The questions that distinguish the denominations

I want to ask my generous and well-informed Christian readership here for their feedback on a list of questions.

The task is fairly straightforward to state, not maybe not easy to execute: Formulate a list of questions that is minimally sufficient to investigate where one “fits” within the broad denominational landscape. There are other differences, but they are more minor and they are “redundant” in that where some distinctives apply, others will as well (e.g., if Mary is mediatrix, then Purgatory). The hypothesis is that if one had (as unlikely as this might be) completely satisfactory answers to all the questions, then one would know just where one fit in, denominationally.

Broadest distinctives: Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant

These distinguish between Catholics and Orthodox, and between those two and Protestants. Some of these also distinguish between categories of Protestant denominations.

• What is the rule of faith: sola scriptura, the Church, or something else?
• Should we affirm sola fide, i.e., that we are saved by faith alone, or do our meritorious works also contribute to our salvation?
• Can and should we pray to the saints?
• Is it acceptable to reverence (e.g., kiss, pray before) icons?
• Is Mary to be accorded special honor above other saints, is she a special intercessor, is she “mother of God,” etc.?
• Do Communion and Baptism (and others, if considered sacraments) contribute to our salvation?

“High church” and “low church” distinctives

Basically, some churches continue the “high church” traditions found in Catholicism and Orthodoxy. These distinguish, for example, Lutheranism and Anglicanism, and in some cases Presbyterianism, from “less formal” churches.

• Is the Lord’s Supper symbolically/memorially or really the body and blood of Christ?
• Is pedobaptism sufficient, or must one be a believer to be properly baptized into the Church?
• Should church governance be episcopal (bishops), presbyterian (elders), or congregational (local autonomy)?
• Should worship be liturgical and structured or informal and spontaneous?

Particularly Protestant distinctives

These distinguish between broad branches of, especially, low-church Protestantism, but even these can distinguish, e.g., Orthodoxy (in the case of sanctification and charismata).

• Does God reprobate the damned from eternity, so that there is nothing they can do to be saved? Did Jesus die for all of mankind or only the elect?
• Is the Christian life primarily about being declared righteous before God (justification), or about being made righteous (sanctification)?
• Is the miraculous gifting of the Holy Spirit (e.g., tongues, prophecy, healing) common and expected to be found in the church today, or did it mostly (or entirely) cease after the apostolic age?

Other distinctives

These questions regard innovations unique to the last 150 or 200 years or so of church history.

• Should explicit creeds be adopted, to distinguish a denomination from others?
• Can Scripture be mistaken or is it “inerrant in the original autographs”?
• Is it acceptable to have extremely large churches, with “performances” for “audiences”?
• Should the Church actively engage in socio-political issues, or is its primary role spiritual?

Caveats: I know there are other questions (many other questions; see the excellent Ready to Harvest YouTube channel) on which denominations differ. There is overlap. Again, a person who answers a certain way about Mary and praying to saints will also answer a predictable way about the Apocrypha and Purgatory. I also ask no questions about pre-, a-, and post-millennialism, not because they are unimportant, but because they are not regarded as primary distinctives (even if they are distinctives in some cases). I also know there are many “What denomination am I?” polls. Most of them aren’t very thoughtfully constructed, it seems to me, so they won’t help. I have taken many such polls, for whatever they’re worth.

If you want to help, here are my questions for you:

1. Bearing the above caveats in mind, would you add any questions to the list, either on grounds of the importance or because they draw important denominational (or congregational) distinctions?

2. Would you revise how I formulate a question (or more than one) in some enlightening way?

3. Do you know of any books that systematically treat of these questions, or a similar list of questions, in a reasonably rigorous way? I do not mean just any old theological text, which do treat of these questions, but they are not focused on them in particular, nor are they designed to help the reader decide between positions on them. I also do not mean books for total beginners. I mean serious books for people who actually read theology.

The task is to make a fairly minimal list of the most fundamental questions and those that mark the differences between the major denominations.