Why I'm still Protestant

1. Let's begin with an admission. As a Protestant, it would be nice to have more theological clarity and certainty on some issues. It would be nice not having to sift through multiple interpretations of Scripture. It would be nice to have more evidence or direct evidence for some OT events. It would be nice to have more evidence for some books of the Protestant canon. The evidence for the Protestant canon is patchy in places. It would be nice to have more evidence for Jude and 2 Peter, or the Megillot (Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther).

2. So why aren't I Roman Catholic? For one thing, I know too much about Roman Catholicism to mistake that for the solution. 

i) To take one example I just used, if I pick up a Protestant commentary, it sometimes reads like a multiple choice exam. The commentator will list several competing interpretations, then by process of elimination, explain why he thinks one interpretation is the best. But sometimes he will confess that it's hard to choose between two competing interpretations.

Guess what–when I pick up a Catholic commentary on the same book, by a scholar like Raymond Brown, Joseph Fitzmyer, Jerome Quinn, or Luke Timothy Johnson, it's exactly the same process. They're in the same boat. 

ii) Take another example I used: where the Catholic canon happens to coincide with the Protestant canon, the evidence is uneven in all the same places. Thinner on some books and thicker on others. Catholics don't have an extra stash of evidence to bolster the less well-attested books. So that's no improvement. 

But they have an addition problem we don't, which is poor evidence for the Deuterocanonicals. In that regard, they're worse off that we are. 

BTW, does anyone seriously think that Tobit or Bel and the Dragon is the equal of Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, or Song of Songs? 

3. Now at this point a Catholic apologist will exclaim: That proves our point! Who decides? That's why the Magisterium is indispensable. 

But there are fundamental problems with that "solution":

i) It's an appeal to ersatz evidence. An artificial makeweight. Catholics have no additional evidence, so they invent an oracle to fill the gap. Yet Catholic apologists must resort to so much special pleading to defend the machinations and peregrinations of the papacy. To all appearances, the papacy behaves just like you'd expect an uninspired institution to behave. 

ii) The problem with asking "who decides" is that it only pushes the same question back a step: Who decides "who decides"? You decide who decides! A convert to Catholicism decided to make the Magisterium the decider. So the convert is the ultimate decider. 

4. God could make it easier to be a Protestant. But that's hardly a damaging admission. God could make it easier to be a Catholic. God could make it easier to be a Christian. Catholic and Protestant alike find themselves in situations where they crave greater clarity and certainty. Times when we wish we had more evidence. When you're going through an ordeal, or watching a loved one go through an ordeal, when your life hit rock bottom, wouldn't it be nice to have Jesus appear to you? Or have an angel appear to you? And some Christians experience that, but Christophanies and angelophanies are not a normal part of Christian experience. 

Wouldn't it be nice of God answered your prayers more often? Wouldn't it be nice if you could ask God a question and get an audible answer? But that rarely happens. Many lifelong Christians never have that experience. 

So you just have to muddle through. That's not unique to Protestants. Consider Catholic "saints" who complain about the dark night of the soul. God wasn't there for them. 

5. There's a sense in which charismatics and apostates or atheists have a Roman Catholic outlook, but they are more consistent than Catholics. They take it to the next step.

A charismatic expects that God will give us certainty, clarity, and evidence whenever we need it or ask for it. God will answer all our prayers. He will perform miracles upon request. He will give us a sign. So the charismatic goes the Catholic one better. 

It's not that the charismatic position is completely wrong. Sometimes God does something extra. But that's unpredictable. Not something you can count on.

6. By the same token, apostates and atheists think that God, if there is a God, ought to make things easier. Why should we have to trudge through Ed Feser's, Five Proofs for the Existence of God, The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, or Two Dozen (or so) Arguments for God–when God can give me a personal, custom-made epiphany? 

That's why some professing Christians become apostates. They had a Catholic outlook that was dashed by rude experience. God didn't give them the clarity, certainty, and evidence they demanded. 

7. The Protestant experience is like hiking on a trail. On some stretches, the trail is indistinct. Are you still on the trail, or are you lost in the forest? However, the trail picks up on the other side, so you were on the right path all along, even when the trail might be unrecognizable in spots.

I'd add that to say the evidence is uneven doesn't mean it's inadequate. It's not that you don't have enough evidence but that in many cases you have more than enough. 

But even if we sometimes lose our bearings, that's the actual situation God has put us in. God doesn't protect us from making mistakes. Rather, God protects us in our mistakes.