“To be Deep in History is to Affirm Protestant Distinctives”

For the naysayers: “The earlier one goes back the more Protestant they seem”.

Here is the entire quote from Dominic Foo:

The Protestant Consensus of the Fathers, Doctors and Saints

To be honest when I set out on my patristic quote spam, I was merely gathering material for my photo album in preparation for Reformation Day. My goal was a lot more modest: I merely wanted to show that Protestant claims were not unprecedented, that what we teach has always existed even if not enjoying a sort of overwhelming majority or broad consensus.

I have to say that now that I have properly dug into it I am surprised, really surprised. Protestant propositions and claims are not merely isolated one off remarks by the Fathers here and there but enjoys a sort of continuity and universality amongst the Fathers. Even when the essence of Protestant claims started to become obscured by later accretions, which reasoning, based on the immediate context, can be clearly understood and motivations, for contemporary concerns, clearly traced, the Protestant claims remains intact.

Whatever is distinctive about high church denominations, like the role of unwritten customs or adoration of images or even invocation of saints, can be clearly seen to be of later developments which came about as a result of much ecclesiastical struggle. The earlier one goes back the more Protestant they seem. I was honestly surprised to read long extensive iconoclastic arguments from Athanasius, the rejection of excessive veneration of saints from Basil and Chrysostom, and a "me and my Bible" approach from them which even I am uncomfortable with.

Officially my Protestant approach to Church History remains the same. If we believe that the Scriptures are perspicuous and clear, other people before us must have read the Scriptures in the same way as we have. While we cannot be the first to have read it that way, I don't however need to harmonise all that they have said. Now however, I am really a lot more confident of making the claims of a "Protestant Consensus" of the Fathers while being able to identify, explain, and argue against the faulty reasoning and premises invoked by the later Fathers and Doctors in aid of erroneous contemporary high church claims.

What it means to be “Roman” but “not catholic”

As part of my ongoing series discussing the work “Roman but Not Catholic” by Jerry Walls and Ken Collins, I’d like to comment on the word “Catholic” and “catholic” with a small “c”. (I’ve discussed the word “Roman” here).

I’m on record as having said that I don’t like the word “catholic” (and its variations “catholicism”, etc.), especially not as it applies, for example, in the phrase “Reformed Catholicism” etc. There are too many different definitions of the word, and there is too much opportunity for confusion. Roman Catholicism, for sure, hangs onto that title “Catholic” – equivocating from when it was used in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed (“one holy, catholic, and apostolic church”) until its use after the Council of Trent. It is supposed to represent “early beliefs”, but the weight of evidence is showing that even those beliefs and practices had changed from the second to the fourth century, much less the 16th century.