A Protestant Reflection
November 2022
Note: The following was not written by me. It is a YouTube comment I found. Popular YouTuber Christian apologist, Cameron Bertuzzi (Capturing Christianity), after a thorough dive into scripture and his convictions, decided to convert to Catholicism. Plenty of Protestant YouTube channels made uncharitable videos talking about it. This is a comment left by a fellow Protestant on the video.
Commented on: this video
Fellow Protestant here – I mean this in the most charitable way possible.
So far the responses to Cameron’s conversion are not being thought through thoroughly — I say this as a Protestant bible expositor / teacher. You (we) will discount ourselves if we respond in caricature or straw man arguments.
So, first, the pattern of scripture is in fact God placing a singular figure or a federal head — or a judge or priest over the body of Christ – or His identified people so perhaps we ought to better qualify our statement or objections. So, if we just look at the Bible we see it everywhere. So, Adam, right? Check. Noah? Check. Abraham? Check. Moses? Check. Joshua? Check. Saul? Samuel? Judges? David? Apostles? Check and check. So, we should argue our position realizing the pattern is overwhelmingly reasonable at the very least at face value of the text. Our job or task is to defend the argument for discontinuity if anything — and the shift in precedence for its erosion.
Next, Protestants are leaving in part because we literally have the same scandals. Fallen pastors, corruption, sexual abuse of all kinds, money being mishandled, etc. Idolatry — except it comes in the form of ‘self’ and big houses and nice cars. Not all but some.
Also, we have a lack of unity. For example, let’s take a single conference … say a “solid” Ligonier conference. If we truly pressed the speakers to answer doctrinal questions, like say roughly 8 speakers…the answers would be completely different. I know this for a fact … trust me. Different interpretations on end times, old earth vs new earth, baptism, sacrament, divorce, election, Mary, women deacons, covenant theology, seminary, liturgy, etc. … but then we say we have unity in the gospel — but let’s be honest we have unity in our presentation and in our gospel elevator pitch — but we disagree on a lot — and I mean a whole lot. Massive doctrinal positions that have huge gospel implications.
We disagree on essentials. In fact, we have different versions of essentials. We even disagree on whether or not we can lose our salvation. This is why people leave, brother. Not to mention our one guy over the Protestant church “Luther” would probably visit 99 percent of our churches and say: “What the heck is this?” And probably call us heretics. Let alone John Calvin, Bucer, or Knox coming in to visit…sheesh. Love Luther — but so many today would call him a heretic if they truly stuck to their statement of beliefs.
I mean this in love, brother. Have you read the Ausburg? Or the book of Concordia? Or the Anglican book of common prayer? Old confessions? The WCF or the 1689? Spurgeon? JC Ryle and the puritans? These guys disagreed on a lot and we ignore it. I mean in some cases it’s literally night and day. They wrote about each other and lit each other up. Bro, if the puritans visited we’d be in trouble. Can you imagine Richard Baxter showing up to Matt Chandlers church? We’d all be in church discipline based on our liturgy alone.
And if you just take time to read and read and read some more you will see we don’t even look like what our forefathers put forth for us as Protestants to adhere to. That’s a problem which apparently we fixed? “Keep reforming” it’s been said but as we do what we are saying is: they were all wrong. We gotta own it and work our problems out and issues. People are leaving Protestant churches because Protestant pastors being charitable about Grand Canyon size gaps in core beliefs is no longer enough anymore. People are seeking and reading the church fathers and they are reading our own reformational history and it does not lend itself to what we have now. It guts me.
But what do we do? “Nope everything is fine – as long as we nailed and agree on justification (which some don’t). I think we have to do better that’s it…we have to do so much better. I say it in love, bro. The reason reformed circles don’t think we are hurting badly is because we’ve been conditioned to choose camps ( Apollos or Paul type of thing) and depending how much we disagree or agree with the other camp, determines whether or not we can do a conference together or share the pulpit.
Does anyone else realize besides me that John MacArthur’s exegesis on a very wide range of theological issues are less than 50 years old?
Again, if the puritans (who we all love) were here he’d be called out honestly. We have fundamental issues — they are serious because there is a serious lack of unity — And we even made up terms to cover it up: “tier 1 issues or tier 2 issues” “gospel coalition” “unified on the gospel” or “gospel unity” – why? Because we aren’t unified.
So, as we look at Cameron — I’d say let’s look at our front porch and have a much more adult and transparent dialogue. People are leaving and they aren’t leaving for statues but because they see and experience disunity. Listen, there are plenty of Protestant seminary guys right now and men on staff who will not become Catholic only because they love their friends and they don’t want drama with their wife or to lose everything. They are being interviewed on the internet by the way.
They’ve built their protestant careers and lively hoods on our shared beliefs and they’d jump ship but they are scared. I am Protestant – but we A LOT of work to do.