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I asked another person here who hasn't responded either: can you link me to some examples of what you mean when you say "serious" protestants?
I can point you to...like Pope Benedict, who wrote books such as Introduction to Christianity, obvious people like Saint Augustine or Thomas Acquinas, or even just normie youtubers like Trent Horne. If somebody asked me "show me who the serious Catholics are" it would be them.
Who are the equivalent protestant "fathers"? CS Lewis is one, but who are other "serious" protestant philosophers, or contemporary apologists? Is the Anglican lady who just became their Archbishop putting out any meaningful intellectual work? Or is Sean Rowe? Is Tracey Malone contributing anything meaningful to the discourse? Or Mariann Edgar Budde? I know she did a real scathing sermon about Trump last year at the national prayer breakfast, but are people reading "How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith" and getting some important theology insight from it?
These are the leaders of various protestant churches. Which one is the most academically serious or would you think of as a good representation of what you mean when you think of "serious" protestants?
This is a colorful way of saying: "you have experienced a lot of protestants and have formed an opinion on their beliefs and activities" which...is just how anybody could form any opinion about anything in the world? What is even the point of saying this? "Gee it sure seems like you think stuff"?
Martin Luther, Calvin, Kierkegaard, John Bunyan, Karl Barth, any number of preachers like Oswald Chambers, John Wesley, Spurgeon. Tim Keller and Os Guinness would qualify as (near) contemporary Protestant apologists. But Protestants can claim Augustine and everyone else from his era just as well as Catholics.
Great, now like I’ve asked multiple times: link me to a contemporary Protestant apologist who you think has done a good job in a debate with a Catholic, please?
Here’s one: https://youtube.com/live/kn7qdPSHSJk
I guess you could just say that Protestants don’t really do debates or think about their claims academically, which I would agree with.
I do think this guy did a pretty good job, but again I think that he’s on kindof an impossible mission here. Protestant claims, especially claims like “sola scriptura” don’t even stand up to basic middle school level scrutiny.
Btw, to make my point you don’t even have to be Catholic! If Vivek converted to Orthodoxy, that would still be more meaningful than Protestantism, or even Mormonism! Mormons are serious, make serious contemporary attempts at apologetics (which I do think fail pretty quickly), and genuinely seem to be serious about what they’re saying.
Protestants just…don’t. It doesn’t even seem like they’re trying anymore. Protestants aren’t generally appealing to people intellectually, that’s why it’s coffee shops and laser projectors and carnival rides in the parking lot.
This is now just now true Scotsman. How many of the people are your local mega church are reading or talking about or thinking about or even know who Saint Augustine is? Are a lot of them reading The Summa do you suppose? I can think of a Protestant friend in “seminary” right now and how he reacted when I asked him about this, and I’m going to tell you the answer is no. No, finding one example of one person at one “seminary” who referenced this one time does not matter to the general point I’m making here.
Not many! How many at your local parish are reading those? How many even follow the Church's teaching on contraception or abortion?
This is just a general problem; most people don't read old books. Those Protestants who engage intellectually with their faith, like the Catholics who do the same, will have read Augustine.
A lot. These people are Doctors of the Church. Protestants have this idea of "sola scriptura", or that the only thing that matters is The Bible, but Catholics just...don't. We treat our religion as a legitimate academic and philosophical pursuit, and so stuff like that is a frequent point of reference. If you want more contemporaries to listen to: listen to any of the Bishop Robert Barron interviews and see how long he can go without referencing things like this.
Yes, I am aware of the official status of the Doctors of the Church. No, that doesn't mean the average person in the pews has read them, any more than the average mega-church attendee. It is just a fact that average people, Catholic or not, are not that intellectual. You're comparing a Platonic ideal on your side with a normie on the other.
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I don't know much about Prot vs Cath debaters; it's not a space I follow. I suspect it's not a very large space. Frankly, Evangelical Protestants just don't think much about Catholics at all. Their apologists usually aim at atheists.
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While doing some fancy footwork about "ah but they were really Reformed/Baptist/whatever and not Catholic", even though they would have called themselves Catholic, and engaged in stuff Catholics did (e.g. St Augustine as a bishop would have celebrated Mass).
The example of this that makes me laugh is Northern Ireland Presbyterians claiming St Patrick as one of their own, yes he was a true-blue Wee Free No Pope Here Calvinist, ignore what those Papists down south say!
It doesn't take fancy footwork at all. There are a thousand years between Augustine and the Reformers; all they need to is claim that the later Catholic Church added on a lot of non-Biblical stuff that would not have been accepted by the earlier church, which is already the central Protestant claim. The reformers quoted Augustine extensively, I think more than any other church father. Luther himself was an Augustinian monk. Note even BB Warfield's famous quote "The Reformation, inwardly considered, was just the ultimate triumph of Augustine’s doctrine of grace over Augustine’s doctrine of the Church."
'We call him Augustine, not Saint Augustine, because we don't venerate saints. We ignore that he was a bishop, because some of our denominations don't accept the office of bishop. We glide over the fact that he would have performed a lot of the Superstitious Roman Catholic Add-ons we claim are unScriptural and later accretions of erring men. To sum up, we declare his theological was perfectly Reformed and he would have had no quibble with Calvin or others' formulations. Take that, Papists!'
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