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Answers to objections against evangelicalism
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OBJECTION #1:
The principle of Sola Scriptura was not existent under the Old Covenant, so why is it presumed to be the standard under the New Covenant?
The evangelical response to this would be: If the Old Testament saints had a supplemental authority, in addition to the Law and the Prophets (the Scriptures) what was this authority? Where is it mentioned in the Scripture? Did Jesus approve of it? What could someone base the conclusion that the old covenant saints relied on some other authority in addition to the Scriptures?
OBJECTION #2:
Martin Luther believed that grace is external to man, and that it can’t be infused into man.
Luther didn’t deny that grace can be infused into man—he simply vehemently denied that such an infusion of grace was what Paul meant by “justification.” In terms of justification, God’s grace is a change in his disposition towards us; in terms of sanctification, grace is something God objectively gives to us to enable us to die to sin and conform to the image of Christ.
OBJECTION #3:
There is no Scriptural distinction between holiness (sanctification) and being just in God's sight (justification).
To the contrary, there is a huge distinction between holiness and being justified in the Scriptures, especially the epistles of Paul. Again, I must point back to Romans 4:5. If only those who are actually, objectively holy are ever declared righteous by God, then what on earth did Paul mean by saying God justifies the ungodly?
Evangelicals would say that the grace God infuses in us flows out of, is a result of, justification, not the ground or cause of it. If we are declared just in God’s sight on the basis of our own righteousness, then salvation would be more like a salary, rather than a gift. What would be remarkable or “gracious” for God to identify a righteous man as a righteous man? How is this good news at all? This would be justice or fairness, not “amazing” grace. However, if God declares righteous repentant sinners strictly on the basis of Christ’s righteousness alone, this does seem almost “too good to be true”, and this certainly wreaks of free grace, far transcending mere fairness.
OBJECTION #4
Individualistic division and disagreement about doctrinal matters is inherent to the Protestant system of authority.
Disagreement about peripheral non-essentials, yes, but there is not that much fragmented disagreement among evangelicals about things deemed “necessary for salvation.” Division about the essentials is certainly not inherent in any branch of Christianity.
OBJECTION #5
A given layperson may have poor reading comprehension skills, and for such a person as this, if he makes Scripture his only rule of faith, he will likely become a heretic. He needs outside interpretational help from the Church.
Again, if a layperson’s skills were as bad as all that, he (were he a Catholic) would end up misunderstanding and misreading papal teaching and still end up a heretic. So the example fails to prove anything conclusively.
OBJECTION #6
The Protestant position, which says to acknowledge only Christ and never his saints, is an “overly Christocentric” perspective, failing to give proper due to the merits of God’s creatures.
Evangelicals don’t think it’s possible to have an “overly Christocentric” perspective. One might as well talk about the dangers of loving God “too much” (as if such a thing was conceivable). God’s creatures, properly speaking, don’t have any “merit” before God. No one who has ever lived, however holy, has ever deserved anything but wrath from God. All of a believer’s merit rests in Christ and only in Christ.
OBJECTION #7:
When Paul talks about works not saving, he is only talking about works before conversion. He is not talking about good works done by believers after their conversion.
If any works we do at any point in our existence serve as the ground or cause of our justification, then Paul could not honestly say that we are not justified by the works of the law. Whether the work is performed before or after conversion, Paul’s meaning is clear—“by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in God’s sight.”
OBJECTION #8
It doesn’t matter, at the end of the day, whether Roman Catholic doctrine are unscriptural, since Protestantism fails to demonstrate why doctrines need scriptural support. It is unimportant whether anything is scriptural, so long as it is taught by the Church (which, like Scripture, is infallible).
Such reckless reasoning as that is hardly a good way to build bridges between Catholics and Protestants. There is a school of thought within Catholicism that argues that all of
Such a reckless “Who cares if this is unscriptural?” is precisely the response that is heard by liberal Christians today arguing in favor of same-sex marriage, abortion, euthanasia, universalism, etc…. Christ chided the Pharisees for adding to the Law of God? Can you imagine how he would’ve responded had the Pharisees replied to Christ, “Who cares if this is unscriptural?”
OBJECTION #9:
It’s not that Luther denied that people could, if so led by God, remain celibate. He just argued that the Church had no authority to forbid clergy to marry. He broke his vow because he’d become convinced that the vow, properly speaking, hadn’t been made to God at all, but rather to apostate institution. If a person who’d joined a cult and made a vow to never eat meat again came to his senses and left the cult, you wouldn’t say that he was living in sin by breaking his vow, would you? Similarly, Luther came to the conclusion that God never expected him to make such a vow, that his basis for having made the vow was erroneous, and therefore it wasn’t binding. This is NOT meant to compare Catholicism to some strange cult (please don’t misunderstand this to be saying that). The analogy is only being used to demonstrate Luther’s viewpoint.
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