Sunday, February 22, 2015

How many Protestant Denominations are there?

Many critics of sola scriptura, such as Latter-day Saint and Roman Catholic apologists, often claim that there are 28,000 denominations, though that figure differs on occasion (for instance, I recently heard a Latter-day Saint throw out the [false] claim that there are 43,000[!] denominations).

To be sure, there are many problems, especially exegetical, with sola scriptura, the formal doctrine of the Reformation (search for “sola scriptura” to see many of the key proof-texts refuted). However, this line of argument should be abandoned by critics of this false and rather pernicious doctrine, as it is just wrong.

Protestant apologist, Eric D. Svendsen, wrote a book entitled, Upon this Slippery Rock (2003), and one of the chapters contained therein examines this claim, as presented by Tim Staples (Catholic) and others who employ this lousy apologetic--the chapter can be found online via archive.org here.

I hope that Latter-day Saints, wishing to uphold intellectual integrity, will retire this argument, or, at the very least, modify the argument and use the proper figure of Protestant denominations, too--in reality, the issue of denominationalism is due to poor ecclesiology, not epistemology per se, within the broad spectrum of Protestantism.

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