Introduction
Today, it is quite common to find a division between various sects that profess to be protestants. Such is the case with the many modern Evangelical Christians, most of whom have never read any of the ancient creeds in their entire lives. Many Southern Baptists find themselves at odds with the very doctrines proposed during the Protestant Reformation although many of them still see themselves as Protestants. Confusion has grown among Roman Catholics about what Christians are truly Protestant, and gradually, many mainstream Christians have accepted any religious adherent to a western sect of Christianity that is not subject to the pope as being Protestant. The Pentecostals and Charismatics, along with the TV evangelists, are frequently described as ''Protestant'' by those that do not know any better. What many of these groups have in common though, is complete ignorance of the historic Reformed Protestant faith. By ''reformed'' I do not mean simply Calvinism, but also lower liturgical Protestants.
1..Are Evangelicals Protestant?
The truth for the matter is that many Evangelicals today are not aware of Protestant theology. In this present era, very few Southern Baptists, for example, have read the original confessions or creeds of the Protestant Churches from the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. While many Southern Baptists have embraced the doctrines of limited atonement or irresistible grace, the vast majority of them reject the sacraments as any means of grace to the elect (which was taught in several reformed confessions). Furthermore, Southern Baptists almost universally accept the practice of the altar call and decision theology, both of which are not only errors in doctrine, but alien to the ideas of the early reformers.
Whether or not the reformers were right, we must ask ourselves if Evangelicals today would be considered Protestant by those of the sixteenth century. While Lutherans and some of the Calvinist churches still believe the papacy is Antichrist, many Evangelicals today do not. Likewise, most Evangelicals today are far less liturgical and confessional than were many of the early reformers. Though Lutherans agree with much of Luther's beliefs (though certainly not all of them), one might be able to argue that Lutherans have softened their view of total depravity from the view that Luther held in his writings. At the same time, many Calvinists today are more dogmatic about limited atonement than John Calvin was. In fact, some scholars including Norman Geisler and David Allen have interpreted Calvin to have taught unlimited atonement.
2. Have the Lutherans Departed from Luther?
Sometimes, it is claimed by Calvinists that Luther taught limited atonement and later changed his view. In his commentary on Romans, Luther said of some popular passages used for universal atonement that these verses only referred to the elect. As an example, he understood 2 Timothy 2: 10 as only applying to the elect. It has been argued that Luther, however, taught unlimited atonement in his later writings. Nevertheless, I have not done enough study on this subject to say if any of this is true.
3. Are Anglo-Catholics truly Anglican?
Today, many Anglicans would still claim to hold to the values of the English Reformation's The Thirty-Nine Articles. When closely examined though, the majority of Anglicans are actually quite far from Wycliffe and Cranmer. As an example, both Wycliffe and Cranmer taught that the papacy was Antichrist. Nowadays though, ecumenism has largely changed the face of Anglicanism. While we may debate whether the Ecumenical movement is a good or bad thing, I don't think it is historically accurate to claim that the Anglicans of the twentieth century have the same theology as those espoused by the Anglicans of the sixteenth century.
4. Final Thoughts:
To be honest, I'm uncertain about who should be considered a ''Protestant'' and who shouldn't be. However, I think it is important that all recognize that most Evangelical Christians today are not in unison with all the ideas supported by the reformers. Of course, this could be either good or bad. The reformers were not infallible. Nevertheless, Evangelicals must see how their views have developed over time. Indeed, one needs to hardly study the reformers to see that several of them included a high reverence for the Virgin Mary that was much higher than many lower church Christians today would hold believe today. The Lutheran have Calvinist/Reformed churches have continued a greater opposition to the Roman Church than many Evangelicals have today. History has changed though, as have the circumstances surrounding theological debates. Finally, though the reformers felt that the Roman Church had erred, they never felt that the Roman Church had ceased to be a true church before the Reformation (unlike what Fundamentalists would later believe).
