What Still Divides Us: The Differences Between Protestants and Roman Catholics. By Josh Maloney. San Diego: Sola Media, 2025. 74 pp. Free Ministry Resource (paperback).
When I first started listening to podcasts about a decade ago, The White Horse Inn was already a longtime veteran in Christian digital media. As described by their website, their hosts “model conversational theology, representing the Baptist, Reformed, Lutheran, and Anglican traditions. Each week, they tackle tough topics that matter to Christians living in a pluralistic world.” Over the years I have found their interdenominational, yet confessional, approach to Protestant theology to be a thought-provoking contribution to my podcast rotation. While listening to a recent episode, an advertisement from their parent ministry, Sola Media, let me know about an opportunity to receive a free copy of What Still Divides Us: The Differences Between Protestants and Roman Catholics by Josh Maloney. As a rector at a traditional Anglican parish, one of the most common questions I am asked, both by parishioners and seekers alike, is what the difference is between our tradition and the Roman Catholic tradition. While I have a typical go-to answer for that question (which will be discussed below), I ordered my copy, thinking it may be a helpful additional resource when tackling this question.
Maloney is a freelance writer who has authored or co-authored several books for Sola Media, most of which are short studies under Sola Media’s Core Christianity line of resources. He holds graduate degrees in theology and in creative writing. That is, Maloney generally knows what he’s talking about, and can present it in a compelling way. What Still Divides Us seeks to present the most important current theological differences between Roman Catholics and confessional Protestants in the most objective way possible. He does this by relying primarily on the Catechism of the Catholic Church (as most recently revised by Pope John Paul II) and on Protestant Confessions, specifically the Westminster Confession of Faith. From Maloney’s perspective, Westminster is sufficiently representative of Reformation thought on the major theological issues (10, footnote).
It is this reliance on Westminster that I found least helpful in the book. While the general theology of Westminster is nigh-identical to most other Reformation-era confessions, it differs from the Anglican and Lutheran perspectives in significant ways. Maloney does a fair job of noting when the Lutheran confessions disagree with Westminster, but the Anglican differences tend to be overlooked, with the notable exception of episcopal polity (52).
The book is divided into four topical chapters, bracketed by an introduction and conclusion. These four chapters represent what Maloney believes to be the most significant ongoing differences between Protestant and Roman Catholic beliefs. While clearly advocating the Protestant perspective, Maloney is charitable to Roman Catholics and acknowledges that there is much more agreement than disagreement. Yet, he argues, the differences are still important ones that ought not be minimized or ignored. This clarity is the strongest point of the book, one that some segments of the theologically conservative Anglican world need to better reckon with.
The four main points of difference that receive a chapter each are justification (How are we saved?), the Scriptures (How does God speak to us?), authority (Who runs the church?), and the Sacraments (How should Christians worship God?).
In the first chapter, “How are we Saved?” Maloney points out significant differences in how Protestants and Roman Catholics see human will, God’s grace, faith, justification, and the role of good works. Is unregenerate man free to cooperate with God’s grace, or is his will bound to the point that he is “dead in his sins”? Is grace a free gift of God to give us new life, or is it a gift to help us find him? Is faith our cooperating with the truth of God, or is it a gift by which we trust him? Is sanctification a component of justification, or is it a result of our justification? In short, who does the action in our salvation? Is it an act of God alone, or is it a joint effort between us and God? As Maloney puts it, “did Jesus do enough” to save us (25), or must his work be completed by our work, the merits of the saints, and so forth? Can we have true assurance?
Similarly, the second chapter, “How Does God Speak to Us?” points to differences in how Protestants and Roman Catholics view the relationship between the authority of the Bible and the authority of the Church. This is the point I typically focus on when asked the difference between Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism. The way I typically explain it, all other differences are downstream from the most fundamental issue of authority. Are the Holy Scriptures sufficient for Christians on matters of faith and morals, or is the Church’s teaching authority on the same level as Scripture? Is the Bible knowable by Christians, or must the Church authorities provide a definitive and infallible interpretation of the Bible? Does the Bible have authority over the Church, or are they parallel sources of authority?
Anglicans who follow the Prayer Book and Articles of Religion will find very little to quibble with in the first two chapters. Indeed, I found some of the definitions provided from the Catechism of the Catholic Church to be eye-opening in their differences from those used in our Formularies. The only odd detail was Maloney’s identification of Apostolic Succession with the authority of the Roman Catholic view of the Magisterium’s teaching office in chapter two (35–36); I don’t think any Anglican who upholds the idea of Apostolic Succession would agree that our bishops hold such authority. Nor would we agree with Maloney’s definition of Apostolic Succession.
The third chapter, “Who Runs the Church?” is mostly about the office of the Papacy. Again, there is little in this chapter with which a well-catechized Anglican would disagree. We would agree with Maloney that our church leaders have a limited authority that is subject to the Scriptures. His definition of priest, however, is limited to an Old Testament sacrificial priesthood which stand as a mediator between God and the people (54). As such he rejects any idea of priesthood for Protestant clergy, despite acknowledging that only “most” Protestants agree with this rejection (53). Again, Anglicans who accept the Formularies as our “confessional” authority would disagree with his definition.
In the first three chapters, Anglican quibbles are just that: quibbles. They’re largely a matter of different vocabulary that is easy to explain. The final chapter, “How Should Christians Worship God?” is more problematic from an Anglican perspective. Not only does Maloney (rightly) contrast Roman Catholic and Protestant definitions and understandings of the Sacraments, but he also paints a contrast between Roman Catholic and Protestant worship. He claims that Roman Catholic worship is centered on the Eucharist, while Protestant worship is centered on the proclamation and preaching of the Scriptures. This is where both Anglicans and Lutherans would take issue, as our respective liturgies each emphasize the need for both Word and Sacrament. That is, while acknowledging that (most) Protestants retain the Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, Maloney paints a picture in which the Sacraments and the Scriptures are in competition. Consider, for example, the following from the fourth chapter:
For Catholics, the sacraments are the heart of the Christian life. And the Eucharist is the heart of worship…. Protestants believe that basing the church’s ministry on this system of sacraments is unbiblical. They also believe it replaces the Bible for Catholics. For Protestants, the Eucharist isn’t the heart of worship – the Bible, God’s word, is the heart of worship (68, emphasis original).
We Anglicans would, of course, reject such a dichotomy. Maloney goes on to describe how Protestant churches changed the “furniture” at the Reformation to de-emphasize the Table and emphasize the Pulpit. While it is true that such changes were not uncommon even in the Church of England at the time, it is rare to find Anglican churches today that have retained a pulpit-centric church layout. While we would agree with Maloney that the Sacraments are a “means of grace” (71), contra the Roman Catholic idea of the sacraments as a source of grace, this chapter is where Maloney’s Westminster-influenced theology shows most starkly, a theology that is not necessarily representative of all branches of Protestantism.
So, in the end, is What still Divides Us a useful book in an Anglican context? I’d answer with a qualified “maybe.” I certainly wouldn’t see it as an adequate book on which to base a Sunday School or home group study. It may, however, be a useful starting place when the young seeker comes knocking on the rector’s office door. Maloney’s reliance on primary texts is a better methodology than one will find on much of YouTube or social media. Furthermore, Maloney’s charitable-yet-clear approach to the differences is certainly engaging and winsome. Nevertheless, most orthodox Anglicans in North America wouldn’t fully recognize themselves in Maloney’s portrait of Protestantism. Some of this is because much of North American Anglicanism has become at least somewhat unmoored from our own Formularies. But some of this is Maloney choosing to use Westminster as the representative of Protestant confessionalism, a possible illustration of what still divides Protestants from each other!
