Or what?

I mean: Purgatory
Prayers directed to Mary
The Papacy is of pagan origin. [The title of pope or universal bishop, was first given to the bishop of Rome by the wicked emperor Phoca.]
Worship of the cross, images and relics.
Holy Water??
Canonization of dead saints
Celibacy – Jesus imposed no such rule, nor did any of the apostles.
The Rosary
Indulgences
Transubstantiation?!?
Referring to Mary as the Mother of God”

and the list goes on and on and on………………

I am not claiming that Paul taught “justification by faith alone.” I have never said that in any of my posts. I’ve been saying that Paul taught that a man is “justified by faith” (dikaioutai ek pisteôs). My mistake for misreading Justin.

What I would say to Justin, though, is that his statement that “Protestants are like JW’s in their historical knowledge!” is fallacious. Think Everett Ferguson. Alister McGrath. Jaroslav Pelikan (who, though he became Orthodox for the last few years of his life, was up till then a Lutheran = Protestant and certainly not JW-ish in his historical knowledge). Michael W. Holmes. Henry Chadwick. Etc.

Like I said, I’m not saying you can’t pull the Protestant view out of some sections of Paul’s text, however, one can’t just take those couple texts and ram them down the neck of every other text that doesn’t mesh with it. Like I said this approach comes from a faulty theory about the clarity of Scripture (and has caused Protestants no small amount of headaches over the past 500 years). Furthermore, when you look down the history of the church you see no one, no one, teaching justification as “an essential doctrine” as the Reformation would propose it to be. That is a big problem to Protestants, especially in light of the fact that they suffer from sever historical amnesia, for the only reason that they INSIST that they know what the text is saying properly. Forget the difficulties in the text about free-will and predestination, or the fact that Paul is using paradox at points in his argument (no, instead war between the Calvinists and the Arminians!). Forget the fact that Jews never taught that works made you righteous. No instead insist that one can sit down by themselves, not read it in context (whether the Jewish context or the early Church context) and just “understand it”. Forget that James says that one is “justified by (faith and) works” (though he just says works). Don’t heed Peters admonishment to be careful in terms of perverting or mishandling Paul’s writings. No, instead stick you head in the proverbial hole and pretend one knows what they are talking about!

Let me propose why the early Church saw Paul as teaching Paul as talking about Jews and Gentiles. Because he was! I know, it’s not all that novel, but it sure explains a lot! In fact, it explains 1500 years of Church teaching in all places! (not just the West or the Medieval West, though including them).

What I’m looking at is the historical realities, and how these historical realities came to be. Why did no one teach justification by faith alone before the Reformation as an essential doctrine. Here, easy answer, because Paul didn’t! I may LOOK like he did, and some people might genuinely be persuaded that way, but “looks can be deceiving” and in the end you go back to that boring old trick of “reading it in context”. All of a sudden it ALL makes sense, the ongoing teaching of the Church, the Jewish insistence that they don’t teach works righteousness, the whole shabang! Or, go on being an a-historical Protestant, resembling the techniques of the JW’s and insist your right! (funnily enough, like the JW’s!)

At the end of the day, one can’t persuade someone that the Sun doesn’t go around the earth, or that the earth isn’t flat, if they are convinced in their own mind that it is.

However, the lack of anyone ever reading the Bible as teaching sola fides until the 16th century is suspicous. It’s not like this was a minority opinion the whole time through that got slowly corrupted. Nobody read Paul that way, and there are still Christians (the majority of them, though you are right that is no proof of anything) who read Paul as affirming the New Testaments overall message of a neccesary relationship of faith and works. This is why Trent anathamized sola fides, incidently, because it can and has led to fideism.

The majority of Jews didn’t accept Jesus as the Messiah.

The majority of Jesus’ disciples didn’t believe that He would rise from the dead.

Which is why I don’t automatically accept majority opinions.

There are scholars and arguments that disagree with your assertion.