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Thanks, Fru, for the ping!

As for Protestants, who is to decide? I’m not sure what constitutes “core Reformation doctrine.” But I’m sure it would be a real surprise to some of the flakier little charismatic country churches around here that they’re “not Protestant,” because they certainly consider themselves to be so....The only thing the Church has to be unified on are the core doctrines. There are many issues where there is legitimate difference and speculation; after all, doctrines are usually defined in response to a challenge, and until something appears that makes those issues important, they remain speculative matters (as long as this speculation does not go outside of the range inherently permitted by the core doctrines).

Great post, livius! To your point, the various creeds and confessions of the historic church have been a useful means of codifying and focusing key Biblical doctrines, and by extension are very useful in matters of church membership (covenants) or forming definitions of heresy for Protestants. You raise in an interesting problem in that many "Protestant" churches, especially evangelical and non-denominational ones, reject these creeds as binding on themselves re matters of discipline or doctrine, and thus there is no simple way of determining whether they are "in the fold" or not.

I would never suggest that creeds are a substitute for Scripture itself, nor would I suffer accusations that they are fabrications of doctrine. I would say that creeds are excellent summaries of where Scripture speaks to certain subjects, and exist as historic documents as to who took what side in prior ecclesiastical/doctrinal disputes such as you mention. IMO creeds were wisely formed to "redeem the time" (Eph. 5:16) when testing or investigating the confessions of a professing believer.

The practical result of any refusal to use a creed/confession/doctrinal statement of some kind, is such that every time someone wants to investigate a brother's doctrine, they must go through the Bible - all of it - and see how each agrees with each other's reading, point-for-point, of:

All 66 books
All 1,189 chapters
All 31,373 verses
All 775,693 words

...and since those numbers are drwan from the KJV, they'll probably debate whether to limit the reading to the Authorized Version as well. Will each agree with the other's beliefs and doctrines point-for-point? How long will either of them endure the investigation, how much error will either of them permit, before one gets fed up and separates from the other?

By refusing to profess/acknowledge a creed, or at least publish/profess an "articles of faith" / "doctrinal statement", the anti-creedal believer and/or their congregation functionally accomplishes five things:

- a tacit a priori rejection of every prior study and/or codification of doctrine formulated by any church body, at any and every point in church history,
- a practical behavior, if not an outright creed-like belief and teaching, that Wisdom ended in the first century (when special revelation did), effectively dismissing any and all possible wisdom acquired by any bible-believing Christian in any post-NT church era, contrary to Proverbs 2:6-9,
- an allowance of relatively minor points of doctrine (eschatology, worship forms and practices, ecclesiastical government forms, etc) to be granted equal status with major points of doctrine (the Trinity, nature of salvation, etc),
- an allowance for doctrinal stances to shift unknowingly from moment to moment, congregation to congregation, pastor to pastor, or even from week to week, without declaration or documentation,
- a willful sequestering of oneself from examination and correction by any congregation, visitors, friends, fellow believers and unbelievers, preventing all from discovering one's actual doctrinal beliefs without forcing a long, arduous and mandatory investigation.

The phrase "Protestant" loses meaning when it's used inclusively to speak of everyone "not Catholic and not Orthodox". It becomes a meaningless epithet when used in this manner. IMO "Protestant" should be redefined to be synonymous with the phrase "Reformed", i.e. with the pro-creedal churches that emerged from the Reformation. While there are other churches and denominations that sprang out of that era (and since), they did not form in protest to the excesses of the institutional Catholic Church. Instead, most of them formed as a protest and opposition to the creeds, confessions, and doctrinal distinctives held by the Reformed (Protestant, Lutheran, Anglican etc) churches. In other words, they were part of the counter Reformation/"radical Reformation" movement.

In more recent times, and following in this latter group's tradition, is the Restorationist (Campbellite) movement of the 19th century. Restorationists reject any prior reforms or formal creeds, Catholic or Protestant. Restorationists believe they are returning believers to an authentic "first century church" experience, by attempting to take the church back to a time when no creed had been formed. In our own lifetime we're faced with the Emergent Church phenomenon, which also seeks to throw off historic traditions and orthodoxies that might color how the Bible is understood. They are not protesting in favor of a particular doctrine over another - they are apparently protesting any institutionalizing of traditions, creeds, and exegesis altogether, in a manner similar to the Restorationists.

IMO both groups (and countless non-denominational others) are born of the (false) beliefs that all institutional authority is corrupt by definition, and that the larger/older the institution is, the more corrupt it is. Thus, the Restorationist desire to not form (institutionalize) their congregations into a denomination, to limit ecclesiastical authority to the local church body only, to avoid formulating any binding creeds or statements of faith to be held accountable to. "No Creed but Christ, No Law but Love, No Book but the Bible". To re-write a familiar proverb in Restorationist terms, "you might successfully tie two strands into a cord, but binding three together weakens the whole."

IMO most of the churches that are called "Protestant" by Catholics aren't deserving of that historic title, and it would be wise to understand and recognize the profound differences between them. IMO those believers that individually and institutionally submit themselves to the historic creeds of the church can be said to be "in agreement", since the creeds define what their shared beliefs are, and provide a useful way for insiders and outsiders to test themselves on whether they are doctrinally and congregationally unified.

Thank you for an excellent and very interesting post, one of the few I have actually taken the trouble to print out and save for future reference!

I had an earlier discussion some time ago with some Protestants about creedal groups and non-creedal groups, and Trinitarian and non-Trinitarian groups, and it did help me to get a better understanding of the things under the "Protestant" umbrella. I really don't know where to begin on the interesting points your post raised, but one thing struck me as a commonality:

Restorationists believe they are returning believers to an authentic "first century church" experience, by attempting to take the church back to a time when no creed had been formed. In our own lifetime we're faced with the Emergent Church phenomenon, which also seeks to throw off historic traditions and orthodoxies that might color how the Bible is understood.

I didn't know these people were called Restorationists in the Protestant churches, but they are very similar to many of the people who were behind the truly horrible changes of Vatican II, which were aimed at "restoring" some supposedly purer form of the Church, and were products of the "higher Biblical criticism" movement and very much influenced by certain 19th century German Protestants. At some point, possibly because of French Orientalism, the "discovery" of the Middle East by the Germans and the British, and the 19th century obsession with archeology, collecting and museology, Biblical studies seem to have become infected with a strange belief that proto-Christianity (as they had reconstructed it) was the only true and authentic form, and everything else was not a development but a corruption.

I think this had a lot to do with non-theological and in fact non-church related currents in 19th century historical and literary thought. What we saw in Vatican II and probably in the Restorationists of the 20th and present centuries was perhaps actually the outcome of a nonreligous intellectual movement that began in the middle to late 19th century, in other words, nearly 150 years ago.

Well, we can all see how well "restoring" the mythical purity works...Thank you for a very, very informative post.

thus there is no simple way of determining whether they are "in the fold" or not.

II John :7 - For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.

The Bible commentary was written by a man named Theophylact, who was born on the Greek island of Euboia in about 1055. He studied in the finest schools in Constantinople, served as a deacon at the famous Hagia Sophia Church in that city, and developed a reputation as a good preacher. In 1090, he became the Orthodox archbishop of Ochrid and Bulgaria and served in that capacity until his death in about 1108. He’s quite an interesting fellow, because he is neither a Protestant nor a Catholic; his native language was the same language that the apostles used to write the New Testament, and he lived in a completely different political, social, and theological context than we do. Perhaps because of all that, he sees something that seems so obvious that, once he points it out, we can only wonder how we missed it.

Theophylact says that if we observe these verses in context and compare them, we see that Jesus is talking about two entirely different situations. People who are not against us are for us

The situation in the first passage is that the disciples found someone acting in Jesus' name without proper authorization. They tell the man to stop; then report the incident to Jesus. I get the idea when I read this that they were expecting Jesus to congratulate them on their conscientiousness, but Jesus responded in a way that they didn’t expect:

“Teacher,” said John, “we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”
“Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us. I tell you the truth, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to Christ will certainly not lose his reward.”
—Mark 9:38-41, NIV

Jesus instructed His disciples not to stop anyone from acting in His name even if they don’t have the proper credentials. His reason is that anyone doing Christian ministry is unlikely to say anything bad about it. I don’t want you to think this makes it okay for you to declare yourself sort of grand high muckety-muck and start your own denomination or something, because if you did that, you would be working for your own glory, and right there that wouldn’t be a valid ministry. However, it does mean that if the church finds a lay person conducting a valid ministry where there is a need and no one else to meet it, they should not stop the person just because he has no credentials but instead find a way to include him. Whoever is not against Jesus is for Him.

from:

as is the following:

Spirits who are not for Jesus are against Him

Theophylact noticed, but I never did, that the situation in the second passage is quite different from the one in the first passage. On this occasion, Jesus is speaking about demons, not people.

“If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand? And if I drive out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.
“Or again, how can anyone enter a strong man's house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can rob his house.
“He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.”
—Matthew 12:26-30, NIV

Now I admit that the English text I’ve quoted makes it seem that Jesus is talking about people here too, but Theophylact spoke the language of the New Testament as his native language, so I have to take his insight seriously.

If Theophylact is right, Jesus is giving us an important and simple tool for spiritual discernment—not to discern people, but to discern ideas and spirits. All we have to do is ask if the spirit or idea glorifies Jesus. If it does, it is good. If it does not, it is in rebellion against God and thus evil. This is why I said earlier that the first passage doesn’t let you make yourself into a grand high muckety-muck, because the project wouldn’t pass this test.

Since Jesus is talking about spirits, and since angels are quite popular today, let’s imagine that you sense the presence of a spirit being and you are trying to tell whether it is an angel or a demon. If we apply Jesus’ discernment criterion, it is a very easy task.

* If the spirit draws attention to itself, encourages you to develop a relationship with it, enjoys your praise, and thus leads you away from Jesus to glorify itself or to glorify yourself, it is a demon. Just tell it to go away in Jesus’ name and it will flee.

* If the spirit prefers to be undetected, encourages you to develop a relationship with Jesus, gives Him all the glory, and only made itself detectable because you were in dire distress, then it is an angel.

The same goes for ideas. If you have an idea to make yourself rich and famous, it might be a shrewd business plan, but it is not a valid Christian ministry. (If being rich and famous was not part of the plan but it happened anyway, then it is God’s blessing.) If you perceive a need that no one else is meeting, and you decide to serve others in love and in Jesus’ name, while trusting God with your own welfare, then the idea came from God.

I think Theophylact was on to something, don’t you?

Kosta, please ping Kolo, I can't seem to spell his name right enough to get it to take. Sorry.