What Church Unity Is Not (Part 1 of 2)
Sometimes when people are out of their depth, they talk anyway and keep talking. Recently, a panel of Reformed Protestant ministers (March 2023; see here, ca. the 17:20 mark) was asked whether denominational pluralism among Protestants, and, beneath it, the theological pluralism between groups claiming sola scriptura, points to (1) a problem with the principle of sola scriptura itself and (2) a problem in the very fact of Protestant denominations. Notably, nobody touched the issue of sola scriptura, which was the principle at the heart of the question. Instead, the panel of preachers suggested that Protestant communities do not reflect a lack of unity on “essential” or “primary” doctrines, a category which, while not really defined, was briefly filled out with three examples that included “the gospel” (i.e., Martin Luther’s monergistic theory of justification, sola fide); Trinitarianism; and heaven and hell. This claim was followed by a comment that “the true church” is indeed unified. However, that “true church” was left unidentified (according to John Calvin himself and Reformed confessions, in this life, the “true church” is intrinsically invisible and ultimately unknowable). The speakers also emphasized that there are disagreements and debates among Catholics (esp. activist German bishops and social media personalities), warning the audience that there are Protestants who are “taken by…romantic myths” about unity in “Roman Catholicism” or “the Roman Church.”
This post merely responds to the Ligonier panel’s three-part claim of Protestant unity and shows why, historically, it cannot be taken seriously.
Central to their discussion of Protestants and Catholics was a grassroots conception of “unity” as an aggregate of individuals who think alike. Their examples of particular Catholics (≠ the Church and its teaching) stressed the fact of persons in disagreement while their examples of particular Protestants stressed persons in agreement. I will return to this conception of unity.
A preliminary correction of nomenclature
My sense is that what they meant by Roman Catholicism is the Catholic Church generally, not specifically the Western rite, which is the proper referent of the adjectival phrase “Roman Catholic” and the nominal phrase “Roman Catholicism.” They are linguistic-geographical descriptions (i.e., historically, the Catholic Church’s discipline and liturgy as practiced in the Western, Latin-speaking part of the Roman empire; cf. the Greek-speaking Eastern rite). Likewise, I assume that by the “Roman Church” they meant not parishes in Rome, which fall within the Roman rite, but again the Catholic Church generally.
Protestant unity amid denominational pluralism, or: What’s the big deal?
The Ligonier panel’s declaration that Protestants are united on what they called “essential” doctrines is objectively false. Theoretically, they could salvage the claim by revising it to say that the three doctrines mentioned (sola fide; the Trinity; heaven and hell) are not actually “primary” for Protestants, but rather “second-level.” Or alternatively, they could say that those outside of their Reformed circles are not real Protestants. But they almost certainly were not claiming that, given how they spoke generically of “Protestants” and “evangelicals” as unified on this front (for a contrary view, see Ligonier’s own survey data and that of the Pew Research Center). At any rate, the three doctrines they deemed “essential” or “primary” are hardly affirmed by all Protestant groups. For space purposes, let us limit ourselves to those explicitly mentioned.
First: Starting with Martin Luther in the 16th century, some Protestants portray the teaching of sola fide as itself “the gospel.” Despite the recycling of this equation in Reformed circles (e.g., R. C. Sproul, Are We Together?: “…to anathematize it was to anathematize the gospel”), Luther’s sola fide has not been well received among numerous Anabaptist, Wesleyan, and Anglican communities. The Anabaptists dismissed assumptions necessary for Lutheran and Reformed theologies, with a conception of sin that rendered moot their teachings on justification by faith alone (see the discussion of historian Carlos Eire, Reformations, chap. 11). Anabaptists, no less than Lutherans and Calvinists, were drivers of Protestant Reformation. Furthermore, the founder of Methodism John Wesley is known for a view of justification by faith that is at odds with Luther and Calvin’s teachings (e.g., see Wesley’s sermon “On working out our own salvation,” where he presents a synergistic conception of justification). Yet he and Methodists are Protestant by any standard definition. Much the same applies to Restorationist groups rooted in 19th century revivals and Scottish Presbyterianism (e.g., in David Lipscomb’s commentary on Rom 1:16–17; see Richard Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith, 173). Various Anglicans too, such as the Tractarians, have not held Lutheran or Reformed stances on justification. These are only some of the Protestant groups who would call a bluff on Luther’s tendency to equate his own monergistic theory of justification, sola fide, with “the gospel” (a tendency that, as the Ligonier panel illustrated, lives on in some Reformed circles). There is no singular doctrine of justification among Protestant confessions, nor is there common affirmation that a theory of justification is “the gospel.”
Second: The Trinity is not a common thread. Particularly outside of “magisterial” Protestant circles (i.e., Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican), there is a history of Protestant non-Trinitarianism founded on sola scriptura. Magisterial Protestantism is not a synonym for “real” or “mainstream” Protestantism; the moniker “magisterial” converges chiefly with the fact that these are the main, and rival, Protestant forms to have received state sponsorship. Outside of these circles that have been state religions, examples of non-Trinitarian Protestantism include lines of Quakers (e.g., William Penn’s “The Sandy Foundation Shaken,” pub. 1688); parts of the Stone-Campbell movement; Oneness Pentecostals; Christadelphians; and Unitarians. Not only does the Bible never mention “the Trinity” per se as some of these groups would doubtless say, but also it contains more than three terms for Israel’s deity without explaining how they relate to each other or ever suggesting that one should stop at the third term (e.g., Yhwh, Elohim, Adonai, El Shaddai, El, Baal, etc.).
Third: Heaven and hell are not affirmed by all Protestant groups, not even within the Ligonier panel’s own Reformed tradition. It has a universalist, sola scriptura line of theology associated with the Swiss Calvinist theologian Karl Barth (e.g., Kirchliche Dogmatik; trans. Church Dogmatics, IV.3.2). Barth’s Calvinist brand of universalism needs to be qualified: he was not universalist to the extent that his theology centered on Jesus Christ, but he was universalist to the extent that he emphasized Jesus Christ reconciling all. Furthermore, Unitarians have espoused a more colloquial sense of “universalist” doctrine. I will stop at this point, though there are other crucial areas where Protestant communities are doctrinally incompatible with one another (e.g., the doctrine of God; the nature of the church; the teaching authority of the church; human nature; the nature of sin; the nature of salvation; baptism; the Eucharist; marriage; how to interpret scripture; whether any canon is needed; etc.).
Here is the issue. In the second half of the 16th century when the era of confessionalization became concrete, it was symptomatic of sola scriptura’s inability to unify those who had parted ways with the Catholic Church (see further Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation, 317–545). Contradictions are not and cannot be true; the rise of denominations meant not only diversity, but formalized institutional contradiction.
John Calvin in 1552 on emergent confessionalization
What does denominational pluralism mean for the credibility of Protestantism and the principle of sola scriptura? According to the second-generation reformer John Calvin, confessionalization, if it continued (which it did), would be an embarrassment to Protestantism’s cause. In a letter to the Lutheran Philip Melanchton, dated 28 November 1552, Calvin wrote how important it was that future generations not realize the profound differences dividing the earliest generations of Protestants—differences that were emerging as official through the formalizing of denominations. Rhetorically, Calvin’s letter weaves together statements about his personal affection for Melanchton, on the one hand, with assertions that Melanchton is “too philosophical” and suffers from character flaws that account for his being unpersuaded by Calvin, on the other. For instance, on their disagreement about election and freedom of the will, Calvin alleges that “you seem to have no other purpose, save that you may suit yourself to the common feeling of mankind.” Yet out of a concern to manage public awareness of Protestant divisions, Calvin acknowledges that, for pragmatic reasons, “all my colleagues and myself openly professed to hold the same opinion on that doctrine which you hold,” pointing out to the Lutheran that such a “reserved expression of opinion cannot but pain me exceedingly.” Theological divisions were starting to require skill in public relations in order to maintain the cause’s reputation.
On the problem of theological divisions that emerged through rival Lutheran and Reformed readers claiming sola scriptura as their guiding principle, Calvin in the same letter wrote the following:
For you see how the eyes of many are turned upon us, so that the wicked take occasion from our dissensions to speak evil, and the weak are only perplexed by our unintelligible disputations. Nor, in truth, is it of little importance to prevent the suspicion of any difference having arisen between us from being handed down in any way to posterity; for it is worse than absurd that parties should be found disagreeing on the very principles, after we have been compelled to make our departure from the world. I know and confess, moreover, that we occupy widely different positions.
Calvin rightly perceived the significance of formalized Protestant divisions, but the era of confessionalization was just getting started and would only accelerate. His willingness to admit it, as well as his being disturbed by its grounding in rival Protestant claims from shared principles, contrasts markedly with the attitude of the Reformed preachers in business suits mentioned above.
Unity is not an aggregate
A major problem in the aggregate conception of unity assumed by the Ligonier panel is that it focuses mainly on individuals and what they autonomously do or do not profess to think, abstracted from the church or, for that matter, any institution with a claim on them—though possibly an exception for them would be patriotic loyalty to the state (“the true church,” please recall, is not identified). This notion of unity mirrors the ground-up, democratic ethos of modern states founded on classical liberalism; it is no secret that classical liberalism and Protestantism, as fellow products of modernity, have a hand-in-glove fit with each other (see, e.g., Charles Taylor, A Secular Age; Brad Gregory, The Unintended Reformation; James Simpson, Permanent Revolution). For such reasons, contemporary evangelicalism tends to collapse into forms of church-shopping individualism, which is what our consumerist culture encourages and what is behind some Protestants’ responses to these historical discussions when they hear them and think, “But this doesn’t describe me.”
In a future post I’ll focus more on the notion of unity itself, specifying what it is. The aggregate conception of unity is not the classical Christian understanding of unity.
