yeah I got kicked out of my church right over here but that's okay because I can just start a new church right over [Music] here hey guys welcome back to Kingdom craft where we build beautiful churches like this while talking about Christianity just kidding I'm going to go somewhere else today I'm going to explore a place that I haven't been to in a while to see what people on This Server have built so I think I'm going to go to the Dutch reformed province of of keria while I talk about Protestant churches and the Authority
for Protestant churches so yeah this is called karia this is the Dutch reformed Province on This Server so I'm going to walk around a bit and then I'm going to go mining and steal their resources because I need some more Cobblestone to work on the tower next to my church so today we're talking about this thing called normative Authority a common question I get is do Protestants have any normative Authority the reason this is a question is because Protestants believe in something called solos scriptor solos scriptor is the Latin for the Bible alone and this
is probably the most misunderstood Protestant Doctrine so because we say it's the Bible alone people think the Bible alone is our Authority that the Bible is our only Authority and that's not true that's not what solos scriptor means Bible alone means the Bible is our only infallible Authority infallible means an authority that cannot possibly be wrong so we do believe in other authorities such as the church such as tradition such as Church councils such as pastors such as presbyteries uh but all these other authorities are fallible the only infallible Authority that we have today is
the Bible and something can still be an authority if it's fallible most of the authorities that God ordains like parents and government and ministers most authorities that God tells us to submit to are still fallible and it's actually a very post-modern idea to think that an authority can't be reliable if it's fallible like that's what justifies all sorts of liberal revolutions and children rebelling against their parents this idea that an authority has to be infallible for it to be reliable at all it's very black and white thinking and it's very postmodern so some people have
this sort of third middle category called normative Authority where it's like maybe it's not always an infallible Authority all the time but it's still an authority that you normally have to listen to even if it's not always infallible in everything it does because Protestants might point out that even Catholics and Orthodox Christians they don't believe that the church is always infallible in everything it does they don't believe that individual theologians of the church are infallible um they don't believe that every single action of a bishop or a local council is infallible um but they would
say is okay but at least we have normative Authority because at least we normally have to submit to those things even if they're not available and the criticism is that Protestants don't have normative Authority um because if you ever disagree with the decision of your church in protestantism supposedly Protestants can just split off and form a new church if you get kicked out of a Protestant Church there's no real discipline supposedly because you can just split off and form a new church made out of dirt in your basement that's what the intro is all about
so is that actually true and what I'm going to say is not exactly that's not true of traditional protestantism that's not true of Mainline protestantism it is true of evangelicalism but I'm trying to distinguish evangelicalism from protestantism because for almost all of protestant history that's not how it has worked and that's still not how it works in Mainline protestantism so what even is normative Authority like I said it's kind of like a middle way between a fallible Authority and an infallible Authority there aren't many clear definitions of normative Authority it's a word a lot of
people use but don't really understand there aren't a lot of clear definitions because it's a very new word you can look on Google engram to see like when the word normative Authority started being used it wasn't really used until like the last few decades so that's why you won't see A Treatise from the reformers about normative Authority or anything uh classically Authority was either fallible or infallible because they didn't have this postmodern mindset that an authority must be infallible for it to be any Authority at all but then in response to postmodernism which questions all
authority uh that you need to have this like third category so that's why they aren't many reformed resources on this normative Authority because it just wasn't a concept until recently on either side uh but I think Protestants do have normative Authority at least Mainline Protestants because unlike Evangelical Protestants we don't think that anyone can just start his own church we do think that you are subject to the authority of the church and that it is a sin to voluntarily split from the church so in that sense the church is the normative Authority we don't think
that each individual Christian is his own unit and the church organization is just a purely voluntary structure made up of individual Christians individually trying to interpret the Bible according to their own individual consciences that's modern evangelicalism and modern evangelicalism comes from the from the revivals which were a conscious move away from traditional Protestant institutions and this is a really cool boat by the way this boat kind of gives me Nostalgia because this looks like the Lego sets that I used to build when I was like a little kid um really cool helicopter I am really
impressed that my world has so many good Minecraft Architects anyway so like I was saying this is something a lot of modern Protestants have forgotten and that's why a lot of modern Protestants are so bad at defending protestantism because they don't know what protestantism teaches they haven't read the confessions they haven't read the reformed Scholastics so Robert Bailey is one of the guys who wrote the Westminster Confession he's a presbyterian Scottish Westminster Divine he's one of the Scottish coven enters and the thing the Scottish covenantor were biggest on is talking about the church talking about
how the church should be governed so Robert Bailey has this really good book called A dissuasive against the errors of our time particularly the independence in which blah blah blah it's a really long title people back then had really really long titles for things because back then people didn't have Tick Tock level attention span you know but basically in this book Robert Bailey is criticizing the tendency of The Independents The Independents are kind of like the non-denominational of that time they're like radical congregationalists who rebel against almost all structural hierarchical Church Authority whatsoever um more
so than the Puritan congregationalists in America even they're just so radically congregationalist they will even like burn down churches and universities because they are very skeptical of any sort of cathedrals or any sort of academic Theology and modern evangelicals are not violent like this but they do have the same Tendencies of being skeptical of that so the reason I don't classify evangelicals with Protestants is because the entire history of protestantism has been a a struggle between uh magisterial protestantism and evangelicalism so Robert Bailey says something shocking that's not just shocking to evangelicals but is even
shocking to a lot of Presbyterians who are in schismatic offshoot denominations uh Robert Bailey is criticizing these Independents who will Schism from any church they don't think is good enough and Robert Bailey brings up the examples of Moses and the prophets in the Old Testament when the people in the Old Testament were going astray and literally turning God's house into places of demon idol worship Robert Bailey points out that Moses and the prophets never split off from those churches and never gave the disciples the least warrant to do so you might say okay well that
was the Old Testament they had like the temple it's it's different now for some reason well Robert Bailey addresses that he says that for that to which was that which was not a reason for Moses and the prophets to separate from their churches in their times is not a reason for us to separate from our churches in our times so because Robert Bailey believes in covenant theology which all Presbyterians do Covenant the olog is this idea that there is perfect continuity between the Old and New Testaments unless explicitly stated otherwise Because he believes in covenant
theology he thinks that principle still applies today even though we're not literally under all the uh ceremonial laws of the Mosaic Covenant because a lot of them have been fulfilled by Christ Christ never changed the concept that you should not split the church now I know you're going to be like what about Luther he left the church we're getting to that but what Robert Bailey says the principle Robert Bailey sets down is what the Bible says which is that Moses and the prophets even when the churches of their times were falling into idolatry which did
happen many many times by the way the Book of Judges is the church going in and out of idolatry again and again none of the prophets ever left the church um they reformed the church that's what they did when God's Temple was used as a place of demon idol worship uh they didn't leave the church the uh the King Josiah reformed the church the prophets reformed the church Isaiah didn't split off and form Isaiah's Bible temple in his own basement as now they did and Robert Bailey explicitly says that this principle carries on into the
New Testament because he says in First Corinthians there was open idolatry and profanation of the Lord's table they were blaspheming the Lord's Supper in the in the Corinthian Church when Paul was writing to it in 1 Corinthians and in Galatians they were literally preaching a heretical false gospel but what Robert Bailey says is none of the Apostles ever separated from these churches nor gave their followers the least warrant to make a separation from any of them what Robert Bailey says is completely incriminating not just to evangelicals but also to a lot of schismatic Presbyterians he
says that sin in the church and even heresy in the church does not justify Schism and this principle is also followed by the church fathers when the majority of Bishops in the church were heretical Aryans who believed the Aryan heresy that says Jesus is not God St athanasius did not Schism from the church he did not leave the church he fought to retake the church even though um people said the world was against him athanasia said okay well then I am against the world so that's why I'm so against leaving the pcusa my Mainline denomination
the majority of Pastors in the pcusa are liberal but that's not going to stop that's not going to stop me from staying there and trying to fix it because the majority of Bishops in athanasius's time were heretical but that didn't cause him to leave the the church so that shouldn't happen for us now you might say okay well that's an okay position to hold but doesn't that contradict protestantism because wasn't protestantism formed out of a Schism well it wasn't a voluntary Schism um there's a difference between walking out the door and being thrown out the
window Martin Luther did not want to leave the church he was excommunicated there were some Catholics who tried to stay in the church and reform it the jansenists they also got excommunicated at the Council of Trent every single Protestant was excommunicated it says whoever believes in faith alone let him be an aema so if you're kicked out that's one thing that's not voluntary Schism and this principle carries in the New Testament because the early Christians stayed in the Jewish churches even after the Pharisees literally killed God they still stayed in the temple worshiping alongside the
Jewish Pharisees who didn't believe in Jesus um that the Pharisees are pretty heretical if anyone is but the early Christians did not Schism from the temple until Steven was stoned to death so if that happens if you are stoned to death if you are forcibly kicked out of your churches then it's not like you have to keep trying to squeeze back in then there is a Schism yes but it's not you that's guilty of schism if that happens it's the people who kick you out that are guilty of the Schism so we believe that since
the reformers were wrongfully excommunicated which Pope Francis has almost admitted by this point we believe that since the reformers were wrongly EX communicated they're not the ones guilty of schism so yeah the Reformation was a Schism but the reformers the people who got kicked out were not the ones guilty of the Schism so Mainline Protestants especially people in the PC USA like me believe that voluntary Schism is sin and in that sense the church is still the normative Authority and it is a sin to voluntarily Schism from the church what does that mean so what
does it mean that the church is the normative Authority and what do I mean by the church so by the church I mean whatever denomination you're in and ideally there should be as few denominations as possible the the solution is not to be non-denominational that creates infinite denominations that creates infinite independent authorities rather the church should be as institutionally United as possible and right now the Christians who are closest to achieving that are the mainline Protestants because all the seven Mainline Protestant denominations the Episcopal Church the United Methodist Church the Evangelical Lutheran Church the Reformed
Church in America the PC USA the American Baptist Church and the United Church of the United Church of Christ all them are in communion with one another so there's pretty much one United Mainline Protestant church with like hundreds of million members around the globe it's a bit decentralized but that's just how like the Eastern Orthodox Churches work uh the Eastern Orthodox churches are all United they're all in communion with one another even though they all govern themselves independently there's not like one Pope over all of them there is The ecumenical patriarch but he doesn't get
to tell people in other jurisdictions what to do right so it's the same with Mainline Protestants so the normative Authority for Protestants is whatever Mainline Protestant denomination you are in and there are some denominations that are not in communion with the main lines some Protestant denominations that are still historic like the lcms or the rpcna uh so I would say they're not exactly guilty of schism so I would just say the norm of Authority for Protestants is the same as the normative Authority for non-protestant it's the church the problem with evangelicalism is evangelicalism doesn't have
any concept of the institutional Church apart from the individual believer so in evangelicalism uh the church is a completely voluntary institution there's no moral obligation to submit to any institutional Church in non- denominationalism but in Mainline protestantism there is if you want to be a Protestant I would say that there's about seven options for you it doesn't really matter because they're all in communion with each other um I'm okay with it if you become an Episcopalian or if you become a United Methodist but if you want to Schism from the mainline Protestant churches and plant
your own church in your basement that is sin that is sin that is not okay we do not have the right to just start whatever churches we want so that means you are subject to church discipline you are subject to the discipline of the church the reformers said the true church exists wherever there is proper preaching of the word proper administration of the sacraments and true exercise of church discipline and even if church discipline is compromised sometimes like I'm in the PC USA obviously there's a compromise of church discipline because pastors do get away with
preaching heresy um but it's not completely devoid of church discipline it's still like I I can't become a pastor and like scam people for money like those televangelists do so the even the pcusa is not utterly devoid of church discipline it's it's corrupted discipline but again the same was true in athanasius's time and that wasn't warrant for athanasius to split off from the church athus was exiled five times he still didn't split off he didn't split off and form athanasius's Bible Church in the middle of the desert if athanasius had had the mindset of evangelicals
where you split from the church the second it goes astray we would all be Aryans and we would all go to hell I mean of course God in his Providence wouldn't let that happen but that is what would have happened logically if he had um if he had split off so normative Authority means you must submit to it unless you had have a really good reason not to and you might say oh can't can't anyone say they have a good reason technically like in a literal sense they can but God's going to hold them accountable
and a lot of people who have this postmodern mindset that if you can ever question an authority at all then it's not an authority at all and that's just ridiculous the Bible says to submit to your parents right yeah that's very obviously true you need to honor your mother and father that is indisputable in the Bible that's one of the Commandments it's the fifth command commandment however do you always have to obey your parents no matter what they tell you obviously not if your parents tell you to stop believing in Jesus then your loyalty to
Jesus comes before your parents so just because there is a normative Authority like your parents if you are a child your parents are the normative Authority in your life you can still disobey your parents if you have a really good reason to do so if your parents are telling you to sin then you can disobey them likewise um every denomination agrees that your individual Pastor is fallible if your pastor tells you to sin or tells you to do something unbiblical you have the authority to disobey your pastor now this almost never happens especially if you're
not in some weird heretical mega church or something this almost never happens even in my denomination the pcusa a majority liberal denomination um I don't have a liberal Pastor right now right now I'm at a conservative pcusa church and the pastor is really solid but I have been at times in a church that does have a liberal PC USA Pastor even then I was never instructed to sin even then the pastors never told me to do anything unbiblical they disagreed with me one lady Pastor I had once was a blatant heretic but I was never
in a situation where the normative authority of my church told me I had had to do something that went against the word of God my church has always known What I Do by the way even when I was in a more liberal pcusa Church they knew about operation reona they knew what I was trying to do they didn't tell me to stop doing it right they didn't do that I've never been in a situation where the church has told me to sin if I was hypothetically in that situation which is possible that can happen so
for example when the general assembly of my denomination the p USA uh says something very liberal like we accept gay marriage now and I know some of you guys are going to be shocked but remember the church in the 4th Century had councils affirming the Aryan heresy so this is not new and this is not grounds for Schism from the church if it was grounds for meus Schism for the church it would have been grounds for aasis and we we have just talked about that so I don't have to listen to that but when my
church is not contradicting the scriptures I still listen to it for example uh the Bible doesn't explain licitly say you can never ever gamble ever my denomination still is against all gambling with no exceptions so out of obedience to my denomination which is the normative Authority I never gamble right um it's not that like the Bible tells me to and I'm only using the Bible as the only moral guide for my life whatsoever no that's not how it works the Bible is the highest moral guide for my life such that if my church tells me
to do something outside the Bible then I am free to disobey the church and obey the Bible it's pretty obvious that the Bible says marriages between a man and a woman so if the church tells me to go against that I don't have to follow the church but just because the church tolerates a lot of liberalism doesn't mean it has ever forced me to go along with it and I never have had to go along with it all I've had to do is tolerate being in the same church as other people who are liberal but
that's not actually oh d y That's not actually the worst thing in the world a lot of conservatives who have been raised in homeschooled rural fundamentalist circles think simply sharing a space with liberals is the worst thing that can happen it's really not um if if you think it is then I move to a third world country you will not share any space with liberals I can promise you that you probably won't have much space to yourself at all but I still will obey my church on matters that the scripture doesn't necessarily address because Sol
of scriptor doesn't mean the scripture is the only Authority the scripture is not an exhaustive list of rules for every single situation the scripture gives us wisdom to know what to do in situations but the scripture tells us to submit to the elders that God has placed over us and this is why if you're a Christian you need to go to church there's no excuse not to scripture says to submit to your elders if you don't go to church how do you have any Elders to submit to seriously um so yes just because the Bible
is the ultimate Authority that outranks all other authorities that doesn't mean it's the only one you need the Bible tells you to obey other authorities outside itself the Bible tells you to obey the Elders of the church the Bible tells you to obey your parents the Bible in Romans 13 tells you to obey the government now these are fallible authorities but they are still authorities this helps answer the criticisms of solos scrip Tor which say oh if you have an infallible Bible but the Bible is the only infallible Authority how can you know which books
go in the Bible without some outside normative authority to tell you uh but what I'm trying to say here is we do have an outside normative Authority it's literally just the institutional Church the normative Authority for Protestants is basically the same as the normative Authority for non-protestant it's the institutional Church the difference is we don't think the institutional Church church is infallible but for Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians the vast majority of things the church does anyway is also not infallible um even if you're a Catholic or Orthodox they don't claim that their individual priests
are infallible they don't claim that their local councils are infallible they don't even claim that all of their Traditions are infallible but they still demand normative obedience so if there is one thing I want you guys to take away from this video is that yes Protestants do have normative Authority it's literally just the institutional Church evangelicals don't have institutional churches and they don't want institutional churches so it is right to say they don't have normative Authority and the vast majority of people who make these criticisms are actually former evangelicals so that makes perfect sense I
don't even blame people for leaving evangelicalism because all the attacks on protestantism which don't actually apply to protestantism do apply to evangelicalism so that's about it for this video I just want to clarify that Protestants do have normative Authority this again the term normative Authority is kind of hard to Define so sometimes it gets people caught off guard I was certainly caught off guard when I first heard about it because I just didn't know what it meant and I sort of took people's word for it that Protestants don't have it but Protestants actually do have
normative Authority in the Bible we are told to submit to many authorities that are fallible but they are still authorities so that's about it for this video thank you guys for watching and I'm going to speed this up while I keep mining down here n n [Music] n [Music] la [Music]
