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This kind of sophomoric internet-theology is of little use. Go read the great works of Augustine, Aquinas, Newman, and Benedict XVI who has been called the “theological Einstein of our times.” Their works are standard fare in the theological departments. of major colleges and universities.

As the saying goes, put 100 Protestants (depends which sect one chooses) and provide them with a passage of scripture, and a pencil and paper, and have them write down and explain their interpretations and you’d have 101 different versions of scripture. This is the heresy of Protestantism that spawned a cluster of heresies from Bishop TD Jakes to Rev. Jeremiah Wright to say nothing of the Moonies, and Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

It was not until the Synod of Rome (382) and the Councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) that we find a definitive list of canonical books being drawn up, and each of these Councils acknowledged the very same list of books. From this point on, there is in practice no dispute about the canon of the Bible, the only exception being the so-called Protestant Reformers, who entered upon the scene in 1517, an unbelievable 11 centuries later.

Every noted Protestant theologian has converted to Catholicism. There is Catholicism and then every other “truth” under the sun that attracts the congregants of the type that gravitate to the Joel Osteens (“prosperity gospel’) Billy Graham (“vapid readings”) Jim Jones, David Koresh (lethal intepretations) and every corner street Foursquare church pastors who purport to crack open the Bible (books assembled as infallible under the infallible Petrine authority) and offer us their “own” interpretations.

Francis J. Beckwith, a “born-again” evangelical, a tenured professor at Baptist-affiliated Baylor University in Waco, Tex, was the president of the Evangelical Theological Society, an association of 4,300 Protestant theologians resigned and joined the Catholic Church. One blogger likened it to Hulk Hogan’s defection from the World Wrestling Federation to the rival World Championship Wrestling league.

Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, was a pre-eminent Lutheran theologian in America. He knew his Bible-text and history like no other Protestant. When he converted to Catholicism he said, “I have long believed that the Roman Catholic Church is the fullest expression of the church of Christ through time.”

Thus the early Church historian J. N. D. Kelly, a Protestant, writes, “[W]here in practice was [the] apostolic testimony or tradition to be found? . . . The most obvious answer was that the apostles had committed it orally to the Church, where it had been handed down from generation to generation. . . . Unlike the alleged secret tradition of the Gnostics, it was entirely public and open, having been entrusted by the apostles to their successors, and by these in turn to those who followed them, and was visible in the Church for all who cared to look for it” (Early Christian Doctrines, 37).

Don’t take my word. Here’s one original source. St. Irenaeus:

“It is possible, then, for everyone in every church, who may wish to know the truth, to contemplate the tradition of the apostles which has been made known to us throughout the whole world. And we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the apostles and their successors down to our own times, men who neither knew nor taught anything like what these heretics rave about” (Against Heresies 3:3:1 [A.D. 189]).

Today, except as part of an exotic inquiry, Protestantism is a “clusters of beliefs” that is not taken seriously by religious scholars and thinkers.