10 Questions About Roman Catholicism & Eastern Orthodoxy: With Reflections on the Book ‘What It Means to Be Protestant’

How should Evangelicals view Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy? Why is interest in these traditions on the rise among Evangelicals? Are there errors worth pointing out, or, for the sake of unity, should we only focus on the areas of agreement among all our traditions?

Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches are major churches with dominant influence in some parts of North America. Globally, there are about 1.34 billion people who claim to be Roman Catholic and about 300 million people who claim to be Orthodox, while there are about 600 million people who claim to be Protestant. So, taken together, more than a billion more people claim to be Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox than claim to be Protestant. Trends indicate that in the future, these traditions may gain more and more adherents in North America.

For a while now, Evangelical (including Restoration Movement) churches have tended not to emphasize their distinctness in contradistinction from the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox traditions. We tend to appreciate their faith and many of the stands they have taken, and are happy to affirm the good things they do.

“For a while now, Evangelical churches have tended not to emphasize their distinctness in contradistinction from the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox traditions.”

One downside of this trend is that our church leaders and the people in our churches are increasingly uninformed about how we differ from them in vitally important ways. Or, on the other hand, uninformed people assume crude or unfair caricatures in their minds of these traditions, and they do not develop an appropriately nuanced understanding.

In this eBook, Bobby Harrington interacts with Gavin Ortlund’s What It Means to Be Protestant and brings his own learnings from church history to engage questions such as:

• Why is there such an increased interest in liturgy and in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions?
• How can we be fair, reasonable, and conciliatory while pointing out errors with Catholicism and Orthodoxy?
• Are the scriptures our final authority, or are both Scripture and sacred tradition our final authority?
• What are fundamental errors in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy?

If you want to take a posture toward Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism which is historically informed, committed to truth, and gracious in tone, let 10 Questions About Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy be a helpful guide.