why<\/strong> did he retain this particular doctrine?<\/p>\nIf I am a Protestant who believes that the Reformers got something wrong, then I really need to try and explain why<\/strong> they got it wrong. What caused their error?\u00a0Not only that, if I am going to claim that I have the\u00a0true<\/em> understanding, I really should explain\u00a0what advantage<\/strong> I have over the Reformers which allows me to see the issue clearly and not fall into their same errors.<\/p>\n![\"MartinLuther\"](\"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/MartinLuther.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
The Response<\/h3>\n
Now, when I asked my Protestant friend these questions, I didn’t receive very satisfying answers. He simply said that “sometimes people make mistakes”<\/span>. He therefore concludes that the Early Church Fathers screwed up, as did many of the Fathers of the Reformation. He couldn’t give me an answer as to why they<\/strong> blundered, whereas he<\/strong> holds to true orthodoxy.<\/p>\nPersonally, I think that if you are going to discount the Early Church and even the founders of your own particular flavour\u00a0of Christianity, better and more complete answers are needed to these questions:<\/p>\n
1. Why do you think the Early Church got\u00a0so many doctrines wrong<\/strong>, even central ones concerning salvation?<\/p>\n2. If you claim that the Early Church was wrong, what advantage do you have over the\u00a0members of the Early Church<\/strong>\u00a0who were linguistically, geographically and temporally closer to the Apostles?<\/p>\n3. If the Early Church was\u00a0so prone to error, how can you\u00a0trust their witness when it comes to other issues, such as\u00a0the canon of Scripture<\/strong>?<\/p>\n4. Why do you think\u00a0the early Protestant Reformers got\u00a0so many doctrines wrong<\/strong>, when they were all\u00a0operating using the same\u00a0worldview of\u00a0Sola Scriptura<\/em>? Shouldn’t the clear teaching of Scripture result in united doctrine among all\u00a0Sola Scripture\u00a0<\/em>Christians?<\/p>\n5. If you are going to say that Luther was wrong concerning Baptism and the Eucharist,\u00a0what advantage do you have over him<\/strong> which has led you to the “correct” understanding of these truths?<\/p>\nI’m interested in seeing if there are better Protestant responses out there to these questions. If you think you have them, please leave your answers in the comments below…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A little while ago, I was discussing with a Protestant the issue of baptism in\u00a0the Early Church. The exchange was quite typical in that\u00a0he rejected\u00a0the beliefs of the Early Church, choosing instead to trump the witness of history with his own personal\u00a0interpretation of the Scriptures. Why did the Early Church “get it all so wrong”? In response to this, I<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[187,38,3048,1014,2969,1274,432,3049,539],"class_list":["post-53743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apologetics","tag-baptism","tag-catholic-church","tag-doctrine","tag-early-church","tag-featured","tag-luther","tag-protestantism","tag-reformers","tag-sola-scriptura"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/FeaturedFathers.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53743"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57509,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53743\/revisions\/57509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Retable_Annonciation_Mus\u00e9e_de_Laon_70908_1\"](\"http:\/\/restlesspilgrim.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/Retable_Annonciation_Mus\u00e9e_de_Laon_70908_1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n