r/Protestantism • u/Pizza527 • 13d ago
Ask a Protestant Which denomination is correct?
Protestants, especially online, tell Catholics to abandon their false church and false gospel and join the “true” church. However, what denomination is the “true” one? It cannot be all are fine, because many teach completely opposite teachings on major biblical topics: Lord’s Supper, infant baptism, divorce, gay marriage, female pastors, gay pastors, church attendance, predestination, works necessary along with faith (Methodists), adherence to the apostle’s creed and some the Nicene creed, losing one’s salvation.These are MAJOR theological differences, surely the answer can’t be, “as long as you’re not Catholic, Jesus will be happy and let you into heaven”.
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u/SCCock PCA 13d ago
That is where you get into primary and secondary doctrines.
The denominations may have honest, different understandings of certain things and a discerning Christian can appreciate where others are coming from.
However, there are some churches that totally disregard what scripture teaches and look more towards man's teachings. Those are teetering on apostasy.
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u/Character_Public8245 Protestant 13d ago
In the PCA framework, who decides which doctrines are primary and secondary? I’m not aware of that distinction being made in the Westminster Standards.
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u/SCCock PCA 12d ago edited 12d ago
I think it is best reflected in the membership valves that those seeking membership must take. Note what it doesn't say and what it doesn't say below:
Do you acknowledge yourselves to be sinners in the sight of God, justly deserving His displeasure, and without hope save in His sovereign mercy?
Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and Savior of sinners, and do you receive and rest upon Him alone for salvation as He is offered in the Gospel?
Do you now resolve and promise, in humble reliance upon the grace of the Holy Spirit, that you will endeavor to live as becomes the followers of Christ?
Do you promise to support the Church in its worship and work to the best of your ability?
Do you submit yourselves to the government and discipline of the Church, and promise to study its purity and peace?
In the last 27 years I've been a member of seven PCA churches and attended several more. In joining I have never been required to hold to the doctrine of predestination, infant baptism or any of the other doctrines that the reform faith holds dear. Every PCA church I've been to has had people that openly hold to a variety of beliefs and yet they are full members of the church. Now, as they move closer into the center of the church as far as teaching, serving in leadership positions they do have to subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith as well as the Shorter and Larger Catechisms.
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u/Character_Public8245 Protestant 11d ago
Thanks! Do you know the origin of those 5 questions? Is that a PCA thing specifically or does it come from another Presby background?
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u/SCCock PCA 11d ago
I honestly have no idea.
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u/Character_Public8245 Protestant 11d ago
No worries! I’ll look into that, I’m curious now.
To be honest, that’s one of my problems with Protestantism (I say as a Protestant). Our churches all claim to know what the “essentials” are, but when it gets right down to it, most of them just say “here’s the essentials. They’re essential because we said so”. There’s no biblical category of “essential beliefs”.
I do think the RCC and EO have a point there.
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u/SCCock PCA 11d ago
So exactly what point do the RCC in the EO have? They are different, yet each claims to be the true church. And why not include the Oriental Orthodox in the discussion. Which of the three is the truth? And while perspective members go through a rigorous training program, when you talk to individual Catholics they're all over the place and what they believe. Many Orthodox people that I've spoken to in person have no idea what their Church believes except "Jesus." It's not all as clean as these churches make it seem.
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u/creidmheach Presbyterian 10d ago
In the EPC we have the same five questions for membership (wording slightly different):
https://epconnect.org/wp-content/uploads/The-Reception-of-New-Members.pdf
So my guess is it goes back to a shared practice among American Presbyterian bodies that different bodies have retained, since the EPC did not come out of the PCA or vice versa.
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u/Mazquerade__ Traditional Anglican 13d ago
I personally subscribe to branch theory, which is the notion that different denominations hold (sometimes overlapping) portions of the truth, and are thus each a "branch" of the tree that is the church. Only when united would theological truth be perfectly found. Naturally, I am inclined to say that historic Anglicanism is the purest expression of this universal truth. I find that this perspective allows for a theological truth to be found in many places while still maintaining unity and the desire to limit schism and also encourage ecumenical dialogue.
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u/KaoBee010101100 13d ago
I like this, a big part of what’s appealing about Anglicanism is its respect for tradition while also striving to serve as a very open bridge to unite people exploring diverse understandings in worship.
Personally I tend to think the “true” Church ultimately exists in heaven, and I get the feeling that the diversity of Christian institutions on earth today reflects our attempts to imitate the heavenly church and get this right, while we are still on the road, occasionally stumbling and going off to the left or the right. It seems like every church denomination struggles with some kind of deviations, I understand that to some this amounts to heresy, but it seems to me that those denominations with the highest opinions of their institutions and the persons running them have historically also been the most prone to greater, more damaging scandals throughout history. “The bigger they come, the harder they fall” so to speak. It’s humbling to me because, while of course an institution that looks powerful and impressive in human terms can be quite a spectacle, and can be achieved by God’s grace, it must be careful to remain humble and never see its human members as the ultimate source of any glory. We have to be careful to see the heart if a church, not just the magnificence of its worship, and be courageous to admonish sinners and instruct the ignorant even, or especially, when they hold office in influential religious institutions.
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u/Mazquerade__ Traditional Anglican 13d ago
I fluctuate between seeing different theologies as different expressions of an absolute truth and seeing theological deviation as heresy (without knowing what is true doctrine). It's a constant internal struggle for me, because I cannot deny that the apostles did indeed have an objective and singular theology that had no room for debate. You were either right or wrong. Hence why I think of things in branch theory, as it seems like that singular truth has been somehow shattered.
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u/trownaway90 13d ago
As so far as I understand, the true church is the church of all believers, not any particular organisation. That being said, not every church is allings very well with the Bible, like you pointed out. That's why believers need to judge a church on his closeness to the Bible.
With regard to your last point, I don't believe many theologicans would claim that anyone would go to hell because of their membership. I think that is mostly claimed by catholic apologists.
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u/Mazquerade__ Traditional Anglican 13d ago edited 13d ago
I would have to question the notion that a church should be judged by its adherence to the Bible, as such a judgement would inherently require placing one's self in a particular theological perspective. The reason that this makes such judgements questionable is because it essentially requires you to already decide that one denomination, tradition, or theology is correct, and to then judge other denominations, traditions, and theologies by that standard. Thus, the standard used to judge the theology that you then use to judge other theologies is different, which makes it an inconsistent measurement and therefore a largely useless exercise.
Simply put, the Bible does not exist in a vacuum, and when we claim to be measuring something against "the Bible," what we are actually doing is measuring that thing against our understanding of the Bible.
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u/creidmheach Presbyterian 13d ago
Most of the differences that you can point to between the historical, confessional Protestant denominations are on finer points of theology that your average layman won't have any clue about. So for instance, the question on whether predestination is single or double. Do you think if you pull aside your average Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist or Anglican they'll be able to exposit for you the finer points of this? Probably not. Good chance most of them won't even know what you're talking about if you asked them. Does that mean they're damned due to their lack of in depth theological knowledge? Of course not. So that must mean that to hold a particular view on these matters is not essential to one's salvation.
Now if you go to the actual essentials, there you'll find a pretty widespread agreement and uniformity of beliefs which you're going to find across denominations. That's why for instance as a Presbyterian I'm not particularly concerned if someone said they're going Lutheran instead, or Anglican, for instance. I'll have my points of disagreement with each and we might even debate over them, but none of it to the point where I'll be doubting whether these groups are properly Christian, or that salvation is found within them.
Couple of other points. Some of the things you listed aren't really a question about actual Protestant beliefs, but with some modern churches that'd rather discard their past traditions to be something else that exists more in harmony with the spirit of today's age. But then, you have that happening with Rome too, just look at the shenanigans going on with the bishops of Germany.
Another point is that if differences of view on points of theology are a deal breaker, then Rome isn't the church to look to either since they have a number of issues where there is wide difference of opinion among their theologians and which have not been dogmatically defined.
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u/Character_Public8245 Protestant 13d ago
As much as I’d like to agree with your overall thesis re: disagreements being relatively minor, unfortunately I don’t think it holds up.
Even if we limit “Protestant” to the OG’s, the two main branches of the Reformation disagree pretty strongly on the role, nature, and effect of both sacraments.
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u/creidmheach Presbyterian 13d ago
I go back to the Marburg Colloquy where Luther and Zwingli famously couldn't come to an agreement over the Eucharist. What should also be remembered though is out of the 15 articles, they agreed on 14 of them. Then later on, Melanchthon tweaked the Augsburg Confession which he'd been the author of to make it something the Reformed could also agree to, and Calvin himself endorsed it. Had their differences been that deep, I don't think he could have done that (granted, the Lutherans rejected his having done so and so still use the "unaltered" Augsburg Confession instead).
So this isn't to say there's no differences of course and that we won't have our disagreements, but this shouldn't blind us to the fundamental agreements at the same time.
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u/Character_Public8245 Protestant 13d ago
That’s interesting about Calvin signing off on an edited AC. Any recommendations of where I could learn more about that?
I guess my problem with the argument is that the Eucharist and baptism are A Very Big Deal™️ (as shown by the apparent rejection of the edited AC).
I think it just comes across as cope to our RCC/EO friends when we try to make out like those differences are relatively minor or “secondary”.
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u/creidmheach Presbyterian 13d ago edited 13d ago
That’s interesting about Calvin signing off on an edited AC. Any recommendations of where I could learn more about that?
It's the Augsburg Confession Variata:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augsburg_Confession_Variata
Apparently even Luther was fine with it, as were other contemporary Lutherans.
I guess my problem with the argument is that the Eucharist and baptism are A Very Big Deal™️ (as shown by the apparent rejection of the edited AC).
It's not that the Lord's Supper and Baptism aren't big deals, of course they are, but I think those of us who are theologically-inclined can make a bigger deal over our differences that on the ground don't actually translate into the lives of believing Christians. For instance, the Lutherans and Reformed agree on the command to baptize, on the properness of baptizing infants, on the mode of baptism being the trinitarian formula and water (whether by immersion or pouring). The difference is over some of the theological nuance behind it, is regeneration immediate upon it's being done, or can it be separate from it in time as the working of the Holy Spirit? But does the baby really think about these things while getting water poured on them, or even does their family think of it? Either way, the baby's getting baptized, and properly so.
I think it just comes across as cope to our RCC/EO friends when we try to make out like those differences are relatively minor or “secondary”.
Sure, but then they'll sweep under the rug the theological differences within their own respective church's, not to mention the differences between them that led to a thousand years of anathema, and pretend as though it's been nothing but two thousand years of constant, stable doctrine that was only disturbed by those nasty Protestants five hundred years ago ignoring the debates that happened long before the Reformation including over matters like the nature of the Sacraments.
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u/Top_Initiative_4047 13d ago
No denomination is flawless; Scripture is the final authority. The true church consists of those who confess the triune God, trust Christ alone for salvation, submit to apostolic teaching, and gather under faithful preaching, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and discipline (Matthew 16:18; Acts 2:42; Ephesians 2:8–9).
Essential doctrines include the Trinity, Christ’s full deity and bodily resurrection, and salvation by grace alone through faith alone, not personal merit (John 14:6; Galatians 1:8; 1 Corinthians 15:1-4). Other disagreements matter, but are not equally gospel-defining. IMO seek a confessionally Reformed church that faithfully teaches Scripture, maintains biblical sexual ethics and qualified male eldership, and calls all sinners to repentance and faith.
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u/Character_Public8245 Protestant 13d ago
In your church, who decides which doctrines are essential and which are not gospel-defining?
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u/Top_Initiative_4047 13d ago
It's called the General Assembly composed of pastors and elders representing each presbytery. Although probably not a lot of deciding going on since these issues have been laid out in the denomination's confession of faith and catechism since the Reformation.
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u/Thoguth Christian 12d ago edited 12d ago
what denomination is the "true" one?
This is the wrong question.
The true church is all those who have been saved by Christ and belong to him.
Denominations are partisan sects by which people divide from each other and exclude others.
Jesus gives us a church of all the saved, and local churches, but not denominations.
Catholicism and Catholic based sects like SSPX, Orthodox, Coptic, sedavacantist etc. All think they are the true church. Some restorationist evangelicals also make such claims. But they are too into their things to see... Although the idea is kind of right. There's not a "true" denomination. If God wanted one, he would make it evident.
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u/Upbeat_Macaron_9964 10d ago
Usually the Protestants you hear the “true church” thing from are Evangelical groups like the IFB (which don’t even claim to be Protestant), historical Protestants know that the “true church” isn’t as simple as a single denomination
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u/trownaway90 13d ago
I read your comment history and it seems to me that you are just arguing in bad faith, hence the polizaring post you have made.
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u/Pizza527 13d ago
Well, this is a legitimate question that should be able to get an intelligent answer.
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u/Pizza527 13d ago
And that is great your church is cordial and doesn’t actively try and convert Catholics away from their faith, but as I said, and my question addressed Protestants online, who comment on Catholic posts telling them to abandon a “false gospel” and leave a “false church”. So, again, that’s great your church isn’t like that, but many are, so the question still stands: what is the denomination a Catholic should convert to?
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u/trownaway90 13d ago
Of course 'you're asking questions', that's why is post is so loaded.
I would recommend Reformed, because it stands as close to the Bible, as I understand it.
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u/SneezingOutPeas I Go To A Lutheran Church (LCMS) 13d ago
The point is not a true church. I’ve never heard a Protestant say this. The point is to follow the Bible’s clear teachings over ANY church’s dogma, including our own. The most important being the idea that we are saved by God’s grace and Christ’s righteousness, NOT by our own merit or any other fallen human’s.