u/Different-Pomelo8755

A little over a year ago, the Mormons pagans began calling themselves "Christians," something that no one would have imagined just a few years ago.

In that context, I recently debated a very sharp Mormon (PhD in philosophy and history). I argued that his religion (I avoided calling it a "Christian denomination") can't be historically traced back to antiquity; he countered that Protestantism can't trace a continuous line before Luther.

In the middle of the debate, he proposed this thought experiment:

—Imagine a distant, unreachable planet where no human religion ever arrived, yet by chance its dominant species developed a religion identical in every respect to primitive Christianity in its purest orthodoxy: same canon, soteriology, ecclesiology, sacraments, everything. Would they be Christians? What could you "reform" if everything is already orthodox? Any attempt would actually corrupt them.

I replied:

—Christianity isn't defined by a checklist of doctrines, since even heresies preserve some orthodox elements. Islam, for instance, affirms Jesus as Messiah, but that doesn't make it Christianity. So those alien pagans, assuming they had moral and religious awareness, would have to turn away from their false religion and join Protestant churches.

He then asked what would distinguish their "orthodoxy" from ours. I answered:

—Origin! Original Christianity is defined by its historical origin: specific first-century individuals. Since those figures didn't originate that alien religion, it isn't original Christianity, even if identical in content (note: this may sound a bit awkward in English, but the conversation wasn't in English, so the wordplay between original and originate felt natural and made my point clear, that "earthly Protestant Christianity" is original because it originates with the apostles).

He replied that this is basically a "papist" view:

—You're appealing to lineage (apostolic succession) rather than pure orthodoxy. True Christianity depends only on having perfect doctrine/practice, not historical pedigree. So, trying to "connect" those aliens to a lineage would actually corrupt a perfectly orthodox faith. And this is basically the kind of "originality" Catholics and Orthodox appeal to when they dismiss Protestantism and stir up "ecclesiastical anxiety" among its members. If you were being honest with yourself, you'd reform your own earthly denomination based on that perfect extraterrestrial one or even join it. But like many Protestants, you're still mentally tied to Babylon (Rome).

We paused there and agreed to continue later.

• How would you push back against the idea that this is basically "papism"?
• How can we as Protestants claim historical "originality" without turning into a poor imitation of Catholicism or Orthodoxy?
• And, fundamentally, would you join the extraterrestrial Church?

¿Cuál es el equivalente a 'salida/s' en inglés con el sentido de actividad recreativa fuera (de ahí lo de 'salida') de las laborales o domésticas? P. ej.: —Este finde tengo una salida con mis amigos.

Como curiosidad, el DLE no recoge 'salida' bajo esta muy extendida acepción.

How do you handle your faith after studying history? Do you find any faith or hope in Christian history?

Every time I study Church history, especially early Christianity, I slowly stop being Protestant: not because I become more Catholic, but because I become less Christian.

With every academic book I finish, with every primary source I read, I see how different our current faith and hope are from those of the early Church.

How can I believe in "sola scriptura" after reading McDonald? How can I believe in "sola fide" after reading Sanders or Nanos? How can I believe in the doctrine of justification after reading McGrath? How can I believe in "sola gratia" after reading Barclay?

I have never seen my faith strengthened after reading Church history: the more I learn, the less Christian I become. The little comfort and strength I find in antiquity comes from pagan works or apocryphal wisdom texts that we reject.

Maybe someone will say: —"Well, maybe we are wrong. So what?" But then our wrong beliefs led to things like the philopoi destroying pagan temples in Egypt, the expulsion of Jews from Rome, the closing of Plato's Academy, Jewish ghettos, Lutherans and Catholics killing Anabaptists, the genocide of Native Americans in the U.S., Luther's attacks on Jews, Calvin's rule in Geneva, Servetus, the massacres of Cunhau and Uruaku, Guido Fawkes, and the Holocaust.

I no longer feel that I hold something just doctrinally wrong, but something morally bad and harmful to humanity. Scorsese has a film where a group of Jesuits arrive in Japan and only bring suffering. That's how I feel.

The only thing that keeps me Christian is the love and grace of Jesus.

Atheists no longer dispute that Jesus existed. The evidence is overwhelming (always was, now just more accessible online). The debate has moved: not ontology, but epistemology; not Jesus' existence, but whether neutral grounds justify the testimonies about him. Christians now defend precisely the neutrality and strength of those grounds.

This is precisely where Catholics, appealing to Marian apparitions, start to get involved: since at least 2019 (and earlier) they spread the idea that there is more evidence, and better evidence, for Fatima or Zeitun than for the resurrection of Jesus.

Like, if we apply the same criteria used for early Christian testimony to Fatima or Zeitun, those cases clearly score higher in reliability. But by the same logic, the Challenger disaster has better evidence than Fatima or Zeitun, just as those apparitions do compared to the resurrection of Jesus, since it comes from a better documented age! And yet that does not mean we should give fides divina et catholica to the Challenger explosion...

Now some atheists use this a fortiori argument against Protestants in debates about the resurrection and divinity of Jesus:

—"By your own criteria, if there are good reasons for the resurrection, there are even stronger ones for Fatima or Zeitun. The evidence is stronger and more compelling."

Fatima and Zeitun have large crowds of witnesses. Independent observers. Repeated events. Short time between event and report. Some photographic material. Consistent descriptions across many people. Public settings. No long chain of transmission.

The Jesus traditions have problems. Few sources. Late texts. No direct eyewitness documents. Dependence between sources. Theological shaping. Variations in accounts. Anonymous authors. Long gap between events and writing.

At the end of the day, Catholics give atheists arguments to attack the faith through apparitions.

TL;DR: What actually sets Protestants apart from a Muslim or a Black Hebrew Israelite when we say "we Protestants are Catholic too!" or that "the Church was Protestant like us!"? How do we make that case without anachronism or cultural appropriation?

I watched a YT debate between a Catholic and a Protestant on whether the Fatima miracles were divine or demonic. In the comments, I saw a Catholic and a Lutheran arguing about the usual topics: apostolic succession, canon, jurisdiction, etc.

At one point the Protestant said: —"The early Church was Protestant." The Catholic replied: —"That's no different from Muslims saying 'Jesus was Muslim' or Black Hebrew Israelites saying 'Jesus was Black.' You're just doing cultural appropriation of Catholicism. No one in academia studies Calvin or Luther to understand first-millennium Christianity, just like no one studies Black Hebrew Israelites to study Second Temple Judaism".

As a Protestant, I know we don't have the same cultural continuity with early Christianity as Catholicism or Orthodoxy. And I'm fine with that: Calvinists didn't launch the Crusades, Lutherans didn't expel Jews from Spain, Anglicans didn't sack Constantinople, Anabaptists didn't build Hagia Sophia... those were Catholic and Orthodox histories.

My issue is cultural: how should I respond when people say we're "doing cultural appropriation"? I hear it often, not just from Catholics or Orthodox, but even from certain atheists (pro-Catholic atheists who back Catholicism against Islam, and conservative anti-Protestant atheists who see the Reformation as the start of modernism and the end of Western values).

What actually sets Protestants apart from a Muslim or a Black Hebrew Israelite when we say "we Protestants are Catholic too!" or that "the Church was Protestant like us!"? How do we make that case without anachronism or cultural appropriation?