How fifth-century Christians knew Christ without printed Bibles
The speaker challenges a Protestant interlocutor with a historical question: how would an illiterate person in the fifth century learn about Jesus without access to a printed Bible? He argues that the Protestant model of Christianity, centered on individual reading of Scripture, is virtually impossible before the invention of the printing press and the rise of widespread literacy.
By contrast, he presents his own view as not requiring a logocentric, book-centered faith. He acknowledges that there was one historical church and presses a reductio ad absurdum: if Protestantism is correct, then the church taught erroneously for 1,500 years. He asks whether God would have allowed the faith he established to be corrupted for that entire period.
The exchange centers on the role of Scripture, tradition, and the church in transmitting the Christian faith before modernity.
Key moments
- The speaker asks the Protestant where a fifth-century person would go to find out about Jesus given widespread illiteracy.
- He states that the Protestant version of Christianity is virtually impossible before the printing press.
- He says he does not hold a logocentric vision of Christianity that requires a printed book.
- He asserts that Protestantism is essentially available only through modernity.
- He acknowledges that there was one church historically.
- He presents a reductio: the claim that Christianity was wrongly practiced for 1,500 years.
- He questions whether God would allow the church to erroneously teach the faith he established for 1,500 years.