If God existed, why would He preside behind the Great Schism and the Protestant Reformation?

[babylonsfalling]

Private message me. I started a thread for the purpose of having a question answered. It seems you want to turn this into something “personal” lol (do you have a grudge against me or something?)

I’m not private messaging you Bohm. You’re question has been answered anyway. If you don’t want to be subject to the same analysis you put God under then you don’t need to respond, which I suspect will be the case here.

I also don’t have a grudge against you. It’s just that you appear to have a huge, unaddressed, issue of vacillating faith, which you seem to want to justify by the fact that you can’t understand some of the things God does, or allows to happen. The problem is that nobody else understands everything about God either but that’s where faith comes in.

Your best help here (as with myself and most other people too) might lie in putting yourself under the microscope instead of God. In your case, you might pay attention to the fact that despite your doubts, God still remains in your head, even though God is a being which you already doubt, and which you cannot touch, smell, see, taste or hear in any physical sense. So despite your doubts, and despite the fact that you have no carnal-sensory reason to believe He exists, and despite the fact that you’re again back to calling yourself an atheist, you still can’t stop going on about God. That’s very conflicted and you can learn a lot from that fact, IF you can divert even a fraction of your analysis onto yourself, AND if you can do that self analysis honestly.

You will never get all your questions answered and personally, I suspect that’s because God demands a certain degree of faith. He wants us to reach beyond our fleshy perspective of 5 senses, and beyond our worldly, finite understandings. He wants us to take a leap of faith into the spiritual, rejecting the carnal and rejecting our human level understanding of things. That’s not Biblical but I still suspect there is some truth to it because faith is such a big topic in both Old and New Testaments.

Also be aware that you already have a degree of faith, shown by the fact that you can’t leave this subject alone. Acknowledge this faith as something which exists within you despite your haunting doubts. Small faith can move mountains of doubt out of the way. Prayer helps but I think you first need to acknowledge your existing faith in God so that you’re at least praying to a God that you’re NOT in denial of.

 

[Calgar]

I don’t really like that flow chart. It ignores many other possibilities. Again, this ignores the purpose of the thread - Jews believe Jesus was only a teacher. Muslims believe He was merely a prophet.

So you think it’s perfectly acceptable and normal for a teacher or prophet to claim to be God?

 

[meltzerboy]

I would first of all like to thank you for your quick and detailed reply. I appreciate it a lot.

That said, to claim the “fractures are led by men, not God” presupposes that the Catholic Church is the true Church. You are accepting a fact before it has even been put to trial. Yet you have the Eastern Orthodox who adamantly claim they are the “one, holy, Catholic and apostolic” Church. And they have a valid reason to make such claim - they have links to St. Andrew, the brother of St. Peter. You have the Anglican Church, who too claim they are the original Catholic Church. So much so, that during the 16th century through to the 18th century, the term “Catholic” generally referred to the Anglicans, and the terms “Roman Catholic” or “Papist” referred to the Roman Catholic Church. And then you have what we call “ecclesial communities”, who claim they are merely following God “directly”…in the fashion that Jesus intended it as laid out in Scripture. Thus, different people preaching different things. All of them are following Jesus. Mainstream Protestantism has 33,000+ branches alone. God, assuming He existed, presides over all of this and is allegedly presiding over all of this. He was there when these denominations were being set up. It sets up an atmosphere where Pascal’s Wager is reversed - which religion do I follow? Which door has the prize behind it? If this isn’t a refutation behind the claim that God is “not a God of disorder”, I don’t know what is. And even more terrifying, is that Scripture regards Satan as the “author of confusion” (cf. John 8:44). So with the differing opinions across the Christian community itself clearly established, does that not indicate that God and Satan are the same - one in character and personality?

That’s not a historical fact as it is a teaching of the Church. To use a teaching of the Church to prove a Church’s teaching is what we call “circular logic”. Modern anthropology does not acknowledge the existence of Adam. It does not even acknowledge the existence of a “first man” - it speaks of a “first woman”, who I believe is called Lucy. And if this is what modern anthropology has discovered, shouldn’t the Church renew it’s antiquated teachings - after all, it professes to claim faith and reason are non-contradictory? Anthropology for anthropologians; history for historians and theology for theologians. Let’s not muddle the distinction between all three; indeed, many believers criticize Richard Dawkins for “stepping out of his boundaries” in regards to theology despite him being a biologist. And rightly so. Hopefully the Church will follow the same advice and practices what it preaches.

Yes it does illustrate the non-existence of God, or at the very least diminishes the possibility of His existence to virtually nil. What we find is that God never sought out Man. Quite to the contrary, Man has always sought out God. To paraphrase the Greek philosopher Xenophanes, “if horses could paint, they would paint their god(s) like horses”. What we find is that God’s existence is a purely neurological phenomenon, as Man always tries to find a “deeper reason” in his surroundings, especially when science is inadequate in explaining it. This explains why certain experiments which randomly process patterns across a white sheet have shown that the human brain tries to find a “picture”, or some kind of meaning in the patterns. In the same way, as Man’s environment changes, Man tries to seek a “deeper meaning” of what is really a random process of patterns. This is backed up historically - it was commonly thought that lightning was an “act of the gods”. Even in Scripture, we find that those with diseases and terrible conditions were often believed to have angered God: “His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2)

It is true psychologists have claimed that the human mind and brain seeks organization, harmony, and meaning out of chaos and randomness. However, why do you suppose this is so? Perhaps it is because humans are attuned to the deeper meaning of life and the universe on a neurological and psychological level. Not wishful thinking, as Freud would call it, but rational thinking. The mere fact you are posing these challenging questions and expressing doubt shows that you too are predisposed to rational thinking, which is based on logic, order, and meaning. None of us may have sure answers to these questions, but our asking them reveals that on some profound level we know there is a purpose and order to our lives and to the universe.

 

[_L]

This is something that always bothered me, even as my time as a Catholic. If God truly existed, why would He preside behind the Great Schism and the Protestant Reformation? So instead of what Catholics say is the “one truth”, you now have “multiple truths”, with different people preaching different things. How can this be so, when the Bible even says “God is not a God of disorder” (1 Corinthians 14:33)? So something is definitely rotten in the State of Denmark, to quote Shakespeare. To say, “God gave Man free will” is a weak argument. God gave Man free will to kill Jesus as a child, but God preserved Him from that. God gave free will to Man to kill the Virgin Mary, St. Anne, and all the other ancestors that would have broken their lineage, but they seem to have been preserved from that. So, in the same fashion, God could have equally preserved the Catholic Church or whatever is the “true religion” from disintegrating into several parts.

In addition, if God existed, why wasn’t Judaism the first religion? Why didn’t God reveal Himself to Mankind at first? Why is it that Hinduism and several branches of paganism all predate mainstream Judaism by about a thousand years, and it’s subsequent successor - Christianity - by several thousand years. This is quite an intriguing thought, as early humans searched for God rather than God searching them. Early humans didn’t receive revelation. But doesn’t Scripture say - “. . .]anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Hebrews 11:6). So he rewarded these early humans with Hinduism/paganism - the very same religions that are now deplored across by the Abrahamic religions Judaism, Christianity and Islam?

God also allowed Israel, His chosen people to be split in half with 10 tribes splitting off and going their own way leaving the tribes of Judah and Benjamin in the south. This isn’t unique to just Christianity, it was around in Judaism to, even in Jesus’ day where we get disputes between the jews and Samaritans and even within judaism there were divisions between the pharisees and the sadducees.

Free will is the most basic of explanations, but perhaps there is more to it than meets the eye something that we will not fully realize until well into the future. We must admit the Church was in a pretty dilapidated state at the time of the reformation. And perhaps God was so displeased with the actions of those in charge of the Church that he allowed (allowed, not commanded) heresies to spread so that in response to these delusions, His Church would rise up and straighten itself out which it certainly did in order to counter the reformation, and this counter reformation in turn produced many learned people within the Church able to instruct others rightly. I know for a fact that if not for the existence of the protestant heresies, I may not be a practicing Catholic today; I was not catechized well, and it was Catholic apologetics sites/organizations aimed at refuting protestantism that ultimately pulled me back into a fullness of following the faith by instructing me in Truth. and I was not even protestant, I was just one of those lax cafeteria Catholics, who in hearing the explanation of the Faith, born out of refuting protestantism was able to build my faith up on what was a weak foundation.

Sometimes, in order for good to triumph, evil must exist in order to drive those on the side of good to spread the word so to speak.

So in short I would say that although the reformation was a tragedy whereby many people were led astray by unsound doctrine, a lot of good came from it; future saints of the Church were born out of it, it challenged Catholics to live learn and love the scriptures to the fullest, it challenges us today to do what I just said and to constantly be ready to make a defense for the hope that is in us. It challenges us, and gives us the opportunity to evangelize in ways we never would have thought to evangelize. And perhaps God knew this all along, and allowed this to happen to the Church so that in the end He could bring good out of it. The alternative would be to let the abuses in the Church continue, and when fully metastasized it could have spelt disaster for the souls of many from the Pope all the way down to the average lay person.

In regards to other religions in the early periods of Man, who is to say God did not reward or save these people for seeking Him earnestly? One of the tenets of our faith is that those who have not heard the good news can possibly be saved if they earnestly seek God in whatever way is possible for them even if that means following a religion that they sincerely believe is true which in fact is not.

And asking why Judaism was not first is a question we simply do not know the answer to, there are countless factors that we don’t know about concerning the emergence of Judaism. Scripture often speaks of Jesus coming to us in the “fullness of time.” perhaps everything happened the way it happened because in the way in which God created the world, this is the manner and time in which things had to happen for God’s plan to be fulfilled. The entire universe is so fine tuned that if Earth’s axis was parallel to the Sun’s rather than tilted we wouldn’t even be here to have this conversation. I think there are too many unknown factors in the history of man to be able to say with certainty that things should have been done a different way. The point is that we believe God did things this way for a purpose, perhaps this was what needed to happen in order for Him to fulfill every single promise He made to us, perhaps Jesus dying when He died and rising when He rose was necessary to fulfill God’s plan, and so to, Abraham being called when he was called was the way God wanted things to happen and so it is what needed to happen for our sake.

2 cents.

 

[Bohm_Bawerk]

I don’t know what you read, but it wasn’t much of Sheed who was hardly a universalist. The facts taught by the Catholic Church include Sacred Scripture which teaches: 1 Tim 2:4 says that God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” If God desires that then He must make a provision for each person, i.e., he must make adequate grace available to each and every person ever concieved in order that that person, through the exercise of free will can accept the gift. Some people don’t but that doesn’t mean God didn’t do his part.

I will go back to Mr. Sheed: there are people who, through misunderstanding, poor experience or lack of information will not accept anything the Catholic Church teaches. Provision must be made for them in some sense to gain adequate knowledge.

I have never read (or even heard) of a Mr. Sheed, you are right for that part. But from the way you have presented his opinion, it is universalist - or it is approaching universalism. To claim that God creates extra avenues so as to try and save people reminds me of Gandhi’s quote that goes along the lines that all religions lead ultimately to the same God. That’s just not true, and even as a Catholic you profess to believe this with the doctrine of “there is no salvation outside the Church” (I understand the full meaning of this phrase by the way, I won’t go into it here).

The error of Mr. Sheed’s claim is that it eventually leads to a situation where it is asserted individuals like Muhammad were “god-sent”. And if they were god-sent, from the implications of the way you have presented Mr. Sheed’s opinions, that immediately contradicts Catholicism’s doctrine that revelation was completed at 100 AD (Muhammad was born at 570 AD). In short, who is right? Who is wrong?

Lastly, you are using that biblical verse in the incorrect fashion ( “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” ; 1 Timothy 2:4). That biblical verse is more appropriately used to criticze what we call “predestination”, which is a branch of soteriology (theology concerning salvation) that claims that our salvation has already been determined. The Church uses that verse, among a few others (as well as patristics), to criticize Calvin’s view of predestination. This is the first time that I have seen a Christian (and even more so, a Catholic) use it to refer to the existence of many religions.

Either Mr. Sheed is wrong or you have misinterpreted what he was saying or trying to say.

 

[Bohm_Bawerk]

It is true psychologists have claimed that the human mind and brain seeks organization, harmony, and meaning out of chaos and randomness. However, why do you suppose this is so? Perhaps it is because humans are attuned to the deeper meaning of life and the universe on a neurological and psychological level. Not wishful thinking, as Freud would call it, but rational thinking. The mere fact you are posing these challenging questions and expressing doubt shows that you too are predisposed to rational thinking, which is based on logic, order, and meaning. None of us may have sure answers to these questions, but our asking them reveals that on some profound level we know there is a purpose and order to our lives and to the universe.

Well, it’s always a possibility that we seek meaning because we have been given it by a “higher power”. I currently have a book from a psychologist who is going to prove God’s existence using psychology. Now that you have mentioned it, I am going to start reading it now and see if that solves my question.

I was thinking more along the lines that it may be that God is a neurological phenomenon. Or to put in other words, the brain, being the complex organ that it is, has projected the existence of God by “looking too much into things” - by looking too much into what are essentially random processes. To use the philosophical term, you could say the brain developed it’s own telos.

 

[Bohm_Bawerk]

So you think it’s perfectly acceptable and normal for a teacher or prophet to claim to be God?

Muslims would argue that the Bible was corrupted and that this led to the incorrect view (from their reference point) that Jesus was the Son of God. They would argue that because the Quran is inimitable, everything the Quran has to say about Jesus is correct.

 

[Bohm_Bawerk]

God also allowed Israel, His chosen people to be split in half with 10 tribes splitting off and going their own way leaving the tribes of Judah and Benjamin in the south. This isn’t unique to just Christianity, it was around in Judaism to, even in Jesus’ day where we get disputes between the jews and Samaritans and even within judaism there were divisions between the pharisees and the sadducees.

Good point.

Free will is the most basic of explanations, but perhaps there is more to it than meets the eye something that we will not fully realize until well into the future. We must admit the Church was in a pretty dilapidated state at the time of the reformation. And perhaps God was so displeased with the actions of those in charge of the Church that he allowed (allowed, not commanded) heresies to spread so that in response to these delusions, His Church would rise up and straighten itself out which it certainly did in order to counter the reformation, and this counter reformation in turn produced many learned people within the Church able to instruct others rightly. I know for a fact that if not for the existence of the protestant heresies, I may not be a practicing Catholic today; I was not catechized well, and it was Catholic apologetics sites/organizations aimed at refuting protestantism that ultimately pulled me back into a fullness of following the faith by instructing me in Truth. and I was not even protestant, I was just one of those lax cafeteria Catholics, who in hearing the explanation of the Faith, born out of refuting protestantism was able to build my faith up on what was a weak foundation.

Good point .

Sometimes, in order for good to triumph, evil must exist in order to drive those on the side of good to spread the word so to speak.

So in short I would say that although the reformation was a tragedy whereby many people were led astray by unsound doctrine, a lot of good came from it; future saints of the Church were born out of it, it challenged Catholics to live learn and love the scriptures to the fullest, it challenges us today to do what I just said and to constantly be ready to make a defense for the hope that is in us. It challenges us, and gives us the opportunity to evangelize in ways we never would have thought to evangelize. And perhaps God knew this all along, and allowed this to happen to the Church so that in the end He could bring good out of it. The alternative would be to let the abuses in the Church continue, and when fully metastasized it could have spelt disaster for the souls of many from the Pope all the way down to the average lay person.

In regards to other religions in the early periods of Man, who is to say God did not reward or save these people for seeking Him earnestly? One of the tenets of our faith is that those who have not heard the good news can possibly be saved if they earnestly seek God in whatever way is possible for them even if that means following a religion that they sincerely believe is true which in fact is not.

And asking why Judaism was not first is a question we simply do not know the answer to, there are countless factors that we don’t know about concerning the emergence of Judaism. Scripture often speaks of Jesus coming to us in the “fullness of time.” perhaps everything happened the way it happened because in the way in which God created the world, this is the manner and time in which things had to happen for God’s plan to be fulfilled. The entire universe is so fine tuned that if Earth’s axis was parallel to the Sun’s rather than tilted we wouldn’t even be here to have this conversation. I think there are too many unknown factors in the history of man to be able to say with certainty that things should have been done a different way. The point is that we believe God did things this way for a purpose, perhaps this was what needed to happen in order for Him to fulfill every single promise He made to us, perhaps Jesus dying when He died and rising when He rose was necessary to fulfill God’s plan, and so to, Abraham being called when he was called was the way God wanted things to happen and so it is what needed to happen for our sake.

2 cents.

Very good post. After 4 pages in - some trying to divert my question, others proceeding to invalidate my question by responding with personal questions about me - my question has finally been answered. Actually, I’ll admit it’s a very difficult question to solve. So I’m glad to see that you’ve done it quite easily.

 

[benedictus2]

He presided over it by virtue of the fact that both the Great Schism and the Reformation occurred. Individuals who participated and were involved in both events clearly believed they were acting in God’s name. God didn’t give them any revelation of any kind that the path they were taking was the incorrect one - yet He supposedly manages to do so with St. Paul.

I think I have addressed this in my post no 20.

 

[JRRTFAN]

I have never read (or even heard) of a Mr. Sheed, you are right for that part. But from the way you have presented his opinion, it is universalist - or it is approaching universalism. To claim that God creates extra avenues so as to try and save people reminds me of Gandhi’s quote that goes along the lines that all religions lead ultimately to the same God. That’s just not true, and even as a Catholic you profess to believe this with the doctrine of “there is no salvation outside the Church” (I understand the full meaning of this phrase by the way, I won’t go into it here).

The error of Mr. Sheed’s claim is that it eventually leads to a situation where it is asserted individuals like Muhammad were “god-sent”. And if they were god-sent, from the implications of the way you have presented Mr. Sheed’s opinions, that immediately contradicts Catholicism’s doctrine that revelation was completed at 100 AD (Muhammad was born at 570 AD). In short, who is right? Who is wrong?

Lastly, you are using that biblical verse in the incorrect fashion ( “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” ; 1 Timothy 2:4). That biblical verse is more appropriately used to criticze what we call “predestination”, which is a branch of soteriology (theology concerning salvation) that claims that our salvation has already been determined. The Church uses that verse, among a few others (as well as patristics), to criticize Calvin’s view of predestination. This is the first time that I have seen a Christian (and even more so, a Catholic) use it to refer to the existence of many religions.

Either Mr. Sheed is wrong or you have misinterpreted what he was saying or trying to say.

I’ll drop off this merry-go-round now. You can buy Sheed’s books at Ignatius Press (Ignatius.com) if you care to. Anybody who doesn’t know who Sheed is, and didn’t evaluate his material prior to becoming an atheist, didn’t really want to know much about the whole thing anyway. I will leave you with “what we call” (is that the imperial we) a suggestion. Read Theology and Sanity (F.J. Sheed - Ignatius Press) and see what WE call Sanity.

By the way, do you ever cite where “you have seen” this stuff used officially by the Church? Maybe an encyclical or 2?

 

[Bohm_Bawerk]

I’ll drop off this merry-go-round now. You can buy Sheed’s books at Ignatius Press (Ignatius.com) if you care to. Anybody who doesn’t know who Sheed is, and didn’t evaluate his material prior to becoming an atheist, didn’t really want to know much about the whole thing anyway. I will leave you with “what we call” (is that the imperial we) a suggestion. Read Theology and Sanity (F.J. Sheed - Ignatius Press) and see what WE call Sanity.

I find your post quite laughable. I have never heard of a “F. J. Sheed” (I’m not American, if that explains anything), and you want to portray me as committing an intellectual crime, of being ignorant in at least rudimentary theology? I would have understood your charge if I said I have never heard of a “St. Thomas Aquinas” or an “Aristotle” or even a “C.S. Lewis”. Who is F. J. Sheed? I have never heard of him. I’m willing to wager there are other posters here who have never heard of him. You can’t expect me - who is probably significantly younger than you are - to hold a mental directory of every theologian that has pontificated on God’s existence.

By the way, do you ever cite where “you have seen” this stuff used officially by the Church? Maybe an encyclical or 2?

As I mentioned in my other posts outside this thread, I don’t really read encyclicals (although I plan on reading* Rerum Novarum* when I have time). I never really liked them. I’ve always enjoyed reading the Bible, even from a young age. I occasionally read excerpts from the Catechism to ensure that I’m interpreting the Bible “in the correct way”. But I have always considered the Bible superior to those other documents. Don’t you - after all, it is called “Sacred Scripture” for a reason?

And yes, you did use the Biblical verse in the incorrect fashion. You couldn’t even refute my claim, but vacuously stated “I’ll drop off this merry-go-round”. I have always seen 1 Timothy 2:4, along with a few other biblical passages used to criticize Calvin’s view of predestination.

I rarely quote the Catechism, but here anyway:

“1058 The Church prays that no one should be lost: “Lord, let me never be parted from you.” If it is true that no one can save himself, it is also true that God “desires all men to be saved” (1 Tim 2:4), and that for him “all things are possible” (Mt 19:26).”

By “lost”, it is meant in this verse of eternal separation from God (i.e. Hell). Even more interesting, is the fact that 1 Timothy 2:4 is only ever used in the Catechism once, and in this instance that it is used, it is a refutation of Calvin’s soteriology that God has already determined who will be damned – a doctrine that clearly goes against the existence of free will.

At least admit you’ve learned something instead of dismissing this discourse. We are here to learn after all, are we not?

 

[Bohm_Bawerk]

This is an excerpt from a Bible commentary which tears asunder the misconception that God “creates extra avenues”, or that those in other avenues are even saved at all:

"**This passage cannot mean, as many have supposed, that God wills that all kinds of people should be saved, or that some sinners of every rank and class may be saved, because:

(1) the natural and obvious interpretation of the language is opposed to such a sense. The language expresses the desire that “all men” should be saved, and we should not depart from the obvious sense of a passage unless necessity requires it.
. . .]**" (Source: Barnes’ Bible Commentary, bible.cc/1_timothy/2-4.htm )

 

[Calgar]

Muslims would argue that the Bible was corrupted and that this led to the incorrect view (from their reference point) that Jesus was the Son of God. They would argue that because the Quran is inimitable, everything the Quran has to say about Jesus is correct.

Ok. So you do think it’s okay for a teacher to claim to be god?

 

[Bohm_Bawerk]

Ok. So you do think it’s okay for a teacher to claim to be god?

No, that isn’t what I’m saying. Please reread what I’ve written.

I’m not a Muslim, let’s just get that off the bat. I only know a couple of it’s teachings. And the traditional Muslim response to your claim is that Jesus never considered Himself God. Muslims would say that the Bible has been corrupted, and this means that one possible consequence of it’s corruption was that Jesus supposedly claimed to be God. They would point to statements such as the shahada - “There is no god but God” - as well as “God does not beget, and does not need to beget. He is ONE and only ONE, and nothing is equal to Him” (Chapter 112). They would also point to the Bible, as they believe it is has some degree of truth, and Christians who follow it are “People of the Book”: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4).

Another thing is that early Christians didn’t always believe Jesus was the son of God. There were several heresies floating around - Docetism, for instance, claimed Jesus was only “God in appearance”. Arianism was the belief that the Jesus, the Son of God, was subject to God. Of course, modern Christians believe in what we call the hypostatic union - that Jesus was 100% God and 100% Man.

Besides that, my initial question of this thread was answered successfully by L (refer to his post above).

 

[Bohm_Bawerk]

I wanted to read up more on the East-West schism, and as I was reading, I came across a historical event called the “Western Schism”. In the Western Schism, two men claimed to be pope. Now, this is something I have never heard or read about before, so I am currently reading up on it.

Here is a Wikipedia link for anyone interested: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Schism

Although the schism was solved (eventually), does that refute Jesus’ promise in any way, or confirm it: “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it” (Matthew 16:18).

 

[benedictus2]

I wanted to read up more on the East-West schism, and as I was reading, I came across a historical event called the “Western Schism”. In the Western Schism, two men claimed to be pope. Now, this is something I have never heard or read about before, so I am currently reading up on it.

Here is a Wikipedia link for anyone interested: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Schism

Although the schism was solved (eventually), does that refute Jesus’ promise in any way, or confirm it: “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it” (Matthew 16:18).

Can you show how this is a sign that the gates of hell prevailed.

In the western schism, only one was validly Pope - the bad one. But this in no detracts from infalliblity because for the gates of hell to prevail, the Church must fall into heresy. The Church has not fallen into heresy.

As a matter of fact, when Charlemagne asked the Pope why it is not a practice to recite the Nicene Creed at Mass in the Catholic Church, the Pope replied that it was not necessary as the Church never fell into heresy. As bad as some Popes were, they never taught error.

 

[benedictus2]

This is something that always bothered me, even as my time as a Catholic. If God truly existed, why would He preside behind the Great Schism and the Protestant Reformation?

I don’t think you’ve given your question much thought.

In what way is God’s existence contingent upon there being no east-west schism and no protestant reformation?

 

[RTully]

In what way is God’s existence contingent upon there being no east-west schism and no protestant reformation?

There are 2.2 Billion Christian worldwide. About 1.2 Billion Catholics, 600 Million Protestants and about 300 Million Orthodox. Maybe I’m wrong but if it were not for the Schism and Protestant reformation I don’t believe the numbers would be as high as they are now and there would be less people brought to Christ. IMO it was all part of the plan in the first place.

 

[AmbroseSJ]

Bohm Bawerk:

This is something that always bothered me, even as my time as a Catholic. If God truly existed, why would He preside behind the Great Schism and the Protestant Reformation?

The problem existed in the time of Jesus between the Jews and the Samaritans. Use those passages of the Bible to probe for an answer to your question.

 

[benedictus2]

There are 2.2 Billion Christian worldwide. About 1.2 Billion Catholics, 600 Million Protestants and about 300 Million Orthodox. Maybe I’m wrong but if it were not for the Schism and Protestant reformation I don’t believe the numbers would be as high as they are now and there would be less people brought to Christ. IMO it was all part of the plan in the first place.

I’ve just replied to a similar post in another thread. And my reply is essentially this: if that was part of God’s plan, then you are attributing evil to God. You are attributing heresy to God.

Why would Christ who prayed for unity make it part of his plan to splinter this unity? You are making Christ sound idiotic. He implores His Father to keep us united when He had the demise of this unity planned all along.

So Christ must have wanted people to fall into heresy and muddle in this confusion.

In the meantime, it still does not address my question as to how God’s existence is supposed to be contingent on there being no east-west schism or protestant reformation.