and this includes the Roman Catholic church, was begun by a man, or men, coming together around a desired theology - and then forming their organization by selectively choosing Scripture verses or passages, and for some even choosing non-canonized sources, to establish a church or denomination based upon that desired set of Scripture verses or passages, or other writings.
Although my Roman Catholic Friends will disagree with me, if they will honestly think about it and not just accept what church leaders have told them - they will realize that the church of Rome (not the Roman Catholic church) began when believers spread from Jerusalem to other parts of the Roman empire, including Rome. The catalyst for the beginning of what became the Roman Catholic church was the influence, from his mother who had become part of that migrating Christian faith, and what Constantine perceived to be a miracle in battle - leading him to begin his version of the church of Rome.
To make his new church palatable to all his Roman citizens (the first ecumenical movement), Constantine allowed them to bring parts of their pagan religions into his new church. And, to later justify those inclusions the leaders had to go outside of Scripture to find supporting texts. Thus we find a large portion of their doctrines coming from non-canonized written sources, i.e., the apocrypha.
So, with that intro, let's get into the article which inspired this blog:
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Does Protestantism Need To Die? Or to Recover Its Riches?
Christianity Today / October 21, 2016
By Fred Sanders
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/november/does-protestantism-need-to-die.html?utm_source=ctweekly-html&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_term=18195569&utm_content=479633242&utm_campaign=email
(Fred Sanders teaches theology at Biola University’s Torrey Honors Institute. He is the author of "The Triune God" (Zondervan), which releases in December.)
Two Protestant Luminaries Look At The Legacy Of The Reformation, 500 Years Later.
Now and then, Protestants are stirred to ask whether the Reformation might be bad for the church and the world. Five centuries downstream from 1517, old objections come with the burden of knowing where things occasionally went wrong.
As Reformation heirs prepare to celebrate our 500th anniversary, we do so with a remarkable capacity for self-criticism. At its worst, Protestant self-critique can be a tiresome self-flagellation, a dreary round of virtue-signaling and posturing over the sins of others. But at its best, it can be a time for soul-searching, a source of insight, and a promise of revival. These books are profound exercises in the most salutary kind of protestant self-critique.
Two new books show the range covered by the best Protestant self-critique. Peter Leithart’s "The End of Protestantism: Pursuing Unity in a Fragmented Church" (Brazos) ~ and Kevin Vanhoozer’s "Biblical Authority after Babel: Retrieving the Solas in the Spirit of Mere Protestant Christianity" (Brazos) ~ come to the task from very different angles. Vanhoozer comes to the conversation from a deep dive into the depths of the Gospel. Leithart comes back to it from the future.
Future Church: The End of Protestantism is the long-awaited expansion of the provocative shorter remarks Leithart has made in this vein over the past few years. He hasn’t exactly softened his tone. Here, he announces, “Jesus bids Protestantism to come and die.” But there is more: “He calls us to exhibit the unity that the Father has with the Son in the Spirit.” That is, “we are called by our crucified Lord to die to what we are now so that we may become what we will be.” What draws all of Leithart’s arguments forward is essentially a syllogism: Jesus prays for the church’s unity, and Jesus will get what he prays for, so the church will be united. . . .
As visionary, Leithart poses the question “What should the future church look like?” Fully admitting he is not a prophet and does not know how to get to the destination he describes, Leithart nevertheless lays out a vision of a global network of congregations all reading the Bible earnestly, taking the Lord’s Supper weekly, keeping the same calendar, honoring Mary without venerating her, trading in denominational names for geographical labels, and working for the common good. . . .
Leithart is sometimes interpreted as calling for Protestants to abandon ship; that’s because he is. He wants us to bail out of our sectarian boats. But he is not calling for anyone to transfer their allegiance to another vessel. For example, he warns evangelicals not to try to join the future church by joining the current Roman Catholic Church.
That, he argues, would only cause greater sectarianism, since it would require denying the reality of their churchly existence so far, and it would preclude sharing the Lord’s Supper with family and friends. The ship we should row for, according to Leithart, is not Rome or Constantinople, but what he calls “future church,” when we will all be in the same boat. . . .
Home Sweet Home: Kevin Vanhoozer, on the other hand, offers less a summons to set out on a journey and more a reminder of how good, and how unappreciated, home is.
In "Biblical Authority after Babel," Vanhoozer responds to Protestantism’s conventional criticisms without being defensive or dismissive. He focuses on “the fissiparousness (tending to break up into parts) that has dogged the Protestant commitment of sola scriptura.” Fissiparous means “inclined to cause or undergo division into separate parts or groups.” It’s a word he never comes across “except in the descriptions or criticisms of Protestantism.” What most draws his attention is not the multitude of confessions and denominations, but the underlying crisis regarding “Bible, church, and interpretive authority.”
Vanhoozer’s solution is to retrieve the classic Protestant theology of the five solas: sola gratia (grace alone), sola fide (faith alone), sola Scriptura (Scripture alone), solus Christus (Christ alone), and soli Deo Gloria (the glory of God alone). Compared to Leithart, Vanhoozer may sound past-oriented, but he says that “to retrieve is to look back creatively in order to move forward faithfully.”
Perhaps we could picture him looking downward, into the depths of the reality that underlies the solas. He views them “not as doctrines in their own right as much as theological insights into various facets” of who God is, how he makes himself known, and what his purposes are.
This comes through clearly in his discussion of the first sola, grace alone. God shares his eternally self-sufficient life, light, and love, makes himself known to us in the Son and the Spirit, and forms a redeemed community. That is a wealth of theological riches, all from the first sola. Readers who have come to think of the solas merely as post-Reformation slogans may be surprised at how Vanhoozer excavates so much from them.
By the sheer profusion of doctrinal delights, Vanhoozer makes good on his claim that “the solas are essentially positive, rather than negative, insights into the presuppositions, implications, and entailments of the Gospel.”
In Vanhoozer’s analysis, “faith alone” points to the framework of responsibility and trust underlying all biblical interpretation, which is necessarily communal.
“Scripture alone” points to the priority of God’s Word and its freedom to correct the church, rather than vice versa;
“Christ alone” points to the Gospel as the announcement of just how much there is “in Jesus Christ.”
And “the glory of God alone” is fulfilled only when redemption is made known publicly by the people of God.
“Discord on Evangel Way,” writes Vanhoozer, “impedes the final purpose of the Gospel, and the glory of God.”
Vanhoozer asks how each of the solas can help us “retrieve the promise of the Reformation but not its pathology.” One way he does this is to draw out their implications for the crisis of biblical interpretation and authority. But another way he shapes each of the solas is by introducing “a virtual sixth sola: sola ecclesia.”
Knowing that “church alone” does not sound like a very Protestant thing to say, Vanhoozer hurriedly clarifies: “The church alone is the place where Christ rules over his kingdom and gives certain gifts for the building of his living temple.”
So in its own way, Vanhoozer’s discussion wends its way toward the doctrine of the church. Leithart’s book is essentially one vast ecclesiology, a book about the church that also makes room for a few other doctrines that undergird ecclesiology. Vanhoozer’s book is more nearly a brief systematic theology of the Gospel, which includes consideration of the church and its public face. . . .
Vanhoozer’s presents seem, at first, to be things that Protestants have possessed all along. But he emphasizes how the five solas are “seeds for a perennial reformation.” In other words, they must bring about change in whoever cultivates them. For all their differences in style and substance, Leithart and Vanhoozer recommend similar practical steps (public cooperation among churches, a focus on shared central doctrines underlying disagreements, hospitality toward the goods of other Christian traditions, etc.).
Reading both books at the same time, I found myself sometimes forgetting which author made which claim. Who said, “The only good Protestant is a catholic Protestant?” Answer: Vanhoozer. How about, “Fissiparousness is no match for the gravitational pull of the gospel toward oneness in Christ?” Also Vanhoozer. But either time, it could have been Leithart.
The great Methodist theologian William Burt Pope once posed the question, “What objections may be urged” against sola Scriptura? He answered this way: “Only such objections as may rather be turned into cautions,” and went on to warn about the ways sola Scriptura can be, and has been, wrongly applied. . . .
From another source:
Sola Scriptura: "Only Such Objections as May Rather Be Turned Into Cautions"
by Fred Sanders on October 1, 2007
http://scriptoriumdaily.com/sola-scriptura-only-such-objections-as-may-rather-be-turned-into-cautions/
The wise William Burt Pope, asking about whether it is right to confess sola scriptura:
Q: What objections may be urged against the general principle that the Bible is the sole rule of faith?
A: Only such objections as may rather be turned into cautions; such as the differences in the confessions of the churches, and the irregularities of private judgment.
From his Higher Catechism of Theology, p. 66.
Sure, some people preach sola Scriptura and their denominational distinctives in the same breath, giving the impression that the two go together necessarily.
Sure, some people preach sola Scriptura with no awareness that anybody ever read the Bible or had the Holy Spirit before this particular sermon started.
Sure, some people preach nuda Scriptura, Scriptura solo, or wacko Scriptura.
Sure, some people think sola Scriptura means that it is impossible to derive any bad ideas from the Bible (!).
And how many young thinkers defect from a clear confession of sola Scriptura over such mis-apprehensions of the doctrine, and take what should be cautions as, instead, objections?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
My Friends, I pray you have found this blog useful and that it will encourage us all toward more unity within our Christian churches - as we faithfully await the day He will return and establish His Millennial Kingdom, His truly unified worldwide church.
But, let me caution you regarding much found in the ecumenical movements we see today.
Walter A. Elwell, in The Concise Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, defines ecumenism as “the organized attempt to bring about the cooperation and unity among Christians.”
Ecumenism can also be defined more broadly: “a movement that promotes worldwide unity among all religions through greater cooperation.”
For example, a Christian priest may invite a Muslim imam to speak in his pulpit, or a church may get together with a Hindu temple to hold a joint prayer service. Defined this way, ecumenism is definitely wrong. We are not to be “yoked together with unbelievers” (2 Corinthians 6:14; see also Galatians 1:6–9). Light and darkness have no fellowship with each other. (Is ecumenism biblical? Should a Christian be involved in the ecumenical movement? - https://gotquestions.org/ecumenism-ecumenical.html)
Just as a Christian believer cannot join in worship and prayer with folks from world religions, we cannot join with those in cult religions which teach false doctrines such Universalism, another Jesus Christ, or which deny the Trinity, the full authority of the Bible, etc.
And, we cannot join in worship and prayers to anyone other than our Biblical God and His Son, Jesus Christ. To pray to or worship anyone else would be to deny the First and Second Commandments - given to us by God Himself.
If you agree with this writing, please feel free to share it. If you disagree, let's talk.
God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,
Bill
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