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PRmerger
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If you are your own pope, then, yep.
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PRmerger
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That is absurd. ** Two **big issues?
There is disagreement on:
Abortion
Attend weekly services, don’t have to go to Church
Baptism—in Jesus’ name only, or Trinitarian? In a river? Sprinkling? Immersion? Sacrament or ordinance? Adult or infant?
Can men and women sit together during services?
Charity or no charity (help one another or let them help
Church leadership, or no leadership
Death/Soul Sleep
Divorce
Drinking allowed, drinking not allowed)
Head coverings or no head coverings
Health and wealth gospel
Hell, or no hell
Homosexuality
Is God‘s Holy Name Jehovah
Is it permissible for women to teach Scripture?
Judge others, don’t judge others
Music or no music (Singing or no singing)
Once saved, always saved
Ordination
Predestination
Rapture
Sola scriptura/private interpretation
The Eucharist
Tongues (some believe others are not saved if they don’t speak in tongues)
Trinity vs. Unitarianism
What is original sin and its effects on humanity
What’s a sin, what is not a sin
When to celebrate the Lord’s Day
Women pastors, no women pastors
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spina1953
Guest
Hi PRmerger: You forget card playing and dancing.
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dronald
Guest
Again, Eucharist or Baptism are the main disagreements.
Most Churches agree that Abortion = wrong; homosexual acts = wrong.
I was speaking of Christian denominations and I exclude non-Trinitarians; lumping them with Protestants isn’t fair, they are their own branch.
Besides that; Romans 14 all the way.
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GKC
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PRmerger
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Repeatedly asserting a wrong position doesn’t make it correct.
It’s irrelevant if it’s “most” or “some” or “few”. Point remains that it’s a difference in doctrine that Protestant denominations have, and because of your paradigm that it’s permissible to come to your own understanding of what the Bible means, divorced from the Tradition which gave you this Bible, you have DISUNITY on these doctrines.
Excluding them is as arbitrary a Lutheran saying, “I think there’s only 2 Christian denominations: those who believe in the Real Presence and those who don’t.”
But we all know that would be a great deception to say that, right? No rational person looks at Christendom and says that they see only 2 denominations.
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clem456
Guest
Just as we are called to be united to Christ in a visible Church, if we reject the Tradition that is in Him, we lead others from Him. Think of the phrase “sowing disunity”. The rejection of God-given authority plants seeds that splinter and divide by nature, because we reject the unity that Christ established in the Church.
Christ established a Church, a community of believers.
That community is real, it exists.
There can only be one Church, or Christ is not Christ. There can’t be two, or three, or thirty thousand. If there is more than one Church, then Christ is a deceiver.
What is “through me”?
“Through me” is Christ, the head of a body, who gives us a Church as his instrument of salvation. Christianity is not an individual endeavor.
Christ established a Church, a community of believers.
That community is real, it exists.
There can only be one Church, or Christ is not Christ. There can’t be two, or three, or thirty thousand. If there is more than one Church, then Christ is a deceiver.
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Contarini
Guest
So you can just pull a number out of your hat, and no one can object unless they have a similar number?
Look, the reality is that Protestants are divided in such complex ways that you can’t really give a number. A “denomination” is a debatable category in the first place. But that doesn’t excuse Catholic apologists for using a figure that is obviously bogus, given that the same source lists several hundred Catholic “denominations.”
Nor does your calculation make sense. Divisions don’t work that way. Not all mathematically possible permutations are worked out.
Why not simply say: “Protestants are so divided that no one can even figure out how many divisions there are.” I think that’s a reasonable, and far more effective, way of putting it.
Edwin
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GKC
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guanophore
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I think this is very true. Clearly Luther had already drifted from the Apostolic faith long before he posted his 95 theses.
It seems that some of your information about Luther is quite lacking. Luther attacked the very source and summit of the Catholic faith (Jesus present in the Mass).
There is a recent thread for those who would like to learn more about Luthers’ theological differences with Catholicism.
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Contarini
Guest
Luther never attacked the Real Presence. He did attack the sacrificial nature of the Mass. His differences with transubstantiation were pretty technical, it seems to me, and had more to do with a prejudice against philosophical terminology than anything else.
On the other hand, Luther certainly thought that the Papacy was Antichrist and that insofar as an ecclesial body was defined by the Papacy, it was false.
Edwin
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guanophore
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I invite you to another thread on this topic, that has a link to yet a third thread on the topic. I hope you will join.Can you show me where Christ established seven sacraments Himself? I can only think of two with certainty that He Himself instituted. I would love to learn.
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guanophore
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Lutherans are not bound to the writings and opinions of Luther, and it is not fair to expect them to defend them.Well…as i recall reading from a link provided by your fellow Lutheran…Luther says Confession is not a sacrament…
So who is to be believed?
Great site, thanks for the link.
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guanophore
Guest
What does it mean to “seek closer ties”?
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guanophore
Guest
Theotokos, hypostatic union and many more. But the ones for which I will pay premium are the Pauline catechism from Tyrannus;
8 And he entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, arguing and pleading about the kingdom of God; 9 but when some were stubborn and disbelieved, speaking evil of the Way before the congregation, he withdrew from them, taking the disciples with him, and argued daily in the hall of Tyrannus. 10 **This continued for two years, **so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks. Ac 19:8–10
I would also like the contents of Jesus talks between His resurrection and His ascension.
To them he presented himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days, and speaking of the kingdom of God. Ac 1:3–4
The Scripture study on the road to Emmaus would also be good.
There was never any attempt to commit the entire message of the Gospel to writing.
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guanophore
Guest
The Sacred Traditions - the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles:
2 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Ac 2:42
“The” Prayers, which were taken from the synagogue service, Psalms and Canticles, the manner in which fellowship and gatherings are organized, liturgy, Eucharist, all of the faith which has been embodied in the Church since the beginning.
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guanophore
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This is why those of us within the Apostolic faith do not distinguish between the Word, whether by word of mouth, or in writing. We are bound to the commandment.
They are not “Roman” only, but these Sacred Traditions belong to all the Churches founded by Apostles. They are found in all 23 Rites of the Catholic Church , as well as the Eastern Churches.
Sacred Tradition is the lens through which we read and understand the Scriptures. It is the Teaching of the Apostles infallibly preserved in the Church by the Holy Spirit. It is the reason that we understand the Scriptures differently.
It is a world view, a lifestyle, referred to in the NT as “The Way”.
That you can find in the Liturgies! As well as in the Teaching of the Church.
This is a lie perpetrated to support the errant doctrine of Sola Scriptura. It denies the powerful Jesus portrayed in the book of Revelation that continues to care for and speak to His faithful. It denies the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the letter of the Corinthians, and is opposed to the teachings of the Fathers of the Church, and the Councils.
If this were true, then Christians today could not accept the word “Trinity”, or the canon of the New Testament.
Yes, many, but what is affected most by Sacred Tradition is how we understand what is written in the NT?
Can you explain what you mean by this statement? I think you are saying that Jesus does not speak to His people outside of the words of Scripture? There are no prophets, words of knowledge, or conciliar decisions that are Christ speaking to His Church outside the canon of Scripture?
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PRmerger
Guest
What number do you think I pulled out of my hat?
The 131, 071?
I can assure you that this number was not pulled out of a hat.
If you mean the “tens of thousands” that I use–that’s not a number. A number would be, say: 34, 478. Tens of thousands is an estimation.
And it is an estimation that is based on logic, math, reason, experience.
Now, if you will tell me the correct number of Christian denominations, as well as how you came to this number, I will use it if it is consonant with logic, math, reason and experience.
[SIGN1]What number is the correct number, Edwin?[/SIGN1]
I will be happy to entertain that number.
Until then, my use of “tens of thousands” is quite reasonable.
Stop bristling at that estimation.
I just spent the weekend in a nearby large urban center and in a 10 mile radius we drove by 5 independent storefront churches: Sunshine Church, Yahweh’s People’s Church, New Canaan Church, Church of the New Beginnings, Frontier Christian Church.
You really think that tens of thousands is incorrect when you take into account every single metropolitan area, within a 10 mile radius, probably has at least 5 of these types of churches?
I think tens of thousands is generously LOW.
It’s probably closer to hundreds of thousands.
But in the interest of charity and not being alarmist, I use a very conservative estimation.
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spina1953
Guest
Hi Guanophore: You made some very good points. I would like to add that from the beginning, the Apostles every Sunday at sunrise they went to break bread and preach the Word of God; this is the Mass. It may not be we know it today but the basic elements were always there and while prayers were added at different times, going to Mass meant breaking of the bread and receiving the chalice of salvation offered to all and hearing the Word of God and what it means so that we can go out and live in the way Christ asks of us. With advent of Protestantism that was somehow lost in that it was not what the Apostles intended nor Christ Himself. In many ways I am still not sure just it is that Protestants are protesting except the CC and what she teaches.
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