There is No Such Thing as Protestant Doctrine

The title of this post may surprise some people, but it is absolutely true. There is no such thing as a single set of Protestant doctrines. Many people don’t realize that the arguments for Catholicism against Protestantism don’t deal with a fixed bundle of doctrines that remain unchanged, but a constantly changing set of beliefs and doctrines that are not uniform among Protestants. Any Catholic arguing with a Protestant must first find out which sect a Protestant belongs to and then also find out which doctrines that particular Protestant accepts from their sect and if they have created any new ones on their own.

Each different sect, and really each different Protestant, has their own set of doctrines. There is no person or entity in Protestantism that has binding authority to declare and define doctrines and dogmas that must be believed and accepted by all Protestants. This is because the very foundation of Protestantism and the Protestant Revolt was the rejection of the one authority in Christianity that CAN bind Christians to certain beliefs, doctrines and dogmas.

The response from many Protestants to this fact about no single set of doctrines is to claim that there are primary (or essential) and secondary (or non-essential) doctrines. They claim that there are doctrines that deal with salvation and those that do not. They will claim that there is unity among Protestants with the primary/essential doctrines and variety among the secondary/non-essential doctrines. The first problem with this claim is that there is no list of what are primary/essential doctrines in the Bible. The second problem is that there is not even agreement among Protestants about what constitutes the primary/essential doctrines.

If you want to even ignore these first two problems with the primary vs secondary doctrines claim, even if you accepted this claim, it is STILL not true. Let’s take a look at a couple of doctrines to see if there is unity.

Baptism

On the doctrine of baptism, there are a wide variety of beliefs among the Protestant sects, with those beliefs being mutually contradictory and as such, there is no possible way for all of them to be true at the same time.

Take for example one of the Lutheran sects, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) which believe that “Baptism is God's gracious means of conveying to human beings His saving grace revealed to us in Jesus Christ our Savior” and also “It is not a mere ‘ritual’ or ‘symbol,’ but a powerful means of grace by which God grants faith and the forgiveness of sins”. This is very clear in their beliefs that “Baptism is God’s act, a divine testimony to what ‘grace alone’ really means, whereby He imparts the blessings of forgiveness, life, and salvation to individuals, children and adults alike.”

Now let’s look at one Baptist sect, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), which believes baptism “is an act of obedience symbolizing the believer’s faith” and that “it is a testimony to his faith”. They believe that it is an “ordinance” given from God but NOT a sacrament. They ABSOLUTELY DO NOT believe that baptism conveys forgiveness of sins or grants God’s saving grace, as the LCMS do. They even deny that babies can be baptized as the Lutherans do. They utterly reject these beliefs about baptism that some Lutherans proclaim. (Mind you, you can find a plethora of other sects of Lutherans and Baptists who believe differently from these two examples given here.)

Now looking at these two views on baptism, and using the law of non-contradiction, it is impossible for both of these two beliefs to be correct. At most, only one of these beliefs could possibly be actual Christian doctrine and belief about baptism. (The truth is that both groups have incorrect doctrines on baptism, but let’s stay focused on this topic.) So this is a doctrine that, in the Lutheran view, is dealing with something that forgives sins and conveys God’s saving grace. This simply CANNOT be a secondary or non-essential doctrine for Lutherans. Now if a Baptist wants to argue that the Lutheran is wrong, and baptism is not a primary or essential doctrine, let’s look at a doctrine that is simply impossible for any Protestant to claim is secondary or non-essential, the doctrine of Sola Scriptura (Scripture Alone).

Sola Scriptura

The LCMS believe that “the Word of God shall establish articles of faith” and that Scripture has “the divine authority to serve as the church’s sole standard of doctrine and life”. But the LCMS also have a book called the Confessions which they believe are drawn from the Scriptures and hold that “their doctrinal content as a true and binding exposition of Holy Scripture and as authoritative”. So for the LCMS, their belief in Sola Scriptura means that Scripture has authority but ALSO the Confessions have authority as well.

The SBC believe that Baptists generally believe Scripture “is a perfect treasure of divine instruction” and is “the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried”. They do not mention which specific creeds they accept (because their membership cannot agree on any specific creed they will uniformly accept) and they outright reject the Lutheran Confessions as having any authority whatsoever. There are also other Baptists who utterly reject the idea of creeds or any other writing as having any authority whatsoever in their beliefs and doctrines.

As you can see, these two views of Sola Scriptura are not the same. Even among a primary and essential doctrine, one of the founding doctrines of Protestantism, you cannot find agreement on what that doctrine even is.

The truth is that there is one and only one belief that all Protestants share. Literally the ONLY belief that all Protestants agree upon is that the Catholic Church is wrong. And that’s because all arguments from Protestants and Protestantism revolves around the question of authority. The Catholic Church is the only Church which claims to have universal and binding authority over all Christians and Christianity, and as such is the one and only Church that all Protestants must oppose.

Now there might be some objection to this claim above, and would counter that all Protestants agree that Jesus is Divine. Except this is not true. There are several Protestant sects which outright deny the Divinity of Christ, such as the Oneness Pentecostals, they Mormons and the Seventh Day Adventists. The reply to this from some would be to claim that these groups are not Protestants and that they are not even Christian. Except this rebuttal has a fatal flaw. This claim rests upon the implicit claim that there is an authority in the Protestant world which can declare these groups as in error and their doctrines as error. Such an authority is LITERALLY the foundational objection that Protestantism began and continues to protest against. If a Protestant tries to claim these groups are in error, simply ask them if they personally are the one who sets, determines and defines binding Christian doctrines for all Christians. They will respond that they do not, but that Scripture does. The final retort to that is to remind them that the LDS, Oneness Pentecostals and SDA’s all claim to follow Scripture alone.