a lot of Christians want to be like the early church my question is which early church you mean the ones that kept getting letters from Paul because of how much they were screwing [Music] up hey guys welcome back to kingdomcraft where we build churches in Minecraft while talking about Christianity and today we're going to be talking about whether we can find Protestant or calvinist beliefs in the early church and here's where the Catholic keyboard Warriors comment no and leave the video so God bless have a great day for those of you who are still watching here's what I'll say so this is a very common argument levied against us by I don't want to say Catholics and Orthodox because I know the intellectuals of those Traditions know better than to use a cheap argument like this like I know Trent horn wouldn't use an argument like that he's he's a good guy but on like Twitter and Instagram you'll find Catholic and Eastern Orthodox people saying oh protestantism is only like 500 years old it's like your church didn't exist before Martin Luther like your church was founded by Martin Luther and John Kelvin my church was by Jesus and I know it's not the most intellectual argument it's not the most intellectually honest argument but I do get DMS and emails from a lot of Protestants saying that someone said that to them online and they don't know how to respond to it so they need my help in responding to it I have to like do people's homework for them by winning Arguments for them I'm not trying to win arguments here I'm just trying to explain to Protestants what our reasoning behind this is so did protestantism as we know it today exist in the early church well obviously not so guys pack it up we're going home it's time to return to to the one true church which could be several different things let's start debating that now no um no of course protestantism as we know it today didn't exist in the early church because the label Protestant refers to the Protestant Reformation which hadn't happened back then but the Protestant Reformation was a Reformation it's in the name Reformation it wasn't trying to create a new church it was taking the existing church and reforming it the word reform means to take something that already exists and and reform it that's what it means so obviously protestantism in its current form didn't exist in the early church but that's like asking if Christianity in its ear in its current form existed in the Old Testament we would say obviously not the faith of the New Testament is a continuation of the faith of the Old Testament but given a new label in light of the coming of Christ so likewise Protestant churches are a continuation of the previous Catholic churches but given a new label in light of the Protestant Reformation and the Protestant Reformation wasn't creating a new church the Protestant reformers did not believe the church ever died the church is like a pure snowball that was rolling down a muddy Hill for many centuries uh accumulating more and more unbiblical things so the Protestant Reformation was cleaning off that snowball as Doug Wilson says when someone asks a Protestant where was the church before the Reformation ask where was your face before you washed it the Protestant Reformation was not about the early church Church versus some random guys new ideas it was about the current teachings of the Catholic Church which they thought went against a lot of what the early church said so obviously Christianity in its current form didn't exist in the Old Testament but Christianity did exist in the Old Testament under types and shadows so protestantism in its current form didn't exist in the early church but a lot of the ideas behind protestantism existed in the early Church in seed form now some people will be like yeah sure Protestant ideas existed in the early church as heresies ooh gotcha but you know when the reformers were arguing for their beliefs they didn't just quote Heretics like origin and noorus there's this myth that Protestants are an historian I mean there are some Baptists and evangelicals who don't want to call Mary the Mother of God but aside from that I don't know where they're getting that um they just quote like origin and the story they quoted Augustine St John costum St Gregory nazan like read John Calvin read John Calvin's institutes John Calvin quotes Church fathers in his institutes way more than St athanasius does when athanasius is in his anti- Arian discourses just read them uh don't don't take my word for it don't take some random Orthodox YouTub word for it read them yourself read these texts for yourself if you read John Calvin's institutes it is full of quotes from the church fathers now of course they'll say oh you're just quote mining well what what does quote mining mean we're we're not quote mining we're just quoting they have to say quote mining because in their system we can't possibly have any consistency with the early church like they they'll say oh you're quote mining because it's out of context but if we ask okay what is the context they'll say oh the context is that they all agreed with us okay well that's circular reasoning so not very helpful the truth is that a lot of protestant ideas did exist in the early Church in seed form and I'll give you some examples number one is the whole issue with icons when the reformers were making their arguments they saw a very stark contrast between the early Church's perspective on icons and then the church's later perspective on icons after the second Council of NAA there's many quotes from the early church about how they do not use icons in worship they do not venerate icons there were some people in the early church who had images of Christ for teaching purposes there were other people in the early church who were opposed to all iconography now I'm not the best person to make the an argument for this point specifically if you want that you can watch Gavin ortland video about icons I'm linking it in the description of this video but the point is that there are things that were very clearly t in the early church that the Protestant reformers saw a departure from so part of the Reformation was about going back to what the early church said so did protestantism exist in the early church well obviously not in its current form because there wasn't anything to protest yet but the ideas behind the Protestant Reformation absolutely did exist in the early church now another thing is communion in both kinds both the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches have this habit of not doing Comm Union in both kinds the Orthodox Church often does intinction and the Catholic Church often uh doesn't give people the bread and the wine they just give people the bread now for those of you who don't know intinction is when in communion you dip the bread in the wine rather than eating the bread and drinking the wine now obviously we can make a Biblical case against this Jesus said eat this is my body take drink this is my blood it's very obvious but we want to appeal to tradition as well because um just because we believe in solar scriptor just because we believe the Bible is the only infallible Authority doesn't mean we believe it's the only Authority period so it is helpful to appeal to tradition and in the early church people did communion in both kinds and the reformers saw a departure from the early church on this particular issue so there's many ways in which the early church was different than the current Roman Church at the time of the reformation and that stark contrast is what fed the Reformation the Reformation was sort of parallel with the Renaissance movement and the rallying Cry of the Renaissance was ad Fontes which means back to the source people were discovering old texts such as texts from the early church people were discovering that certain things were forgeries and they had to reconsider what they believed in light of that so the Reformation was not a departure from what the early church believed and many ways it was a going back to what the early church believed now at the same time I do believe it's wrong to say that the early church is this gold standard and we need to agree with the early church on everything that's like saying the Old Testament is some gold standard not not the Old Testament itself but like the Jewish Community the Old Testament is some gold standard and that the um we all need to be completely in line with that because that's like an Orthodox Jewish argument now I'm not saying Catholics and Eastern Orthodox people are like this because they're Christians but a lot of the arguments they use against Protestants are the same arguments that Orthodox Jews use against Christians I'm not saying that um I'm not trying to compare Catholics to Orthodox Jews because you know Catholics are Christian and Orthodox Jews are not Christians they're Jewish but they use a lot of the same arguments and I know this because I have a Jewish Heritage and I have interacted with a lot of Orthodox Jews and they'll say things like oh you can't use your old testament to point to Christ you can't point to verses about Christ in the Old Testament because the Old Testament comes from our tradition we assembled your Bible so you need to interpret your Bible along with our uh rabinal traditions and they don't consider the possibility that maybe their Traditions might have gone astray at some point that sounds exactly like what the Catholics say the Catholics say oh you Protestants can't use the Bible to support your doctrines because because we assembled your Bible and therefore you need to interpret the Bible along with our Traditions the Catholics don't think it's possible that maybe the church could have gone astray at some point but if you actually read the Bible that you supposedly assembled you'll see that the church always goes astray both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament so it wouldn't make much sense to say that like like if you were a first century Christian who's first hearing about Jesus it wouldn't make sense to say oh we need to be exactly like the Old Testament Israelites you know sometimes the Old Testament Israelites were good and sometimes they were not they turned their backs on God all the time The Book of Judges is the church committing apostasy like every single generation and needing to turn back every single generation now to be clear the church never fully dies out God always preserves a Remnant both in the Old and New Testaments but the church is more or less faithful at various times and places in history and that's exactly what we see in the Bible but only Protestants can really be honest about that so this idea that old means good is just not a Biblical idea in fact there is progressive revelation in scripture and it would seem in scripture and Carl Bart has helped me realize this that our knowledge of God seems to get better over time because there is such a thing as progressive revelation more stuff gets revealed over time now this doesn't mean we should change what we believe we should rather build on what we believe so I'm not saying we should depart from the church fathers but in some way we should build on the ideas of the church fathers we shouldn't think of the church Fathers as this infallible golden age of the church and everything else we believe needs to be in light of that no not at all and I don't think the church fathers would want us to think like that for example St Jerome great not not sorry not St jome um Justin Martyr Justin Martyr is one of the most important Church fathers one of the most uh important apologists of the anti- nyine Christian Church however his articulation of the doctrine of the Trinity is kind of sloppy is it his fault no because he lived before the you know first ecumenical councils when the doctrine of the Trinity was really clearly straightened out so yet he was still a faithful Christian he was still a faithful Christian apologist but at the same time his articulation of that Doctrine was a bit sloppy because there is progressive revelation now I don't believe there's any new public revelation of the church after the apostolic era has concluded but the church by the guidance of the Holy Spirit still grows in its understanding over time I believe what a lot of modern Catholics believe in the development of doctrine that although truth itself doesn't change and God doesn't change and God's covenant doesn't change our Theology and understanding of God does develop and grow over time as we understand more and more as we grow in our understanding a lot of people want to join some church that never changes its beliefs but that's wishful thinking with sinful finite humans like us that's not possible and this is where Carl Bart is helpful he says theology is a science and science does improve over time he also says that all theology is a limited flawed human attempt to summarize the incomprehensible truth that is the gospel so some people might wonder why do Protestants think it took the church 1500 years to get it right our answer is we still haven't gotten it 100% right we shouldn't be like the theologically liberal Christians who want to Simply deny the past who want to Simply say oh the church fathers got it completely wrong if there is any Doctrine the church fathers were complet completely unanimous about we probably shouldn't deny it and that's why I think it really is hard to justify you know Baptist Evangelical non-denominational Christianity um in light of church history because a lot of what they believe such as believing the sacraments don't do anything that completely goes against the unanimous consensus of the church fathers but the church fathers don't have a consensus on very much they disagreed with each other very frequently like if you if you listen to your average Catholic and easn Orthodox apologist they'll say the church fathers were completely in agreement on everything they'll make it sound like oh all the church fathers were my denomination if it's a Catholic person talking they'll say all the church fathers were catholic if it's an East Orthodox person they'll say all the church fathers were East Orthodox if it's an oriental Orthodox person they'll say all the church fathers were Oriental Orthodox I think Protestants can have a more realistic view of church history Protestants don't claim that all the church fathers always agreed with us on everything but traditional Presbyterians can find everything we believe somewhere in the fathers St Jerome supported our shorter Cannon of scripture and argued that the early church had a presbyterian government that gradually evolved into an Episcopal one due to people being power hungry and our soteriology meaning what we believe about salvation largely comes from St Augustine St Augustine also has a lot of statements supporting solos scrip Tor so let's talk about Austine Augustine's a saint um he believed in double predestination most intellectually honest Scholars will admit that he also you can just read his Works read his on the spirit and the letter he believed in double predestination and calvinist ideas of double predestination come from Augustine's writings in fact the more proper academic definition for what is commonly called Calvinism is just augustinianism because AUST Augustine was the first one to clearly articulate those doctrines but there's some other Church fathers I'll admit who don't really have a completely augustinian view of predestination and things like that so yeah the church fathers do not always agree with each other on things the way the capid ocian fathers articulated the Trinity is a little bit different from the way St Augustine articulated the Trinity they they didn't believe in different trinities but their articulations of the doctrine of the Trinity were different for example it seems like Augustine believed in the Philo and the capid oian fathers probably didn't I know that you know some Catholic apologists will claim the capid ocian fathers believe in the Phil oqu and I believe in the Philo of course but you know I I can see where Eastern Orthodox get their doctrines from regarding the the the Trinity and the philio I can see how their doctrines largely do come from the capid oian fathers the same way I can see how a lot of Western the ology both Catholic and Protestant comes from Augustine so if you're Protestant you can have a realistic view of church history that the church fathers believed a lot of things so the most realistic and objective view of church history is not that the church fathers were all Catholic it's not that the church fathers were all Eastern Orthodox it's not that the church fathers were all Oriental Orthodox it's not that the church fathers were all Calvinists is that the church fathers were simply the church fathers and the ideas of most modern denominations existed in seed form in the church fathers um but for every Church Father pick a church father and pick a denomination and you will find uh a contradiction there's not a single Church Father agreed with any mon modern denomination on everything on any on any point at all uh you people will try to claim that but it's not a uh historically tenable position and the scholars of every tradition will admit that it's mainly just the pop apologists who who won't admit that and we'll try to pretend everyone was on their side so I guess the way Protestants should approach this is with a branch Theory approach I know a branch Theory sounds like an Anglican thing and everyone thinks I'm just a closeted Anglican but if you look at church history from an objective point of view it really is a bunch of different branches from the same Roots the Roots are the early Church founded by Jesus and the apostles and the different branches are the different denominations that is what you will find if you look at church history from an objective unbiased perspective however only Protestants can really be honest about that only Protestants can really be honest about the fact that the knowledge of the Gospel the knowledge of the truth evolves over time just the way it did between the Old Testament and the New Testament yes it's a little bit different because God has not made a New Covenant with us but even Catholics and some Orthodox people will admit that our theological knowledge does indeed grow and develop over time it's the same way a lot of dogmas about Mary in the Roman Catholic Church some of them were not made official until quite recently so I'm not saying it's wrong because of that because I understand that no matter what denomination you are in there is development of Doctrine so that's my quick explanation for uh can we find Protestant beliefs in the early church I'm not saying the whole early church was Protestant but it also wasn't Catholic or rased in Orthodox the early church was simply the early church all of the different denominations sprang from that so who is correct well luckily that is why we have the Bible [Music] n [Laughter] [Music] a oh [Music] a [Music] n [Music]