DEBATE: What Still Divides Us? - Robert Sungenis, Patrick Madrid, and William Marshner versus Michael Horton (Reformed Episcopalian), Robert Godfrey (Calvinist), Rod Rosenbladt (Lutheran)

What still divides Catholics and Protestants five centuries after the Reformation? This landmark exchange puts the two central Reformation principles, sola Scriptura and sola fide, on the table before an audience of fifteen hundred, and the stakes were real: a half dozen people from the audience were received into the Catholic Church that very day.

Three Catholic apologists, Patrick Madrid, William Marshner, and Robert Sungenis, faced three Protestant theologians: Dr. Robert Godfrey (Calvinist, president of Westminster Seminary California), Dr. Rod Rosenbladt (Lutheran, professor of theology, Scripture, and apologetics at Concordia University), and Dr. Michael Horton (Reformed Episcopalian, author and host of the White Horse Inn radio show).

The first day, over three hours, took up sola Scriptura. The Protestant side defended the formal sufficiency of Scripture; the Catholic team answered that Scripture alone is itself unbiblical and foreign to historic Christianity, was not taught by Christ or the Apostles or the early Church, and has produced deep theological division within Protestantism over the last five hundred years.

The second day turned to sola fide. The Protestant team argued from Scripture that Christians are justified forensically, by faith alone, and that Catholic teaching on justification is unbiblical. The Catholic team replied from Scripture and the testimony of the early Church Fathers that this pivotal principle rests on a mistaken reading of Scripture and is therefore alien to the gospel of Jesus Christ.