Stop It!

[Enda]

[quote]No One Ever Heard of (Blank) until the Reformation


It’s very common for a Catholic apologist to argue that Protestant doctrine is unhistorical—that nobody held to Protestant positions until the Reformers came along and invented them out their fevered brains. (Remember, of course, that there are all kinds of Protestants, and on many issues the Reformers would be on the Catholic side arguing against many modern Protestant beliefs.)

The claim goes like this: "No one ever heard of sola scriptura [or sola fide, or doubted the canonicity of the deuterocanonical books, or whatever] until Martin Luther."

Really now. Have you read all the Christian theologians of East and West from the time of Christ until 1517? If you’re particularly ambitious, you may have read bits and pieces from a very small sample of the Church Fathers. Some of the Reformers also read the Church Fathers. They did not perceive their doctrines to be novelties, although an expert on the history of doctrine might be qualified to say that they were.

Pointing out the contrast between the faith of the early Church and the faith of your modern Protestant friend is a very effective apologetic tool. It’s easy to show how Catholic doctrine developed from the faith of the early Church, and it’s hard to show any continuity between the early Church and the faith of the Bethel Bible Church down the road. So don’t spoil a good argument with claims you can’t prove or defend.[/quote]
This is an absoutely ridcilous argument against a perfectly vaild apolgetic tool. Even Protestant who [i]read[/i] the Church Fathers totally agree that the early Church agreed with Catholicism and not Evangelicalism. They simply don't care that it did.

Edited October 11, 2004 by Enda

[noncatholicname]

This goes a long way towards making things better between all people, protestant, catholic, jew, muslim, bhudist... online and offline. Thanks for posting this again.