Originally posted by One Bad Pig
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Prediction - a lame excuse will be given to avoid the problem. If by some fluke an answer is given, the answer will not properly address the issue.
What is the issue?
The reformation principle of private interpretation currently held by modern Protestants means no Protestant has any authority to cause anyone else to believe any doctrine derived from the scriptures. As there is no authority within Protestantism, then the logical outcomes of private interpretation are many competing understandings of the same texts. Hence collectively, Protestantism is a very strong witness to one of the Reformation principles concluding to agnosticism.
We see the logic of the Reformation play out in Protestantism’s closet agnosticism through the inter generational loss of any Christian faith experienced in northern Europe, and now in North America. The once Protestant areas are now largely secular, because former Protestant generations now have children that no longer believe anything biblical.
The endless debates over doctrine between Protestants leads to only a few possible outcomes.
1) Doctrine is not important for the debates show Protestants disagree with each other and the debates never fully resolve doctrinal problems. The non importance of doctrine means Protestantism is in principle indifferent to doctrine, and therefore open to agnosticism.
2) Doctrine is important but Protestantism does not have the authority within its system to resolve doctrinal differences in a way as to avoid agnosticism about any particular doctrine. The lack of authority within Protestantism concludes to a closet agnosticism.
3) Doctrine is either important or not, but Protestants know they do not have any certainty on any doctrine because of the principle of private interpretation. So Protestants have in large numbers decided to leave Protestantism and become formal agnostics.
The above three points all conclude to an inability within Protestantism to resolve doctrinal problems, thereby opening the Reformation based denominations to agnosticism.
Even the existence of denominations indicates Protestantism is agnostic. Denominations infer each group has a number of distinct doctrines and practices divergent from other denominations. As no denomination has authority over any other, any person is free to come and go, or even form their own denomination. And no one Protestant or group of Protestants have any authority within any denomination to enforce opposing doctrine. Consequently, from the historical witness of denominationalism, Protestantism is fundamentally agnostic.
Because Protestantism is fundamentally agnostic, Protestant dominated countries will always simultaneously tend towards a collective schizophrenia of fundamentalist dogmatism and liberal unbelief, directed towards agnosticism and secularism. This is what we see unfold in North America, with the once Protestant nation become a nation divided into the post Protestant secular America and the fundamentalist Protestant bible belt.
JM
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