My Pet Peeve With Protestants

In this still-emerging age of ecumenism, perhaps its not in good "faith" to frame arguments on denominational lines. However, the points in this post have been bugging me for a while, and I'd like to take this opportunity challenge my Protestant brethren on them. I hope you hear my frustration and take what I say in good humor, where applicable! Even in this ecumenical world today, we can still get under each others’ skin. Here’s what gets me going:

Public Service Announcement to All Protestants (and Other Descendants of Reform Churches):

Christianity was not invented in 1517.


Many Protestants give the following as their impression of God’s Spirit working through Judeo-Christian history:

• B.C.E -- Beginning with Creation itself, God guided and revealed himself to the Israelites and was a constant, guiding presence in their history


• 3 B.C.E – 30 C.E. – Jesus came onto the scene
  
• Circa 30-100s-ish -- Apostles moved about the Hellenistic world and beyond in an explosion of Christianity


• 100-1516 -- Nothing happened of note, other than few assorted fringe groups


• 1517 -- Martin Luther awakened the world to Christianity; a rich and broad movement ensued to this day.
  

Did you notice anything unusual in this depiction of history? It could be that 1,400 year gap—just as Christianity started to take off, God sort-of retreated from human history in every way but a faint trickle.

Just to deny the work of the Holy Spirit during those 1,400 years is bad enough—don’t you think God was up to anything during those years? Didn’t anybody respond in genuine faith during that time?

I can certainly sympathize with those frustrated with the direction of institutional religion, but I'm not sure why anybody would target those 1,400 years over and above any other time period. Besides, there are some inherent contradictions in this line of thinking. Protestants are doing themselves a disservice (and the whole of Christianity) by not acknowledging their influence by and participation in this larger church history.

Sola Scriptura

While few educated descendants of reform churches would argue a strict doctrine of scripture-and-only-scripture, I think the mentality is still alive informally speaking (and most certainly with fundamentalists). There is a strong emphasis among reformers on scripture as the primary means of God’s revelation and certainly the primary source or authority. However, what good is the authority of scripture if any hack out there is interpreting it? It seems to me that the true revelation of God happens in the intermingling and “discussion” between the divine and human. A revelation only happens if something is revealed. A sight is only a sight if it is seen

Without the interpretation of a living and breathing person, community, church or tradition responding in faith (i.e. Dermot Lane)—the Bible is just a collection of books. If the Word of God falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, is it really the Word of God?

But let’s look at what happened during those 1,400-odd years that just didn’t seem to matter much:

That very canon of scripture that Protestants hold so dear was assembled. Over the course of a few hundred years, writings were passed down from generation to generation and eventually what we now know of today as the New Testament was agreed upon. Most Protestants today seem to confirm that the books chosen were the finest available. This didn't happen overnight or with any thunderclouds and lightening, though. Much argumentation happened over those years as people debated the canonicity of certain books, and the record of that debate is preserved in the writings of early Christians. However, the cream of the crop really did rise to the top through this process—most likely some writings became canonical through a groundswell of public opinion, some through institutional authority. Not bad for an era where nothing of note happened, huh? For being such an “invalid church”, the Holy Spirit sure did a nice job of working with early Christians to put this cannon of scripture together.

It is irony at its finest when people look at scripture as the ultimate authority as a way of denying the living church tradition that worked in conjunction with the Holy Spirit to form it in the first place!

Christian worship and liturgy were formed during these missing years. No matter how non-liturgical Protestants claim to be, I’ve attended some services that sure looked a whole lot like a Catholic mass to me. Entrance hymn, cleric in a robe, reading from the Old Testament, maybe a sung psalm, New Testament reading, gospel, sermon, petitions, sometimes communion, sometimes more music . . . yadda yadda. You may be freer than us liturgical churches to deviate from a structure, but how often do you end up with a structure anyway? It seems like you either came to the same conclusions as Catholics about the natural flow of things, or else you inherited that tradition.

The very concept of “church” as we know it today is a very western development. Okay, so you have ministers and we have priests, and we have paintings and you don’t, but you have pews, you have pulpits, you have robed clergy. To an outsider, Catholics and Protestants look very much alike. And there’s a reason for that: We all come from the same tradition, a tradition with roots and reasons for being that you would benefit from by knowing.

A few kinda important ideas like Trinity, the Nicene Creed, and other pillars of faith were established during these “missing years”. Brilliant and inspired doctrines that are held to this day and which form the more fundamental common ground among orthodox Christianity.

The Church Fathers gave some of the first witnesses to the new church, insight that is critical today for scholarship and inspiration. Protestants are theologically speaking children of Augustine, but how many Protestants know much of anything about Augustine directly? You guys are more Augustinian than we Catholics, but you don’t know it.

Protestants: I love ya’ll. Just consider the notion that there really is only one living Christian tradition. It doesn’t make any sense for a branch to cut itself off from the trunk. Trying to cut yourself off from your own source isn’t very healthy. Like it or not, much of your theology and culture is inherited from those years in the Catholic Church and in years prior, and its not just a few little things, its some big, major stuff. It’s your church, too, and those 1,400 years are part of your tradition, too.

Luther and others were reformers, not spontaneous generators. They took a living tradition that they were a part of and reformed it. They did not suddenly create new nor did they oppose everything that was fundamental about the faith they came out of.

This a tradition we all share in. Acknowledge it. Embrace it. You don’t have to agree with all of it—I sure don’t. But you may see a lot of yourself in it. By understanding it, you may understand yourselves more, too. In the end, good or bad, it’s where we all come from.

Pre-1517 wasn’t all papal indulgences, Inquisitions, Crusades and whatever other horrors you may have heard about. Yes, those are all there. But so is the formation of the scripture cannon. So is the development of the concept of Trinity, and the dual nature of Christ’s humanity and divinity. The modern from of church and what a worship service generally looks like and what it encompasses took form during those years. Major theological concepts came from Augustine and Aquinas and others. Just like it’s hard to really study the New Testament without understanding the Old, its hard understanding modern Christianity without understanding early and middle Christianity. And there are a few more immense traditions that came out of those years, like the monastic movement and mysticism. Modern mission approaches and what Christian service to the poor is like has been largely influenced by the Franciscans and Dominicans.