I often hear some sort of claim along the lines that Protestants and Catholics effectively believe the same stuff really. When I demur, I am asked – if we’re so different – where do the key differences lie?

There are various ways we could address that question. I don’t think it takes a lot of digging or much observational prowess to simply walk into a nonconformist church like mine, take a look around and see that it is quite noticeably different to our most local Catholic church in a number of ways. There are more than a few surface level differences that render any suggestion that we’re all basically the same evidently untrue.

For example, there’s no font in our church. Nor are there any confessionals. Similarly, you don’t find stained glass. There is no altar. Our walls are not adorned with various saints nor do we provide any candles by which one can beseech them to pray on one’s behalf. There are bunch of other such differences, all a result of specific theological beliefs, that all speak to something quite different. Some of these differences are surface-level matters of tertiary import, some of them are more key but nevertheless non-gospel matters, others still might owe something to even more core theological principles. But you hardly have to be a great detective to see it really isn’t all the same, even just as you walk in to either place.

But I rarely talk about that kind of thing because it doesn’t really get to the heart of the differences. We’re not fundamentally diferent to Catholics because we have a baptistry and they have a font; after all, Anglicans and Presbyterians have fonts too and we don’t necessarily go to such effort to make sure there is clear blue water between our form of Christianity and theirs. The issues that matter run somewhat deeper.

Generally, when people tell me it’s essentially the same, I highlight two fairly core differences from which all the other matters flow. There are really two issues – the very two that were at the heart of the Protestant Reformation – that get to the nub of the issue. These two things are really why Protestants and Catholics do not believe the same thing.

First, there is the question of authority. Lurking behind every part of the Protestant Reformation was this question: where does ultimate authority in matters of faith and practice lie? For Luther and the other reformers, the answer to that question was clear: final authority lies in the scripture. Whatever authorities might exist in the church, they are subordindate to the scripture. For the Catholic Church, there were two sources of (at least) equal authority: the scripture and the church. Or, rather, the scripture as interpreted by the church. And, in practice, where there was a conflict, final authority lay with the papal office. So, the first key difference is a matter of authority.

Second, there is the question of salvation. Specifically, what is the means of salvation? Again, for Luther and the other reformers, the answer was that salvation comes by faith alone in Christ alone. For the Catholic Church, the answer was by faith in Christ and through works. Paticularly, the works of receiving the sacraments. This second key difference – derived significantly from the first key difference – meant that Protestants and Catholics disagreed over the means of salvation. This second diference is a matter of how one is saved.

The other differences I alluded to above stem from these core differences. There are some key and core differences that mean we proclaim different gospels – both of which cannot be simultaneously right – and we believe final authority in matters of faith and practice stem from different sources. This means we inevitably believe there are different, mutually exclusive, ways to Heaven and different sources, with different understandings, of what it is appropriate to do as churches. However you cut that, it cannot be chalked up as ‘basically the same thing’.