Fake Fallibility: A Protestant Myth Worth Busting

Last Monday, I considered how everyone has a pope. Today, I want to bust a myth. However, instead of busting a myth about Catholicism, I want to bust a Protestant myth. (I'm so gosh darn warm and fuzzy).

I'm a lot like another ecumenist I know

Of course, no Protestant walks around saying that they have a Pope. Well, almost. My generous interlocutor in the comboxes of my last post was kind enough to bring to my attention that Protestants say that they are fallible. Unlike the papists who believe that their pope or Magisterium under a special grace of the Holy Spirit--at infrequent times and on important matters regarding the eternal destiny of the soul's of men on earth--can teach infallibly, the Protestants believe that on matters where one's soul could be damned to hell for believing something false, they could be all "well-golly-garsh", marbles in their mouth, caught with their theological pants down; in a word: fallible

I have two problems with this thought. (1) A tuquoque (you-too!) argument is hiding right around the corner. This argument says, "Catholics are fallible too! How can they know their pope/Magisterium or more, how can they know what their authorities teach? (at this point, the arguer looks to his crowd with delight, awaiting their applause)

The difference between the Protestant and Catholic methods for obtaining theological truth is that one (the Protestant) method cannot evidence results that warrant trusting it. We all trust our cognitive faculty to know stuff. That is beside the point. Doubting our cognitive faculty's ability to obtain truth is counterintuitive since we would also need to doubt the very premise that leads to our doubt--which would be just as rational as the doubt (in the premise) itself. Thus it is rational to dismiss this kind of doubt. What we can or should doubt is methods for obtaining truth. These methods can be more or less reliable. The results of the Protestant method for obtaining theological truth (sola or solo scriptura) do not warrant trusting that method. See here or here for evidence. (I will dedicate an entire post to this later)

However, the Catholic merely uses his cognitive faculty to identify the "Church" and then relies upon Her to authoritatively and infallibly interpret the deposit of faith. Moreover, no Protestant--I think--would try to say that "There are 7 Sacraments" is as ambiguous or "“exponentially multivocal, polysemic, and multivalent, [and] semantically indeterminate” as the Bible (see last link) under the Protestant paradigm. In other words, every Protestant sect wielding the method of sola scriptura has not arrived at anything remotely approximating the clarity of "There are 7 Sacraments". On the contrary, one group says there are no Sacraments, another 1, while another 3. Sure, each idea is clear to them. But that is not the point. No one is trying to arrive at a "true-for-me" theological truth, but rather a universal theological truth. In other words, I'm worried about a method that has objects both falling if dropped and not falling if dropped.

On a last note, it is interesting as well that many non-Catholic interlocutors will note that this or that parish is unorthodox as an attempt to evidence how poorly the Catholic paradigm works for its adherents. Ironically, it apparently works well enough that a non-Catholic can spot Catholic orthodoxy fairly easily without even personally subscribing to the paradigm.

Kids, its time to go home.

Which leads me to my second contention: (2) no Protestant confession, statement of faith, or major doctrinal position has EVER been significantly or substantively revised. In other words, what bite is there in being theologically fallible if one never comes to that "a-hah" moment where one would concede (not real quotes):

"Well guys, we totally blew it. That whole 'Once-Saved-Always-Saved' bit...yeah...not so much"-Albert Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Denomination 

"We are here to announce that con-substantiation is kind of silly. We now see that if the God who said, "Let there be light" and it was light said "this is my body", the 'this' is probably his body (we are updating the website)"-Dr. Harrison, President of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod 

"Dear members, we will humbly announce this day that speaking in tongues is not a necessary experience for all Christians nor a necessary sign of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Don't be alarmed. We have been fallible all this time. I know, I know that many of you have based your entire existence on this belief. We will move past this, I promise." George Wood, General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God 

"You may use instruments in the worship service. We know many of you already were, but we just realized that Scripture doesn't teach against it. We're sorry for the confusion and hope to not make any more mistakes like this in the future. Every church will be receiving a drum kit, keyboard, and gibson guitar in the mail (some assembly required)" --Some pastor, trying to speak for the Churches of Christ

"That's taking it too far!", says quasi-pope person

Seriously, chest-bumping about "look how fallible we are" is little more than false pride or a version of the doubt-train heading toward "Mt. Solipsism". Of course, the individual Protestant, I suppose, could say that they ultimately always have the right to change ship. That per denominations, nobody acts as if they are fallible, but the individual Protestant always lives with the tension of fallibility and thus could always make the kind of about-face changes referenced above. However, I would immediately ask, if not what they just described, what in the world is Ephesians 4:14 describing if not them:

"That henceforth we be no more children tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the wickedness of men, by cunning craftiness, by which they lie in wait to deceive" 

Moreover, I don't think any Protestant holds to any particular belief with the type of fallible tension we are suppose to believe they do (or I did!). Go to a Sunday school class or talk to a child to find out just how fallible each individual Christian is. I have respect for those who might be reading this, who aren't teaching Sunday school classes or indoctrinating children. They feel the tension of fallibility due to the unreliability of their method for obtaining theological truth. They are in a theological pregnant pause; one that will either birth a move to Rome or a fundamentalist move to one particular denomination (that is my common observation). Of course, the third option is that they live in the pregnant pause all of their lives and become emergent.

The point is that the Protestant claim to "fallibility" is a little more than stating the obvious. The Pope is fallible most of the time. So, were St. Peter and St. Paul. I am. Who cares. The point is that a lot of the time we have methods at our disposal to obtain truth with a degree of certainty correlative to the type of knowledge we are obtaining. In the case of Christian theology, everyone acts like they are infallible--eternity is at stake. There is no evidence other than church shopping to the contrary. Thus, the claim of "fallibility" is a myth or is at least an ad oculos, ad nauseam argument (irrelevant), I will not believe until I see some major denomination make a statement evidencing the contrary.


Wait a minute, I found one here. Maybe they are fallible after all...


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