The Inconsistency of Protestantism by F. M. W.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 23, 1914

The Inconsistency of Protestantism

By F. M. W.

Protestants take as their basis of faith the Scriptures of Truth. They reject tradition, and profess to take the Bible, and the Bible alone, as their rule of faith and practice. Catholics, on the other hand, receive the traditions of the church as of equal authority with the Scriptures of Truth.

Are Protestants true to this position which they have assumed? Do the Protestant churches find authority for all their creeds and doctrines in the Scriptures of Truth? What about the practice of infant baptism, which is observed in many of the Protestant churches? Where in the Scriptures is there afforded authority for belief in the conscious state of the dead, and that death affords an immediate entrance to eternal glory? What warrant is there in the Word of God for sprinkling or pouring as a mode of baptism? Particularly, where can be found divine authority for the practice of the great Protestant church in the observance of the first day of the week as the Sabbath of the Lord?

Indeed, for these doctrines there is no Scriptural warrant. Tradition has played a very important part in their acceptance by the adherents of Protestantism. It was on this authority they were brought into the Church of Rome, and in the great split from Romanism in the Reformation of the sixteenth century, Protestantism never cleared itself from these Roman beliefs and traditions. The Catholic Church is not slow to recognize this weakness in the Protestant platform of faith. Repeatedly it has challenged the consistency of Protestants in professing to take the Bible, and the Bible only, as their rule of faith, while at the same time they go entirely

contrary to the teaching of the Scriptures with reference to some of these important doctrines.

The Ecclesiastical Review for February, 1914, a representative Catholic journal, contains an article by Walter Drum, S. J., on "Sunday Observance." In this, as many of his coreligionists have done in other papers, he charges Protestants with great inconsistency in professing to reject tradition while at the same time acknowledging its claims in the regard which they give to the Sunday institution. He declares:—

Protestants make much of the observance of the Sunday, and are sometimes sincerely and honestly shocked that we Catholics seem to make little of that same observance. It does not occur to our separated brethren that by their principle of faith—the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible—there is no Sunday observance of obligation at all. Christ abrogated the Mosaic law, "Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day" (Ex. 20:8); and, so far as the New Testament tells us, substituted no Lord's Day for the Sabbath,—no Sunday observance for Saturday observance. The logical thing for Protestants to do is not to keep holy either the Saturday or the Sunday. And yet they deem it their duty to keep the Sunday holy. Why?—Because the Catholic Church tells them to do so. They have no other reason.

This caustic writer suggests that in the early church there was a celebration of mass on Sunday on the part of the faithful, as instanced by the gathering of the disciples at Troas. He believes also that 1 Cor. 16:2 indicates that it was a custom of the Christians "to celebrate the sacred mysteries" of the church on this day, but adds:—

No more than this can we gather from the New Testament. It contains not a shred of a law to keep holy the Sunday. The substitution of a Sunday law for the Sabbath law is a purely ecclesiastical institution; the celebration of the Lord's Day was for several centuries a custom that was local, and not a universal law of the church. The reason of this universal law was to honor the day of the resurrection of Jesus. And yet, as late as 154 A. D., that same feast of the resurrection was rarely celebrated on a Sunday in the Oriental church.

The writer then proceeds to detail the steps by which the Passover came to be celebrated on Sunday. The idea of Sunday observance he claims, even down to the middle of the fifth century, was entirely disassociated with the idea of Sabbath keeping, and no claims for its observance were made in connection with the law of the ten commandments. He concludes his argument with the following statement:—

The observance of Sunday thus comes to be an ecclesiastical law entirely distinct from the divine law of Sabbath observance, the prescriptions of Gen. 2:2, 3, in regard to the Sabbath having nothing whatsoever to do with the law of the church about Sunday, the Lord's Day. Catholics should observe the law of the church, not by the Old Testament observances of the Sabbath nor by the dictates of Protestants or of the Jews, but by the prescriptions of the church herself. The author of the Sunday law is the only one who has a right to interpret that law; and that author is the Catholic Church.

By what argument can the great Protestant church meet this charge of inconsistency? If Protestants admit the authority of Rome in the observance of a weekly rest day, should they not also admit the authority of that same church with respect to other church days and ordinances? Logically they are forced to do this, and practically they will do it in the days to come. Even now the great churches of Protestantism and the Roman Catholic Church are uniting to secure legislation for the enforcement of the Sunday sabbath; and this is only one of many points of contact in these great organizations, as will be seen in the future.

We cannot admit the premises of Rome without accepting her conclusions; and the man who in his religious faith accepts the claims of tradition as of equal authority with the Scriptures of Truth will finally come to receive them as of paramount authority. The spirit of true Protestantism rejects the whole fabric of superstition and tradition which has been created by the philosophy of the Roman Church.

True Protestantism will be found in these last days not deriding Romanism and at the same time accepting its traditions as a basis of Christian faith and practice, but standing consistently and squarely upon the Word of God alone, and sounding God's message for this generation against the worship of the beast symbolizing the papal system and the worship of the image to that beast, as represented in apostate Protestantism. Those only who do this are logically, intelligently, and consistently Protestants.

F. M. W.