Truth Unites - The 10 Worst Arguments Against Protestantism (And the 3 Best)

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

Gavin Ortlund examines the ten worst arguments against Protestantism and highlights three of the strongest challenges Protestants should take seriously, including the canon, fragmentation, and appeals to antiquity and ecclesial authority.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

As a Protestant, I'm happy to concede. There are some really forceful, good criticisms of Protestantism, and I'll give you the top three at the end of this video, but there's also a lot of low-tier ones, and I would love for these to be retired so that we can elevate the discourse. So if you've used any of these, don't worry about it. The spirit of this video is not finger-pointing, but more fun and reflection and just elevating the discourse. I've used bad arguments in the past, too.

Let's go through 10 of the bad ones, and then how they could be. better also along the way, but then three of the best. Number one, Jesus founded a visible church, but Protestants believe in an invisible church. Yeah, you hear this over and over, but there's some basic misunderstanding here. Often in these critiques, first of all, visible is conflated with institutional. If you listen carefully to how the argument is unfolding, as you can see on screen, these are completely different things. But the more basic issue is that affirming an invisible church is not denying a visible church. This is a distinction between two different aspects of the church, but both halves of the distinction are being affirmed.

There is the church as we see her, and then there is the church as God sees her. God knows hearts, and he knows who's actually mystically united to Christ, as opposed to baptized hypocrites that the church doesn't know are not actually united. to Christ. So the visible, invisible distinction is not a reference to two different kinds of churches or something like that. Francis Turriton pointed this out. It's kind of encouraging that these things have been going on and he calls it a slander against us, you know, for hundreds of years. We've been having to work at these things. But I'll just try to keep belaboring this point. Maybe here's a way I can gain sympathy for my concern here is if we took a different issue, like the distinction between the church triumphant and the church militant. And imagine if you

said, the church triumphant is resting in glory. And someone said, are you denying the existence of the church militant? You'd say, you know, come again. Trying to, not laughing and mockery, but trying to draw out the thinking here is, in referencing one side of a distinction, we are not denying the other side of that distinction. They're both there. We're just distinguishing. So for more on that, see this video. in all of these topics, I'm going to try to reference other videos for fuller treatment if you want to chase this down where I make my full case. This video is more in the way of overview. Number two, of the ten bad arguments against Protestantism, my church, you've heard this one. I guarantee you've heard it. You've seen it on the internet. My church, by the way, so I'm not trying to annoy anybody here. I'm going to do another video. Let me know in the comments if you want this. 10 worst arguments against Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy or something like that

or 10 worst arguments for Protestantism or something like that, trying to do this in all directions. Number two, my church was founded by Jesus, yours was founded by Martin Luther or fill in the blank, Henry VIII, Billy Graham, whoever it may be. You'll also hear sometimes the appeal, where was your church until 1517? or what is a little better, but problematic still, if you don't go further, if Protestantism were true, then the church must have died somewhere along the way in those first 1,500 years of church history. Sometimes you'll even hear people say if Protestantism is true, it was dead that whole

time. Now, there is a better argument hiding somewhere inside this bad argument, which is going to be true for a lot of these. I'm going to try to pull out the better argument if I can. And again, we're in the spirit of, we're not really trying to settle anything in this video as trying to elevate the discourse. There's lots of reasons I was thinking about this and how genuinely hoping this video would be useful for people. But you need to get to the better argument by saying more. And I'm going to return to that at the end of this video.

Because if you want to critique something, you need to understand what it is that you're critiquing. And so to critique a Protestant view of church history, the Protestant paradigm needs to be engaged, which does not hold that the church died or a a new church was founded by Luther or anyone else or anything like that. In the first chapter of my book, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals, I survey the reformers and other later Protestant lights and basically show none of them believed the church had died, none of them believed it needed to be relaunched. They were emphatic on this point over and over,

affirming the indefectibility of the church. She shall never die. She shall never fail to achieve her end. You find this all over the place. Here's an example from John Calvin. I've referenced that so many times. You can pause the screen and read that if you want, and there's so many other statements like that.

The claim, rather, was that the true Church of Christ is not designated by the Roman Catholic hierarchy. And therefore, she exists. She's there. In fact, she's bigger than just that which is under the jurisdiction of Rome. It includes these various Eastern traditions as well, potentially. But the Protestant effort was to reform that thing already in existence, and therefore there's not a new church being born. Here's how Turriton put it, Francis Turriton.

The reformation is indeed new, but not on this account by this reformation was a new religion or church instituted, which had not existed before. Rather, that which existed already was made better by the ancient rule to wit the word of God. In other words, the claim was, and the claim is, not an invention of a new church, but a bettering of the one that already existed. Now, Suppose you think Turriton is out to lunch. This is crazy. This is obviously bad. And no, the Protestant Reformation made things worse, not better.

It didn't go back to the Word of God. It went further away from the Word of God and so on and so forth. Fine, but say that. And then we have a really good debate about, you know, what's an interesting question? Did the Protestant Reformation make Christianity better or worse? If you're a Christian in Western Europe in 1516, what was your understanding? of the gospel, likely. What access did you have to the scripture? How often did you receive the Eucharist? And so forth. And we go through, and I think a good case can be made that the Reformation

furthered the knowledge of the biblical gospel in the church. And that it's good that people like Luther and Tyndale and so many others did what they did. But that's a debate to have. And it's not even getting into, all we say is something like, where was your church or something like that? That just seems to suggest that the opposing paradigm has not been understood. So hopefully we retire that and we have the other debate. I'm really not trying to be snarky in any of this. I'll try to watch my tone and I really want my videos to feel in good taste. So that's the effort.

Number three, every Protestant is their own authority. Another related and common point you will hear is Protestants leave all doctrine to private judgment. Now again, there is a force. full point hidden inside this, which I'm going to return to at the end of this video. But in saying we are our own authority or that private judgment is the rule for all doctrine, I think I would just need to say that is just verifiably incorrect. Just, you know, take a look, right? If I deny the Trinity, I am excommunicated and barred from the Lord's Supper.

If I violate my ordination vows, I lose my ministerial credentials, they have real authority over me. and historic Protestant traditions have always required submission to the authority of confessional standards enforced by ecclesiastical courts. They have different views of what those courts should be, but the authority is there. And so we keep saying this, but I think what happens here, the thinking on the other side that perhaps makes this one hard to get through is if you don't conceive of ecclesial authority as we do, then it's not any real kind of authority at all. But the better argument would be Protestant ecclesial authorities are inferior to their

alternatives, and here's the argument why, pragmatically, historically, historically, et cetera. The claim that we're our own authority as individuals or we don't submit to church authority is just, you know, it's just not the case. So, you know, hopefully we'll keep making that and we get it to the better thing. Also, the best appeal in this regard will distinguish between the different Protestant traditions. So I'm a low church guy, a Baptist, Reform Baptist, and I defend that a lot. But I also kind of want to stick up for, I understand, the high church traditions are embarrassed to be lumped together with us.

So it's like, hey, okay, yeah, fair enough. Let's recognize the Lutherans and the Anglicans are their own thing and so forth. So what will also need to happen here is not treating Protestantism as a singular ecclesial. institution. You hear this language. I just heard this the other day, reference to the Protestant Church, which is at best very imprecise and kind of confusing language because there isn't one singular Protestant church. Protestantism is an umbrella category for distinct Christian traditions that have common ground on doctrines like Sola Scripura and Sola Fide and many other points, but we're not all one church or one denomination or something like that. So criticisms need to recognize

those differences and not do the apples to oranges comparison of Catholic versus Protestant as though these were two parallel realities. That's not what Protestants believe we are. Okay, number four, but baptism isn't just a symbol. Now, I hear this over and over. Now, most people will recognize and appreciate that many Protestants affirm baptismal regeneration. So that's one of the problems here, but usually that'll be recognized. deeper point I want to press forward here is that just a symbol and baptismal regeneration are not

the only two options. And therefore, refuting just a symbol doesn't itself establish baptismal regeneration. But that false binary is the constant framing. I hear this over and over and over. It's like if you said the Baltimore Orioles are really, really bad, and therefore you should be a fan of the Minnesota Twins. And you might say, what about the other teams, you know? And I belabored this point in an older video. This, I'll just play this because it has the graphic up on screen. Let me put up just another way you could frame it. This is how Francis Turrinton basically puts it. He's a reformed scholastic theologian. And he has basically three options. He uses the phrase sign and seal for his own reformed view. And he distinguishes that from the Sosinian view on the one

side, where you have the sacraments as external badges of profession, and on the other side, the Lutheran and Roman Catholic views, which he calls sacraments as vehicles and vessels containing grace and physical means, or real and instrumental causes. So, reformed Christians like Turitan are just one example of those who say that the sacraments are not just a symbol. They are efficacious signs, baptism saves in the Eucharist, we feast on Christ, and I've done lots of videos explaining a reformed perspective on all these things, but they also don't fall into the bucket of baptismal regeneration proper. Now, let's suppose you say someone like Turriton or Calvin, in their view of baptismal efficacy is wrong. You might say, actually, that view collapses down to just a symbol. You can

make that argument. Or you might say just a symbol and reformed view of sign and seal, efficacious sign, They're both incorrect. You can make that argument. But if all you say is baptism isn't just a symbol, as though that established baptism of regeneration, then it's unclear that the historical options typically in the debate have really been envisioned. And yet, you hear this over and over all the time.

The video I just cited has a thumbnail like this. If you want to chase that down more, I try to make my case there. All right, number five, hopefully you'll agree with this one. Hopefully this won't get too much pushback. There are 30,000 or 33,000 or 40,000 Protestant denominations. Now, to address this, I would encourage you to read this article, which is written by a Roman Catholic, and what it shows is that the same criteria leading to this figure means that there are 242 Roman Catholic denominations

and 781 Eastern Orthodox denominations. Then it takes a bunch of non-Christian groups and throws them in. to the picture. It adds all of that together, not just Protestantism, all that together to get to 33,000 denominations. So, you know, hopefully just that alone can show this statistic genuinely deserves retirement. And yet the reason, by the way, to lay my heart on the table, the reason I'm making this video is being on the internet, you do realize that sometimes falsehoods persist. And so this video is in the spirit of friendly, like, you know, again, I'll do the same thing for my side. We do the same thing too, but some of these things we really need to retire. And this statistic, we really do.

Because I hear this not only persisting, but increasing and the numbers going up. That's why I'm making this video to address these points. So we're all equipped, because we all stand to benefit when criticism from one Christian tribe to another has accuracy and charity and understanding and just good style and good taste, right? So this is one we can retire. And thankfully, there are lots of people, by the way, on the other side of these issues who could agree with All of these points or many of these points. On this point, Trent Horn has done a video where he explicitly calls this out, which I appreciate. We know the Encyclopedia makes this kind of error because it falsely claims that there are 242 different denominations of Catholicism.

But that doesn't mean there are 242 separate denominations with conflicting belief systems within the Catholic faith. That's not true at all. Okay, number six, without the fill in the blank church, you wouldn't even have. have the Bible. Now again, in many of these, there's a kernel of truth here, or if not truth, there's a historical issue underneath this that is important and fair. And I'll come to that at the end of this video. But as stated in this popular slogan type way, the claim equivocates between the historic church and the contemporary claimants to be the one true church. such as the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and many others.

And therefore, because that is the whole point of dispute. And so that would need to be argued for, not just assumed. And because here's the thing is we all agree that the church was given the task of recognizing, for example, the New Testament canon. But it needs to be showed that the particular ways that happened actually favor one option over the various rivals today that claims to be that church. So, for example, if the New Testament canon had been determined by an ex-cathedra statement from a pope, that would be pretty decisive. That would not be the only way to score a point on the Roman Catholic side, but it would be one

way to certainly do that. But if, it turns out that the New Testament canon came to be recognized through a gradual, bottom-up, cumulative, organic, and fallible process, then at the very least, more needs to be said to establish a meaningful continuity between the contemporary claimant of being the church and the actual on-the-ground reality of how the canon was recognized. You can make that argument. But that's the argument to be made. What can't be done is simply the assumption that it's either the Roman Catholic Church that was that church back then, or the Eastern Orthodox Church that was that church back then. You need to kind of establish over and against the rivals why our church has the better claim. And again,

you can try to do that. But so often we did, and I've been doing these conversations enough, I realize, a lot of people are just making that assumption. Okay, here's number seven. Solo scriptura isn't in the Bible, therefore it is self-refuting. Now, this criticism is targeting a related doctrine, the sufficiency of Scripture, which is conceptually distinct from most, and I think the best, definitions of Sola Scriptura, but historically has been seen as derivative from it. So we just need to be aware. Solar Scriptura is not a catch-all phrase for everything Protestants believe about the Bible, like the perspicuity of Scripture and other things like that.

The word Sola is a part of this particular idea. But leaving that aside, the sufficiency of Scripture. just doesn't claim that everything needs to be in the Bible. The sufficiency of Scripture is construed a little differently in different Protestant traditions, but in none of them does it mean that every doctrine falls packaged and ready to go out of the pages of Scripture. More modest definitions of the sufficiency of Scripture can be found in Article 6 of the 39 Anglican articles, which you can see on screen.

Lutheran statements about Scripture's sufficiency that touch on this point right now are also pretty modest and pretty careful. It's the reformed tradition, my own tribe, that generally offers the strongest articulations of the sufficiency of Scripture. But even here, they're carefully nuanced. So the Westminster Confession of Faith says, The whole Council of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture or, by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture. Now, the whole point of having an either-or is so you can do either one, right?

The other way to say that is to say it's denying that you always need an express or explicit affirmation of these various doctrines referenced there. But what happens a lot of times is people come along with a very sharp number two pencil and they cross out those words by good and necessary consequence. sometimes they'll also inflate the all things necessary, so you get basically the whole council of God for everything is just expressly set down in Scripture as though that's what Protestants believe. And that is just not what we believe. If you think you can refute this massive reality

called Protestant Christianity with something that you can kind of see in five seconds, there's probably people who've thought of that. And these are some of the things where I'm wanting to say, let's raise it up and look at these historic, I realize, and some of the dialogues I have done and other things I do, I realize many people have simply never studied Protestantism. And yet they're speaking about it very caustically. And so, but they've never read Herman Bovink. They've never read Richard Hooker.

They've never really gone in and done the homework. And so, and now our side is Protestants can do the same thing, you know. And so I always try to call that out in both directions, but I want to call it. us to elevate the discourse and really engage its tradition at its best. The better criticism here is not to say Soliscriptura is self-defeating, because it's not in the Bible, but rather to say Soliscriptura and other Protestant doctrines concerning scripture cannot be deduced from Scripture. That would be a problem, at least for the Reformed Tribe, if you said the consequential reasoning here is bad and unnecessary rather than good and necessary. That would be a problem.

So that'd be more of the critique maybe to focus on. All right, number eight, Protestants removed seven books from the Bible. Now, again, there are issues we can get into that there's legitimate, sophisticated debate about. But as stated, the problem here is it assumes that the Deutero-canonical books were in the Bible. You cannot remove something unless it's already there, but the status of these books was disputed. And in this video, I try to give a walkthrough of the data here. I look at Church Fathers like Athanasius, Jerome, Molito, a lot of the Eastern fathers. I look at different canonical registers.

What do we mean by the word scripture? And then I look at medieval usage and even Roman Catholic cardinals in Luther's own day. And the point is, there wasn't just one view of the Old Testament canon prior to Luther. So the better argument here would be to say, not we took books out of the Bible, it would be to say the Catholic view of the canon has more support or better support in church history and in other respects than the Protestant view of the canon. And the Protestants shouldn't have followed Jerome. They should have followed Augustine and so on and so forth. And then we get into the debate. By the way, regarding Jerome, I did a follow up on the video I just mentioned to correct the really problematic claim that Jerome again.

changed his mind later in his life somehow without ever telling us and without anyone in the medieval era ever knowing. Yet people say that, but no, Jerome. Jerome's position is clear on the shorter Old Testament canon. All right. Number nine. Last two are going to be quick. Luther invented justification by faith alone. This is not the case. There are different views among Christians prior to Luther about justification. By the way, I have a video that's pretty old and less known about justification. Sometimes so many of the comments over and over I get comments. Can you do a video on fill in the blank?

And it's I already have. So just search on YouTube. It'll come up. But in that video, which is a pretty ecumenical video, I'm pointing out that some of our differences have to do with terminology and so forth. But I work through John Chrysostom's homilies on Romans. Another interesting example is actually Hillary. But if you read through John, you're going to find statement after statement after statement

like the following. The declaring of God's righteousness is not only that he is himself righteous, but that he does also make them that are filled with the putrifying source of sin suddenly righteous. Doubt not then, for it is not of works but of faith, and shun not the righteousness of God, for it is a blessing in two ways because it is easy and also open to all men. lots of quotes like this that I then exegete the quote. I know there's a lot to say about all of that. I go through that in my book a little bit too.

But the point is it's not something that is completely freshly concocted by Luther. There's legitimate debate about certain aspects of justification and how much precedent they had. But the deeper issue, of course, is going to be going back to Scripture. Because a claim of invention doesn't just pertain to church history but also Scripture. and the view that I would defend is that Luther's position represented a genuine encounter with the writings of the Apostle Paul and passages like Romans 4 or 5 to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, and the Greek verb for counted there is significant.

Of course, there's Catholic views on this verse, but I'm just saying those are the kinds of texts you've got to get into. So if you disagree with Luther on justification, the thing to do is to dive into these historical points and do what people like Eric Ybarra do in this book where he gives really smart engagements with the Protestant arguments. That's one reason I like engaging with Eric because he's pretty familiar with the best of the Protestant tradition, like a Hermann Bavink or Johann Gerhard or Richard Hooker and these kind of folks. But that requires going beyond just the assertion of invention and just working through the data.

All right, here's the last one. The early church was obviously fill in the blank. Usually this will be said about Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. I hear this a lot, so I need to kind of address it. The problem here is partly the word obviously, which does a lot of work, but then just the lack of argument. And I do actually understand where people are coming from, based upon their own experiences, especially when they have maybe grown up in like a very evangelical, ah historical context, and they start reading the church fathers and they are swept away and they're convinced of something.

And there are real points of continuity between Catholic and Orthodox views and the early church. The problem is there are also massive questions of development. And unfortunately, sometimes there is naivety about those issues of development. Now, I actually think the Roman Catholic side does a little better than the Eastern Orthodox on this front. That's why I answered Lila Rose's question to me in this way. If you couldn't be Protestant, would you be Orthodox or Catholic? Oh, man, no, no, no. Well, this is, I have thought about this.

And the caveat is when people hear me answered this, they're going to say, oh, so he must be on his way to do that. I think I know I'm going to say. So it's not the case. But I would be Catholic. And that surprised me when I looked into it. surprises me. I actually thought you, I thought you might say Orthodox. I thought I would land there because of the, I mean, I have tremendous respect for so many Christians in that tradition as well. And there's such beauty to it. And the, this, the emphasis upon mysticism, prayer, the body, the role of the body and prayer. I've learned so much

from that tradition. I love studying the essence, energy, distinction, all that. Sorry, this is supposed to be rapid fire. No, I love it. It'd be Catholic because of the fili-oque and a whole host of other issues. And I do appreciate the Catholic traditions. I mean, the rich spirituality, that's developed to the, and in the way it has, it is more ecumenical. That is so, I couldn't submit to any system that says salvation is just in this one institution. I think the more ecumenical posture of Roman Catholicism is, is much better, and I appreciate that. So the ecumenical posture of contemporary Roman Catholicism, I regard as a recognition of reality today, and the theory of doctrinal development, which is more robust in Catholicism, though sometimes

has little glimmers here and there in Eastern Orthodoxy, at least in scholarship, Eastern Orthodox scholarship, I regard that to be a recognition of reality over time. And even if I'm not persuaded of that system, I appreciate that these theories are going beyond the simple assertion of obviousness. Like here, there's that and there's that and just obviously they're the same thing. You've got to get into the challenges of how the church has changed over time, which we all have to reckon with. But one of the things to observe here is just how many people say this about different groups. So an Eastern Orthodox person and a Roman Catholic person, they will both say this. They will say it's obviously us and not them. And then there's other groups as well. And, you know,

the challenge there is they can't all be right, especially about the obviousness point. And the more basic point I'm trying to make here is just we've got to get beyond these kinds of rhetorical assertions, which sometimes seem more psychologically useful for the speaker than logically useful in the dialectic. And it, you know, you just got to, like for myself, I am deeply convinced that Protestantism is true. I don't really have any doubts about that. But my conviction about that is not an argument. I don't go around saying, well, obviously Protestantism is true. For one thing, it annoys people. For another thing, the assertion doesn't advance the discussion.

An argument needs to be appended. So, for example, if you say the early church is obviously the Roman Catholic Church, you need to follow that up with an argument that addresses and shows awareness of the pressure points, like papal infallibility and the Marian dogmas and indulgences and things like that. You need to be aware, you're going to have to make a case to try to show a living development. And that's what people like Newman with doctrinal development are trying to do. So many times we don't even get to that point, though. If you think that the early church was obviously the Eastern Orthodox Church, you're going to have to deal with the pressure points.

And this is why I talk about issues like icon veneration and the invocation of the saints and things like this, which thoughtful historians can recognize, even if you think, in my view, against the data, that it existed in the year 200 AD and thereabouts, it's at least not. obvious. You know, you can at least understand why people are kind of scratching their heads and saying, where did you get this? So those are the kinds of arguments that need to be appended to the claim of obviousness. Another version of this that I hear is argument by means of personal narration. So it'll be like, I read the church fathers and it was just so persuasive for me. A friend of mine was telling me about seeing someone say this and they were pointing to their edition of patristic texts, implying that the Protestants cannot deal with these texts, and the person may have not realized that the scholarly pioneers and architects who produced that edition are Protestants,

Philip Schaff and many others. And so the point is, what is convincing for you personally may not be convincing for others you need to bring an argument. But there are good arguments to be brought. Let me say to try to be fair-minded here and wrap it around, what are some of the good arguments against Protestantism? and there's a lot more that I could say than just these three. Let me clarify that what I mean by a good argument is not necessarily a successful argument.

An argument is good if it is forceful and well-constructed and it moves you and it's challenging and it makes you a sharper thinker. You know, so for example, whereas a successful argument actually establishes the conclusion. So as a I'm just explaining how I'm using these terms, a parallel issue would be I would say the problem of evil is a good argument. in the sense that it's a very challenging issue, even if I'm ultimately still a Christian, still a theist, and not persuaded that it is ultimately successful. Okay, so let me mention three good arguments against Protestantism,

the canon conundrum, the fragmentation impulse, and the, what I'm going to call, these are all my own labels, the antiquity plus authority appeal. First, the canon conundrum, put it like this, how do you know for sure that 2 John is in the Bible? And here we get into all these issues, which many of you will be familiar with, about a fallible list of infallible books and this kind of thing.

Now, I do think there are some answers to these concerns, but they're not easy to answer. And this is a forceful and often very well-made appeal. And it really does shine a light on an area where many contemporary Protestants are very weak, and that is epistemology or the theory of knowledge. So I'm going to resist in this video giving any answers whatsoever, but lest you're disturbed by this and want the answers. I'll just point you to where I've addressed this.

This video is the starting point. If you want a shorter version for the Cliff Notes in less than 10 minutes, you can see this video. And then I've done other particular videos niching down to particular topics like Milito in this video. And I also have some older interviews like this one with John Mead, who's a great scholar on this topic. A second really good argument against Protestantism that has force and gets traction,

understandably, is the fragmentation impulse. And this is what I mean by this is simply Protestantism's tendency toward fragmentation and splintering and rupture. And I think this is something we need to take very seriously. By the way, did you know that you can be a Protestant and not think the Protestants are perfect? Earlier I mentioned Philip Schaff. This is one of the things I love about being a Protestant, can just be ruthlessly honest with church history and the church today, and just basically completely acknowledge the truth and respond to it as you are, whereas it seems to me that in some

of the other systems, there's often this sense we need to preserve greater sense of continuity and so forth. So Philip Schaff, as an example, the great Protestant church historian was very critical of much contemporary Protestant practice in his own 19th century context. As you can see in this quote on the screen, this video is going a little longer than I plan, so I won't read through this. But for the podcast listeners, he's basically saying a lot of Protestantism has overreacted to medieval Roman Catholicism, which I think is a plausible claim for many Protestant traditions. And Protestants are simply free to admit that and talk about our sins and errors.

My next video on my own channel is going to be a critique of John Calvin for his role in the burning of Michael Servetus. Comes out Monday, Lord Willing. And in my book, what it means to be Protestant, I talk all about this and I give some more examples. Here's the third forceful and good argument that is often made and can be made against Protestantism. I'm going to call it the antiquity plus authority appeal. Both of these on their own can be very forceful. Many criticisms of Protestantism appeal to antiquity, especially the patristic era. And many critiques appeal to authority.

How does ecclesial decision-making happen? The antiquity appeal is focused on the the issue of ecclesial continuity. So this is a huge question, the philosophy of identity. The paradox of Theseus is a ship. So the Theseus, I think it is. So if you have a ship in a harbor, and one by one, you take every piece off and put it on another piece so that after 50 years, every piece has been changed, but gradually and successively, is it still the same ship? That's a fun thought experiment to try to get into. What is it that makes something itself? and then moving to the church, we say, what is it that makes the church herself as she changes over time?

Just like a human being doesn't look the same when they're four years old as when they're 40, but they're the same person, but they look totally different. The church does look different in various important ways over time, so we're trying to discern how do we mark the continuity amidst that change. And a very forceful appeal can be made against Protestants here, especially some Protestant traditions, like my own Baptist, just in terms of the sheer optics and kind of the whiff test of like, you know, look at how Cyril of Jerusalem is functioning when he's speaking to these catechumans.

And look, imagine yourself like Augustine, hearing Ambrose of Milan's sermons and just think about how that church function and so forth, and look at all the differences. And I really understand how people could be persuaded by this and this is forceful and it's a fair appeal, even if I don't think it's finally conclusive. but what happens is you can take that and combine it with the authority arguments. And this is a forceful appeal. So the authority critiques against Protestantism often appeal to the enforcement of decisions in the church for both faith and practice.

And the word binding comes up, you know, what decisions are really binding. The best critiques of Protestantism on this point recognize that historic Protestant traditions have ecclesial decision making that is binding. and the best critique here is going to engage those Protestant models and positions and statements. But when you combine these two, this is a very forceful appeal to ask, how did ecclesial authority work in the early church versus today, especially in light of the rapid evolution of bishops and the role of councils? Very forceful appeal.

And if I were arguing against Protestantism, that'd be one of the things I'd just take a hammer and just smack it over and over and over. I think it's okay to acknowledge that in this complicated landscape, there are pressure points in all directions and to try to receive the pressure points against our own position. And these are just three of them. There's others too. So I'm going to leave to that.

I'm not going to respond to these objections because I've done it elsewhere. If you want a video on Protestantism and church history, you can see this one. If you want one on bishops and apostolic succession and questions of authority, you can see this one. But I'm not going to let's, I don't want to be defensive. just trying to give overview here. All right, two questions to finish with. What would you add to either of these lists, the 10 or the three? Put it in the comments. I'm curious. And second,

do you want me to follow up with a video called Top 10 worst arguments for Protestantism or top 10 worst criticisms against Roman Catholic and Orthodox? And I always try to include the Oriental Orthodox and the Assyrian Church of the East as well. So maybe I'll do a video like that. Let me know if you want that in the comments. Hopefully this has not annoyed you because the internet is and it amplifies all the normal human annoyances. I'm just trying to call out some of the things where we can elevate the discourse. That's the goal of this video.

All right, God bless you. Thanks for watching, everybody.