Truth Unites - Is Private Judgment a Problem for Protestantism?

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

In this video I address the challenge of choosing which church to join via private judgment, showing that this is not a uniquely Protestant challenge. Videos referenced: The Catechumen's The Worst Part About Protestantism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfxQWVD2RYQ Did Augustine Affirm Sola Scriptura? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6ZAa0gNMvE How to Overcome Intellectual Anxiety: https://youtu.be/sNTOiZlF_Kc?si=10x3DwNa0qOQqQYi Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

Sometimes people will describe a particular problem as though it were unique to Protestants, when in reality it's just a problem for all of us. I've noticed this a lot on different issues. During my debate with Trent Horn on Sola Scriptura, this recurrent criticism kept coming up that Protestants don't agree on the essentials, right? And it's like, you know, Sola Scriptura never says we will. It's not the doctrine that scripture is the only infallible rule, plus people will agree on the essentials. So we're not claiming people will agree on the essentials. So it's kind of a misfire, but more basically, it has nothing to do with Sola Scriptura, specifically or Protestants. It's the exact same with Roman Catholics. There's no list of

essential doctrines. If you ask Roman Catholics, what are the essential doctrines of the faith? You ask 12 different people. You'll get 11 different answers, that kind of thing. So this is being portrayed as though we're a uniquely Protestant problem, or specific to Soliscriptura, but it's just a human reality that people are going to disagree about the essentials. The same issue comes up with private judgment, and especially private judgment in choosing a church. and then functioning within that church. The Catechumen put out a video about this recently where he's doing a skit talking about how confusing it is

to have to choose a denomination to belong to because there's so many. And he says, why is it like this 500 years ago being a Christian got really complicated? And then he's basically saying, I'm not going to show clips or do a like a thorough response here. He's a nice guy, but he's repeating some of these talking points that I think are unhelpful and I want to protest

because I think they're unfair to us Protestants. Because I think if you just think this through, you realize this has nothing to do with Protestantism specifically. This is a human issue. We all face this. But he's basically saying, you know, Protestants broke off from the church Christ founded, and that's what created this confusion about this and so forth. But the way to see that this is not a good criticism is just to ask, okay, suppose you're convinced by that, and so you leave Protestantism, now what do you do? If you've left the chaos of Protestantism and the confusion of breaking off of the church, now do you just have peace and tranquility knowing which is the one true

church that Christ founded? Well, no. Now you have to do the exact same thing. You use your private judgment to decide whether to join the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox, the Assyrian Church of the East, amidst a few other separatist groups you might think of, but especially those four groups. The difference is that now the stakes are all the higher, because unlike Protestant denominations, which recognize that they're simply part of the church, each of these churches claims to be the one true church. And that means if you pick wrong via private judgment, you might end up missing out on the fullness of the faith.

Historically, it meant you would be damned. You can see my video on No Salvation Outside the Church for that. That was absolutely overwhelming that that's the view in like the medieval era, for example. So the fundamental issue of using private judgment to choose which church is the true church, is an unavoidable part of being a human being that did not start in the 16th century. There were many earlier schisms, not just in the 5th and 11th centuries. Schisms and false churches go back to the first century. There were false churches that embraced a different gospel.

There were false apostles. People would have had to use their private judgment to distinguish true from false. And they have to, you know, Jesus gives us these tests, for example, of how we determine the false prophets by their fruit and so forth. it's always been a need to use our judgment to evaluate true from false. So it's not, there is zero percent difference here for Protestants versus others. Now, someone might say, trying to be, trying to steal man this as much as possible. Someone might say, but yeah, but there's so many Protestant denominations. So that's what creates such a problem because it, you know, you've got 30,000 denominations over here

and then you just have these four options, right? But just to work through that a little bit, the 30,000 number or 33,000, sometimes people say 40 or 50,000, you hear that. This number has been thoroughly debunked. I would really plead with everybody just to stop saying that. I'm going to link to this article, which is written by a Roman Catholic, which is basically saying the same thing. We need to stop using this figure. The same metric that gets you to that number, which is given for world Christianity, gives 781 Eastern Orthodox denominations, 242 Roman Catholic denominations. It includes a bunch of non-Christian groups and so on and so forth. The 30 number, 30,000, 33,000. When we use that number, I got to...

to say, what we're doing is repeating a slogan that shows we're not interested in a true criticism or a true appraisal of the other side. So let's get beyond that. In the process of choosing a denomination, it's actually not so overwhelming. Yeah, it's hard work, but it's comparable to the hard work you have to do whether you're a Protestant or not. What you do is you try to break it down. The advice I give to people is to study the sacraments and church government, because those are two of the determinative issues that have caused some of these divisions. And then I like to encourage people to read the confessional documents of the main traditions. So basically, you just look at the main options to start with. So you read the 39 articles, you read the Augsburg Confession,

read the Westminster Confession, Second London Baptist Confession. Those would be good four ones to start with. And you're working and you're studying. And that's a part of the process, just like you'd have to do on the other side. Now, someone might say, well, you can't just look at the main options. you have to look at all these different Protestant groups. There's all these little tiny little groups that have splintered off and so forth. But if you have to look at all those on the Protestant side, then similarly you should do so on the other side because there's lots of little tiny offshoot groups on this side as well.

You've got the old Catholic Church you'd have to consider, which split off after Vatican 1. You've got the SSPX split off sometime in the 70s. You've got lots of Sative Akantists who basically think the church went off the rails at Vatican 2. Within Eastern Orthodoxy, you have schisms, you have the Moscow-Konstantinople schism, you have splinter groups like the true Orthodox. So we have to be consistent with both sides.

If you have to measure every single option on the Protestant side, then you should measure every single option on the non-Protestant side. At the end of the day, if you just think this through, the simple fact is using private judgment, first for deciding to be a Christian, and second for choosing the church that you think is the one true church, that is the church you should join, that is unavoidable for all of us. Now, someone might say, okay, I guess, yeah, we all have to use private judgment to enter the church. But once you enter and you make that choice, now you're under an objective authority that can really bind to the conscience.

As opposed to the Protestant denominations where you're kind of picking the one you like, like it's a matter of preference or style and the way you might pick the pair of jeans that you want to wear and that kind of thing. This is some of the way of thinking that came up in the Catechumans video as well. So he's talking about confessional documents and he's saying, basically, those things don't really have authority over you because you just come to agree with it and then it functions with authority over you. Now again, this is representative of just common talking points. I'm not trying to pick on him. He's representing what you hear a lot from all kinds of people. But these common talking points, I think, are confused. Part of the problem here is we're comparing apples and oranges when we

compare Catholic to Protestant. Protestant is not a church. It's a label for a number of different church traditions. So the more apples to apples comparison would be like Roman Catholic to Anglican, or being a Catholic Christian versus being a Baptist Christian or something like that. Or you could compare like Protestantism to the imperial churches or something like that, to make it an apples to apples comparison, as opposed to apples to oranges. When you compare apples to apples, one church to another church, what you see is they both have an objective authority that binds the conscience. There is 0% difference. I submit to my church's statement of faith, and it binds my conscience. I literally, with my ordination vows, made a vow before God to place myself under them as a matter

of conscience. They are an objective standard. They're not subjective. Just because we think our doctrinal standards are fallible, that doesn't mean that they're not objective or obligatory with respect to conscience. Now, someone might say, yeah, yeah, yeah, but if you, as soon as you don't believe in that statement of faith anymore, you can just get up and walk down to the church down the road and leave, so it's not really binding over you, right? Again, exact same, 100% the same for the Roman Catholic Christian or for any other kind of Christian, Eastern Orthodox, whatever.

As soon as you don't believe in that system anymore, you can leave and join a different church. It is the exact same. There's no difference. I don't think people have thought this through. At any moment, a person can leave the Roman Catholic Church. That doesn't mean it's not really functioning with authority over you. The possibility of departure is not at odds with it functioning with an objective authority. That would be like saying, well, because you can leave America and emigrate to another country

and move to Canada and eventually become a citizen of Canada, therefore the laws in America are not really objective. binding laws or something like that. It's like, of course not. Possibility of departure doesn't mean it's not objective or obligatory with respect to conscience. Now, one final point. This quote from Vincent came up. Vincent of Lerin in the 5th century. This is an off-sighted passage that's basically saying this was in his video as well. He's saying, well, the canon of scripture is complete and sufficient, but so why do we still need the authority of the church's interpretation? And the answer is because we all interpret scripture differently. So this quote comes up a lot. lot against Protestants. But a friend of mine pointed out to me recently, all you have to do is just

keep reading a little further. And you note what immediately follows in the next chapter, where Vincent is considering, what do you do if an error comes into some portion of the church? And then he countenances, what if some novel contagion seek to infect not merely an insignificant portion of the church, but the whole? Then it will be his care to cleave to antiquity, which at this day cannot possibly be seduced by any fraud of novelty. But the seduction by the fraud of novelty, the, the sideways movement inward of some novel contagion that infects the church, is possible for Vincent. And what you do is you cling to antiquity then. As Protestants, we agree that we can't read the scripture atomistically, just as an individual without regard for the broader church. But Roman Catholics read later ideas

like infallibility back into, you know, if there's any passage that has to do with authority or tradition, they'll read a contemporary Roman Catholic view into it, even if it's not talking about that. This, so if there's, so, you know, in this case, with Vincent, he is not talking about infallibility here. That's not what he has in mind. If he was, then he, you know, he would say a novel contagion infect the whole church, oh, that's impossible.

The Holy Spirit is guiding the church. The Holy Spirit gives the church infallibility. That could never happen. But that's not what he says. He says when that happens, if that happens, you cleave to antiquity. Novel contagions can come in. That can happen. So for us, that's exactly what we think happens. We have to look to the whole church, but it is possible that you'll get something like the bodily assumption of Mary, something I talk about a lot, but it's just one example. And it's a novel contagion. It's pretty obvious. This was unheard of in the early church for several hundreds of years

before anybody ever heard of it. And just see my video on that, my more recent video where I go through the objections. I honestly don't know how people, how that's not a deal breaker for the whole system, for everybody, because it's just so clear that it's not present in early Christianity. And so that's what you have to do when you get a novel contagion that sneaks in to use his words where there's the fraud of novelty. You cling to antiquity. So the upshot of all this is basically, you know, criticize Protestantism for her real flaws all you want. And there are many. Individuals an overly individualistic approach, the abuse of private judgment. I mean, look, there's lots to criticize in Protestantism.

But these common talking points about private judgment are not well thought through. There is absolutely zero percent difference between Protestants and other Christians in the use of private judgment to join a church and then function within that church context, including submitting to that church's doctrine as an objective standard that is obligatory on their conscience for while they are there. That is not a Protestant dilemma. That is an unavoidable feature of our humanity that none of us can escape. Now, a final thought for the end of the video, someone might say, well, that puts such a burden on the individual. Well, consider the advice that John Chrysostom gives.

When he envisions a pagan desiring to come to church and wondering which group to join, he basically commends them to read scripture. And I'm not even going to tell you what he said, because people will accuse me of, you know, misreading him and so forth. Go watch this video at the 18-minute mark and just see what John himself says. just take his own words, let him speak, let his voice come through. Because again, it's a great example of where people have to read later Roman Catholic ideas back into the church fathers. And then if you point out the differences, they'll say, oh, so you're claiming John

as a Protestant, as though those were the only two options, and just completely missing all the differences of context from the early church to today. John Chrysostom is not a Roman Catholic. He's not a Baptist. He's just John Chrysostom, right? But he's certainly not thinking like, oh, you know, the way you'll know the difference between these different groups is because the church is going to give you some kind of infallible guide to that. So the final encouragement I would give to people is simply this.

We don't need to be afraid of our creatureliness and our fallibility. I think people have this desire for infallibility and I don't know what produces that all the time, but sometimes we're looking to some system to meet that need. Instead, we need to look to the Holy Spirit. Look, the most important decisions of our life are fallible decisions, like whether you're going to follow Jesus. other decisions like who you're going to marry, things like that. Ultimately, what we do is we look to our helper, our paraclete, the Holy Spirit. And like every other area of life, we bring it under Proverbs 3, 5, and 6. You work hard. You study the scripture. You study church history. You attend different churches. You pray. And then ultimately, you place your trust in the Lord. God is

not looking to trick us. He's not looking to damn us. He will guide us. That's his promise. he will guide us. And ultimately, when it comes to our functioning in the church that Jesus founded, that is a matter of trusting in the Lord. And so we put our faith in him. If that process causes you anxiety along the way, this video that I just made from Soren Kirkgaard can help as a next step. I hope this video will help kind of undercut some of these talking points that come against us that might seem plausible initially, but if you just think it through, you realize, oh, this is making a contrast where there isn't one. And then ultimately for the process of kind of going forward, that's what my YouTube channel exists for, to try to help people to reduce the anxiety, to give

gospel assurance to people as they're working through these things, and then to try to give answers and things, hoping that this could be helpful for people. So I hope this video will help somebody out there. Let me know what you think in the comments, and we'll keep working on all these things together. Thanks for watching, everybody.