Trying to Understand 2: Protestantism

Summary: By sacrificing the teaching authority of the Church, Protestant reformers ignored Christ's promise that the Holy Spirit would guide his Church, founded on Peter, to all truth. The Protestant focus on individual interpretation of the Bible paved the way to modernistic subjectivism, as witnessed by the myriads of new denominations popping up every time a pastor develops a new theological bent. I hope any Protestant readers of this blog will consider the ideas in this post - knowing that I mean these words in Christian love - in the spirit of intellectual honesty.

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The Protestant Reformation began as a reaction against two main problems in the Church. First of all, the Church had been seduced by the secular world, and corruption abounded. Positions in the hierarchy came with rewards of private property in a time when land was the key to power and position in the secular social structure. As a result, key positions were often granted as favors, or given to family members. This practice was called nepotism. Because hierarchical positions were sought for reasons other than service to God and man, they were often neglected. Bishops would leave their dioceses in order to live where the weather was nicer, or where they could escape the pressures of their office. Some bishops were able to gain more than one bishopric, and the land that came with it, but ruling two or more dioceses was not an efficient way to serve. Furthermore, some Church officials attempted to improve their secular well-being by selling spiritual favors, a practice known as Simony. This form of corruption was the first problem against which the Reformation rebelled.

The second problem was the heresy known as Nominalism. My understanding is that Nominalism wasn’t a formal heresy, with teachers spreading it and writing down its tenants. Rather, it was an informal heresy that rose out of an uneducated and neglected laity. Nominalism was the reduction of truth to personal revelation. The Faith was full of superstitions and “mystical” ways to earn God’s favor and to win salvation. When Protestants claim that Catholics believe in earning salvation through works, the kernel of truth to that claim can be found here. The belief that salvation could be earned just by wearing certain medals or scapulars was very popular.

The problem of Nominalism corrupted doctrines that were at their core sound. The most well-known example is the use of indulgences. Indulgences have been part of the faith since the very beginning of the Church, when martyrs and confessors (those who suffered for the faith but did not die) would offer their sufferings for the salvation of others. The Church, with its power to “bind and to loosen” would apply the graces of their suffering to those who needed it (usually those who were in the catechumenate, waiting to be baptized). An indulgence usually came with a spiritual practice – a set of prayers, a pilgrimage, etc. – designed to turn the recipient’s heart away from sin and toward love for God. Unfortunately, Nominalism perverted this practice into the belief that indulgences could automatically send someone to heaven. Some corrupted Church leaders took advantage of the over-emphasis on indulgences and saw an opportunity to raise some money. While giving money can be a virtuous act worthy of an indulgence, grace can never be sold. Martin Luther’s anger against this practice was righteous. Indeed, all of these problems were true problems that needed to be combated.

Unfortunately, the Protestant Reformation overcorrected for these errors. The superstition and theological confusion caused by Nominalism caused a lot of unnecessary paranoia about salvation. What if a person did not do what was necessary to get into heaven? Martin Luther was greatly affected by this paranoia. The Protestant response to this kind of paranoia was the development of doctrines such as solo fide (salvation by faith alone) and predestination. More to the point of this exploration, in their opposition to the human corruption present in the Church, they began to doubt that the Church was divinely inspired and divinely guided. As a result, they embraced beliefs that took power away from the hierarchy of the Church, such as sola scriptura, the belief that the Bible is the only source of divine inspiration. They sacrificed the Biblical truth that the Holy Spirit would guide the Church to all truth and put the task of interpreting Sacred Scripture into the hands of individuals.

Ironically, by sacrificing the assurance of the truth of the Holy Spirit through the Church and placing the onus for interpreting theology on the individual, Protestantism gave free reign to Nominalism even while it stamped out the overt signs of it. Today, Nominalism can be easily found in the myriads of denominations that spring up at the drop of a hat, and in the myriads of contradictory theological beliefs that are glossed over, if not outright ignored, for the sake of “Christian unity.” The Bible is the Word of God, but how is it to be interpreted? Who has the authoritative interpretation? The faithful are left with no solid way to know the objective truth about God. If we cannot know solid objective truth about God, then we cannot truly know solid objective truth about anything. Our journey toward subjectivism begins with the Protestant Reformation.