A tiring swimmer reflects on the Flood -- and the Ark.

By Diogenes ( articles ) | May 16, 2004

The unfailingly articulate Anglican at Pontifications has some lucid observations on the future of Protestant Christianity:

I believe that classical Reformation Protestantism is doomed -- doomed because it is structurally incapable of saying No to secularism, heresy, and unbelief, except by recourse to schism and the formation of new denominations. I would expect the mainline denominations to continue in some form or another -- probably as small communities of neo-gnosticism and political activism. I also expect Protestant fundamentalism to continue to thrive. Whatever else it offers, fundamentalism does offer clarity. Evangelicalism, on the other hand, is an open question. It really does not know which way it wants to jump -- whether off the fundamentalist cliff or the experiential-pietist cliff. In some ways American evangelicals sound a bit like the biblical theology movement of fifty years ago, only with praise bands in their sanctuaries.

The future of catholic Christianity thus lies … where else but with the two traditions that are truly catholic -- Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Both traditions deny the formal sufficiency of the Bible. Both reject the sola scriptura of Protestantism. Both insist that the Scriptures are to be interpreted through the living Tradition of the Church. And for this reason, both communions have the structural capacity to say No to modernity and to maintain, by the grace of God, the core doctrines of Christianity.