J.C.
Carrick, in his book on John Wycliffe, while trying to find those who, in his
view, held to the true gospel in the opening centuries of Christianity, could
only find a handful of people who held, to some degree, beliefs he held to,
such as Jovinian (c. 390) as he attacked the monastic life (p. 4) and Vigilantius
(c. 400), for similar reasons (pp. 4-5). Notwithstanding such desperate
attempts to find proto-Protestants in early Christianity, Carrick was forced to
admit that there were many centuries were, in his view, it is practically impossible
to find a remnant of true believers from the mid-fourth century to the 800s:
There is a deep silence of four hundred years
during which few if any voices are heard lifted up against mechanical and
superstitious Christianity. (J.C. Carrick, Wycliffe
and the Lollards [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908], 5)
This is
repeated by Carrick elsewhere:
In the Dark Ages—i.e. for four hundred years after the middle of the fourth century—the practice of preaching from Scripture gradually decayed, and, instead, the Ethics of Aristotle, or some other philosopher’s moral treatises, were read. (Ibid., 113)
When did the preaching of the gospel revive in
the pre-Reformation era? According to Carrick:
In the thirteenth
and fourteen centuries, however, preaching revived through the influence of
the two great orders of monks—the Franciscans and Dominicans, founded respectively
by St. Francis of Assisium and St. Dominic. (Ibid., 113, emphasis added)
Carrick is not the only Protestant who is forced to admit that, when one
examines history, in their own view, true believers were few and far between in
the first millennium of Christianity. Lorraine Boettner (1901-1990), a well-respected
defender of Calvinism and critic of Roman Catholicism, admitted:
It may occasion some surprise to discover that the doctrine of Predestination was not made a matter of special study until near the end of the fourth century. The earlier church fathers placed chief emphasis on good works such as faith, repentance, almsgiving, prayers, submission to baptism, etc., as the basis of salvation. They of course taught that salvation was through Christ; yet they assumed that man had full power to accept or reject the gospel. Some of their writings contain passages in which the sovereignty of God is recognized; yet along side of those are others which teach the absolute freedom of the human will. Since they could not reconcile the two they would have denied the doctrine of Predestination and perhaps also that of God's absolute Foreknowledge. They taught a kind of synergism in which there was a co-operation between grace and free will. It was hard for man to give up the idea that he could work out his own salvation. But at last, as a result of a long, slow process, he came to the great truth that salvation is a sovereign gift which has been bestowed irrespective of merit; that it was fixed in eternity; and that God is the author in all of its stages. This cardinal truth of Christianity was first clearly seen by Augustine, the great Spirit-filled theologian of the West. In his doctrines of sin and grace, he went far beyond the earlier theologians, taught an unconditional election of grace, and restricted the purposes of redemption to the definite circle of the elect. It will not be denied by anyone acquainted with Church History that Augustine was an eminently great and good man, and that his labors and writings contributed more to the promotion of sound doctrine and the revival of true religion than did those of any other man between Paul and Luther. (Boettner, Calvinism in History, emphasis added)
One core
doctrine relating to the central issue of soteriology, that Reformed Protestants would view as perverse and would be "an
anathema" (per Gal 1:6-9) is that of baptismal regeneration.
Notwithstanding, this doctrine was the unanimous teaching of early Christians,
even according to Reformed apologists. As William Webster writes:
The doctrine of baptism is one of the few
teachings within Roman Catholicism for which it can be said that there is a
universal consent of the Fathers . . . From the early days of the Church,
baptism was universally perceived as the means of receiving four basic gifts:
the remission of sins, deliverance from death, regeneration, and the bestowal
of the Holy Spirit. (William Webster, The
Church of Rome at the Bar of History [Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust,
1995], 95-96).
For a
listing of quotations from early Christians (e.g., Justin Martyr), see, for
e.g.:
In an interview on Hank Hanegraaff's conversion to Eastern Orthodoxy, Rob Bowman discussed whether one holding to EO (and RC) soteriology instead of the classical Protestant formulation means one is not a true Christian, Bowman said the following:
First of all, it leads to what I think ought to be for most of us [Protestants] a rather unsettling conclusion, which is that there were no Christians prior to the Protestant Reformation. Because, you will not be able to find, except perhaps a statement here or there out of context, you will not be able to find any Christian theologians, teachers, writers, in the first 14/15 centuries of Christianity clearly articulating what we would call "justification by faith alone," or as some people would like to call it, "forensic justification." The idea that justification is, at its core, is a legal act in which God pardons sinners of all their sins, past, present, and future, solely on the basis of Christ's atoning work, created simply by faith . . .(44:32 mark, "Episode 46: Hank Hanegraaff Converts to Eastern Orthodoxy")
Bowman is correct about forensic justification being absent (unless one wishes to wrest texts out of their context as William Webster and others are known to do), so one has to give credit where credit is due to Bowman on that point. Sadly for Bowman, forensic justification is not biblical. For a fuller discussion, see, for e.g.:
Response to a Recent Attempt to Defend Imputed Righteousness
Refuting Douglas Wilson on Water Baptism and Salvation
The same applies for Sola Scriptura. On this, see:
Not By Scripture Alone: A Latter-day Saint Refutation of Sola Scriptura
Why do I
bring this up? Many Protestant critics of the Church argue that Latter-day
Saint belief in the Great Apostasy is false and that there was always believers
in the true gospel throughout all the ages. Notwithstanding, when one examines
Christian history and the primary sources and relevant scholarship, one thing
is painfully clear: there were no “proto-Protestants” in early Christianity.
Indeed, the early Christians held firmly to doctrines Reformed Protestants
would believe to be blasphemous, such as baptismal regeneration, transformational
justification, belief in authoritative teachings outside of the Bible,
progressive justification, and many other teachings. So, while Protestant
apologists like Aaron “the yellow” Shafovaloff can, as he did in his debate with Kwaku El, confidently claim the true gospel and believers therein were
ceased to exist during the time of the Great Apostasy, in reality, Shafovaloff
and others, if they were consistent,
would have to condemn to hell all of them (and yes, that includes Augustine,
who believed in baptismal regeneration, purgatory, prayers to saints, Mary’s
perpetual virginity, Mary’s personal sinlessness, that truly justified people
can lose their salvation, etc).