Where Was the Protestant Church Before 1500? A Case for Orthodox Indefectibility

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• − opinion#36 ♥ 30

  Wow, what a coincidence. I'm an orthodox inquirer and have been going to a church in Texas for around four months and really love it. The issue is I'm not educated, and even the low-level debates sound like another language to me. I just keep replaying them, and today while rewatching one of Jay's debates on Sola Scriptura it suddenly made sense. And then this video comes out the very same day. Thanks, brother.
• − opinion#38 ♥ 28

  2nd Thessalonians 2:15 is, I believe, the killshot against Protestants, because it affirms the three pillars of the Church: 1) written tradition (scripture), 2) oral tradition (which Protestants reject), and 3) apostolic succession (which Protestants lack).
• − opinion#41 ♥ 20

  Philosophically, I've found that the Protestant system offers no way of knowing what's objectively true. In the end it reduces to subjective personal opinions and interpretations.
• − opinion#54 ♥ 12

  False dichotomy. Protestants do have apostolic succession and sacraments (non-denoms don't — that's not 'Protestants'). And prayer to saints and icon veneration are doctrinal developments found nowhere in Scripture and not appearing until centuries after Christianity's founding and its spread into formerly pagan populations. 'The gates of Hell shall not prevail against it' is doing absurd amounts of heavy lifting for papist apologists. Teaching false non-essential doctrine — nothing to do with salvation, like icon veneration and intercession of the saints — would be the literal gates of Hell triumphing over the church and make Christ a liar?? That's stupid, and you know it's stupid; you're starting from a presupposition of Roman Catholic doctrine and reading it backwards into the text. Will you lay all the sins of the Catholic church at the Holy Spirit's feet and blame Him for not guiding Rome hard enough? It ultimately comes from a one-true-churchism mindset: if you don't affirm the right doctrine or listen to the right people, your soul is lost. So what if the church believed in icon veneration and saint intercession and it was false all along? So what? None of it is essential. God decrees life, forgiveness and truth just as He decrees death, wrath and false doctrine.
• − opinion#50 ♥ 10

  B is the right answer, but Christ was never talking about institutions. The major churches across the Roman world fell away once they became institutions and tied themselves to the Roman state in the 4th century. Most of the man-made traditions and doctrines in Orthodoxy and Catholicism don't appear anywhere in the Bible, so apostolic foundations can't be claimed for any of them. 'Church' means the body of Christ — every genuine believer, who is also part of the priesthood with Christ as head. The other sense is the local assembly near a believer that he joins to grow in faith and fellowship. You submit to your local assembly's authority — pastor, deacons, overseers, elders — but every decision is checked against Scripture. I'd add that in the early centuries many institutionalized churches lost the plot regarding the gospel of grace, elevating their doctrines of men above the gospel and mixing faith with works, which nullifies the saving gospel. Satan couldn't destroy the church (the body of Christ), so he infiltrated the institutions and corrupted them from within. No surprise — the Pharisees of Jesus' day did the same after centuries, putting their own doctrines above the will of the Father.
• − opinion#35 ♥ 9

  I'm not protestant myself, but the core flaw in your argument is that it rests on three assumptions: that the church and its institution are inseparable, that the institution is infallible, and that your particular institution alone has avoided heresy. The church is the body of Christ — you admit this at the end, yet you seem to imply Christ exists only within Eastern Orthodoxy. The church born at Pentecost has endured for 2000 years, but claiming the Holy Spirit infallibly guided the specific theologies of the councils and fathers is circular reasoning. (Also, when Christ says the gates of Hell won't prevail against the church, He means the church will defeat Hell, not merely survive it.) Even in the first century there were theological disputes, yet the core gospel was the same: salvation by God's grace through Jesus Christ. The church has always had doctrinal disagreements, so theology evolving as authority centralizes isn't just plausible — it's exactly what we'd expect. We don't need protestants in church history to see that its theology came from fallible humans dogmatizing their conclusions over time. Christ is the center of the church, and He never left it.
• − opinion#49 ♥ 8

  I loved the video. The idea that the church fell into heresy, as you said, opens the door to further questions. It even makes 'maybe Islam is correct' a viable question, since it implies the church fell into heresy. That's exactly why Protestantism has never appealed to me at all.
• − opinion#51 ♥ 6

  35 years non-denominational, 15 in ministry, trained at a Baptist Bible college and in international missions, then 10 years agnostic — and truth led me through the doors of the Orthodox Church, where I've finally found home and healing. If any curious evangelicals are reading this, I strongly recommend the (audio)book Becoming Orthodox by Peter Gillquist. Thank you, Kyle 👑
• − opinion#37 ♥ 5

  Kyle, this is the strongest version of the argument I've encountered, and I agree with nearly everything you say about indefectibility, the visible church, and patristic consensus. Thank you. But your conclusion — that confessional Protestantism is therefore not a serious option for sincere Christians — doesn't follow, because you've located the decisive rupture in the wrong place. I'd also add that serious pastoral, episcopal, and sacramental reform is needed where Calvin, Luther, Bullinger, and Melancthon overcorrected against medieval Roman errors and let those corrections fossilize instead of remaining living traditions. The rupture wasn't Luther's departure in 1517. It was the Western church's gradual self-definition, abandoning the humble, authoritative vision of the Church as the visible institution and manifestation of the Incarnation until the Eschaton. From the 11th to 15th centuries Rome increasingly behaved as an absolute monarchy wielding both spiritual and temporal swords pathologically, culminating in Unam Sanctam and finally dogmatized at Vatican I with the ex sese definition of universal ordinary papal jurisdiction. The Eastern church preserved symphonia: a cooperative, asymmetrical relation between spiritual and temporal authority where conciliar correction of Patriarchs and even Popes stayed structurally possible — which is why the Sixth Ecumenical Council…
• − opinion#40 ♥ 5

  I can't figure out why Christians endlessly argue with each other for hours yet say nothing about Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, New Age, etc. It makes converting to Christianity an insufferably long ordeal where you must figure out which denomination with centuries of theology is the right one, while cultural Christianity just devours itself instead of uniting against the world.
• − opinion#52 ♥ 5

  Simple — it comes directly through Scripture, and that's why Reformation theology is so powerful. You can never use Scripture to justify homosexuality, for example; it's explicitly laid out as wrong. That's also why the Reformation produced greater scientific and theological advances through debate and discussion of the text. This is exactly why we don't worship Rome or any other false church claiming such titles. And finally, the problem with the 'One True Church' slogan is that even if it were true and scriptural, it wouldn't erase human failings — people always split from one another while all claiming the same thing. Hope this helps.
• − opinion#39 ♥ 4

  This argument begs the question. I agree Christ founded and preserves His Church. But "Christ preserves His Church" doesn't logically entail "the visible institutional Church cannot widely embrace serious error." Acts 20 explicitly warns that even Spirit-appointed overseers can distort the truth. And "Where was the Protestant Church?" assumes Protestants believe the Church vanished. We don't. The same historic Church continued and, we believe, eventually needed reform. Those first 1,500 years are Christian history, not solely Orthodox history. Most importantly, showing that Christians "eventually" practiced icons, invoked saints, and so on only proves those practices became historical traditions — not that they came from the apostles. So my question isn't "Where was the Church?" It's: how do you know these particular later practices are apostolic? "Because the Church eventually received them" only works if you first prove the Church is infallible in making that determination — which is precisely what the argument is supposed to establish. And it doesn't.
• − opinion#53 ♥ 4

  Protestant here — this is a false dichotomy. Within the church there will always be voices of truth teaching what Scripture teaches, and always heretics teaching lies. When we say the gates of Hell will not prevail against the church, we mean the voices of truth will never completely vanish. You cited St. Athanasius, who lived when a large portion of the church taught the Arian heresy. He himself once said that if the world is against the truth, he is against the world — implying he knew large swathes of the church could teach total lies while the true faith still prevailed and the gates of Hell did not. That has been the standard Protestant view since the Reformation.
• − opinion#44 ♥ 3

  The Arian crisis and others like it happened because figures like Origen and Nestorius weren't condemned right away — by the time a reactionary council condemned them, sometimes 300 years later, their influence had already corrupted the church's mind. The first Christological schism is a symptom of this, which is exactly why Protestantism is a good reason not to conform to an ancient faith saturated with delusion.
• − opinion#43 ♥ 2

  I'm a Baptist living in an Orthodox country and I'd genuinely love to become Orthodox. But when I see how Orthodox Christians live sinful lives, clergy corrupted by love of money, and a majority who don't even attend liturgy, I doubt whether this church bears any fruit.
• − opinion#45 ♥ 2

  The problem is you quote "saints" as if they were infallible. Not even the apostles were — Peter, supposedly the first Pope, was corrected and rebuked by Paul for treating Gentile believers differently than Jewish ones out of fear of the Jewish believers' judgment. Beyond that, the title "saint" isn't biblical in the exclusive sense; biblically all believers are saints, it's not some special title reserved for great figures of particular denominations. You keep citing church history as proof, ignoring that even the very first churches fell into serious error requiring Paul's correction. If that could happen with the Holy Spirit guiding them, then humans could certainly have gone astray a couple hundred years later and stayed astray for a millennium after. The church didn't lose the gospel — it began interpreting it in an obviously wrong way and adopted and slightly "Christianized" pagan customs and festivals while forcibly converting pagans. Teaching that a council of fallible humans suddenly becomes infallible in any decision is plainly ridiculous, and the way they obviously twist scripture to justify their dogmas makes it clear they're false. And breaking away from them over one error — not all of them — doesn't make you suddenly true. I'm not saying Protestantism is the truth either; all of them are false, not because Christ isn't the Truth, but because these "churches"…
• − opinion#42 ♥ 1

  Protestants do have apostolic succession — just not the kind you'd expect. It's an alternative one: before Luther there were Hus, Wycliffe, Waldo, Berengar of Tours, Gottschalk, Ratramnus, Claudius of Turin, Vigilantius, Helvidius, Jovinian, Aerius of Sebaste, and others.
• − opinion#47 ♥ 1

  Just because you arbitrarily define the church so narrowly doesn't make your argument undefeatable. Christ is the one who decides who belongs to his church and his body. Give me actual evidence, not just the opinions of dead believers, if you want to convince me. I trust Jesus Christ to determine who is a member of his church and part of his body.
• − opinion#46

  The reformers weren't restorationists. They believed both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches hold valid apostolic succession, claiming it through the Western church. You can't argue against Evangelical restorationists — who only appeared in the late 18th century — and then claim your argument applies to the reformers.
• − opinion#48

  Hello everyone! Since many Eastern Orthodox folks are probably here, I have a question: how can you call yourselves the "true" church when your entire identity is built around a single eastern culture, roughly 60% of your believers live in one country (Russia), and another denomination somehow has 7x your followers? No disrespect intended — as a Catholic I respect Orthodox discipline — but seriously, how can a belief so regional claim to be the "true" church?