Responding to Reformed Protestantism: Can You Have the Fathers Without the Church? | Just Christian?

Can you be “just Christian” and still wear a team jersey? In this episode, Cloud of Witnesses team members Jeremy Jeremiah, Mario Andrew, and James St Simon sit down to react to a Reformed Protestant defense of labels, movements, and sola scriptura, and then press into the deeper questions underneath it all: unity, authority, and what it really means to be catholic in the sense of a complete, historic faith.

We explore how “no labels” talk can hide real discomfort with fragmentation, and ask whether you can credibly claim two thousand years of Christian heritage while setting aside the worship, sacramental life, and conciliar teaching that actually shaped that heritage. Along the way, we test modern Protestant confessions against the early Church and ask whether you can quote the Fathers without also receiving the churchly life they inhabited.

In this conversation we dig into:

• The pull of “no labels” Christianity and the problem of theological tribes
• What it means to be catholic as complete, not just universal
• How liturgy, sacraments, and councils tether us to the early Church
• Sola scriptura versus Scripture within a living Tradition and teaching authority
• The danger of cherry picking Augustine, Chrysostom, and others to fit our systems
• Justification as declared righteous versus actually being made righteous by grace
• Why the New Testament insists that works and real transformation are necessary
• Assurance, baptism, and whether a believer can truly fall away

At the heart of the episode is the engine of the Reformation: sola scriptura. Our Protestant friends call Scripture “the norm that norms other norms.” We ask what that looks like on the ground, where every believer can become their own referee and the result is endless splintering. Against that, we explore a vision of Scripture inside the Church, where the Bible is read, preached, and lived within the grammar of historic worship and sacramental life.

If you care about what unites Christians across the centuries, how faith moves from theory into a way of life, and whether the Fathers can really be claimed without the Church they loved and defended, this episode is for you. Share it with a friend who loves theology, tell us where you land in the comments, and join the Cloud of Witnesses community as we keep wrestling with the faith once delivered to the saints.

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