Hello @Mr.Bultitude

I was pinging you in response to:

context:

@Dan I agree, the No true Scotsman fallacy does not apply. The definition is not being changed in an adhoc fashion - Protestantism has always been Trinitarian, and more than that, always Chalcedonian.

Though there are many on the fringes, and some of a Protestant heritage have left the bounds of small-o orthodoxy, they are not determinative for what the Protestant branch of Christianity is

@curiousdannii I disagree with that statement, so I suppose we won't see eye to eye There are plenty of non-Trinitarian Pentecostals who are Protestants

orthodox (small-o)? No

but any time you say "no true [whatever here]," it's no true scotsman

Protestantism has become any Western offshoot of Roman Catholicism

including non-fundamentalists, in the historical sense

And by historical sense, I consider any Western Christian Protestant group that affirms these principles/beliefs to be fundamentalist

very early on, many Protestants did not accept even all decisions of the ecumenical councils

for instance, the seventh ecumenical council (Nicaea II in 787 CE) affirmed the propriety of icons as genuine expressions of the Christian Faith. Most Protestants rejected that very early on

the third council (Ephesus, c. 431 CE), while defining Christ as the Incarnate Word of God, also defined Mary as the Theotokos (which was not rejected by Luther but many other early Protestants immediately began to reject her role)

the problem is Protestant is a label/category that has no defined set of beliefs associated with it

only that it is Western Christian and broken off from Roman Catholicism

to say what is a true Protestant vs. not is no true Scotsman fallacy, plain and simple

you may take issue as a certain brand of evangelical, etc.

but Protestants are Southern Baptists as well as Episcopalians

and concerning Who is a Christian for this site, it is "any group that identifies itself as such"

you may disagree, but that's a hallmark of Protestantism

that's why there's 23,000+ denominations / sectarian groups

@Dan Oneness Pentecostalism has no grounds for claiming the label of Protestant. It just old fashioned modalism with a new name.

@Dan absolute nonsense. Protestantism is defined by the four solas. They may no longer be perfectly upheld, but they are still defined by them. That is how prototype theory works

Practically speaking, sure, in a list of all denominations it may make sense to categorise some non trinitarian groups under the protestant branch because of their shared history and recent divergence, but that doesn't stop the fact that they are complete denials of their heritage.

Protestantism is at its core a confessional branch of Christianity, and you cannot say it has no defined beliefs.

@Dan and also, among the thousands of protestant denominations are only a few dozen substantial groups. All that statistic means is that protestants do not believe that institutional Christianity needs to be unified at any level more than is practically useful.

@curiousdannii Oneness Pentecostalism = Sabellianism/modalism with a new name --> I'll agree with you on that, despite it having descended not from ancient Christianity but from (Protestant) Methodism/Wesleyan-->Holiness Movement-->Charismatic Movement-->Pentecostalism-->Oneness Pentecostalism

@curiousdannii I would argue that the sola's were subjective from the get-go

And so would this guy

@Dan Of those, the substitutionary atonement, and more specifically, penal substitutionary atonement, is probably the most critical regarding doctrinally distinguishing Protestantism from other branches of Christianity. And even more basic than that is justification by faith alone. A denomination that rejected either or both of these would have a difficult claim to being Protestant doctrinally.

However, it's good to make the distinction between doctrinal Protestantism and cultural Protestantism. My own denomination, the Swedenborgian Church, is culturally Protestant simply because as an institution it drew its early leaders and laity from Methodism and Anglicanism, and took on their character. But doctrinally it is vehemently anti-Protestant, in that it decisively rejects both justification by faith alone and penal substitution--not to mention the Trinity of Persons.

@Dan The only things I would add to what @curiousdannii said are that if you say Oneness Pentecostals are Protestants then so are Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, which would be an absurd claim.

In addition to that, while you may not agree that Nicene trinitarianism or the solas or Chalcedonian Christology are true marks of Protestantism, that doesn't mean that those who do are succumbing to the no true Scotsman fallacy; as curiousdannii mentioned, the definition we're using is not being changed in an ad hoc fashion, it's the definition that for us has always been in use. The fact that you think a different working definition is better doesn't change that.

@Mr.Bultitude I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree. I still consider Episcopalians, American Baptists, etc. to all be Protestants, despite not all of them being fundamentalists. I would expect a fundamentalist to define things more narrowly. I'm looking at it purely from a historical sense, in which case the beliefs aren't as important as their historical descent from other groups and self-identification

@Dan Hi! How are you? -- BTW, do you know a good book about Aktionsart, Verbal Aspect, etc.? :)

@PaulVargas I'd recommend cambridge.org/au/academic/subjects/languages-linguistics/…

Which I've just noticed is in the Internet Archive! archive.org/details/…

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