Lecture 14: The Reformation - Dr. Carl Trueman

[@jw8284]

Scripture is so clear, in fact, that you have thousands of Protestant denominations all claiming that they believe the Bible and all believing different things. This is one of the biggest reasons I abandoned a lifetime of Protestantism and embraced the Orthodox Church. Protestantism ultimately fails in three fundamental ways: The first is theological unity, the second is antiquity, and the third is beauty. I've already hit on theological unity. As for antiquity, there is a reason that this lecture series is covering the mid second millennium rather the early first millennium as Orthodoxy does. In regards to beauty, most of the Reformers, albeit not Luther, were iconoclasts, destroying centuries of religious art on sight, whereas the Orthodox Church embraces beauty in all of its forms in all it does. I am very grateful for lecture series like Dr. Trueman's because they highlight the fact that these problems were with Protestantism from the very beginning, although undercutting the faith he professes is obviously not his goal: It is simply inevitable when you study the history of the Reformation. In the end Cardinal Newman's saying that to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant is vindicated every time you go back to the roots of this movement.

[@ninjacell2999]

Dr Trueman does have lectures on other periods in church history just fyi

[@TheBluntNinja]

The "thousands of denominations" number actually comes from a flawed """""study""""" that also identified more than 200 "denominations" of Roman Catholicism. Saying people disagree and therefore you reject the notion of justification by grace alone through faith alone is absurd.

[@jw8284]

@@TheBluntNinja I reject sola scriptura because Protestants can agree on virtually nothing the Bible says, even something as basic as baptism. I reject sola fide because nobody in the history of Christianity taught it before Luther. It wasn't even around in the second century, a loss that would have been an incomprehensible failure on the part of the Apostles to pass it on to the next generation if this is indeed one of the most important doctrines in Christianity in Christianity as Protestants allege.

[@TheBluntNinja]

@@jw8284 protestants who hold to sola scriptura agree on virtually everything. Ave Augustine taught sola fide (so did Paul).

[@HearGodsWord]

@@TheBluntNinja unfortunately, people like JW don't want to hear how flawed their arguments are, especially when you can point to facts :)