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Modern Protestants or Ancient Faith: Who Owns the Story? | Sola Scriptura vs Historic Christianity
Can you be “just Christian” and still wear a team jersey? In this episode, Cloud of Witnesses team members Jeremy Jeremiah, Mario Andrew, and James St Simon sit down to react to a Reformed Protestant defense of labels, movements, and sola scriptura, and then press into the deeper questions underneath it all: unity, authority, and what it really means to be catholic in the sense of a complete, historic faith.
We explore how “no labels” talk can hide real discomfort with fragmentation, and ask whether you can credibly claim two thousand years of Christian heritage while setting aside the worship, sacramental life, and conciliar teaching that actually shaped that heritage. Along the way, we test modern Protestant confessions against the early Church and ask whether you can quote the Fathers without also receiving the churchly life they inhabited.
In this conversation we dig into:
• The pull of “no labels” Christianity and the problem of theological tribes
• What it means to be catholic as complete, not just universal
• How liturgy, sacraments, and councils tether us to the early Church
• Sola scriptura versus Scripture within a living Tradition and teaching authority
• The danger of cherry picking Augustine, Chrysostom, and others to fit our systems
• Justification as declared righteous versus actually being made righteous by grace
• Why the New Testament insists that works and real transformation are necessary
• Assurance, baptism, and whether a believer can truly fall away
At the heart of the episode is the engine of the Reformation: sola scriptura. Our Protestant friends call Scripture “the norm that norms other norms.” We ask what that looks like on the ground, where every believer can become their own referee and the result is endless splintering. Against that, we explore a vision of Scripture inside the Church, where the Bible is read, preached, and lived within the grammar of historic worship and sacramental life.
If you care about what unites Christians across the centuries, how faith moves from theory into a way of life, and whether the Fathers can really be claimed without the Church they loved and defended, this episode is for you. Share it with a friend who loves theology, tell us where you land in the comments, and join the Cloud of Witnesses community as we keep wrestling with the faith once delivered to the saints.
Questions about Orthodoxy? Please check out our friends at Ghost of Byzantium Discord server: https://discord.gg/JDJDQw6tdh
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Please leave a comment with your thoughts!
James, that that has to be said. If what he said is true, there would be one Protestant church. And let's face it, it would be the Lutherans. Because they start with the first one. They'd all be Lutherans.
SPEAKER_01:Are works necessary? They would all say yes, right? You heard it. Right? They'd say it's the works are necessary. But you're not saved by the works. But you have to work. Okay. Make that make sense. Tell me we're not saying the same thing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you know what I mean? Capital C Catholic and lower C Catholic. Yeah. And we what we are affirming is the lower C Catholic in that universal aspect of the church.
SPEAKER_06:I just find it so ironic. These guys started this, their own podcast by saying, we're not Protestant, we're not protesting, we're not anti-Catholic. What if they had done this entire video? We're not Catholics. We're not Catholics. We're not Catholics with the capital C, right?
SPEAKER_07:They're constantly going back to the kid. Denominationally to speak in terms of teams and that. But if you try to think back before that, well, okay, that was 1517. What about 1417? What about 1317? What about 1217? Are all those people also not on my team and against the Reformation teaching? It's a great question.
SPEAKER_01:Let's talk about teams for a second. Sure. Why do we even need to think about it as Teams?
SPEAKER_06:Really excited that you're here for this video today. If you like what you see, please, right now at our Patreon, the full uncut um video is available for you right now on our Patreon. Also, it always helps. For more people to find this content, hopefully, they'll be edified by God's grace. Hit that like button. Click subscribe, and most importantly, leave a comment down below. We hope that you enjoy this video. We'll see you at the end. Welcome to Cloud of Witnesses. We're really, really excited about this episode. We're going to be reacting to a video put out by Sean McDowell, who has been a longtime Protestant professor, author, apologist. This is his YouTube channel, and he's got a guest, another Protestant from Biola, Dr. Fred Sanders, and they're talking about why they're Protestants.
SPEAKER_03:You have argued in blogs and in other forums that Protestant is not the most helpful name for our movement because it doesn't stand for anything positive, but just implies protest. So what does it mean to be Protestant? And what do you think might be a better name for our movement?
SPEAKER_06:I just think it's fascinating. We don't have to dwell on this for long, but they're starting their thing off with they don't even like the name that they're associated with. I think the undercurrent there is like they don't really want to be called Protestants, but they are. Right. I don't know about you guys, but I get this a lot in conversations I have with Protestants, is they'll want to dissociate themselves from Protestants they don't agree with. Oh well, they're not really Protestants. They can't pick and choose, right? It's like we our family members, right? I might not like my uncle Eddie, but I'm stuck with him. You know what I mean? It is the way it is. He's my uncle.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. I think something that's really interesting is that they don't like titles at all. They don't want to be called anything. Yeah. They just want to be called a follower of Jesus. They want to be called um just a disciple of God or something like that. A believer who has no association with anyone else or uh no ties to any group. And it makes you wonder why that is. It begs the question like, why don't you want to be a so just call me a Christian? Some don't even like that at all. Right. There's something about the labels, there's something about the um the association with other Christians, which is kind of anti-Christian if you think about it.
SPEAKER_02:Sure. I think it has to do with and the anti-Catholicism, right? I think that the if you're labeled as a Catholic, as a Protestant, they're like, oh, you're you're something. And I think we're talking about more like non-denominationals. Because I think I think Presbyterians are like, I'm a Presbyterian or I'm I'm a Lutheran. But I think here in SoCal, at least most non-denominationalists are like, no, no, no, I'm not, I'm not even a Christian. That that makes it religious. Sure. And I'm not religious. I'm all about that relationship relationship. Right. Right.
SPEAKER_06:Right. And by the way, we should note for our audience, we have experience with what we're talking about. Yeah. Even though we're all Orthodox Christians in this group, each one of us spent years, more or less, you know, in some of our cases, as Protestants. Some of us non-denominational, some of us reformed, some of us both for a time. So we we've been there, we've done that in many respects. But this little discussion, I think, shows how confusing and difficult to juggle is the Protestant world. It's this whole menagerie of beliefs, and yet it all falls under the umbrella.
SPEAKER_01:But it makes me wonder why. Um why don't they want to be associated with other Christians, you know, um, or why don't they want a label put on their faith? Um and I think uh it has to do with the disunity that there is. Um, because you don't want to be associated with Baptists if you don't really know what Baptists agree.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, so we're stuck with the name. You can't really rebrand at this point. It goes, it goes way back into the 1500s. But something has changed in the English language since then, where the word Protestant used to mean from the Latin protestare, to hold forth, to have a view, to advocate for it passionately. That that's not a word we use in English in any way. If we say protest, it means mainly you're mad about something and you're gonna protest it, and that's the reason you're talking at all is to say no to something. So protesting has just kind of poisoned our use of the word. Um, is there a better word? The problem with thinking about Protestants as mainly protesters, and again, let me make clear that's a bogus etymology. That's that's not where that word comes from. We're not anti-Catholics as our defining identity. Um, a better what that term leaves out is the idea that we are holding forth a positive teaching about Christianity, um, and that we're passionate about it, and that we're part of the one Christian church of all ages, and we have an idea for how to reform it. So you could link up to the word reformation and say reformation Christians is a nice helpful way to kind of historically tag it.
SPEAKER_01:They neglect the fact that it is a protest against Catholicism. Right. Their defining quality is that we are not Catholic. So it is still closely linked to the definition of the term. 100%. I don't think it is a bad translation. I think it's absolutely what that is.
SPEAKER_06:I agree. I think that you know, this Dr. Fred Sanders is doing his best to put the best spin on it possible. Um, and I give him credit for that, but I agree with you 100%, James. Ultimately, and I think we're gonna see it borne out in this video. Their entire perspective is in light of how are they distinct from Roman Catholicism, right? Um Callistos Ware, Timothy Ware, who wrote um the Orthodox Church, um, talks about this in his book, where he basically says, and he's quoting another Orthodox theologian, but the Protestants and the Catholics are very similar in one way, and that is they all have the same starting point, and that is the papacy. And it's either you're pro-papacy, or if you're Protestant, you're anti-papacy, right? And you all of them kind of are have that same kernel of truth, and I think that's a problem we're seeing here as well.
SPEAKER_07:It'd be cool to say we're in the Reformed Church, but again, branding-wise, um, yeah, that means the the magisterial Calvinists who are not Lutheran or etc. etc. Yes, you know.
SPEAKER_00:So that we're not Calvinists. So, Fred, how given the Reformation was in the 1500s, uh, and that the sort of the birth of Protestantism was around that time, how should we view the church before the Reformation?
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, that that's a great question. And really important too, because it's possible to sort of install a denominational grid on how you think about these things before you have a historical grid. And and I think you're right to say, oh, you know, they've got 2,000 years of history here, divided up into four quarters. And if you just want to think of your church as only starting in the fourth quarter, you're already sort of uh caddy wampus to use the technical term, right? Because you need to install the historical grid first and say, oh, this goes all the way back. I mean, the church I'm in is the church founded by Jesus Christ, carried out by the ap by the apostles. And it didn't sort of go into a time capsule and vanish for 1500 years, and it wasn't a thin trickle of marginal kind of weirdos that were my church all the way back. I bring you good news that the entire Christian tradition belongs to Protestant Christians.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. He went there. He went there where we were talking about the saying that you can trace back your denomination to Christ or your church back to Christ. What does that mean? Right. Um, yes, the Christian faith was founded by Christ, right? But the teachings of Christ and the practice of the church has changed exponentially. You know, like it it there's look at the way that most churches operate on a Sunday versus how it was back then, or just when you step into an early church from the first few centuries, it looks totally different. So can you really say that the lineage is connected? You'd have to ask in what way?
SPEAKER_06:Exactly. James, on top of that, he's going to say, I think this uh Dr. Jenkins, uh Dr. Sanders, sorry, is um a pastor or attends an EV free church, an evangelical free church, right? I would just ask Dr. Jenkins, point to the EV free church in the third century. Show me the EV free church in the ninth century. Anything even close, right? Which is what I think you're getting at, right? Because what do we know about the early church? It was liturgical, right? It came out of the the synagogue practice. There were icons and imagery involved, incense used, vestments practiced, the the the baptism, the confession, the um the Eucharist, the Eucharist, holy unction, the vestments, all of it, right? I guarantee you, go check out an EV free church, you will see none of that. Right. Right? So I you're asking a great question, James. How can because he's to me, he's just saying, oh no, you're connected to it. Right. Kind of like just by fiat. Yeah, no, you're connected to it. Sure. But you're asking the question, how? Show us.
SPEAKER_07:Something big happened in the round in the 1500s, of course. And then that's where it's legitimate to talk about distinct sorts of confessions or denominations. At that point, you could put the denominational grid in place and start thinking that way. But you don't want to let that grid trick you out of owning three-quarters of the Christian tradition.
SPEAKER_00:So be say a little bit more about you know when you said basically most of church history is essentially the Protestant tradition.
SPEAKER_01:Belief and practice are they they go together. They're symbiotic, right? What you believe, that's how you will practice. And if it's antithetical to the rest of the body of Christ, then you're gonna have a body that's moving in different directions and it's not gonna be able to accomplish what it sets out to do.
SPEAKER_06:Right. Well, it's exactly, James. I'm not gonna say much here because you said it well. That's why the church delineates between right practice, orthodoxy, and schismatics, and those who are anathematized and those who are heretics outside of the church, the church is drawing lines that it sounds like you know, I I want to be charitable to them, but they almost just want to say, uh, uh, it almost doesn't matter, right? Because I think we'll get to it. If you believe in Christ, if you have these essentials, that's all you need, and all the other stuff really doesn't matter all that much. And I think that if history shows us anything, it mat all of it matters.
SPEAKER_01:Well, yeah, it does. There's this uh famous quote that comes from uh I think I I would hear Greg Laurie say it all the time, all the time on the essentials unity, on the non-essentials grace. How do you even distinguish between what's essential and what's non-essential? Exactly. Show me that proof text. Yeah, where are the essentials? The Christology is important, but the Christology was established in the early church. It wasn't exactly right. The the satiriology, how one is saved, how one uh attains salvation. Um, like all of those things had been ironed out.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah. So if you're trying to get your bearings on this, you could think, okay, at some point in the early 1500s, somebody kicked out Martin Luther for teaching justification by grace alone through faith alone, and sold the scriptura. Someone heard him teaching that stuff, which I like, and said, Anathema, you're out. We're not going to reform and take that on board. We are instead expelling you. Now, whoever did that is not on my team to speak denominationally, to speak in terms of teams and that. Um, but if you try to think back before that, well, okay, that was 1517. What about 1417? What about 1317? What about 1217? Are all those people also not on my team and against the Reformation teaching?
SPEAKER_01:That's a great question. Let's talk about teams for a second. Sure. Why do we even need to think about it as teams? If those little theological differences don't matter, what's the point of saying, well, there's my team and then there's you're not my team? And why does that matter?
SPEAKER_06:100%. And and I mean, all I go back to is Christ's own words in John, where he is talking about calling his followers to be united, right? To be one, even as he and the father are one. Why? So that they, the world, will know that I sent you. In other words, the world needs to see you guys being united. And here, the Protestants, you almost feel bad for them, James. They have to talk about teams, they have to talk in these terms because they're trying to grapple. Let's face it, they're trying to grapple with a failed experiment. I Protestantism, I was a Protestant for 25, 26 years of my life. I love my Protestant family members and friends, etc. But Protestantism, Protestantism failed. It failed Christendom, and that's what they're trying to pick up the pieces for.
SPEAKER_01:But then again, well, then why are there so many different Protestants? Right. And when does it end? Yep. How can we all unify? And if if we only need to unify on the essentials, why can't we go to each other's churches?
SPEAKER_07:Aquinas was 1274. Now, denominationally speaking, he agreed agreed with some things that we would call Roman Catholic now. But historically speaking, he was before the Reformation turning point. And so I'd like to say, I think Aquinas is mine. And you see where this is going. You go further back, hey, Bernard of Clairvaux, I think he's mine. Says some things about Mary that are not the way I would put things, but that guy is completely my intellectual property, part of my Christian heritage, part of my birthright. If you jump all the way back to like Augustine of Hippo, you know, um Athanasius of Alexandria, Irenaeus of Lyon, the Apostles, you kind of see where this goes.
SPEAKER_06:This cannot go without some commentary. He's quoting these primarily Western saints, and he's saying, I claim them, they're mine. I want to ask the question you asked earlier, James, how he he he said some things that were problematic about Mary. That's just the beginning. There were prayers to the saints. He was praying to the Theotogos for intercession. Is that is he okay with that? Does he claim that?
SPEAKER_01:Or even talking about the appearances of Mary to family members or to themselves.
SPEAKER_06:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:Right. To me, it s shows frankly just such a superficial level of the fathers. Just this kind of of, oh, I like some things that that Aquinas said, he seems to believe, which I find it fascinating by the way, that he wants to align himself with Aquinas in some ways. Right? We we, I think, would argue as as Orthodox it's Thomism that is in many ways the great downfall, not only of the Roman Catholic Church, but it seeped right into uh uh Protestantism, and he seems to be proving that. Right.
SPEAKER_01:The scholasticism.
SPEAKER_06:He wants to hold on to that.
SPEAKER_01:Well, if I can to say that uh to my critical thinking students, I always speak against cherry picking. You cannot cherry pick your facts, you can't cherry pick your quotes, and and that's exactly what he's doing to support his his stance. He has a stance, and he's trying to uh support his argument, but it's a fallacy to use cherry, you know, to cherry pick your data and say, yeah, and and say, well, Thomas Aquinas aligned with me on this one thing, and I really like his teleological arguments. So he's mine, he's my intellectual property. To be able to just claim people like that and completely ignore how did they practice, how did they do justice?
SPEAKER_07:Charges against Protestants um in the 1500s was that they were not patristic, that they were not traditional, that they were not historical. You can think about different ways to address that charge. That's what Cardinal Satelletto, who I think was the bishop of Geneva, the Roman Catholic bishop of Geneva, said to John Calvin. Think about how to respond to that. Calvin's response and the standard Reformation response was no, we're the ones being traditional and patristic and in touch with the great tradition. There have been some recent deviations from that, where things have hardened into a Roman Catholic deviation from the Great Tradition. The Reformation was an attempt to get back to the church fathers.
SPEAKER_01:Did he say great tradition or Greek tradition? Great, great tradition. Yeah. And and I love that, just the term tradition, but what tradition? They don't mention which tradition that they are going back to. And there he's right to say that, you know, the Presbyterians who can trace their lineage back to Calvin, right? They went to Saint Augustine selectively. They were very selective about what they took from the early church and put into practice and they developed traditions. But then you listen to Martin Luther, who completely dragged Calvin on the floor on certain things, right? Or you know, like the linguist. Exactly. They they completely disagreed on it. Right. Um, they they disagreed on many things like predestination. Luther did not hold to Calvin's view of predestination, and I don't think Calvin even held to St. Augustine's view of predestination. Right. He kind of you know developed something that something different.
SPEAKER_06:And Calvin's followers really even took it a step further.
SPEAKER_01:Very true, yeah. Very true. And so we we uh wonder as people who understand the tradition of the church fathers that trace back to the canons and the you know, it's what we practice to this day. Right. Uh we ask, well, what what traditions were you going back to? Uh and it seems just like uh it's scripture. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:I uh believe, and I want to say this to those who are Protestants right now, maybe watching this, you guys the danger and the dangerous ground they're in here. It sounds so easy, right? He's like, oh, Calvin's response is generally the reform response. And that is, you know, the reformers rediscovered or, you know, re-umestablished the traditions of the apostles, right? The apostolic teaching. If that's true, then the church lost apostolic teaching. And what do Calvinists, what do Presbyterians, what do reformed Christians hark on the most that they think we get wrong? The gospel. Right. Salvation.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_06:If the church got the gospel wrong for 1500 years so that it had to be reformed, if it's really the souls, we know the soul laws are nowhere to be found in the in the church fathers. If that's the case, then you're two steps away from being a Mormon. Right. Where Joseph Smith taught that the tr the church had fallen away into utter apostasy. You're a couple steps away from that. But that's you see the game these Protestants are trying to play. And again, to be fair, they're not playing a game. They're defending their position, and I get that. Okay, I shouldn't have just said game. But they are involved in this explanation that leads to other problems and they're serious problems. Because if you don't get the gospel right, how can you trust anything? Why would they want to be associated with Irenaeus? Right. Why would they want to be associated with Athanasius?
SPEAKER_03:We're great scholars of the Church Fathers. So that's what you mean by making the church more Catholic, lowercase c. Talk about that a little bit, if you will.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, if you take the word Catholic in its original meaning, it's from the Greek through the Latin, according to the whole, um, holistic, uh universal, total. Um then you can once you define it that way, once it means that in your mind and not the name of a particular denomination, you can kind of pick up on how paradoxical it is to call something Roman Catholic. And you know, not to be snarky, but the question would be something like, well, which is it? Is it Roman or is it Catholic? Like, is it local and tied to one particular organization or is it universal?
SPEAKER_01:Because that's another big misunderstanding in translation. I heard it said best that it doesn't mean universal, and it doesn't even mean total, it means complete. Complete, I love that. And and that's what it is. It's it's really it's the complete church. And you know, I would say that's the capital C, right? And just because you say the Nicene Creed doesn't mean that that necessarily includes you. Right. Start calling my church the total church, right?
SPEAKER_07:And then you'd say, well, yeah, but that's a brand new, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, I every almost every week I affirm that I believe in the the Holy Catholic Church. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07:Again, in English, we've had semantic drift over the last four or five centuries.
SPEAKER_00:But I think it's I think it's important for our listeners, listeners, and viewers to be aware that there's a there's a big difference between capital C Catholic and Lower C Catholic. Yeah. And we what we are affirming is the lower C Catholic in that universal aspect of the church.
SPEAKER_06:I just find it so ironic. These guys started this, their own podcast by saying, we're not Protestant, we're not protesting, we're not anti-Catholic. What have they undone this entire video? We're not Catholics. We're not Catholics, we're not Catholics with the capital C, right? They're constantly going back to it, they can't help themselves. Let's keep going.
SPEAKER_07:We're attempting to reform and correct by scripture the one church.
SPEAKER_03:All right. So tell us what a unique Protestant view of Scripture would be. And of course, when we say a Protestant view of Scripture, you don't mean as opposed to a capital C Catholic, but in terms of what the scriptures view about themselves, what Jesus and the apostles taught. And how does that maybe pair with things like reason, history, tradition, and other sources of knowledge?
SPEAKER_07:Yeah. Yeah, and it it's it's nice to kind of catch yourself there and say, well, the main thing I want to say about a Protestant view of Scripture is it's a Christian view of Scripture. So thank God, Roman Catholics also believe that scripture is the word of God and is authoritative.
SPEAKER_01:I want to go back to how he said when we take the teachings of Jesus, understanding them already, you can see the enlightenment thinking rationally and all of these things, right? Jesus did not write a book. He didn't write a single thing. Just think about that for a second. Not because he was illiterate, right? Right? Jesus was intelligent. I mean, any philosopher, any historian, any person who eat who even critics of Christianity, they have nothing negative to say about the teachings of Jesus or the life of Jesus. That's why a lot of people just accept him as like a teacher. Yeah, yeah. And people called him a good teacher, right? Because you can't really take what he says, so beautiful and and wise, and just his storytelling. He was the truth, the life, right? Yet he didn't write anything down, and he didn't tell his disciples, write this down. Exactly. Take this down. He said, Hear my words and do them. Yes. And and what I love about um, you know, people use this scripture to put Mary down when uh he's uh he had performed the miracle of of raising Lazarus from the dead, and someone says, Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that fed you and nourished you, right? Um, and Jesus says, uh, even more so, blessed are those who hear my words and do them, right? Yes. Showing how what makes Mary so magnificent and praiseworthy is what makes you and all the saints and hopefully me one day praiseworthy is those who listen to the words of God and do them are part of a holy lineage that began with the Theotokos, right? She said, Let it be according to your words, right? The first to hear the words of God, obey, and bring our Savior to become flesh, as we we say it in the creed. But do you understand it like that? Do you see the mother of God as as you know more spacious than the heavens, and that she held the creator of the cosmos, of everything, of truth itself in her womb, and yep, and through her he became flesh of her flesh. Right.
SPEAKER_06:Christ says famously, what is the great commission? Go unto all the nations and teach them scripture, go into all the nations and read the Bible to them. No, go into all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and making disciples of them, right? That's what's important, is the like you've said, James, so well, practicing the faith. That is what the church is about. Are scriptures important and are they crucial and and a you know invaluable part of the church uh tradition? Absolutely. Absolutely, and we will defend it till the day we die. Absolutely. But there's so much more than that. We're not left with merely the scriptures.
SPEAKER_07:Protestants are better at describing it as the authoritative word of God and as the norm that um norms other norms, you know? There are various ways that we get our doctrine right, and we would want to use tradition and reason and all kinds of things like that in thinking well and thinking connectedly. But when it comes to scripture, we say, oh, this is in a whole different category. This is not one of the norms that mutually norm each other. This is the norm above all other norms. This is this is where we would use the phrase sola scriptura, obviously a Latin phrase, which doesn't mean all I read is the Bible or I can't get a bad idea out of the Bible no matter how hard I try. It certainly does not mean those things. Actually, if you think about the phrase sola scriptura, it implies that there's a range of influences on our theology, but that scripture alone is the one that stands above them all.
SPEAKER_01:If you have scripture alone, what is going to influence your interpretation of that scripture? Right.
SPEAKER_06:Well, see, James, this is this is where the rubber hits the road. Yeah. Okay. You talked earlier about it. I want to say the same thing. I'm a former, first I was a non-denominational Christian for about 19 years, then I became a reformed Presbyterian, um, under the tutelage of of uh Dr. Michael Horton himself. Um, and I used to believe sola scriptura wholeheartedly. And it was, quite frankly, the cracking of that foundation of solar scriptura, which is what was really the first big domino that led to me becoming Orthodox. This is ultimately found, this is totally foundational. They are raising here, quite frankly, a straw man. They're saying, oh, soul scriptura doesn't mean we aren't influenced by other traditions and other things, you know, but ultimately he said the scripture is the norm above all other norms. Here's the problem. You asked the question, James, what other things are they being influenced by, right? Well, you can name any of it: Augustine, the Augsburg Confession, the Westminster Confession, any systematic theology, anything you want, the books of R. C. Sproul and Michael Horton, and whatever you want to bring in there, throw it all in there. Sure, it's influencing you. But ultimately, if it disagrees with an interpretation of scripture that you're convinced of, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what St. Athanasius says, it doesn't matter what St. Augustine says or practices, as we mentioned. Why? Well, because you know, when it comes to things, some some things they say about Mary, it disagrees with my interpretation of scripture. So I'm just gonna kind of I'm gonna discount that thing that Augustine said.
SPEAKER_01:And that must be the Holy Spirit. It must be, if it doesn't agree with your soul or if it doesn't agree with your heart, right? It makes you feel a little icky inside. Yeah, it's probably the Holy Spirit, and heaven knows, uh, Saint Augustine wasn't full of the Holy Spirit. But do you realize how absurd that is? Yes, to be able to just and and you you said it perfectly. They're influenced by a little bit of Augustine, a little bit of this, a little bit of that that you claim. But at the end of the day, the buck stops with you. Yes, this agrees with me, so I agree with a little bit of that, a little bit of St. Ignatius, a little bit of Athodaceus, a little bit of Aquinas, a little bit of Billy Graham, because I like certain certain person's charisma. Right. Um, so but at the end of the day, it's uh a hodgepodge of everything that I picked. So what ultimately, what the major influence on your sola scriptura for every individual Christian is themselves.
SPEAKER_06:Yes, because it's true. When you submit yourself, especially as us Western modern American Christians, when we have come to orthodoxy, there's some things that are tough to accept. There were some things that were I didn't like at first. I had a very difficult time with some of the prayers to the Thail Tokos. I was like, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:Or the veneration, the bowing, the kisses.
SPEAKER_06:Absolutely, right? But what do you do? You submit yourself to that greater body of faith that has preserved and has stayed unified for 2,000 years. That's the power of the Orthodox Church. It's not about yourself. You didn't discover it, I didn't discover it. I love how you put that. But rather the truth by God's grace came to you.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah. Amen. So again, to put the Protestant edge on that, you'd say in those places where tradition develops sort of odd little excrescences and and oddities, you'd say, we can correct these not by just appealing to more tradition, but by appealing back over tradition's head to scripture itself, which stands out with a clearer profile as having authority.
SPEAKER_01:Well, that's worked out great, hasn't it?
SPEAKER_06:Exactly. James, that that has to be said. If what he said is true, there would be one Protestant church. And let's face it, it would be the Lutherans, because they still was the first one. They'd all be Lutherans, and there'd only be one type of Lutherans, right?
SPEAKER_01:We'd all be speaking German. I don't know why that made me laugh so hard. Um but it's right, this is gonna piss Lutherans off. I'm sorry, Lutherans. I just that hit me. That hit me on the funny. Um, but you're right. There would be one Protestant church. They make it sound so simple. Yes, it's so contrary to what we've been taught. You're the gatekeeper of your destiny. Yep, you know better. Your vote matters, right? Yep, so but that's that's in every uh heresy and and and cult in the world, and denomination and denomination. You can trace you see, you can say you can trace it back to Jesus, but it usually goes back to one guy. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00:Misunderstood to refer to scripture as the sole source of valid knowledge. Yeah. And there's that's why there's skeptics, there can be skepticism about the other disciplines and how they might inform our theological understanding. But that you're saying that's that has nothing to do with the notion of soloscriptura.
SPEAKER_07:Right. Yeah, the phrase sola scriptura. Sometimes people will try to substitute something like, well, you're the view you're describing is solo scriptura or nuda scriptura or something like that. Um, so people will pick up this motto and read into it things like, you don't need anything ever but the Bible to tell you anything about anything. Also, it's a question of how information-rich your way of confessing scripture is. If you've never read any of the church fathers, if you've never read anything but the Bible, well, it doesn't really matter much that you say scripture alone, because you don't have any other options even on the table. It's when you're dealing with the entire Christian tradition, all the pre-reformation exegesis of scripture, all the riches of the entire Christian faith, that you're able to say, I've got all of this on the table. And when it's decision-making time, scripture is what guides and norms and controls what I do with all it's a farce.
SPEAKER_06:It's a farce what he's saying. And I and and and I don't, he of course doesn't intend it to be, but he's talking about, and this is what you touched on, James. Here I am, a Christian in 2025. If I'm a Protestant Christian right now, that is a heavy burden. He's saying you gotta take it all, 2,000 years of history, it's all on the table, and you gotta somehow have the right interpretation by the Holy Spirit. But how on earth is any human able to do that?
SPEAKER_01:It's an impossibility. Fish through 2,000 years of of exegesis. Good luck. Even that that's bad exegesis. Like to think about it, when you take everything, okay, okay, quick lesson on literary criticism. There's a difference between eegesis and exegesis. Exegesis is like formalism, right? Letting the literature uh interpret itself. But what he's saying is essentially you don't just read scripture, you you take in what's outside of scripture to understand the scripture. That's not exegesis, that is reading into scripture with other things. You're you're trying to read the church fathers, and you notice that there's some discrepancies in some of the things between the church fathers. The the Bible is too robust, yes, and allegorical and comprehensive. Yeah, it's it's too much for the you know, puny wisdom of man to fully grasp and comprehend alone, right? Hence the Bible saying it's the Holy Spirit that's gonna lead you into all truth, right? But let's let scripture give us the the code. It says in the multitude of counselors there is wisdom. Right. Why? Because you can't just trust one person to interpret scripture, and that's why you shouldn't just read one church father, right? You read the church fathers in accordance with the collective church, right? Because one person's not going to have it figured out, table's empty, solar scripture means less.
SPEAKER_00:What's the distinction then between how do how do the Roman Catholic traditions see scripture differently?
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, that's a good question. And I again I would want to say it's great that uh Roman Catholics believe the Bible is the Word of God. If I could put that in an edgy way, I'd say they just believe it badly. That is to say, they clutter up the confession of Scripture's authority with all kinds of competing norms and such as such as an appeal to unwritten tradition, which they would claim goes all the way back. So if you if you're asking a why, seems to me that Mary, as described in Roman Catholic devotion and doctrine, is very different from the minor character of the New Testament. And they would say, Yeah, but there's an ancient tradition that gives to Mary a certain level of veneration. Um and so that's an appeal to unwritten, extra-biblical ancient tradition.
SPEAKER_06:Notice, by the way, have they mentioned Orthodox a single time yet? No, not once, right? This is a this is a Roman Catholic, they are responding to Roman Catholics, and I think that's important. Why? Well, because a lot of their people, and they will say it later in this video, a lot of Protestants are coming to orthodoxy. So why don't they engage with Orthodox?
SPEAKER_07:Kind of drill down into this. Um, you would say Protestants teach their doctrine of salvation by emphasizing justification, uh, the declaring to be righteous of sinners, justification by grace alone through faith alone. And that's where you start bringing in these alones again to say, as compared to say a medieval Catholic doctrine, which would be you're introduced into uh sort of a state of the grace of God, but within that state of grace, you ask for God's help and power to make you do good works. And those good works set your soul in order. So you're increasingly sanctified and sort of brought into alignment with God. You get rid of vices, you take on virtues. Picture the way Dante has people climbing Mount Purgatory in the afterlife, something like that. But now, like in this life, you're getting rid of virtue, getting rid of vices, taking on virtues. At the end of that, God looks at you and says, Well, you have been made just by my assisting power. And therefore, at the end of the process, I call you justified. You might consider the whole process justification. That's the edge where Protestants say, No, that's Not how it works. We're forgiven, freely forgiven by the grace of God, and justified at the beginning of it. Then we do get rid of vices, take on virtues, and live that life of sanctification.
SPEAKER_06:Here's the thing, and we you know, we don't want to get into obviously the entire uh soteriology and and attack of the reform view of justification by faith alone. But what I would point the viewer to is Christ's own words. What did Christ say we will be judged by? By our faith, by our works? What had we done? Had we fed the poor? Have we given to the needy? Did we visit those in prison, etc.? That's upon which the wheat will be separated from the chaff, the goats, right? Um that's what Christ talks about. I want the reformed Christians to respond to that. It's not about faith alone. They talk about justification coming at the front end. If that's the case, why does the entire rest of the New Testament and the history of the church even exist?
SPEAKER_01:Faith alone or grace alone, nowhere in scripture but in James, right? Where he says, not by faith alone. Exactly. Look at the church fathers. What was their interpretation of this? Saint Clement of Rome, we are justified by works and not by words alone. Saint Ignatius, those who profess Christ will be judged by what they do. Saint Polycarp, he who raised him from the dead will raise us up if we do his will. Amen. Each will be saved by his work. St. Justin Martyr. These were all 150, 110, 107, 96 in the same in St. Clement. But here's the thing: this is what Jesus said. Right. Do not just be hearers, but doers also. Exactly. If you love me, obey my commands with justification by grace alone through faith alone.
SPEAKER_00:So, Fred, would it be fair to say that Protestants make a cleaner distinction between justification and sanctification? Then there is they don't tend to be. It sounds like in in Catholic teaching they are they are more fused together rather than seen as more separate and distinct.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, I think that's a fair way to say it. And and even to take the word justification on the Catholic side to take it to mean actually being made just. Whereas Protestants have had to dig that out of Romans and Galatians and kind of hone it and say, no, it actually is being used in scripture to mean declared just. Then we go on to be made holy, and at the end of that, there's a kind of justification. But the key use of the word is at the outset.
SPEAKER_01:That's such a big point. Can I just point out that ontological transformation of holiness that is it's it's completely changed there. When your justification is you are not made holy, you are declared holy. It's just forensic. Then what what fruit is there to your you know what's the point? Right. When it says to put on the nature of Christ and to take off your old nature, what for? Right? You're declared righteous anyway. Exactly. You you you're you believe in God, you're justified by your faith, right?
SPEAKER_05:What else do you need to do and why? And why does Paul say to work out your faith with fear and trembling? Right, work out your salvation. Why? You're right.
SPEAKER_03:Answer this, but I want to ask you about a unique Protestant view of grace, which is obviously at the root of the gospel. What's a unique Protestant view of grace? And then what would the relationship look like, we think scripture teaches, between grace, faith, and works?
SPEAKER_07:Yeah. Um so Protestants, you know, reduce everything to the grace of God. This is what salvation is, and they want a clean shot at it. So there's a kind of a um, I don't want to call it nervousness, but there's a um there's a caution about introducing anything in between just free forgiveness and the grace of God. Um uh you don't want any of your works or of your um alignment or submission to church authority uh or any of those things to sort of get between you and saying, I'm saved by grace. As a result, um, we then have to emphasize that the life we're introduced into by grace is a life which has a particular shape to it, that has a form, and that we're going to obey God because God continues to have the authority to command our moral lives. Um, we don't remove the just authority of the rule maker when we say that we are forgiven for breaking those rules. And then we can go on to say, and this is the classic Protestant view, I could cite lots of sources here, um, that works are in fact necessary as part of the Christian life. This is wild. Just one one example, the Heidelberg Catechism, which is uh like a reformed document on Lutheran territory in the 1500s. The Heidelberg Catechism says, since we are saved by grace through faith alone, why must we do good works? That's that's the question. Just the fact that you can put that question in a properly Protestant document alerts you to the fact that, oh yeah, works are necessary.
SPEAKER_06:So I have to say, I feel like this is some gaslighting here. Because what it is, this is where oftentimes, and this happens a lot, we're saying words, but we're talking about different things. When he's saying that, and sure, he quotes the Augsburg Confession, you know, that works are necessary. What they're saying, this is what I always struggle, struggled with as a Protestant, as a Presbyterian Calvinist, is you're taught you are saved, you're justified, you're elect, you it's a done deal, you are seen in the perfection, that is Christ's the robe around you. However, you're commanded to do good works, right? And and you're taught as a presby as a Calvinist Reformed Christian that you will do good works because it's just a natural outflowing of your new state. But I found as a Calvin Calvinist, they weren't a natural outflowing. It was hard. I still struggled with sin greatly, right? And so when he's saying that, he's not saying it at all in the same way we would argue that works are necessary, as James points, as I love it so beautifully. He goes on to say, as the spirit is to the body, so are so are works to faith. Without the spirit, the body is dead. That's the analogy that James draws. They're not saying that, they're just saying, well, as an elect person who is saved, you will therefore do good works. And so they're therefore necessary, because this is what Christians do. Christians do good works, right? And to me, that feels like checking off the boxes. Did I do a couple of good works today? I'm commanded to. They're necessary. He just said it, but that's completely different from the traditional, historic Christian faith, which says that we are being transformed, being conformed to the image of God. And in that, we are naturally and holistically and ontologically, James, like you like you said, we are becoming new creations in Christ. Created me a clean heart, oh God, right? And renew a steadfast spirit within me. That's the Christian faith. Not this, I'm sorry, mental and intellectual gymnastics that reformed Christians are required to do to make this all fit together, justification, sanctification, etc.
SPEAKER_01:And there needs to be a taking off and putting on. Yes. Which is it's that heart work that you need to be doing.
SPEAKER_07:Works don't constitute our salvation, but the Christian life has to include a transformation in which you do good works.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, so necessary in what sense? Not necessary for salvation. That's the question. What's that necessary component? Listen to this gymnastics. That's properly Protestant and vigilant of you to get in there.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah. Um, never necessary as a condition, right? Never as a condition. Like you must do these works, and when you have satisfied the condition of doing these works, then you are saved. That's that's not how that works. That would be again the Heidelberg Catechism question puts it, Since we are saved by grace, why must we do good works? And that means it can't come first as a condition.
SPEAKER_01:And why does Romans 2, 6, and 7 say he will render to each one according to his works? Exactly. Right? And why does Romans 2.13 say it is not the hearer of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law? And how um Galatians 5.6 talks about faith working through love? It just I don't think that that aligns with scripture at all.
SPEAKER_07:How we live towards the righteous lawgiver, God, the Holy One. Um, but also because this is not a fantasy. We're actually aligning ourselves with God and taking on the character of Christ, and that's gonna have the form of um Ephesians 2.10, you know, doing good works which God has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Ephesians 2.10 is, of course, right after. By grace you are saved through faith, and that is not your own doing, so no one can boast, but we are his workmanship created for good works in Christ. If I start quoting Paul, I'm gonna get kind of carried away here because um if you uh if you take on all of Paul's letters, especially including like his letters to Timothy and Titus, where he's not writing to a church but to pastors of a church, he's constantly using the phrase good works in a very positive sense. Remind them to do good works.
SPEAKER_05:Yes, be imitators of me as I am of Christ.
SPEAKER_01:If you press the issue enough, right? Are you saved by grace? Yes, grace, the grace of God is what saves us. Yes. Well then we agree, right? Are works necessary? They would all say yes, right? You heard it, right? They say it's the works are necessary, but you're not saved by the works, but you have to work. Okay, make that make sense. Tell me we're not saying the same things. Yeah, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00:I wonder if one of the may one of the major differences would be where a believer would get the assurance ultimately of their salvation. Because I I'd be nervous if the assurance of salvation was coming from my good works. I'm I'm I'm inclined to say that the scripture comes at the foot of the cross. Yes. And that that's what assures me of my salvation.
SPEAKER_01:When they say, How will you know whether someone is a disciple of Christ? Wouldn't that be the same way you would measure yourself by their works, by their love for one another, by their fruit. And that's the measure. So why would if if that's the measure for you to see other people, whether or not other people are following Christ, how else would you know someone is a Christian? Right. They should be living like a Christian, right?
SPEAKER_06:In that, we absolutely have the hope of salvation. Yeah, you can even say have the assurance of salvation. Paul uses the language, but it's not an assurance because it was uh decided before I was ever born, right? Or that I've been elected and I can't even sin my way out of the faith, if you will, right? It it's rather in the assurance of the faithfulness of God and in the promises of God. We believe that one wholeheartedly, and that's why the church exists.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_06:We're sealed at the time of baptism, right? That's an assurance. We have the Holy Spirit, but it's up to us not to fall away from the faith, right? As Hebrews 3 points out, to fall back into sin and literally fall off the path. It can happen. It's what I mean, even Revelation talks about those in the book of life who are erased from the book of life, right? It's that's powerful language. Thank you so much for listening this long to Cloud of Witnesses. This has been an awesome discussion. I want to thank James St. Simon for joining us tonight, as well as Mario, Andrew. It's it's always a pleasure. Please go check out our Patreon right now. We have the full uncut, unedited version of this. And believe me, we talked for a long time tonight. Um, you're only getting a part of it right now in this video. We hope you enjoyed it. Please give us a like, subscribe if you haven't already, and let us know what you think down in the comments. What did we get right? And most importantly, what did we get wrong? God bless you, and we will see you on the next one. Bye-bye.