Fragmentation: Argument #8 Against Sola Scriptura

After looking at argument #9, which was, ‘Sola Scriptura was not in the early Church,’ and seeing how Church history actually does support Sola Scriptura, we move onto argument #8 and the idea that Sola Scriptura caused the fragmentation of the church. At first glance, this might sound plausible. There are a lot of Protestant denominations, and some of them are turning downright heretical. But the general reason for this argument seems to be all of the perceived doctrinal disagreements that created the perceived disunity, although I think far too many of these splits are caused by personalities and petty selfishness.

But fragmentation can sometimes be more difficult to pin down than one might think. Far too many Protestants, and Catholics for that matter, know nothing about their history or how their doctrines came about. When someone says something, you just believe it because checking them out is not always an easy task and we live in a day and age when we just can’t be bothered with such things. Yet as believers, our faith should demand that we do so.

That is the reason I completed the first 29 blog entries of this series, because a basis for looking at everything that must follow needed to be established. Church history is something no one wants to read because it can be very long and very boring, with some exciting finds here and there along the way. But I think it has become a necessity for believers to know their history. The Church fathers are a mixed bag, sometimes they are biblical in their views and sometimes they are not. That doesn’t invalidate everything they wrote, nor does it require us to believe their questionable beliefs. To understand them, we need to recognize the era they lived in and the issues they faced, not always an easy thing to evaluate.

It might be easier to see the fragmentation in the Protestant church when all we do is look at the number of denominations and especially some of the doctrines they teach and preach. But fragmentation is not reserved to Protestants, since the Catholic Church’s own history would seem to point to their own problem with this same issue. In this blog, number 31 in this Sola Scriptura series, Cameron’s argument will be examined in a number of ways to bring some balance to his old and outdated accusation, one that current Catholic apologists should no longer make.

Fragmentation: Scripture should have Unified the Church

This is the transcript of what Cameron said in his YouTube video for argument #8,

Argument 8 fragmentation. Now this one is easy to miss at first but it's huge. Okay, if Scripture alone was meant by God as the sole infallible rule of faith for the church we'd expect it to unify believers around clear doctrines. But instead it has reliably produced a staggering degree of doctrinal fragmentation. The numbers themselves are absolutely astonishing. According to the Center for Study of Global Christianity in mid 2023 there were 47,300 Christian denominations or rights. By 2025 it is predicted that there will be 49,000 and in 2050 64,000 denominations. And of course the vast majority of these denominations are Protestant or evangelical. And these splits are not trivial either. Okay, they're over essential doctrines central to salvation itself, infant or believer baptism, the nature of the Eucharist, eternal security versus the possibility of falling away, justification by faith alone or in combination with works. Each of these doctrinal disputes strikes at the heart of the gospel message. And what's particularly striking here is that serious fragmentation started almost immediately after the reformation began. Within just 15 years of Luther's initial protest multiple irreconcilable Protestant confessions emerged particularly around foundational beliefs like the Eucharist and justification. Moreover this widespread persistent fragmentation isn't accidental. It's structurally built into Sola Scriptura itself. By placing the final interpretive authority in the hands of every believer or pastor the doctrine essentially guarantees a steady multiplication of competing interpretations. Without a universally recognized teaching authority to arbitrate these disagreements each doctrinal dispute inevitably results in new denominational splits. This pattern of fragmentation isn't simply due to human imperfection is precisely what we would predict given Sola Scriptura’s fundamental premise. Now some might reply here that fragmented truth is better than unified error. But remember persistent and substantial fragmentation itself strongly suggests a problem. It remains that ordinary believers face constant confusion and uncertainty about critical doctrines. It also profoundly undermines Christianity's witness to the world. In John 17:21, Jesus explicitly prayed for unity among believers precisely quote “so that the world may believe.” If God's intention were really Sola Scriptura why would the fruit of that intention be a landscape of perpetual doctrinal chaos and uncertainty the very opposite of the unity Christ prayed for in short fragmentation is a deep structural flaw within Sola Scriptura. Instead of unity and clarity we consistently see division and doctrinal uncertainty. Exactly the opposite of what we would expect if God is in control of his church. So why is this one argument number eight? Well, while this one is serious, it's a serious argument, fragmentation alone isn't necessarily a knockout blow. Okay, someone could argue that God permits this fragmentation for some greater purpose. Perhaps uh doctrinal diversity has stimulated theological insights or spiritual growth. But notice these goods, the very goods achieved by fragmentation like theological richness or adaptability, are already fully realized within Catholicism through diverse spiritual traditions, religious orders and vibrant theological discussions, all within a unified doctrinal framework. So, while fragmentation may not utterly disprove Sola Scriptura on its own, it strongly hints that a better system exists, one that achieves these goods without sacrificing unity. 

Cameron's video: 4:35-8:26 [emphasis added]

In my last blog I summarized his statement into bullet points, but since this one seems to be more of a hodge-podge of ideas and thoughts, I’m just going to go right into my defense against his view.

What the Heck are ‘Rights’?

Before we start this rebuttal, a question has to be asked about what would seem to be his strongest point, the 47,000 Christian denominations and rights. The site Cameron refers to states, ‘denominations and rights,’ but I’m not sure I understand what the term, ‘rights,’ actually means. Is the reference to para-church organizations? Does it mean Christian associations? Is this talking about groups like the Knights of Columbus, prolife groups, pro-family groups, groups promoting home schooling? If none of these are what is meant, then what is the definition of that word? Nothing I found seems to discuss what this term means. So, how many so-called denominations fit into this category? Are the majority of ‘these’ denominations or ‘rights’? If its ‘rights,’ then the 47,000 number is an unfair description of what is going on, because there are Catholic organizations and associations or ‘rights’ just like there are Protestant ones. Without a clear definition, all one can do is speculate which seems to be the exact opposite of what needs to be done if he is attempting to ‘prove’ that Sola Scriptura ‘creates’ the disunity he claims it does.

Now, for the remainder of this rebuttal, I’m going to use the following articles for various parts of my rebuttal:

• The published article, We Need to Stop Saying That There Are 33,000 Protestant Denominations, on the National Catholic Register website which was posted back in 2016.
• The webpage titled, The Facts and Stats on "33,000 Denominations", linked in the Register articles referenced above.
• The webpage titled, Global statistics for all religions: 2001 AD, linked in the Register articles referenced above.
• The webpage titled, Anti-Sola Scriptura Arguments Refuted, linked from the Global statistics webpage directly above.
• The webpage titled, The 33,000 Denominations Myth.

Also, I want to let the reader know that I’m going to use the 33,000 denominations number, since most of the resources linked above use this number and these numbers are from 2001. Doing this will make this presentation much easier for the reader to follow along in the linked articles if it uses what is consistently stated in these resources. But it doesn’t really matter what the number is. If it's 22,000, 33,000 or 47,000 the point that Cameron is trying to make is still the same – there are far too many denominations, and they all exist because of Sola Scriptura.

“Stop Saying That!”

Let’s begin with the article published by the National Catholic Register, which was written back in 2016 and asks Catholics to stop using the number of Protestant denominations for their fragmentation accusation. Yes, you heard that right, 2016. It’s 2025 and Cameron is still using an argument that was refuted by a Catholic source back in 2016, but let’s continue down this road and see where it takes us. This article refers to statistics published in 2001 and the author starts his conclusion with these words,

There are not — repeat with me — there are not 33,000 Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions. There are not any­where close to it. It is a myth that has taken hold by force of rep­e­ti­tion, and it gets cited and recited by reflex; but it is based on a source that, even Catholics will have to con­cede, relies on too loose a def­i­n­i­tion of the word “denom­i­na­tion.”

We Need to Stop Saying That There Are 33,000 Protestant Denominations [emphasis added]

That’s right, a Catholic source that definitively states this concept of 33,000 denominations is NOT true. It’s a myth. But I encourage you to check out the source linked above and read the entire article for yourself. Now, let’s go through some of the details for why the author had to conclude that this number was a myth and a misrepresentation of the facts.

The original source material is from ‘World Christian Encyclopedia’ mentioned in this article, as well as the World Christian Database (blocked by their paywall), neither of which I have direct access to. There is also a third source which Cameron cites in his video that is also behind an expensive paywall. So, I’m going to use the numbers from the articles I linked above. If they were good enough for the Catholic Register, then they should be good enough for us. Using an article from James White’s Alpha & Omega Ministries website, The 33,000 Denominations Myth, as well as some additional resources linked above, I’ll start with the reasons I and others disagree with this point.

The first point is that it is now eight years after the Catholic Register article was posted, so why was it that after a full year of investigative work on Cameron’s part, he never came across this article? How on earth can he still be referencing this myth? It’s not like he had no idea this information exists. All he had to do was ask ‘Catholic Answers’ who would be up to speed on this myth, right? James White, whom Cameron knows, has a YouTube channel, just like Cameron does, and Catholic apologists follow him and comment on his work all the time, so they have to know his rebuttal on this, and would also know about the Catholic Register article. This is ‘Christian Apologetics 101’ – know your opponents, know their rebuttals, check out their sources. I have listened to all of White's 5 or 6 Sola Scriptura debates going back to the 1990’s and no Catholic apologist has ever raised the fragmentation argument with him in a debate.

The second point is that in White’s blog post, which was written in 2007, he called out Catholic apologists for utilizing this argument against others. So, we know that in 2007 the argument had been debunked but Catholic apologists were still using it against other debate opponents, just not with James White, who would have pointed out their error.

But since Cameron used this debunked argument, we should take the extra step of discussing why the argument has always been invalid. Did you know that in 2001, there were 242 Catholic denominations? No? Did you know that there were 781 Orthodox denominations? No? I didn’t think so. I’ll bet you had no idea there were any Catholic denominations at all, because Cameron gave the impression that the Catholic Church was in complete unity, as in zero denominations. So, why are there Catholic denominations in the 33,000 number?

So, let’s dive into these numbers a little further. Take a look at Global statistics for all religions: 2001 AD webpage which documents the information from James White’s blog article linked above. Now let’s take a look at a slightly different example from Anti-Sola Scriptura Arguments Refuted which draws out a different point from the statistics. According to those statistics, there are,

… 25 Orthodox traditions inside the Orthodox church and 22 Roman Catholic traditions inside the Roman Catholic church. Add the 16 Orthodox traditions and 8 Roman Catholic traditions in the "Independent" category, and [you have] a grand total of 41 different Orthodox denominations and 30 Roman Catholic denominations.

Anti-Sola Scriptura Arguments Refuted [emphasis added]

So, there are legitimately 30 Roman Catholic denominations. Now, does that sound like the kind of ‘unity’ that Cameron was boasting about? But wait, you say, aren’t there 242 denominations? Yes, you are right, that is what was said above in a different article. For this higher number, it seems the writers of the study use a different ‘denomination’ for each country. So, if you had 200 countries, then you would have at least 200 denominations of the same church, or there abouts. But doesn’t that mean that if there are 242 countries, then there is actually only One Catholic denomination, right? No, because there are actually more denominations identified than there are existing countries, so you are still going to end up with more than a single Catholic denomination. And in the quote above, adding the ‘independents’ to the single Catholic Church number Cameron so desperately wants, you still end up with a minimum of 30 Roman Catholic denominations.

Now if you are following the math on this one, and assuming the higher number of denominations, we still have just under 32,000 denominations to account for. I wonder what they could possibly be. Did you know there were 122 Mormon denominations? Or that there were 228 Jehovah’s Witness denominations? Yeah, neither did I! But what’s worse is that Cameron appears to include these cults in as if they are Protestant denominations. Yet somehow Sola Scriptura created those cultic denominations, along with the Catholic and Orthodox ones. Is that really fair? As a matter of fact, there are all sorts of heretical cults that are labeled ‘Protestant’, like Oneness Pentecostals, Unitarians and other cultic non-Christian groups [1]. So, besides the nebulous ‘rights’ category that has no definition and no numbers, mixed into this 32,000 number are groups that are decidedly not Christian denominations at all. Again, does this seem fair to you?

Now, according to the statistics, of those 33,000 denominations, there were 8973 Protestant denominations and it is an appalling high number, but for a ‘unified’ Catholic Church, 242 or even 30 denominations is just as scandalous and I will get to ‘why’ in the next section.

Two Equals Two Million

The writer of the Register article also wrote the following,

Catholics need to stop cit­ing this num­ber, not only because it is outlandishly false but because it is not the point how many Protestant denominations there are. The point is the scandal of divi­sion and the love of private judg­ment that has caused so much of it. The scandal would be no less if there were two denominations, and no greater if there were two mil­lion. Any divi­sion in the body of Christ is a scandal. To argue over how many is a red her­ring. It is an argu­ment about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

We Need to Stop Saying That There Are 33,000 Protestant Denominations [emphasis added]

OK, so let’s test that theory out, shall we? In the quote above, the writer stated that the scandal is not in the number of denominations but the fact that there were divisions at all. So, I wonder if the writer really means this because we already have 30 Catholic denominations, right? But I can easily cite two divisions of the Catholic Church right now, and neither had anything to do with Sola Scriptura: the split with Eastern Orthodoxy and the creation of Anglicanism.

The Great Schism

As virtually every Christian knows or should know, in 1054 the differences between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church came to a head. The Roman Catholic Church, desiring to be the head of all Christianity and being blocked by Eastern Orthodoxy from doing so, excommunicated the East, who shortly thereafter did the same to the Roman Church. Now there is a whole lot more to this split but it has been a huge black eye on the Catholic Church since that bull of excommunication was delivered. I am sure that Catholic sources will blame Orthodoxy and vis-versa but as an unbiased outsider reading the history, the ‘lust for supremacy’ seemed to be the overriding factor that forced the hand of Rome and the split.

Regardless of who is blamed, according to Cameron, one of the reasons the Catholic Church is so superior to Protestantism is its unity, but where exactly was Rome’s unity in its excommunication of the East? To be sure, this split was a long time in coming since there were already deep divisions between the two for centuries, some of which were documented in several blogs of my Sola Scriptura series. But there were other areas of division like icon worship in the East vs Saint and Mary veneration (worship?) in the West, mysticism in the East vs legalism in the West, Presbyter (Patriarchs) in the East vs Episcopal (Pope) in the West and Greek in the East vs Latin in the West. I know I haven’t provided any explanation for these differences, but the point was to highlight some of the irreconcilable differences that were already present between the two and at some point the Eastern and Western sides of the Church would have split. These differences highlight the real issue – the lack of true unity between the two. If ‘unity’ is the hallmark of the Catholic Church, then what happened between East and West?

One thing is for sure, Sola Scriptura did NOT cause the Great Schism between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism. The Great Schism was arguably the biggest church split in the Church’s history and occurred because of Rome’s demand to run all of Christendom. By the way, this split is enough to negate Cameron’s supposed unity claim within the Catholic Church.

Anglicanism

Let’s move onto Anglicanism. Yes, I know it is considered Protestant in some circles, but why does it exist? Was it because of Sola Scriptura? The answer to that question is a resounding ‘No.’ Its origin is from King Henry VIII and his desire to get his marriage annulled from Catherine of Aragon because she could not produce a male heir, as if it was her fault. Pope Clement VII rightfully refused to give Henry an annulment, so Henry declared himself the supreme head of the English Church, which established its independence from papal authority. And because virtually all countries had ‘sacral’ governments where church and state were intertwined, Henry was simply creating his own papal authority so his marriage could be annulled. Henry was very, very Catholic. So, it needs to be stressed that he was NOT trying to create a Protestant sect, he hated Luther and Protestants. With this as a more proper understanding of the origins of Anglicanism, how exactly did Sola Scriptura establish the Anglican Church? That becomes obvious, does it not? Sola Scriptura had absolutely nothing to do with it at all, since Anglicanism was and still is Catholicism without the Pope.

But what we now have are two examples of church splits, or maybe I should say two examples of disunity, which had nothing to do with Sola Scriptura. And according to the Catholic Register article, ‘whether 2 or 2 million’ the scandal is the lack of unity. So, is Catholicism properly scandalized?

And just to add to this, if you will remember in the above section, the data from the websites linked in the Register article, there are at least 30 Catholic denominations to add to those two Church splits. Disunity galore!

There is one last thing I should point out. Cameron seems to blame Protestants for the disunity, yet there had been reform movements throughout the history of the Church. Some of these were handled better than others. One horrible example is Tyndale who simply felt the Scriptures should be in the language of the people and he was burned at the stake. Just like Luther, Tyndale was NOT trying to split the Church, he just thought everyone should be able to read the Scriptures in their own language. Today even Catholicism provides the Scriptures in the languages of their people. And speaking of Luther, he was not the first to believe that it was by faith that we are saved, and had he gone to Rome when called, he would have been treated as Tyndale and Huss were. Rome has never been very good at dealing with those who question the current norms.

The Enlightenment, Not Sola Scriptura

If Rome really wants to blame something for these initial Protestant divisions, she should look in the mirror and acknowledge all the dumb decisions she made down through history. For instance, locking the Scriptures in Latin – a dead language – for a thousand years! Latin may have been the language of the Church but it was not the language of the people, and it's pretty hard for people to read Scripture when they cannot read or speak the Church’s language. Add to that the fact that no one understood what was being said during their ‘church’ services because the Mass was in Latin. Imagine thinking that God didn’t want you to know what He was saying to you. Much like the KJV Only crowd, up to the enlightenment the Catholic Church believed that the Scriptures should only exist in Latin. But Latin Bibles, just like English Bibles, are translations of the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. Add to that, it should be stressed that a lot of care had to be taken when doing that translation so as not to introduce any translation errors. And that was exactly what happened when you have a translation committee of one, which is what Jerome effectively was. Jerome was a brilliant guy and I believe that he attempted to do the very best job he could, but he was only human. His translation accidentally changed doctrine when he mistranslated ‘repentance’ into ‘penance,’ which has become a sacrament in the Catholic Church, a sacrament that does not and could not ever legitimately exist. Continuing, Rome never kept a knowledge of Greek, which helped create and strengthen the divide with the East. This also meant it had no way to verify that its Latin translation was accurate. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Catholicism treated Latin as if it was the original language of Scripture, just like the worst of the KJV Only crowd tries to do today. So, that mentality conveyed the belief that anyone who translated the Scriptures into a modern language was a heretic.

And this is just one topic to explore for the divisions that arose during the enlightenment, which we need to get back to. So, what happened during the enlightenment? People started going back to the primary sources to verify the secondary source they had been using for generations, i.e., the Latin Vulgate. There was a renewed interest in knowing both Greek and Hebrew. Because of Lorenzo Valla’s notes on the New Testament, Desiderius Erasmus wanted to verify the veracity of the Latin Vulgate by going back to the original Greek and Hebrew, which is why he was creating a Greek New Testament. And there is no doubt that his Greek New Testament fueled the Reformation. But it was the enlightenment that caused all of this, not the reformers themselves, they were simply a byproduct of their times. And with the advent of the printing press, there was no way for Rome to stop or control the explosion of knowledge that would follow. It was not Sola Scriptura that created Martin Luther or the Protestant Reformation, it was the principles of the enlightenment, the printing press and a Catholic priest named Desiderius Erasmus.

It wasn't even Sola Scriptura that created differences in Protestant groups, it was more than just people reading Scripture for themselves, it was also reading the Church fathers in their historical context and coming to different conclusions than those provided by Rome. Yes, there were differences from what Rome taught as well as differences from those of other reformers, but there was also a gigantic void of biblical knowledge that the Catholic Church never filled. I have been fond of saying, ‘where are the infallible commentaries of Scripture?’ because after 1500 years there were none for the reformers to read. They devoured the Church fathers like Irenaeus, Tertullian, Augustine, Chrysostom and Aquinas and what they found were differences between what these men wrote and what Rome officially taught, or didn’t teach. They discovered the two schools of Scripture interpretation and rejected the Alexandrian allegorical interpretive methodology and embraced the Antiochene. Add that to the differences they found between Greek and Latin, and you had the reformers validating all of the teachings of Rome. Honestly, to blame Sola Scriptura for the disunity is infantile and naive.

What Really Kept the Church from Splitting

If Cameron wants to be more honest in his argument on this specific topic, then he needs to address how the sacral Church and State used both ‘threats of’ and ‘use of’ force to prevent anyone from dissenting or disagreeing with the ‘Church’ defined doctrines. And it's not just about that, there was a lot of conversion by the sword. When a person has a sword on their throat, they are likely to agree to anything and then later do nothing to ‘rock the boat.’ The same would be true of those that witnessed this type of ‘use of force.’ Maybe take a moment and read through this article, Interview — Converting By the Sword. The persecution of Protestants like Tyndale and Hus was not an isolated case, as there were plenty of Catholics and non-Catholics that were persecuted by the Church throughout the history of the Church. And don’t think I’m excusing the Protestants on this point; they were equally horrible and brutal when it came to persecuting Catholics. A pox upon them both! But I raise this as an issue because Cameron seems to completely miss how much the threat and use of force throughout Church history ‘kept’ unity in the Church. He blames Sola Scriptura like it's some ‘boogyman’ which destroyed the peace and harmony the Church enjoyed since Constantine became a Christian. What happened during the Crusades? What did the Catholic military forces do to people in the Eastern Orthodox lands? Cameron needs to take off his rose-colored glass!

Striking at the Heart of the Gospel

I also would like to see those same rose-colored glasses taken off when it comes to an honest evaluation of the Church fathers and their differing views on Doctrine. The Church battled through heresies to define the humanity and the deity of Christ, reject Arianism and endorse the Trinity, just to name a few. But somewhere along the line the Church started being more concerned with honoring personalities like the dead Apostles, bishops and Mary, than understanding what Scripture actually said. They got enamored with Greek philosophy and started using it to interpret Scripture as allegorical and completely forgot that real people wanted to read Scripture and know what it meant. People became obsessed with collecting trinkets like pieces of the Cross of Christ or drops of Jesus’ blood. These obsessions led to veneration and then worship of things and people, instead of what should have been their focus, Jesus. Obtaining offices started to become more important than the function of that office, which led to the development of the papacy and the rewriting of history to make Peter the first Pope. Maybe if the Church had been focusing on doctrine instead of icon veneration/worship and fighting for papal supremacy over the Church there would have been much less biblical confusion within the Catholic Church about basic doctrines like salvation and justification. Salvation is not as complicated as Catholicism has made it. “Sin” is not divided into venial and mortal – all sin is offensive to God. There would never have been a need to sacrifice Jesus every Sunday in Catholic Churches if believers understood that Jesus died for all of our sins, past, present and future. Why did Paul spend so much time telling believers that ‘faith’ was about trusting in the finished work of Christ?

All Those Interpretations

Lastly, we need to address the plethora of interpretation’s accusation once again, but in a slightly different way this time. I suspect that the interpretations are really tied to the number of assumed denominations, but let me touch upon a couple of examples, one of which Cameron raised. Let’s take baptism and communion, but only to allow me to point more accurately to a better understanding of the problem being addressed in this section. Are there disagreements between those that believe in infant baptism and those who hold to believer’s baptism? Yes, but I believe one can place this issue squarely at the foot of the early Church. The first 300 years of Church history was chaotic when it came to the subject of baptism. Constantine, for instance, waited until right before he died to be baptized. And yet, there seems to be some general agreement that infant baptism did not start until the end of the 2nd century. [2] Next, concerning Communion or the Eucharist within the Church, there was no consensus as to its proper meaning and implementation, as both a memorial and a real presence was believed and taught in the early Church. As a matter of fact, there was no controversy on its observance until the ninth century. [3]

And just because Cameron raised the point, justification is something that modern day Catholics don’t quite understand, as they confuse part of what they believe with sanctification, something that generally, most Protestants get right. But if you want to make the argument here between total depravity and free will, Catholicism opted to adopt a bit of Pelagianism to resolve the issue. Even though semi-Pelagianism was condemned at the Council of Orange in 529 AD, elements of it were still adopted in the Medieval Church and continue to be believed to this day. [4]

My point of raising this is not that there were or are no disagreements within Protestantism but that Catholicism does not have a spotless record on any of these topics. The lack of serious Scriptural and doctrinal discussions on key topics in the early Church meant that centuries later these issues would arise, as they did. I also recognize that my statement might be viewed as unfair, assuming that they could predict what controversies would arise. But as the previous blogs in this series show, their incorporation of philosophy and focus on allegorical interpretation from the Alexandrian school meant that centuries down the road they would struggle with basic Scriptural exegesis. Catholics have the gall to condemn Protestants for interpreting Scripture, while also knowing that giants in the early Church like Augustine and Chrysostom thought that everyday Christians could understand and apply Scripture to their lives. The fact that the Catholic Church never felt it important enough to do that very task for believers meant and still means that someone down the road would attempt to do so. There were a lot of early and later Church fathers that wrote commentaries, but none of them are considered ‘authoritative.’ Why do you think that is? But since, according to the Catholic Church, only she can interpret Scripture, I ask once again, where are the infallible commentaries? The Catholic Church can condemn Protestants all they want for their interpretations of Scripture but until they actually create and provide those infallible commentaries, it's a hollow condemnation. God, who is the author of Scripture, intended His people to read the Word He provided them, and not only read it but understand it. Chrysostom was extremely clear on this very point.

And one last thought on this topic. As a non-denominational believer, I find the same diversity that Cameron says the Catholic Church has. Sure, there are hardliners in Protestantism that demand their view be adopted or the rest of us are unbelievers, but no one takes them seriously. Still, that created the kind of disunity Cameron and other Catholics are so quick to point out. But I also see Presbyterians and Baptists discussing theological topics together and in Communion with each other. Just because they go to different churches does not mean they oppose one another. For instance, John MacArthur (non-denominational) and R.C. Sproul (presbyterian) were the best of friends yet disagreed on certain beliefs. That is because disagreement does not mean separation or disunity.

I am currently writing what amounts to a commentary of Colossians, one of my favorite New Testament Epistles. To create it I use commentaries from a lot of people, from early Church fathers to modern day commentators and from a full spectrum of denominations. Sure, I disagree with some of these people at times, but I’ve been struck with the unity of belief between all of these commentators through the centuries of time in this short Epistle.

Conclusion

In this rebuttal of the fragmentation argument against Sola Scriptura we touched upon the obscure wording of the study where the number of denominations came from which defined denominations very loosely, so loosely that Catholicism had 242 denominations. And even if that number could be reduced to one (which it cannot), there are still 30 legitimate denominations, so we had an epic failure on the Catholic side right at the beginning. Then we had a Catholic article that agreed that the denomination's number of 33,000 was absurd and Catholics should stop repeating it. The author stated that the real issue was about disunity, so it did not matter whether the number was 2 or 2 million, anything over one demonstrated the lack of unity within the Protestant Church. But since there were already at least 30 denominations in the Catholic Church, they had already failed their own unity litmus test. I then pointed out the split with the Eastern Church in 1054 and the creation of Anglicanism, which was created simply because an English King wanted a marriage annulment.

Next, I discussed the real culprit for the Protestant Reformation – the enlightenment, which had much more to do with mistakes made by Catholicism. After that I brought up the uncomfortable topic of the ‘threat of’ and ‘use of’ force by the Catholic Church through its long history. People tend to obey rules, even crazy rules, when a sword is on their throat. And I equally castigated the Protestants for committing the same sins after the Reformation. And lastly, I addressed the so-called conflicting interpretations issue, making the point that there is a lot of diversity of views within Protestantism and that there is a lot more tolerance of differing views and unity than is given credit. But, just like in Catholicism, there are some views that are not tolerated, such as truly heretical views.

In all of this, I was not trying to make the point that Protestantism is without error, nor was I trying to misrepresent Catholicism. There are a number of Protestant denominations that are downright embarrassing to the faith that was ‘once for all delivered to the saints.’ (by the way, the saints are you and me) But I also feel the same about far too much of Catholicism. So, my goal in this blog was simply to dismantle a flawed argument which had been refuted over a decade ago. Maybe it was accidental, maybe Cameron simply had no idea this argument had been repudiated long ago, but I think he should have known, especially after a supposed year of intense investigation. By using this discredited argument, he makes himself look foolish or disingenuous.

Regardless, Cameron’s argument that Sola Scriptura created a fragmented Church is highly flawed. As Astin Suggs put it in his response video, “Sola Scriptura is about avoiding errors, and not about governing the Church in a particular way that leads to unity.” [5]

So, as you can see, there is really no point in attempting to utilize this fragmentation argument against Protestants. If Cameron’s point was really about unity, then neither Catholicism, Orthodoxy or Protestantism can claim the high moral ground. I think both Jesus and the Apostles, especially Paul, were preparing the Church for disunity because the real issue is the purity of the Church and her doctrine. Satan's goal will always be to splinter the Church into irrelevancy. The fewer the true Christians, the more marginalized they will become. Why else did Paul warn in his epistles about the coming false teachers? Satan does not care how many idols you worship, just as long as your focus is off Christ and onto something else. And honestly, only Scripture can keep us grounded and centered on Jesus. And that is what is needed for all true Christians. You want unity? Then be united to Christ through His never changing Word.

We read the Scriptures; we commit the psalms to memory; we master the Gospels; we expound the prophets; but we must not do this so as to win praise and glory in the presence of our brothers, but to please Christ, that His word may resound from our lips.

Jerome, On the Psalms, Homily 46

Footnotes

1. I would also add the cultic and near cultic KJV Only groups into this category as they effectively reject Sola Scriptura. Many of these groups do not acknowledge the impact of Church history on Scripture since the English version of the KJV Bible translation is effectively ‘modern day revelation’ as a Bible version. The fact that Scripture’s original languages were Hebrew and Greek is irrelevant now that the English KJV exists. I would also add many of the independent Charismatic and Pentecostal groups that effectively reject Sola Scriptura since they believe in modern day revelation. Some examples would be the Adventist groups such as the 7th Day. If you hold that there is modern day revelation still being given by God to mankind, then you cannot fully endorse Sola Scriptura. Some of these groups are very open about their rejection of it, while others count modern day revelation as something less than what Scripture is.
2. Baptism in the Early Church
3. THE EUCHARIST - Its Historical Development and Roman Catholic Teaching - This is a long article but well worth the read.
4. Semi Pelagianism and Roman Catholicism
5. Responding to ‪@CapturingChristianity‬ on Sola Scriptura: BTW, Sola Scriptura is True