The Protestant/Christian Standard Or Chaos

Here is a great teaching to learn about the endless schisms and false authority claims in history both from Rome and Istanbul, mostly the latter:

“Filioque: How Eastern Orthodoxy Anathematizes the Church Fathers.” https://youtu.be/5mEMG4tkQf0?si=oHyqNQufcJj1yi-r via @YouTube.

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The fact is that neither the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) nor the opposing Eastern Orthodox Church (EOC) today represent the Faith of the apostles. This is evident when you know where to look. My Baptist (Protestant) church is also not the infallible standard in the world. All of us are judged by the Lord and the standard that he has given us in his word and will emerge either as members of the body building well upon the foundation, or building poorly, or as enemies of Jesus who’ve attacked the foundation. What’s clear regarding both the RCC and EOC today is that they’ve both departed from the roots we share while they outright mock and condemn the grace of Christ for their ever-varying un-biblical sacramental apostasies and siloed dogmatisms. They’ve both set up new and mutually exclusive standards via their selective post-apostolic authority claims. Protestants have not. Our cry is Sola Scriptura; theirs is Sola Ecclesia (and varying ecclesias at that).

Reader, history is hard. No one grasps it all, and he who frames the argument often wins it…especially these days in the sea of ignorance that’s often ours. What emerges to us today in any study of history is that we do indeed need a standard. God knew it. We needed it, need it still, and God has given it. What that standard is is not the endless power schisms of popes or patriarchs but the word of God. Period. When we use that well, the wolves are kept at bay. And we can use it well. God’s word (which no one claims is anywhere other than the Bible) stands above us all as its author intended. It’s wonderful…beautiful…and terrifyingly hard sometimes…yet sublimely pure and evident.

Have claimed protestants always practiced this? No. But the same standard remains intact to correct them too.

The true church catholic would not understand the Faith as it does without the constant challenges from “without.” That is from those who outright deny God’s teaching and didn’t always even pretend to value them. Gnosticism, Islam, Mormonism, etc. No doubt. We also, however, and this is key, would not understand the value of “Scripture Alone” (the 16th century solidification of it) without the challenges that arose from “within,” that is from among those who claimed fidelity to Christ yet added their traditions onto the Faith in the medieval era. Simply put- both Rome and Istanbul (EOC & RCC) stand guilty today of adding their opposing church(es) to Christ. Whatever arguments can be made in understanding how this may have occurred, the dangers of it are now on full display. “Jesus’ church” now to them means “their church.” Holding the faith of the apostles in Christ (which they deny) is not enough for them.

Protestantism, as it’s today understood, that esteems Scripture as the sole inspired and sole infallible rule for doctrine remains the un-changed and most historic and biblical approach to the Christian life. Wherever this approach was seen in history, be it in the EOC or in the RCC or to the uttermost parts of the earth, we see the church catholic at work.

What is essential is clear in Scripture. What’s not is clear also by Scripture. And most if not every one of the church fathers would agree with us on this as they did not hold to the medieval and scholastic devolutions of either the RCC or the EOC of today.

Grace to all who call upon the triune God and his never-changing Gospel (of non-sacramental salvation) through the Cross. Anathema to the attackers. The apostles taught us to look to Christ, who could be understood, and who by God the Holy Spirit has always been revealed in the hearts of God’s children who believe…everywhere they’ve been found.