What does the Protestant Church believe?

Answer 1

Defining and setting forth Protestant beliefs in full would take a book. For this purpose,

we'll confine ourselves to setting down the major principles.

1. Only Scripture is the basis of the Christian faith and the church.

2. Only By Grace - we are saved by God's grace alone, and not by any works

3. Only by Faith - it is our faith in God's grace that enables our salvation

4. Only by Christ - salvation comes only through Jesus Christ and not through any other way.

5. Only for God's Glory - this is done for the Glory of God

In other words, the Protestant Church accepts all orthodox Christian Trinitarian doctrine as set out in the Nicene Creed. However, some Protestant Churches accept, to a lesser degree, reason and tradition as well as scripture as the basis for doctrine (eg the Anglican Church). But scripture always takes precedence.

However, the Protestant Church rejects the teachings of Rome in various Roman doctrines. These include:

• Purgatory
• Limbo
• The over veneration of Mary
• Traditions surrounding Mary (eg the identity of her mother, grandparents etc, her perpetual virginal state, her assumption)
• the selling of indulgences
• the infallibility of the pope
• praying to dead saints
• using saints to intercede (Jesus is our only mediator and advocate)
• transubstantiation and the doctrines surrounding the continual sacrifice at the mass

and many others. The Protestant Church believes these have no substance either in scripture or historically and are therefore heretical.

Answer 2

Answer: There are so many things that Protestants believe in, and that they do not agree with each other that you would really have to ask a specific Protestant religion what they believe in. And, even then, different people define "protestant" differently. The word Protestant comes from that fact that they started by protesting specific doctrines that the Catholic Church believed in. But now, they have gotten to the point where they are protesting what other Protestants believe in. About the only doctrine that I can find that seems to be universal is that all of them seem to believe that anyone can, if they have an open mind (open to God), then they can read The Bible and understand it for themselves, without a church over them to interpret it.