Problems of Protestant Exegesis
The Catholic “Et-Et” vs. the Protestant “Aut-Aut”
Before delving into why I believe Protestant exegesis has erred on this topic, I want to highlight a fundamental difference in how Catholicism and Protestantism understand Revelation. Catholicism operates on the principle of “et-et” (both-and), while Protestantism often adheres to “aut-aut” (either-or). The latter tends to view concepts that are actually complementary as mutually exclusive, a logical error known as a false dilemma.
This dichotomy is evident in the foundational principles of the Protestant Reformation, especially its “Five Solas”:
Sola Scriptura (Scripture Alone): Protestant reformers rejected 1,500 years of Christian doctrinal development, including Councils and Tradition, in favor of individual interpretation of the Bible. This led to a fragmentation of beliefs, creating denominations that developed their own “traditions.” For Protestants, it was no longer “Bible and Tradition” (et-et) but “Bible or Tradition” (aut-aut).
Sola Fide (Faith Alone): Luther’s interpretation of salvation through faith in the Epistle to the Romans led him to conclude that salvation came only through faith, but not the faith that works through charity. For Catholics, it is not contradictory to say that faith saves, but also that one must live according to God’s will and obey His commandments. God’s grace provides both the faith and the ability to act accordingly (Philippians 2:13). Luther’s “Faith Alone” teaching led to the extreme idea that sinning did not affect salvation, shifting from “Faith and Works” (et-et) to “Faith or Works” (aut-aut).
Sola Gratia (Grace Alone): Luther saw salvation as a free gift from God, excluding any cooperation from human freedom. The error here is in removing cooperation instead of subordinating it, presenting grace as coming solely from God without involving man’s participation. Thus, the shift was from “Grace and Freedom” (et-et) to “Grace or Freedom” (aut-aut).
Solus Christus (Christ Alone): Under the Protestant “aut-aut” approach, if only Christ saves, the Church is deemed unnecessary for salvation. Neither the Pope nor a hierarchy of bishops and priests is seen as needed. Catholic understanding, however, asserts that union with Christ implies union with His Church, and thus submission to its divinely instituted authorities.
Soli Deo Gloria (Glory to God Alone): From a Protestant perspective, any veneration of a creature, including Mary or the saints, was seen as idolatrous. Therefore, the response was to eliminate rather than properly order these devotions. For Protestants, it was about giving glory to God or the saints; for Catholics, it is about glorifying God for what He has done through His saints (Romans 8:17). Again, the issue is “aut-aut” vs. “et-et.”
This same approach to understanding Revelation, which often leads to mutilating rather than harmonizing, and assuming rather than subordinating, caused Luther to remove the seven deuterocanonical books from Protestant Bibles, leaving only 66 books. He also unsuccessfully attempted to exclude the New Testament epistles of Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation.
This does not mean that Catholic doctrine embraces everything indiscriminately. Clearly, some teachings are mutually exclusive. The key lies in discerning when something is genuinely exclusive and when it is not.
Let’s revisit a previous example for deeper illustration: Protestantism asserts that all glory must be given solely to God. Thus, when encountering a biblical passage, it tends to reaffirm its stance by excluding any form of veneration or honor toward the Virgin Mary and the saints:
“I am the Lord: that is my name: I will not give my glory to another, nor my praise to graven things.” (Isaiah 42:8)
Reading the same text from the Catholic perspective, it is understood that no one should receive the glory that belongs to God alone because He is God (e.g., an idol considered as a deity). However, this does not preclude acknowledging that, in a subordinate way, God is also glorified when His works are honored. For this reason, Scripture says of Christians:
“And if sons, heirs also; heirs indeed of God, and joint heirs with Christ: yet so, if we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified with him.” (Romans 8:17)
Likewise, Jesus prays:
“And the glory which thou hast given me, I have given to them; that they may be one, as we also are one.” (John 17:22)
This is why Catholic doctrine differentiates between adoration (the highest love owed to God as the supreme being and creator of the universe) and veneration (a subordinate form of honor given to a creature because of its relationship with God). When a Protestant attempts to convince a Catholic to worship only God and not to venerate Mary or the saints, they are interpreting the first commandment, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God above all things,” as though it truly meant, “Thou shalt love only God and nothing else.”
Having grasped the fundamental difference between how Catholics and Protestants understand Revelation, let us now see how this has led to a distorted Protestant understanding of the new birth.
Martin Luther: Total Depravity and Concupiscence
As previously mentioned, it all began with Martin Luther, a Catholic monk tormented because, despite his best efforts at good works, he could not find inner peace, constantly feeling as though he was in mortal sin. His torment arose from a misunderstanding of concupiscence; he believed that sinful impulses were, in themselves, formal and imputable sins.
So convinced was he that, after leaving the Catholic faith, he reproached Catholics in his Smalcald Articles, arguing that they “only do penance for actual sins, such as evil thoughts consented to, evil words, evil deeds which could have been avoided by free will, and do not consider as sins the pernicious movements, concupiscence, and evil incitements.”
It is not difficult to imagine the psychological state of frustration and failure of someone who feels they commit grave sin whenever a sinful thought crosses their mind, even if they do not consent to it and reject it immediately. In other words, when Luther experienced temptation, he already felt he had sinned, regardless of whether he overcame it by God’s grace.
Luther concluded that if he could not live without committing grave sin, then no one else could either. He understood that, due to original sin, free will had become so diminished that it was now “nothing,” and thus, all human actions before justification, though they might appear good, were nonetheless, and most likely, mortal sins.
Amid his torment, Luther found comfort in reading the Epistle to the Romans, where he read that man is justified by faith. Therefore, if man is not free, those who are saved—Luther deduced—are saved because God grants them salvation in a completely passive and external manner. Man does not cooperate in his salvation; everything is resolved by the subjective certainty of having been justified by faith, thanks to the imputation of Christ’s merits. One only needs to accept Christ as Savior and trust in one’s salvation to ensure eternal blessedness, regardless of whether one continues breaking the commandments, as Luther felt he did.
From this perspective, man remains a sinner but is declared righteous, akin to taking a ragged, tattered man and covering him with a splendidly white robe without washing him. The judge sees only the bright, white robe (representing Christ, who died for sins) and not the tattered man underneath.
For the Catholic faith, this is an error. Instead, Catholics believe that we can cooperate in our justification—not by our strength, but because grace inspires and enables us to do so. We also believe that God does not only declare us righteous but also makes us righteous; He sanctifies and renews us so that, through grace, we are truly born again as a new creation. Therefore, we must live as children of God. Faith must be effective through love, in keeping the commandments, and performing acts of charity.
Faith Alone: “Sola” Means Only
Although Luther did not fully extend his concept of Sola Fide to mean “faith without any sacrament,” he initiated the reasoning that would later lead others to do so. A similar pattern emerged regarding the Eucharist. In John 6, Jesus delivers a lengthy discourse preparing for the Sacrament’s institution, saying:
“Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, abideth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father; so he that eateth me, the same also shall live by me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead. He that eateth this bread, shall live for ever.” (John 6:53-58)
Traditional Protestant interpretation after Luther concluded that “eating the flesh and drinking the blood” of Jesus could only symbolize one thing—sola fide. Again, this interpretation is driven by Luther’s biases towards “faith alone,” forcing all scripture to fit within that framework.
An objective analysis of the text reveals this is incoherent. Jesus uses a pedagogical method, akin to how He spoke with Nicodemus, where He draws a parallel between a symbolic element and a literal one to convey a teaching through comparison. For instance, He states, “I am the bread of life” (v. 48), where bread serves as the symbol, and the real element is Christ. Then, He continues:
“The bread that I will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world.” (John 6:51)
Pause to reflect on this verse: What is symbolic, and what is real here? Does the bread symbolize Jesus’ flesh, or does Jesus’ flesh symbolize the bread? If the bread is the symbol, then Christ identifies His flesh as the true element. This aligns with the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist, where Jesus is preemptively explaining how He will truly give His “flesh” and “blood” during the Last Supper, when He takes bread and wine and declares, “This is my body” and “This is my blood,” not merely symbols, as later Protestantism would come to believe.
From a Protestant perspective, Christ’s words would only make sense if one symbol explained another: bread symbolizing flesh, which in turn symbolizes faith. But Jesus doesn’t teach by resolving one enigma with another, leaving the audience in the dark. Instead, He clarifies, as He did with Nicodemus, that to be “born again” one must be “born of water and the Spirit.” The explanation lies there—receiving new life as God’s child through the waters of baptism, forgiveness of sins, and the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, the issue originates from the Protestant understanding, bound to Luther’s thought, which ends up relating every salvation element solely to faith. When it encounters passages stressing the necessity of obedience to the commandments for salvation (e.g., Matthew 7:21, 19:17) or the judgment of believers based on their deeds (e.g., Matthew 16:27, 2 Corinthians 5:10, Revelation 20:12, Matthew 25:21-46, John 15:2,6), it simply ignores or minimizes them.
This distortion is also evident in Protestant interpretations of texts concerning baptism. For instance, when Jesus says:
“He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved.” (Mark 16:16)
If we read this passage from a Protestant (aut-aut) perspective, we fall into a false dilemma. If salvation only requires belief, then the “and” shouldn’t be there. However, that is not the case; it reads, “he that believeth (et) AND is baptized (et) shall be saved,” not merely, “he who believes shall be saved,” nor does it say “he that believes (aut) OR is baptized (aut).”
Extreme Calvinism: Total Depravity
Let’s now delve deeper into extreme Calvinism, which we mentioned at the beginning of this work. One of its errors, shared with the Lutheran understanding of free will, is the doctrine of total depravity, teaching that as a result of original sin, man is spiritually dead. The nature of fallen man is incapable, by its own strength, of attaining religious truth or performing morally good actions. Man’s will lacks freedom and can only sin. This leads some Calvinists to believe that only if God first works in the elect, granting new birth and regeneration, can they have faith. Faith would be a consequence of new birth, thus indicating that a person has already been born again.
However, before explaining why this understanding is incorrect, we need a brief overview of the Catholic doctrine on this matter.
Firstly, Catholic doctrine teaches that due to original sin, free will is weakened but not extinguished. While we believe that God’s grace is absolutely necessary for any act leading to salvation (a salutary act), man, even in his fallen state, can naturally comprehend religious and moral truths and perform morally good works.
Scripture provides numerous passages showing that even before justification, or what Calvinists consider “new birth,” a person can perform morally good deeds that are not sinful. Otherwise, it wouldn’t make sense to exhort sinners to repent and turn from sin through acts of penance. It would also be incomprehensible for the Church to treat sinners and catechumens if all actions without justification were sinful.
“And thou shalt say to them: Thus saith the Lord of hosts: Turn ye to me, saith the Lord of hosts: and I will turn to you.” (Zacharias 1:3)
“Therefore will I judge every man according to his ways, O house of Israel, saith the Lord God. Be converted, and do penance for all your iniquities: and iniquity shall not be your ruin.” (Ezechiel 18:30)
In a fallen state, without supernatural revelation, man cannot, with firm certitude and without error, fully know all religious and moral truths of the natural order or consistently uphold the moral law, resisting grave temptations without the aid of healing grace. Therefore, from the Catholic perspective, what precedes faith, works, and even “new birth” is the grace of God.
It is God’s internal, supernatural grace that He infuses into man in a fallen state, enlightening his understanding and prompting him to believe and act, not without him but with him. In this way, grace precedes faith, and faith precedes baptism, which is the ordinary means through which God works the new birth within us. This would be understandable to Calvinists if not for their deficient conception of grace, seeing it as incapable of infusing faith in man even in his fallen state.
“He is dead and cannot believe,” they might argue. However, if we push this analogy to its extreme, interpreting it literally, we would have to conclude that man in his fallen state also cannot sin. After all, sin is the voluntary and free violation of God’s law, and if man is not free, he cannot sin—just as a stone, a tree, or even an animal obeying its natural instincts (to which it is bound) cannot sin.
Let’s briefly revisit Peter’s address to the first converts to illustrate this point. After Peter’s preaching, God’s grace first moves the listeners to believe (faith):
“Now when they had heard these things, they had compunction in their heart, and they said to Peter and to the rest of the apostles: What shall we do, men and brethren?” (Acts 2:37)
To which Peter replies:
“But Peter said to them: Do penance, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of your sins: and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is to you, and to your children, and to all that are far off, whomsoever the Lord our God shall call.” (Acts 2:38-39)
From the Calvinist perspective, however, Peter’s response to the question of what must be done to be saved would have to be something like: “You don’t have to do anything! You are absolutely dead and incapable of responding to God until you are regenerated and born again!”
But that is not what happens; God’s grace had already infused faith in them, and that same grace would then prompt them to be baptized, thus being born again.
