Transcript

Over the recent years, we have seen the decline of low church evangelical Protestant Christianity in America.

Millions of souls are leaving the various sects of evangelicalism such as Baptists, Pentecostals, and so-called non-denominational churches.

These men have found themselves converting to either Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, believing them to be the truth.

Indeed, it seems unlikely that evangelical churches will survive the next 50 years as many are abandoning evangelicalism for orthodoxy into Catholicism.

But this alone does not prove Protestantism is false.

In recent years, such as since 2022 in particular, there has been a push for a revival of so-called Protestant traditionalism or classical Protestantism, such as Anglicans, Lutherans, and Presbyterians.

They propose a solution to the problem of the death of Protestantism, that being a return to Protestant traditions.

However, they ultimately failed to resolve Protestantism's main problem, the ultimate reason why Protestantism cannot be true.

I am Brother Patrick, and this is where Protestantism fails.

While it is certainly true that there are many who become attracted to Catholicism and Orthodoxy because of the aesthetics such as the Gregorian chanting, the burning of incense, and the icons and frescoes of the venerable dead.

However, there is ultimately something which is missing in Protestantism that they find very attractive about the Apostolic churches.

This is that under Protestantism, it is impossible to know anything theologically for certain.

There is no way you can be 100% sure that you are right about key doctrines, and this is why people leave Protestantism, because of this, uh, lack of certainty and clarity.

Ironically, this is something which high church Protestants have traditionally accused the Apostolic Church to be guilty of.

However, this is an issue which, in reality, it is the Protestants who are guilty of in this regard.

This is because of the Protestant understanding of sola scriptura, or the assertion that the scriptures alone are the sole infallible source of divine revelation.

This is something that is presented as a dogma of the Christian religion in Protestant circles.

And many Protestants, such as myself when I was still considering myself a Protestant, were taught this in their circles.

However, what is not discussed in Protestant circles is a question which I think is far more important: Why scripture?

Why do we affirm the Holy Scriptures as being divine revelation?

Even among classical Protestants, this isn't an issue most are even taught to ask.

And whenever few traditional Presbyterian churches there are left which still affirm the proclamations of Nicea and reject all errors regarding that which God is, the people are still generally not taught about where the Bible comes from, if anyone even thinks of asking that question.

It is, of course, rather sarcastically and tongue in cheek declared that Protestants think the Bible fell out of the sky or that our Lord left the apostles with a completed Bible.

However, this is not that far off from what I was taught and from most of the ex-Protestants who became Apostolic Christians that I spoke to, they were taught something along these lines also.

They are left to believe that the Bible somehow spawned in as though it fell out of the sky or simply appear one day, or even though as such Christ gave the apostles the completed Bible.

And the Bible, according to Protestants, is the sole infallible rule of faith.

However, the truth is, is that after the resurrection, our Lord did not leave behind a finished canon of the scriptures.

Rather, he left behind a church.

And make no mistake, this church was not a Baptist or some kind of Protestant church.

This is even to the admission of many classical Protestant apologists, that the early church was not a Presbyterian or Lutheran church.

And aside from the fact that conceding that you are not a part of the church that Christ founded is a very serious issue that you have just conceded, since this means that anyone looking for the church of the apostles can simply forget about you and your sect.

This also means that doctrinally, the Protestant views aren't in the early church.

This church, this church which is not any Protestant denomination, is what Christ left to the apostles, and the writings of the apostles would become the New Testament of our Lord.

So in declaring that the Bible is needed to infallibly know anything, then we have a problem.

The canonization of the Bible wouldn't come along for centuries after the apostles.

Now, Protestants have realized the problem with this, and in recent years have attempted to respond to the canon by saying that the canon of the Bible itself is not infallible and it is truly a fallible list, but the words themselves are that which is infallible.

However, this opens a new can of worms entirely.

If the canon of the Bible is fallible, but the words aren't, then it is possible to produce an infinite number of Bible canons.

And sure enough, that's exactly what happened in the early church.

Some Protestant apologists such as Gavin Ortlund have actually cited this against the Catholic canon of the Bible, because it is true that not every father held to the Catholic 73-book canon of the Bible.

But this is irrelevant, as the Bible hadn't been canonized yet when these men disagreed on it, so it is rather expected that these men would not, uh, all affirm the exact same Bible canon that we do.

In fact, this only furthermore proves why the scriptures needed to be canonized in the first place.

The fact that it just so happened for the Protestants to arrive at a 66 canon conclusion is frankly just how history played out, as Martin Luther also wanted to remove the Epistle of Hebrews, the Epistle of Saint James, the Epistle of Saint Jude, and the Apocalypse of Saint John.You might instinctively disagree with that, as you know those books are in the Bible.

But why do you know those books are in the Bible?

What grounds do you have to affirm that any book of the Holy Writ is indeed divinely inspired?

Unless you affirm an infallible canon, you cannot object to any of these being made, uh, sacred Scripture or removed from sacred Scripture.

Likewise, what prevents anyone from tacking on any books that they just want to add into the sacred Scriptures whenever they're interested?

There is no objective grounds in the Bible that's to say what the standard for something to be in the Bible are.

If this is all just a matter of Christian liberty, as many Protestants have tried to make it out, then there is no reason why anyone couldn't add any edifying works to the Scripture which they personally accepted to be Holy Writ.

I could decide to add The Republic of Plato into the canon of the Bible if I wanted to, or decide to add the Summa Theologica in there.

What is there to stop me if there is no infallible canon?

Due to the fact that they believe it is a fallible list of books, it is possible for anyone to declare any book that they would like to as infallible.

You may consider this to be absurd, but why do you consider it to be absurd?

According to the Protestant framework, there is no reason why this would not be allowed.

To resolve the dilemma of sola Scriptura, many Protestant apologists have proposed a solution to the problem, that being sola apostolica.

They say that we can know something is infallible if we know that it is from the apostles and/or the prophets.

Generally, the prophets are also included in the apostolica in sola apostolica.

Even if we were to overlook the fact that many books of the Old Testament and New Testament were not written by the apostles and prophets, for example, m- uh, the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Luke were not written by apostles.

So under an, the sola apostolica framework, this would not justify them as being in the canon of sacred Scriptures.

But even if we were to kind of forget all of this, this introduces a new worse problem of circular reasoning.

The assertion that all of the writings of the apostles are infallible and this is all that is infallible means that the only way you can justify this is through the writings of the apostles, such as the Gospels and the Epistles.

But the only way that we know these things are infallible anyways is because the writings of the apostles are infallible.

Using this kind of circular reasoning cannot prove a canon of Scripture infallibly, nor can it prove a doctrine on the authority of Scripture as this violates all concepts of logic.

The reason why they expect this to work is because they are relying on the presupposition that we already accept the writings of the apostles and the prophets as infallible.

However, this is because they are simply engaging in the you lose so I win fallacy, where they expect us to bind ourselves to their framework, where we presuppose that their authority is infallible and we have to prove theirs.

Therefore, they don't actually need to prove anything from their framework in order for it to be true.

However, even if we were to temporarily suspend the laws of logic and enter into the minds of a Protestant, this still would not work.

Presupposing the rather arbitrary standard that, uh, only the things the apostles themselves give authority to is that which can be infallibly believed, we run into a dilemma of the fact that Scripture do not give Scripture alone apostolic authority.

Saint Paul wrote to Saint Timothy in Second Timothy 3:8.

"Now just as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth, men of corrupt minds and reprobate concerning the faith."

Jannes and Jambres are figures who are not found in the Old Testament.

This is an oral spoken tradition being given apostolic authority.

Some will object to this fact by stating that this is only being used to give historical information and not being used to define anything that is de fide.

However, this tradition is being used to teach doctrine regarding those who reject divine grace and cannot simply be ignored.

And even more importantly, does Saint Paul teach us in his second epistle to the Thessalonians.

"Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold to the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word or of by epistle."

Once again, apostolic authority is not being given to Scriptures alone, but rather both to the Epistles and those things which are taught by word.

Oral traditions of the apostles are being given apostolic authority, and Saint Paul is ordering the elect of Thessalonica to hold fast to them.

Some will still object by arguing that all of the traditions which Saint Paul says were taught by word are already in the Holy Bible.

But this is objectively not the case, as no one has ever opened up their Bibles and found in it something along the lines of a compendium of canons and apostolic traditions.

But we do find many instances of the apostles themselves, such as Saint Paul and Saint John, saying he will tell p- the people he is writing to more things in person.

These, of course, will still possess the charism of apostolic authority, and yet they are not found within the Holy Bible.

Many of these traditions were written down by the Church Fathers and are today known to the Catholic Church.

However, they are not in the canons of Scripture and therefore are not being treated as infallible, even in spite of the fact that they are given apostolic authority.Perhaps one of the most glaring problems with the Sola Apostolica framework to argue for Sola Scriptura is that of the Epistle to the Laodiceans.

It is an epistle which Saint Paul wrote which, while not being in the Bible, is referenced in the Bible.

"Salute the brethren which are in Laodicea and Nymphas, and the church which is in his house.

And when this epistle is read among you, cause it to be read also in the Church of the Laodiceans, and that they likewise read the epistle that is from Laodicea." This epistle is not in the Bible, yet Saint Paul is choosing to give it apostolic authority.

Therefore, something outside of the Bible is confirmed to have been given apostolic authority.

So even presuming the Protestant Sola Apostolica framework, it wouldn't prove that Sola Scriptura is infallible.

Rather, it pre-refutes it, as we, uh, clearly see apostolic authority being given to things outside of the Scriptures.

So any attempt to justify Sola Scriptura by presupposing a Sola Apostolica worldview, especially considering the flimsiness of what they consider to be apostolic authority, is completely self-refuting and is not a logically coherent method of proving that the Scriptures alone are fallible.

One of the incredibly problematic propositions of Protestantism is their rejection of the books of the Deuterocanon.

It is true for centuries the debate regarding the canon of the Holy Bible was not resolved.

Some Catholic apologists have claimed that it was resolved in the 4th century, which, while true, is misleading.

The canon of the Bible was not an ecumenically and infallibly defined issue until the Council of Trent in f- 1646, or for Protestants, never.

It was only then that the canon was truly a closed issue.

However, the Protestant claim that it was a topic of constant debate is even more misleading.

After Saint Jerome translated and composed the Latin Vulgate translation of the Holy Bible, the canon was not ragingly debated.

In fact, there were multiple councils afterwards which upheld the Council of Rome's decision regarding the canon of Sacred Scripture.

However, those who disputed the canon of Scriptures didn't do it because they considered there to be anything wrong with these texts.

It is true that some Protestants, like Steven Anderson, do not value the deuterocanonical books at all and consider them to be junk.

And then you have all these goofball apocryphal works mixed into the text.

Looks like Judith.

But more reasonable Protestants, such as Dr. Matthew Eberhart, consider the deuterocanonical books to still be masterful and edifying, but regardless, not divinely inspired.

I said good.

I didn't say inspired.

If you're a Protestant or if you're Reformed like I am, uh, we don't consider the Apocrypha to be part of the Bible.

In fact, for Presbyterians, the Westminster Confession of Faith makes that very clear in chapter one that, "The Apocrypha are not to be considered part of the divinely inspired Holy Scriptures, and are therefore not to be used or consulted any more than any other human writings." But that doesn't necessarily mean e- any less either.

And so we can use these for reference.

We can use these for historical study.

In fact, there are even some things that we might even consider some devotional materials in the Apocrypha that might be helpful.

But nevertheless, we do not assign to the Apocrypha the level of inspired Scriptures.

And again, it's not 'cause they're not interesting or they're not, um, curious or historically relevant, it's that they're not inspired like the rest of the canonical books are.

So what I'd like to do in this video is I'd like to...

While it is true that some faithful Catholics were skeptical of the deuterocanonical books prior to the Council of Trent, it is important to note that the justification for this was very different from the Protestants' justification.

For example, Cardinal Cajetan didn't believe that the books of the Deuterocanon were divinely inspired per se, but it is not for the same reason as his contemporary, Martin Luther.

Cardinal Cajetan was far more loose and liberal with his definition of the word canon, and didn't believe that the deuterocanonical books taught heresies.

This is because the cardinal wasn't laboring under the belief that only books within the canon of the Holy Bible were infallible or guaranteed to be free from error.

He simply believed the primary purpose of the text was not doctrinal, which is true.

The Books of the Maccabees, for example, are largely historical texts and not to be used to teach doctrine alone.

However, this doesn't mean that he had thought that they contained theological errors, as he affirmed the doctrines in there, which modern Protestants, y- uh, use to justify their rejection of the books, such as purgatory.

Indeed, while the book's primary purpose is not doctrinal, this doesn't mean that there is no doctrinal purpose in the books whatsoever.

And Martin Luther saw this.

In fact, he didn't even believe that all of the books of the Old Testament were free from error, going as far as to call the Epistles Saint James in Epistle of Straw.

"In a word, Saint John's Gospel and his first epistles, Saint Paul's epistles, especially Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians, and Saint Peter's first epistle are the books that show you Christ and teach you all that is necessary and salvatory for you to know, even if you were to never see or hear any other book or doctrine.

Therefore, Saint James's epistle is really an epistle of straw compared to these others, for it has nothing of the nature of the gospel in it." He saw that 2 Maccabees clearly taught prayers for the dead, in essence, purgatory, and other books clearly teach other doctrines which he disagreed with.

Therefore, his conclusion was that they must not be sacred Scripture.It is important to note that his view wasn't that he had the authority to determine the canon of sacred scripture, but rather that these books contradicted the scriptures and could, therefore, they contradicted Christian dogma.

But ultimately, it does have the same effect as Martin Luther rejected the infallibility of the church's dogmatic professions and rather privately interpreted the scriptures.

Therefore, his opinion on what books ought to be in the scriptures is ultimately a result of his personal opinion and interpretation.

This isn't to presume that Martin Luther had no justification for his beliefs.

In fact, his justification was rather simple.

The Jews did not accept them as infallible or as scripture.

However, when we say Jews, we aren't talking about the words of Moses or of Elijah, but rather of the rabbinic post-destruction of Jerusalem Talmudic Jews.

Martin Luther's ultimate justification for removing the books of the Deuterocanon from the sacred scripture was not from church history, but rather an appeal to those who rejected Christ in this church.

However, Christianity is not Judaism, nor is it simply an offshoot of Judaism.

Therefore, Talmudic Judaism cannot be viewed as a doctrinal lens to interpret which books belong in the most sacred composition of Christian writings to ever exist.

Rather, we should trust the Christian Church to tell us this.

But the ultimate problem here is the fact that it took 1,500 years for a canon issue to become relevant enough that it would still be discussed today.

The fact that it took 1,500 years to dogmatically define the canon of scripture indicates that Christians were not in any particular hurry to create an official and inerrant canon of the sacred scriptures.

If Protestants rejects the Council of Rome in 382's canon of scripture and recognized that the canonical debate was not closed in the fourth century, they must also accept that Christians were in no hurry to define this canon infallibly or inerrantly, and were fine with having differing views, which would be a major problem if sola scriptura was the only way we could infallibly know anything regarding faith.

Or if they were to accept that it was a closed issue, then they would have to recognize that the conclusion the church reached wasn't their canon.

If either of these things are the case, then it cannot be true, and therefore, Protestantism is erroneous.

Some Protestants will still accuse Apostolic Christians of circular reasoning regarding our relation to Scripture and the Church.

They believe that because we think that the Bible is true because the Church says so, but when pressed on why the Church is true, we say it's because of the Bible, and then when pressed on why the Bible is true, it's because the Church says so, we are committing circular reasoning.

Indeed, if this argument is being made, this is a circular argument.

However, as the great Catholic apologist Transformed states, this isn't how we understand this.

The Catholic argument is not a circular one, but rather it w- is more explained spirally in a more accurate sense, or as I will demonstrate it, linearly.

Before anything else can be proven, it must first be proven that there is a God.

Thanks to the work of the great philosophers such as Socrates, who gave his life for faith in the true God, we know that this much can be proven by pure human reason.

Once this proposition has been proven, we must then determine whether or not this God has revealed Himself and how He desires to be worshiped.

We can determine that Christianity is true by proving, uh, these propositions.

This is done by the study of various ancient documents such as the Scriptures, but also other documents which testify and prophesy regarding the coming of our Lord, as well as documents which record Him, which are outside of the Scriptures, such as the Didache, The Shepherd of Hermas, the Epistles of St. Ignatius of Antioch, and the Apostolic Tradition.

Once the truth of Christianity has been discovered, we can see that Christ established one Church, which He intended to continue until the end of days.

Therefore, we must see which church is this Church.

We use the same texts that prove the proof of Christianity to this end.

For example, obvious heretics, such as Mormons and the Klan, can be proven as contradicting the Scriptures, and sects, such as the Baptists, can be proven to be contradicting the ancient Church on antebaptism.

In doing this, the truth is narrowed down to a few options.

It either has to be one of the Reformed, Lutheran, or Apostolic traditions.

However, as demonstrated in this video, we can prove that sola scriptura is false, and therefore, it must be one of the Apostolic traditions.

We can prove that monophysitism is false and that the filioque is taught by the unanimous consensus of the Latin Fathers, as well as the vast majority of Eastern Fathers.

Therefore, it is possible to prove that Catholicism is true, and therefore, the traditional Catholic argument is not circular, but rather, it is completely logically coherent.

But this is the ultimate problem with Protestantism and why Protestantism fails.

It is impossible to infallibly know anything under the Protestant system.

We enter into a situation where everything is based on personal opinion.

There is no way for you to be 100% certain that you are correct on faith and morals.

Because while the Scriptures are infallible, you have no way to infallibly know that you are not just misreading the Scriptures and arriving at an erroneous conclusion.

Of course.The Holy Scriptures are materially sufficient for determining all that is true, but it is not the testimony of the early church that the scriptures are formally sufficient or that they are all that is needed to interpret the scriptures.

They affirm the sanctity in the truth of apostolic tradition, which is to a source of divine revelation, which runs complimentary to the Holy Bible.

Christians who studied church history are not convinced anymore by the claims of Protestants as they ultimately are a result of personal opinions more than infallible doctrine.

The historical claims of the Protestants are that Catholicism is a demonic religion, that Catholics worship the Blessed Virgin Mary, that the Holy Father is the Antichrist, and that Rome is the horror of Babylon.

And while many Protestants seem to have abandoned their more eschatological claims regarding Catholicism, many of them continue to slander and lie about the most Holy Roman Church, as well as the various Orthodox churches.

When people study church history, even through the absurd lenses of their denominations theology, they soon discover that their beliefs are not ancient in origin, but rather a product of Renaissance humanism, which has its origins in Greco-Roman paganism, as well as personal interpretations and an overcorrection to issues such as paid indulgences, which haven't been ir- irrelevant for over 400 years.

When they bring these issues up to the teachings of their denominations, they soon discovered that not one Protestant church even claims the ability to make an infallible pronouncement.

Therefore, the things which they were taught were fundamentals of the Christian faith in which they were taught Catholics were going to hell for not believing are, in reality, certain private interpretations which cannot be held up to any real standard, and they aren't things which can be infallibly affirmed.

Many Protestants have tried to resolve this dilemma with the high church Protestant traditions, such as Lutheran and Presbyterian ones.

However, even those fail to provide the absolute clarity which one can find in the Catholic Church.

To the one who is in the Catholic Church, he can be absolutely certain that he holds to the true faith of the apostles preserved by the elect from all ages because he knows exactly what is de fide as it was defined without any error by the Catholic Church.

No Protestant denomination has this, and ultimately, this is why Protestants are leaving.

Catholicism offers clarity and unapologetic sincerity.

Furthermore, Protestants have not met the burden of proof that the Catholic Church has fallen away from the Gospel of Christ and that their sect has recovered the Gospel of Christ that was lost.

There is no way they could infallibly assure their members of this reality because they don't even have a method of undoubtly defining that Rome teaches anything that is an error.

No matter how much scripture they cite against you on this matter, they can never be certain that they aren't misinterpreting the scriptures and their arguments against you.

Only authentic apostolic Christianity delivered to us by the Apostles, promulgated in the ecumenical councils, and preserved by the Holy Roman Catholic Church is able to give men the clarity that they seek.

So, Protestants, I plead to you, study the Scriptures and discern the traditions passed down from the fathers.

I promise you that you won't find Protestantism and you won't find the belief that the sacred Scriptures are the only infallible source of divine revelation.

May divine providence guide you and number you among the elect.

In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.

Amen.