Review: The Protestant’s Dilemma

The Protestant’s Dilemma: How the Reformation’s Shocking Consequences Point to the Truth of Catholicism by Devin Rose is a rather interesting read.

Many apologetics books in this area concentrate on a couple of arguments such as the faults of interpretation such as Sola Scriptura. What I found most interesting is that this book uses a variety of arguments taking the consequences of various Protestant theology to their natural conclusion. That often some of these Protestant premises really prove too much in that they are self-defeating.

Devin Rose as a former Protestant worked through these ideas on his way into the Church and so he conveys multiple intellectual exercises regarding “If Protestantism is True”. This is the format used for each specific idea within a topic. To first take seriously an idea as true and to work out where that should lead. This is than offset with a concluding paragraph “Because Catholicism is True” which gives the Sed Contra (on the contrary).

These individual chapters within a topic are fairly short and so there were certainly times where I wanted to see an idea more fleshed-out. Still I enjoyed that I often came across objections I had not thought or heard before.

So overall I found this to be a worthwhile read. This is not a book I would just hand to a Protestant friend since the format and the wording could be rather off-putting to someone not already questioning some of the premises. Rather it would be more useful for Catholics wanting to look at some of the arguments used since there is such a wide variety contained within this book. My only caveat is that there were a very limited number of times where I did not see how the answered objection necessarily flowed from the premise. Possibly I just didn’t fully understand the argument.