THE SOLAS, CATHOLICISM AND THE BEAM IN OUR EYES BY PASTOR GREG ELKAN.

Anyone familiar with the history of the Protestant Reformation knows that the “Church” the reformers were “protesting” against was the Catholic Church. Yet in all of our discourse on the _5  Solas,_ the “Church” was always left nameless. 

This is deliberate, not as much for not offending some Catholics but because discussing the _5  Solas_ as a ‘Catholic’ thing today would not only be counterproductive, but would actually be factually incorrect. ALL of us today – Catholics _and_ Protestants are guilty, in varying degrees, of the excesses the Reformers fought against. Indeed, some of the grosser infractions against the 5_solas_ can be seen not just among modern Protestants today, but in the very churches founded by the Reformers themselves!

Protestants who read of the _solas_ and automatically think it concerns the _other_ denomination would do well to remember our Lord’s words in Mt 7:3-4, _“And why behold you the speck that is in your brother's eye, but consider not the beam that is in your own eye? Or how will you say to your brother, Let me pull the speck out of your eye; and, behold, a beam is in your own eye?”_

They also need to be reminded that, centuries before the Reformation, the Catholic Church, too, was a ‘protestant’ church – protesting against unscriptural doctrines being introduced into the Church at the time. 

This cycle of doctrinal protest - followed by relapses into religious unbelief - causing another protest, ad infinitum exists in church history because the source of the problem lies not in the church itself, but in its people – US! 

Religious unbelief is hardwired into our genes. Though recessive during the fervent early days of any denomination; as generations come and go and decades become centuries, the ‘harmless’, ‘trivial’ excesses that we leave unchecked eventually explode into full-blown unbelief.  

The proper response to the _solas,_ therefore, is self-judgment: confronting our personal and congregational excesses, and repenting in honest humility where we find them.

AMEN

GREG ELKAN.

More Blessings await you today; you’ll not miss them in Jesus’ Name.

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