The Protestant Principle: Divide and Conquer




A little while ago during one of his teaching hours, my dean was using the word "Protestant" to describe a group of Christians opposed to his own position (which he continually called "Catholic"). At first I was a bit confused about this seeing that the Anglican Church has always been considered a Protestant Church, but the more I have come to think about it the more reticent I am to use the word Protestant because of what Fr. Richard John Neuhaus has called (and he is surely not the first) the Protestant Principle.

As far as I can tell the Protestant Principle is basically "divide and conquer." Actually it might be more appropriate to call it "divide and become insignificant." I mean when was the last time anyone outside the Baptist denomination cared whether they accepted literal 24-hour creationism? The whole ridiculousness of the Episcopal Church going on with homosexuality, liberalism, and female primates (linked?) might very well be seen as a last bid for some significance in a world that ultimately doesn't care what dividing churches do or say. On the other hand, can anyone honestly say that John Paull II did not have a significant influence on the world, let along on Roman Catholicism or Christendom? He may not have stopped communism single-handedly, but his pleas for social action and peace have changed the minds of many. But what is at the core of Protestantism which makes it so insignificant today?

I think Bishop Tom Wright was correct when he said that the Reformation was the religious version of the Enlightenment (in the first sections of The Challenge of Jesus). What principle was at the core of the Enlightenment, broadbrushing accepted? Autonomy of the individual soul or rather reasonable substance. It seems to me that there was a revolt against all things traditional in the early Reformation and this lead to Luther's theology of Protestantism as well as the anabaptist sects which revelled in iconoclasm of more than just stone. The Protestant motto seems to be "divide and conquer", taking every part of tradition and subjecting it to the rational substance we all have in order to weigh its merits. For Protestantism it seems that the whole is merely the sum of all its parts.

On the other side of the debate we have the Catholic tradition, something not subjected to mere opinion in the way Protestant doctrine is formed. This is not limited to Roman Catholicism (I don't think, yet...) because anyone can see the differences of method when they read Luther or Calvin. There is not a page in Calvin which does not go back to the Fathers for insight into the Christian tradition, something he wished to Reform, not remake. Some would make the case for Luther as well, but Protestantism as it stands today in America (at least) seems to have gone the Anabaptist route and seeks "personal" authority in every interpretation. Catholic tradition is something wholly different (pun intended) since the whole is more than just the sum of the parts. Tradition is not just the educated opinions of some men (and women) in the past, it is the living dialogue which the present part of the Church has with the past members. The Church is not a collection of just people, it is the living union of Christ with his bride. The role of the Church is to keep the "faith once handed down" from the apostles and Jesus, whereas Protestantism is to change the faith whenever something new comes up in the mind of an individual. In Protestantism a small group of people are the Church (if you can use the captial C) whereas in Roman Catholicism the Church is the Church. It is a living entity which is really the earthly prescence of the Lord Jesus to his people through Word and Sacrament. In this case the Roman Catholic Church is theocentric whereas the Protestant church is unduly anthropocentric. In the Protestant scheme "man is the measure of all things" whereas in the Catholic system the community of saints is the true rule.

As a case example of this distinction we can look at women's ordination. The majority of Protestant churches have accepted women's ordination as required by Scriptures even though there are no explicit passages commanding it (some would say quite to the contrary). It might be logically necessary that Protestantism accept women's ordination (despite the protests of PCA, LCMS, and others) because there is really nothing keeping them back. In the Protestant scheme one can pull a single issue (women's role in ministry) and focus on it indefinitely until the consensus over interpretation changes. The past does not matter or can be explained away as being "naive" or "biased" as if there were neither of those today! Thus taken to the extreme Protestantism seems to allow a continuously changing doctrine for the church, as seen in the Epsicopal Church as it redefines salvation, Jesus, God, ministry, humanity and everything else. But it does this by seperating one from all the rest, isolating each issue and pounding opposition into submissiong through emotive utterances.

The Catholic position is quite different because tradition and doctrine are "one seemless garment", not to be taken apart and examined seperately. Fr. Neuhaus comments that the present part of the Church is not allowed to change the issue of women's ordination because that ignores the majority of who makes up the Church: the traditional teaching of the fathers (and mothers). In the Catholic system doctrine is allowed to develop, but not to change because that denies the Holy Spirit's continuous work in his Church. This might sound like being handicapped to the past, but that is only because we are naturally inclined to see the past as something bad or wrong. C.S. Lewis called this "chronological snobbery", the idea that the newest things have a stronger truth claim then the older things. We must take seriously the thinking of the traditions and take very seriously the changing of teaching in areas like ordination. Some have compared the women in ministry issue to the African-Americans in ministry issue in America, but to do this is not only culturally self-centred but also historically naive. There was never a prohibition in the Catholic Church of people of different skin colour being priests or bishops (one need only think of the desert fathers - white skinned Europeans?), whereas the prohibition of female priests and bishops has been part of the tradition since the choosing of the twelve.

This example is not designed to argue for a distinct different in ministry roles between men and women but only to show that the understanding of the Church is vastly different between the Protestant and Catholic systems. One says "we need to listen to the whole Church" whereas the other says "I need to listen to myself (or the Holy Spirit, or the Bible, or whatever individualistic misunderstanding of enlightenment you want to put there)." The Protestant Principle is divide and conquer and this will lead to a conquering, but more a being conquered by ever false wind of doctrine.

So I am quite happy to reject the label Protestant as my Dean has. A tell-tale sign of Anglo-Catholicism was the rejection of the Reformation as a mistake, and insofar as it was based on the Enlightenment principle of individual autonomy and reason over thinking with tradition and "being-in-the-world", I am comfortable rejecting that as well. The real question in my mind is whether Newman's path is inevitable and whether a Calvinist would dare to swim the Tiber River.