Protestants, Can You Show Me What I Missed?

In a previous article, “Explaining Away” the Appeal of Catholicism, I explained why I, as a Reformed Protestant, converted to Catholicism. To restate: as a Reformed Protestant, I believed that the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation reclaimed true biblical and authentic Christianity. However, after a thorough investigation of the primary sources—including theology courses that engaged those sources directly—I could not find my Reformed Protestant faith in the early, Nicene, or post-Nicene Church, except in places that affirmed Catholic authority.

As a Protestant who adhered to the doctrine of sola scriptura, this discovery should not have troubled me, right?

Wrong.

While I adhered to sola scriptura, I also accepted doctrinal definitions outside the Bible, such as the Incarnation and the Trinity. Scripture supports these doctrines, but the Church did not define them formally until the fourth and fifth centuries—well into the period where my investigation revealed no trace of my Reformed Protestant faith.

That realization left me with another possibility. What if the true biblical and authentic Christianity—the one clearly taught in Scripture—had experienced gradual corruption? Like a lobster slowly cooking in increasingly hotter water, true biblical Christianity might have suffered slow corruption until it disappeared.

But if that happened, when did the corruption begin?

Right after the death of the apostles? Before? During the second or third centuries? The fourth century marks the beginning of the ecumenical councils, which I accepted as authoritative. And what about Jesus’ promises to protect the Church and lead her into all truth?

Instead of sola scriptura, I found a Church led by bishops who affirmed apostolic succession. Instead of autonomous congregations, I found bishops who claimed succession from the apostles. And finally, instead of localized autonomous church communities, I found one Church that pronounced anathema on those who dissented.

In other words, I found the Catholic Church.

So I ask any Protestant reading this: Did I miss something?

Can you show me what I missed?

**Show Me Sola Scriptura in the Early Church**

Where do the Fathers teach Scripture as the sole infallible rule?

In my investigation, I did not find the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura reflected in the historical evidence. Did the Fathers appeal to Scripture? Of course—but so do modern Catholics. An appeal to Scripture does not mean an appeal to Scripture alone.

Where do they deny binding apostolic succession?

The evidence shows that belief in apostolic succession reaches back to the beginning of Christianity. Scripture records that the apostles appointed bishops, and those bishops appointed others (1 Timothy 3:1–13). Around A.D. 80, Clement of Rome affirmed this continuity in his letter to the Corinthians:

Through countryside and city the apostles preached, and they appointed their earliest converts, testing them by the Spirit, to be the bishops and deacons of future believers… For this reason, therefore, having received perfect foreknowledge, they appointed those already mentioned and afterward made the further provision that, if they should die, other approved men should succeed to their ministry.

Christians have maintained this belief continuously from the earliest Church to the present day. Conversely, if sola scriptura governed the early Church, we should expect the Fathers to teach it clearly.

Show Me a Church Without Visible Authority

If Protestantism reflects true and authentic Christianity from the beginning of the Church, should we not see a far more decentralized early Church? Should we not also see doctrinal disputes settled through individual interpretation of Scripture? And what about the councils? Should we not see them appealing to Scripture alone without binding others to their authority?

Yes—we should see all of this.

Do we see it?

No.

Instead of decentralization, we see a unified Church with Rome widely recognized as holding the primacy of honor and authority. What else do we see? Councils that bind on pain of excommunication and bishops who ground their authority in their role as successors of the apostles.

Interestingly, St. Vincent of Lérins anticipated the eventual Protestant resistance to Church authority in his Commonitorium (A.D. 434), where he wrote (forgive the long quote):

But here some one perhaps will ask, Since the canon of Scripture is complete, and sufficient of itself for everything, and more than sufficient, what need is there to join with it the authority of the Church’s interpretation? For this reason — because, owing to the depth of Holy Scripture, all do not accept it in one and the same sense, but one understands its words in one way, another in another; so that it seems to be capable of as many interpretations as there are interpreters. For Novatian expounds it one way, Sabellius another, Donatus another, Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, another, Photinus, Apollinaris, Priscillian, another, Jovinian, Pelagius, Celestius, another, lastly, Nestorius another. Therefore, it is very necessary, on account of so great intricacies of such various error, that the rule for the right understanding of the prophets and apostles should be framed in accordance with the standard of Ecclesiastical and Catholic interpretation.

How does Protestantism fit within the mind of someone like St. Vincent?

Can it?

Luther and the Fragmentation Problem

Moreover, Luther—the prima reformer himself—confirmed the dangers of ignoring St. Vincent’s admonition. In his Letter to the Christians of Antwerp, he lamented:

There are almost as many sects and beliefs as there are heads. This fellow will not hear of baptism, that one denies the sacrament, another places a world between this and the last day; some teach that Christ is not God. There is no peasant so rude but that when he dreams or imagines something he must be a prophet.

Luther did not intend to produce endless doctrinal division, yet the logic of private interpretation quickly generated exactly that—and within only a decade.

If Luther and the other reformers simply returned the Church to her original and truer state, why did the early Church not suffer the same fate? Why do we not see the first centuries of Christianity splintering into “as many sects and beliefs as there are heads”?

Final Thoughts… Protestants, Can You Show Me What I Missed?

When I began my investigation, I expected to find my Reformed Protestant faith clearly reflected in the early Church. If the Reformation restored authentic biblical Christianity, then the Church closest to the apostles should resemble Protestantism.

But I did not find that Church.

Again, instead of sola scriptura, I found a Church that appealed to Scripture and apostolic authority. Instead of autonomous congregations, I found bishops who claimed succession from the apostles. Finally, instead of doctrinal disputes settled by private interpretation, I found councils that bound the Church and defended the apostolic faith.

Even Luther recognized the fragmentation that followed when private interpretation replaced ecclesial authority, lamenting that Christianity had produced “almost as many sects and beliefs as there are heads.”

Yet the early Church did not resemble that world.

So, I ask again: did I miss something?

If Protestantism restores the Christianity of the apostles, show me where it appears in the historical record.

Protestants, can you show me what I missed?