Are Protestants Closer to Catholics than Martin Luther? A Response to the Recent Pew Study (Part 1)

Mark Twain once quipped, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

Ah statistics.  They can be very helpful. Or very misleading.  And much of it depends on how the questions are asked.

Last week it was announced that a new Pew foundation study demonstrated that modern Protestants are a lot less like Martin Luther and a lot more like Roman Catholics than people might think.

When it comes to the two main issues of sola scriptura (Scripture alone) and sola fide (faith alone) apparently Protestants aren’t so Protestant after all.  The study conclusions state:

For example, nearly half of U.S. Protestants today (46%) say faith alone

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New Book on the Authority of Scripture

If we learn anything from church history, its that the church fights the same battles over and over again.  Until Christ returns and redeems His church, this reality is, to some degree, inevitable. And one of those reoccurring battles is the issue of biblical authority.  For a variety of reasons, this topic continues to pop up again and again.

In the last 50 years, one of the key issues related to biblical authority is the issue of inerrancy.  Is inerrancy a recent, post-enlightenment, rationalistic (and largely American) invention as so many maintain?  While one most always be careful to explain and nuance the meaning of the term, I don’t …

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