I don’t usually delve into discussions of apostasy or church authority. My own personal feeling is to pursue unity where possible — Paul puts it well in Ephesians 4:3: “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” But I recently read an article on Catholic Share by Godwin Delali Adadzie titled “The Protestant Reformation Was a Total Failure. Period.” The title is not subtle, but the argument is earnest, and Mr. Adadzie is clearly a thoughtful writer who cares about his faith. I wrote him a brief note expressing my disagreement, he responded graciously, and we agreed not to chase each other down a rabbit hole. He’s keeping me in his prayers, which I appreciate.
But I did promise I had a rebuttal to each point. So here it is — not as a quarrel, but as an honest account of where I disagree and why.
I’ll say upfront what I said to him privately: I grew up Catholic. I have fond memories of that upbringing. It built a real foundation. And where Rome teaches the gospel of Jesus Christ, I rejoice. The disagreement is not whether Catholics love Christ. Many clearly do. The question is whether Rome’s additional claims — the ones that go beyond what Scripture teaches — are binding on the conscience. I don’t believe they are.
With that established, let’s go through the article’s main arguments.
“Truth doesn’t contradict itself, and Protestants contradict each other.”
This is the article’s central argument: Baptists, Lutherans, Calvinists, Methodists, and Pentecostals all read the same Bible and reach different conclusions. Since truth cannot contradict itself, the Holy Spirit cannot be guiding all of them. Therefore Protestantism fails the test.
The argument sounds airtight. It isn’t.
Human interpreters contradict each other. That’s different from truth contradicting itself. And this problem is not exclusive to Protestants. Catholic theologians disagree with each other. Eastern Orthodox theologians disagree with Rome. Even within Catholicism, serious theological debates continue — over grace, free will, the nature of development of doctrine, and much more. The existence of disagreement proves human fallibility. It doesn’t automatically prove that Rome has the solution.
There’s also an important distinction the article doesn’t make: the difference between essential gospel truths and secondary doctrines. Protestant churches disagree on baptism, church polity, spiritual gifts, and worship style. But historic orthodox Protestants have confessed the same core gospel for five centuries: the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the incarnation, substitutionary atonement, bodily resurrection, salvation by grace through faith, and the return of Christ. That is not nothing. That is, in fact, everything.
The article assumes that visible institutional unity equals doctrinal certainty. But Rome doesn’t eliminate interpretation. It relocates it. Someone still has to interpret Scripture, tradition, councils, papal statements, and catechism paragraphs. And someone has to determine which teachings are infallible versus reformable. Rome’s answer to “who interprets?” is “the Magisterium.” The Protestant answer is that all human authority — including councils and popes — must itself be tested by Scripture. That’s a real disagreement. But Protestant fragmentation doesn’t resolve it in Rome’s favor.
“Sola Scriptura and private judgment caused the chaos.”
The article argues that Luther planted two fatal seeds — Scripture alone and private judgment — and once everyone became his own interpreter, division was inevitable.
This is a common argument, and it misrepresents what sola Scriptura actually means.
Sola Scriptura does not mean “me, my Bible, and nobody else.” It does not reject pastors, teachers, creeds, councils, church history, or theological tradition. What it means is that Scripture is the only final, infallible rule for faith and practice — because Scripture alone is God-breathed. All other authorities are real but subordinate. They serve the Word; they don’t stand over it.
A Protestant can and should affirm creeds, respect councils, honor tradition, and submit to godly elders — while still insisting that all of those things remain accountable to Scripture. The Reformers didn’t discard the early councils. They appealed to them. Luther invoked Augustine repeatedly. Calvin’s Institutes are dense with patristic citation. The Protestant concern isn’t with tradition per se — it’s with the Roman claim that the Church’s teaching office is itself infallible and therefore beyond scriptural correction.
A related Catholic argument — developed at length in Mr. Adadzie’s companion article — is that the early heresies were defeated not by Scripture alone but by apostolic Tradition and conciliar authority. Arius had Bible verses. The Gnostics quoted Paul. The Pelagians built careful exegetical cases. And the Church didn’t defeat them with more verses — it appealed to the rule of faith, the regula fidei, and the consensus of the Fathers. Therefore, the argument runs, sola Scriptura couldn’t have been the apostolic principle.
This is worth taking seriously, and Protestants shouldn’t wave it away. But notice what the argument actually proves: that human interpreters — including skilled, trained, sincere ones — can misread Scripture. That is precisely what Protestants have always said. The answer to bad interpretation is better interpretation under the guidance of the Spirit, tested by the full witness of Scripture. The answer is not to declare one institution’s interpretation permanently infallible.
Moreover, the early Church’s use of tradition and councils was itself always normed by Scripture. When Athanasius defended the full divinity of Christ against Arius, he didn’t simply say “the Church has spoken.” He argued from John 1, Colossians 1, and Hebrews 1 that the Son is eternal and uncreated. The council at Nicaea used the non-biblical term homoousios — but to capture what Scripture unambiguously teaches about the Son’s relationship to the Father. Tradition served Scripture; it didn’t replace it. The Protestant claim is that this is how it should always work — and that Rome eventually inverted the relationship.
Notice also how Jesus Himself handled disputed matters. He didn’t appeal to an institutional office. He said “Have you not read?” and “It is written.” He said the Scripture cannot be broken. The Bereans were commended — commended — for testing Paul’s preaching against Scripture rather than simply accepting it on apostolic authority. That’s not private judgment run amok. That’s Scripture functioning as the final court of appeal, which is exactly what Protestants are claiming.
“The Bible never says ‘Scripture alone,’ so the doctrine fails its own test.”
This is one of the sharper points in the article. If sola Scriptura is true, why doesn’t the Bible say so explicitly?
The answer is that this kind of proof-text isn’t what Protestants claim to need. The doctrine of the Trinity is not found in those exact words anywhere in Scripture. We don’t conclude the Trinity is therefore unbiblical. Theological conclusions can be necessarily derived from Scripture without appearing as a single proof-text — and Protestants argue that sola Scriptura is exactly that kind of conclusion.
The Protestant case is cumulative. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says Scripture is God-breathed and sufficient to equip the believer for every good work — a strong sufficiency claim. Jesus treated Scripture as the decisive court of appeal in every dispute. Paul warned the Galatians that even an angel from heaven preaching another gospel should be rejected — which means even spectacular spiritual or institutional authority must be judged by the apostolic gospel already delivered in writing. That is a remarkable statement. It subordinates all subsequent claims to the written deposit.
Here the Catholic counter-argument becomes important to address directly: if Scripture is self-sufficient, why did the early Church need Tradition to defeat the Arians and Gnostics? The Protestant answer is that the Arians and Gnostics were defeated by Scripture correctly understood — and that Tradition, creeds, and councils were the instruments by which the Church articulated what Scripture had always taught. Nicaea didn’t add to Scripture. It clarified it against a misreading. The homoousios was a fence around a biblical truth, not a new revelation alongside Scripture.
The difference between the Protestant and Catholic views of Tradition is precisely here. Protestants see Tradition as the Church’s accumulated wisdom in reading Scripture — valuable, weighty, and not to be dismissed — but always reformable if it can be shown to have departed from Scripture. Rome sees Tradition as a second, co-equal source of divine revelation alongside Scripture, with the Magisterium as the infallible interpreter of both. That is not what the early Fathers claimed for themselves. Irenaeus appealed to apostolic succession as a guarantee that the apostolic teaching had been faithfully transmitted — not as a new source of revelation independent of Scripture. The Reformers’ argument was that by the 16th century, Rome had added doctrines that could not be shown to be that apostolic deposit.
The Protestant position, stated plainly, is this: all doctrines binding on the conscience must be either taught in Scripture or necessarily derived from it. Rome binds the conscience with doctrines Protestants believe go beyond what Scripture can support — papal supremacy, Marian dogmas, purgatory in its developed form, the treasury of merit, and indulgences. That’s where the disagreement becomes unavoidable, and no appeal to Tradition resolves it, because the question is precisely whether those Traditions are genuinely apostolic.
“Luther had the Bible only because the Catholic Church gave it to him.”
This is one of the more rhetorically effective arguments in the article, and it deserves a careful answer.
The councils of Rome, Hippo, and Carthage recognized the New Testament canon. The article is right about that. But recognizing the canon and creating the canon are two different things.
The Old Testament books were received as Scripture by the Jewish people before the Catholic Church existed in its later institutional form. The New Testament books carried apostolic authority because they were written by apostles or their close associates and were received as such by churches from the beginning. The councils didn’t make Matthew, Romans, or John inspired. They formally recognized what the churches had already received.
Here’s a parallel: John the Baptist recognized Jesus as the Lamb of God. That recognition was real and important. But it did not make Jesus the Lamb of God. Recognition is not the same as conferring authority.
Protestants can gratefully acknowledge that the early Church preserved, copied, defended, and recognized Scripture. But that gratitude does not obligate us to accept every later Roman doctrine as infallible. And the canon argument cuts both ways: the Eastern Church also preserved Scripture and received the apostolic faith — and they reject papal supremacy. So if “the ancient Church preserved the Bible” proves Rome, why doesn’t it equally prove Eastern Orthodoxy?
“Luther and Zwingli disagreed over the Eucharist by 1529 — year fourteen of the movement.”
The Marburg Colloquy is a fair point to raise. Luther and Zwingli both read “This is my body” and reached opposite conclusions. That’s a genuine division, and Protestants should be honest about it rather than waving it off.
But the Catholic argument assumes that this disagreement proves the need for Rome’s infallible interpretation. Protestants would say it proves the need for careful exegesis and humility under Scripture.
Also worth noting: Rome’s position on the Eucharist isn’t simply “Jesus said, ‘This is my body,’ and we believe Him.” The full doctrine of transubstantiation depends on a particular metaphysical framework — substance and accidents — that was developed centuries later. Protestants are not rejecting Jesus’ words. They are questioning whether that specific philosophical explanation is required by those words. Lutherans, Reformed, Anglicans, and Baptists disagree among themselves about the Lord’s Supper. But many would argue Rome has gone beyond the text by defining the Supper as a propitiatory sacrifice of the Mass. That’s an addition, not simply a reading.
“Protestant violence — Servetus, the persecution of Quakers, the Puritans — proves what happens without a living teaching authority.”
The article is right that Protestant persecution happened and was wrong. Calvin’s role in Servetus’ execution was wrong. Religious coercion by Protestants was wrong. There’s no defense to be made there.
But the argument is historically selective. Rome also used coercive power: the Inquisition, executions for heresy, political persecution of Protestants throughout Europe. If Protestant violence disproves Protestant theology, the same logic would seem to disprove Catholic theology.
The more honest answer is that both Catholic and Protestant coercion reflected a failure — a failure to understand that Christ’s kingdom doesn’t advance by the sword. Jesus told Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.” The weapons of the Church are the Word, prayer, discipline, and faithful witness. Protestant reformers who reached for political power to enforce doctrinal uniformity were wrong, full stop. Conceding that doesn’t concede anything to Rome’s authority.
“There are tens of thousands of Protestant denominations.”
The number of Protestant denominations is the article’s most rhetorically powerful point and its most statistically imprecise one. The figure of “tens of thousands” typically includes national bodies, administrative divisions, and independent congregations counted separately even when they share the same doctrine. A Baptist church in Houston and a Baptist church in Nairobi may be counted as two different “denominations.”
But I’ll be fair: Protestant fragmentation is real. Pride, individualism, celebrity pastors, cultural accommodation, and doctrinal carelessness have all contributed to divisions that should not exist. This is not something Protestants should dismiss. Jesus prayed for unity. Unnecessary division is sin.
What’s worth noting, though, is that Catholicism has its own internal diversity that rarely gets counted the same way. The Franciscans, Dominicans, Jesuits, Benedictines, Carmelites, Opus Dei, and dozens of other Catholic orders differ significantly in theology, practice, spirituality, and even moral emphasis — yet they remain in institutional communion under Rome and are therefore not counted as “denominations.” If Protestant congregations were measured by the same standard — shared confession under a common authority — the number would shrink considerably. The difference is largely organizational, not doctrinal.
What the denominational count does not prove is that Rome’s authority is therefore established. Institutional unity and doctrinal faithfulness are different things. Protestants ask: does visible institutional unity equal biblical unity? If a church is visibly united around doctrines Protestants believe obscure the gospel, that unity comes at too high a price.
“Jesus prayed that they may all be one. Protestantism violates that prayer.”
John 17:21 is important, and Protestants should take it more seriously than they sometimes do. The division in the Church is not a small thing. It is a wound.
But Jesus’ prayer for unity in John 17 is rooted in something specific. He says, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” The unity He prays for is unity in the Father and the Son, grounded in the apostolic word. It is not first an institutional unity. It is a unity in truth.
The Protestant concern about Rome is not, “Unity doesn’t matter.” It’s that unity purchased at the cost of the gospel is not the unity Christ prayed for. If justification by faith is obscured, if Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice is re-presented as a propitiatory act of the Mass, if the conscience is bound by traditions without sufficient biblical warrant — then the Reformers’ argument was that separation, however painful, was required. That’s a serious claim. It deserves a serious answer, not the assumption that division alone proves them wrong.
“The Catholic Church has held the same core doctrines for 2,000 years.”
This claim deserves more nuance than the article gives it.
Protestants don’t deny that the early Church was sacramental, episcopal, liturgical, and deeply concerned with unity. I’m not going to pretend the early Church looked like a contemporary American evangelical congregation. It didn’t. And it’s worth saying plainly: Protestants share those first 1,500 years too. The Reformers were not pagans who invented Christianity in 1517. They were baptized, catechized, ordained men who had lived inside that same tradition — and whose protest was precisely that certain later developments had departed from it.
But the word same is doing a lot of work in this argument. Several distinctively Roman doctrines developed significantly over time and cannot simply be read back into the apostolic age: papal supremacy in its later form, papal infallibility (defined in 1870), the Immaculate Conception (defined 1854), the Assumption of Mary (defined 1950), indulgences, the treasury of merit, and the full dogmatic definition of transubstantiation. Rome has a sophisticated theology of doctrinal development to explain this, and it’s worth engaging seriously. But the Protestant concern is precisely that Rome treats these later developments as apostolic and binding even when the biblical evidence is thin.
Antiquity matters. But apostolicity matters more.
“Come home to the Church Jesus founded on Peter.”
I appreciate the warmth of the invitation. I want to accept the charity with which it is offered.
But Protestants don’t believe the true Church is defined first by institutional communion with Rome. We believe the true Church is defined by union with Christ — by those who trust His finished work, submit to His Word, and live under the apostolic gospel.
We confess in the creed “one holy catholic and apostolic Church” — and mean it. But “catholic” in the creed means universal, not specifically Roman Catholic. The Church is one because all believers are united to one Lord by one Spirit. It is holy because Christ sanctifies His people. It is catholic because the gospel is for every nation. It is apostolic because it is built on the apostolic witness preserved in Scripture.
Peter is honored in Protestant theology. He is a leading apostle. He confesses Christ. He preaches at Pentecost. But Matthew 16 does not establish papal supremacy in the way Rome reads it. The New Testament doesn’t present Peter functioning as a pope. In Acts 15, James pronounces the judgment of the Jerusalem council. Paul rebukes Peter publicly in Galatians 2. Peter calls himself a “fellow elder” in 1 Peter 5, not the universal head of the Church. Ephesians 2:20 says the household of God is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone — not Peter alone.
We can honor Peter without the papacy.
What I Told Mr. Adadzie — and What I’ll Stand By
I told him privately what I’ll say publicly here: Protestantism does not claim that every Protestant interpretation is correct. It claims that Scripture is the final authority over the Church. The sins and divisions of Protestants are real. They do not prove Rome’s claims.
The question is not whether Rome is institutionally unified — it is. The question is whether Rome’s additional doctrines are apostolic and biblical. Where Rome teaches the gospel, Protestants rejoice. Where Rome binds the conscience with doctrines that go beyond Scripture, Protestants must respectfully dissent.
Mr. Adadzie closed his response with a quote from Matthew 10:8 — “Freely you have received; freely give.” I think that’s exactly right. The grace of God in Christ is the thing we’ve received. Protecting the clarity of that gospel is what the Reformation was about at its best — and what it’s still about.
I retain genuine respect for my Catholic upbringing and for the Catholics who love Christ. This is not a quarrel with them. It is a disagreement about where the authority of Christ over His Church ultimately lies.
Soli Deo Gloria.
Chasing the Wind 
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