Combox for:
Reply to C. Michael Patton on Sola Scriptura, Part Six (Divisions)
[19 November 2008]
http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2...on-
sola_19.html
This is the worst and weakest argument I have ever seen a Protestant make in order to defend not only SS but their entire movement.
Its very much lacking, not only that it ignores much of the New Testament when it gives instructions to the faithful as Dave has pointed out.
Dave,
Has Michael responded to your critiques? Is he even aware that his defense appears all over the place, is inconsistent and collapses under it's own weight?
I received a return letter from Michael on 11-14-08, complimenting me on my replies. He said that if he "cannot get around to responding" that he would perhaps direct some of his "students" to my posts.
I totally agree with Giovanni here. This was an embarrassing case of defending the indefensible.
Of all the issues Dave mentioned, I think one huge issue today is the "Federal Vision" and New Perspective 'controversies' within conservative Reformed Protestantism. The Federal Visionists want to revamp liturgy to make the Sacraments more frequent and such as well as EXPLICITLY deny that a Christian has to affirm imputation in justification. The Reformed camp is screaming about this because the FV crowd is calling itself Reformed yet is denying a central tenet of Protestantism. The New Perspective crowd is very similar, and are making a big case claiming Paul was never primarily concerned about pelagianism but with how the Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians would get along. The New Perspective camp is denying imputed righteousness, denying 'righteousness of God' means what Protestants have always thought it to mean (a gas that floats across the courtroom and lands ontop of the defendant), etc, etc. The FV and NPP are making inroads into the Reformed camp and making a lot of popular reformed authors (eg Sproul, Piper, etc) very uneasy.
AND BEST OF ALL these FV and NPP people are parading around under the Sola Scriptura banner!...this means they cannot be stopped or told 'no' by objectors.
One of the leading New Perspective authors is NT Wright, he has made it explicitly clear he is simply trying to be faithful to Scripture and even that he is being more faithful to Sola Scriptura than his Reformed objectors.
As for the 33,000 denominations argument, after looking into the issue I agree it is wrong for Catholics to go around saying "33,000" because that is misquoting the actual source that that number came from.
HOWEVER, the data is still valuable and I made this case about a year ago using that same data and source:
Basically the truth is the Encyclopedia quoted says there are 33,000 Christian bodies total in 238 countries (ie there are 238 countries in the world). Thus if the Catholic Church exists in 238 countries it will be be counted as 238 of that 33,000. Given this info about the Catholic (and minus the Orthodox which are a little higher) the Protestant bodies number about 30,000 of the 33,000 over 238 countries. And if each of those denominations is located in every single country that means there are actually 126 distinct denominations. However it is unrealistic to say that each of those denominations is located in every single country, in fact I would say quite the opposite. Lets just say 100 of those 126 distinct denominations were in every country though, that means (238 x 100 =) 23,800 of the 30,000 are "repeats", yet that still leaves a total of 6,200 distinct denominations. If only 50 of those 126 are in every country then the total of denominations is 18,100.
So in the end, yes often trumpeted number of 33,000 DISTINCT denominations is incorrect based on the actual source from which that number was drawn. That being said it isnt a stretch to say based on the evidence there are easily 10,000 distinct Protestant denominations (and that is me giving the benefit of the doubt) total given the great unlikelihood that each denomination has a church in all 238 countries.
In my opinion the fair numbering is "only" about 10,000 distinct protestant denominations.
Oops, here is the Encyclopedia I was talking about:
http://www.bringyou.to/apologeti...getics/
a106.htm
Commenting by HaloScan
