Number of Protestant Denominations

[Ani_Ibi]

PC Master:

That, folks, is a double-standard.

No. You are equivocating and building a strawman.
PC Master:

Also, interestingly, the call to unity is a prayer of Jesus for the apostles, that they may become one as Jesus and God are one.

So? How many Protestants can validly claim apostolic succession – the laying on of hands? Hint: zero.
PC Master:

John 17:20 (Amplified)* Neither for these alone do I pray [it is not for their sake only that I make this request], but also for all those who will ever come to believe in (trust in, cling to, rely on) Me through their word and teaching*
So, it’s God’s will for everyone who comes to trust in Jesus to be united.

Yep.
PC Master:

If this is an organizational unity, clearly, the Roman Catholic Church does not embody this, as there are millions of Orthodox and Protestants who profess (and truly believe) faith in Jesus, and yet, are not united organizationally.

You misrepresent Invincible Ignorance and Extra Ecclesia Nulla Salus. In fact you completely ignore them as if they were not relevant. This is an outrageous omission! Moreover you equivocate on the concept of unity. We say unity in doctrine, community, and accountability. You say organizational unity.
PC Master:

Schisms and anathemizing are definitely not in line with this if speaking organizationally, so the Roman Catholic Church isn’t fulfilling God’s will.

Show me in the Bible where it says that the Catholic Church is not the Church which Jesus instituted.
PC Master:

Neither are the Protestant denominations

Ah!
PC Master:

but it doesn’t matter any more, because Roman Catholicism is guilty of breaking this unity too.

So this is your logic. Build a strawman against the Catholic Church then, on that shifting sand, build your case for the 30 000 denominations. Two wrongs make a right. First of all there is not two wrongs. Only one. And that was the act of schism.
PC Master:

So, is it an organizational unity (comprised of all those who have faith in Jesus) Jesus was praying for, or was it perhaps something else?

How long are you going to continue evading the words which I actually post?

end of post

 

[Ani_Ibi]

Ani Ibi:

You are cherrypicking my post.

PC Master:

Not intentionally.

Neverthetheless. Now that you are aware that you are cherrypicking my posts, any further cherrypicking can only be intentional. Right?
Ani Ibi:

Schismatics, therefore, chose a life which did not include Jesus. Oh, their inventions, their novelties, their terms – but not what Jesus was offering.

PC Master:

In John 6, yes. But Jesus prayer for unity was for those who come to have faith in him, not for the whole world. In other words, he wants Christianity

to be united (in some fashion).

My reference was to John 6. Those who walked away were disciples. So John 6 can be said to prefigure the Reformation and its deunifying effect on Christianity.
Ani Ibi:

Actually it is unity of doctrine and community. Because God’s truth has been preserved in the Catholic Church. The groups who split off did not preserve God’s truth. They invented something which was comfortable to them – the easy way.

PC Master:

Actually, this is unsubstantiated opinion.

How can it be unsubstantiated opinion when several of us have already demonstrated that all of the truthclaims of all of the denominations cannot be simultaneously true because

• the truthclaims differ,
• the truthclaims are denominationally distinct, and
• truth cannot contradict truth?
  Obviously the lion’s share of the splitters were inventing doctrine and therefore not preserving God’s truth.

continued…

 

[Teflon93]

[edit] As long as we play the numbers game with the RCC vs The World data set, it will be useless, because Protestants are never going to agree that it’s an accurate data set anyway. Your time would be better spent demonstrating why the lack of a central man-made authority is a fatal flaw in Protestantism.

Well, thank you for your concern for our time by suggesting we not address the schismatic nature of Protestantism which is inconvenient for Protestant claims. Since you’re arguing from interest, you can forget about it.

The real issue in Protestantism in not the lack of a central man-made authority, as you deem it in utter ignorance of what papal authority is, but in the lack of evidence of coherent inspiration from the Holy Spirit.

With 33,000 denominations ALL claiming radically different and mutually contradictory interpretations of salvation, sacraments, history, and prophecy, ALL claiming their interpretation is the work of God, you cannot claim with a straight face that Protestants are right and non-Protestants wrong. Protestants don’t even speak with anything resembling one voice on matters of doctrine, faith, and morals, but with a babbling anarchy that is the direct result of The Atomic Church of Me you’ve built.

Those Protestants counted among the saved are counted so DESPITE this anarchy, not because of it. For when there is no agreement whatsoever on salvation among yourselves beyond the empty nostrums erupting from the profane mouths of heretics past, how precisely do you guide the faithful to it?

Why do you think so many Protestants continue to vote with their feet? Why do you think schism continues at a quicker and quicker pace in the mainline denominations, and why pseudo-theology like “The Purpose-Driven Life” gains more adherents than five centuries’ worth of Protestant theology delivers today?

The Catholic (not Roman Catholic, as we keep trying to tell you but in your rudeness you eschew) Church and the Orthodox churches, despite being around millennia longer, have not produced anywhere near the number nor the severity of schisms Protestantism has. It is an engine of schism.

Why is it an engine of schism?

Because at its root Protestantism recognizes no earthly authority whatsoever and offers no method of telling which claims of holy inspiration are completely bogus, the work of Satan himself, or truly divine. So how do you stop heresy within Protestantism short of the unChristian repressiveness favored by Calvin and Zwingli?

You don’t. Which is how you get 33,000 denominations, and climbing.

And there isn’t a Protestant clergyman alive with the authority to stop it, even had they the wisdom to try.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

PC Master:

Each split-off no doubt actually believed they were preserving God’s truth.

Are you not reading our posts? We have already demonstrated several times that just because folks claim something or believe something does not mean that it is true.

Does truth not matter? Does the notion that the road to Hell is paved with good itnentions not hold water anymore?
PC Master:

Luther, at least to some degree, believed that Roman Catholicism was no longer maintaining God’s truth.

Absolutely false. Luther’s reasons for the split were political not theological. If they had been theological, the split would never have happened.

Why? Because the points of theological disagreement were addressed and resolved.

Yet Luther stayed outside the Church and he and his buddies forced a multitude of simple folk to convert to their new religion. There’s unity for you!

Luther was comfortable outside the Church. He had power outside the Church.

See:

Forcible conversion to Protestantism
Holy Men? The Leaders of the Reformation
German Peasants War, 1524-1525
Der Bauernkrieg von 1525: The German Peasants’ Revolt

There is much more evidence, but I have posted it on other threads. This is enough to make my point on this thread.

continued…

 

[Ani_Ibi]

PC Master:

That’s why schisms of doctrine happen – not because people want something more comfortable.

The tree is known by its fruit. The fruits of Luther’s split were political though clothed in the garments of doctrine.
PC Master:

If it were that, then I’d say that having a single earthly authority is ultimately more comfortable than the Protestant way – you can easily know if you’re in-line with God’s will or not.

Just because it is logical and legitimate, doesn’t mean that it is comfortable. Witness the scores of martyrs in our history.
PC Master:

With Protestants, we don’t have such a clear certainty,

Is this admission of fact supposed to be a glowing testimonial?
PC Master:

but since we don’t believe God intended one man to have control such as that, it doesn’t matter.

One man? Jesus should not have stated His wishes for the Church? Nothing really matters is a Christian teaching?

 

[PC_Master]

You know, at some point, you might go back and actually address the points I made, and explain not just the supposed Protestant failings in regards to unity, but how schism and such actually doesn’t apply when it happens to Roman Catholicism.

You keep ignoring the inconvenient stuff and mutilating my words (not to mention adding an insane amount of rhetoric). Just address what I wrote regarding the supposed unity of the Roman Catholic Church, in regards to how it actually doesn’t fulfill Jesus’ prayer (which is presumably, where you get the idea that unity is important).

 

[Ani_Ibi]

PC Master:

As a majority of the previous posts come from “The Roman Catholic Church is the one true church as instituted by Christ, and everything else didn’t come into being until hundreds of years later – and oh yeah, we agree completely on everything and thus are perfectly united.”, I won’t respond to the conclusions given, as they’re mostly nonsense, ignoring the very reason for schisms and denominations.

Our conclusions have been reasoned and referenced. Your replies otoh have been question begging, equivocation, evasion, and sometimes pure misrepresentation of Catholic teaching.

If you are not responding to our conclusions, it is not because our conclusions are nonsense. Most likely it is because you have nothing with which to refute them. If you had, you would have posted it pages ago.
PC Master:

As long as you can’t consider that you might not have the full and total truth

Please refrain from commenting on something you cannot know. I have looked at whether or not Catholicism is the full and total truth. Long and hard. I look at it every day. The question is: have you?
PC Master:

I don’t believe it’s within your ability to understand why there are so many denominations.

Normally when a person runs out of substantive contributions to the discussion they can choose to either concede or make personal attacks.

I see that your ‘rhetoric’ is turning personal. It is an unjustified personal attack to claim that we are unable to understand why there are so many denominations.

We haven’t even begun to go there yet. And we are very prepared; believe me.
PC Master:

You will assume, of course, that I’m being hateful here,

Well, leave us to make our own assumptions, OK?
PC Master:

and that the reason for so many denominations is that people are rejecting God’s truth (as you see it) and just want something easy. This couldn’t be more wrong.

So you say. But you have failed on numerous occasions to demonstrate that we are wrong.
PC Master:

The entire point of splitting, in most cases (not all – there are some trivial ones) is due to honest disagreement in doctrine.

I have provided links proving that Luther’s split was not on doctrine. It was on politics. Now any number of splits after Luther could have been on doctrine. Or they could have been on politics.
PC Master:

Both sides believe they are right, and that the issue is important, so they end up with no choice but to split.

Luther had choices. But he wanted his way or the hiway. Not too many folks are going to stand for that, unless forced. And forced is exactly what happened. People were forced to convert to Luther’s religion on pain of death and on pain of seizure of their property. The other early Reformers were no different.

Now that is not theological. That is political.

continued…

 

[Ani_Ibi]

PC Master:

This still leaves the remnant of my original point. When Jesus prayed for unity, he included in that all who would ever come to have faith in him through the apostles’ teaching (and either, by extension, the teaching of those taught by the apostles or Jesus was referring to the things being taught, not the teachers).

Sorry guy! You are reduced to tautologizing what has been successfully refuted. Saying something a multitude of times does not make it true. Yet this is exactly what you are trying to do here.
PC Master:

He said that he wanted us to be one as he and the father are one. What does this mean? Does this really refer to an earthly, physical sense of unity, via an organization?

If He did not want organizations then why are the 30 000 denoms no more than 30 000 organizations? Why did you not change that when you split? Why? Because the original split was political not theological. And politics is organizational by nature.
PC Master:

Can you honestly support that from the text?

What we can support is the model which Jesus gave us for running a Church, the model which Paul and Peter gave us, the instructions which Jesus gave us, and the promise which Jesus gave us. From scripture.
PC Master:

I really do understand how you build up a framework based on other information, but this passage would seem to be clear.

What other information are you talking about?
PC Master:

Jesus and the father are united (according to the trinity concept) in spirit, but not in flesh. Is that what he was referring to?

Are we to be ruled by flesh?
PC Master:

If it’s about organization

You’re the ONLY person saying this. And it’s a strawman.
PC Master:

I’d say Jesus prayer for unity has not been answered (at least completely) because his prayer was for all those who would ever come to have faith in him. That includes me, and many, many Protestants.

Because like the disciples who walked way, folks have free will.
PC Master:

As to a question earlier – Yes, I believe there are some Roman Catholics who are included in the “invisible church” (that is, the true body consisting of all true believers in Jesus).

You can include us all you want, but we can see each other and so can the lurkers on this board. That’s the advantage of not being invisible.
PC Master:

I also believe there are a great many Protestants (of every denomination) who are not true believers, just as there are many Roman Catholics who are not (even if they are “officially” members of their respective churches).

So?
PC Master:

These are certainly not included in the invisible church.

How can you tell if you can’t see what 's going on? God gave us the faculties of observation and reason. God did not give us a crystal ball.
PC Master:

As long as we play the numbers game with the RCC vs The World data set, it will be useless, because Protestants are never going to agree that it’s an accurate data set anyway.

So? Some of the simple folks in the pews will put 2 and 2 together, throw their arms up in the air in disgust at having been gulled for as long as they have, and simply cross the Tiber.
PC Master:

Your time would be better spent demonstrating why the lack of a central man-made authority is a fatal flaw in Protestantism.

We’ll take care of our own time thank you. If you want to start a thread on the lack of a central man-made authority is a fatal flaw in Protestantism, why not do just that?

 

[Ani_Ibi]

PC Master:

You know, at some point, you might go back and actually address the points I made, and explain not just the supposed Protestant failings in regards to unity, but how schism and such actually doesn’t apply when it happens to Roman Catholicism.

I already have.
PC Master:

You keep ignoring the inconvenient stuff and mutilating my words (not to mention adding an insane amount of rhetoric).

I have quoted everything you have written. I have not mutilated your words but held your feet to the fire and made you accountable for your words. As for ‘insane’ please keep your desperation to yourself.

As I have tried to no avail to explain to you reason and rhetoric is not the same as rhetoric. We have given you reason and reference. You have given us question begging, equivocation, evasion, and misrepresentation. You have given us rhetoric.
PC Master:

Just address what I wrote regarding the supposed unity of the Roman Catholic Church, in regards to how it actually doesn’t fulfill Jesus’ prayer (which is presumably, where you get the idea that unity is important).

I have numerous times.

 

[Teflon93]

You know, at some point, you might go back and actually address the points I made, and explain not just the supposed Protestant failings in regards to unity, but how schism and such actually doesn’t apply when it happens to Roman Catholicism.

You keep ignoring the inconvenient stuff and mutilating my words (not to mention adding an insane amount of rhetoric). Just address what I wrote regarding the supposed unity of the Roman Catholic Church, in regards to how it actually doesn’t fulfill Jesus’ prayer (which is presumably, where you get the idea that unity is important).

And where do you get the idea that unity is unimportant?

Did Christ have multiple groups of apostles?

Did he found his Church on one rock, or upon many pebbles?

Why did he not claim to found multiple Churches?

Why did he not warn his beloved apostles of the schisms to come, of the rending of his body, if that was the intended outcome?

Why did he tell us to attempt to correct our brothers, individually and in groups, and then go tell the Church? How could we find it if it were invisible? How would we know whom to tell within it if their status as members could not be known to us until Judgment Day?

Talk about inconvenient…

 

[Ani_Ibi]

…talk about inconvenient…

Inconvenient for some, convenient for others. Look at the lamentable story of Luther’s patron, Landgrave Philip of Hesse, surnamed the Magnanimous.

Philip was married and had a number of sons and daughters… and in the year 1539—when he was 35 years of age—he wanted to marry a lady called Margaret von der Saal. He asked Luther’s advice, and tried to obtain his permit for a bigamous marriage…

The Reformer was in a dilemma, for Philip wanted his permission in writing. But Dr. Martin easily found a way out. He said that there was nothing whatever against a bigamous marriage, since in this case it would help the Landgrave to get over his physical and psychological troubles.

The only condition Luther imposed in his written document was that the marriage ought to remain an absolute secret, for otherwise he himself and the Landgrave might get into trouble…

But too many people were in the secret, and all the parties to it got scared… Capital punishment was still prescribed for bigamists, and neither Philip nor his adviser knew at first what to do… But then [Luther] had an idea.

He would point out that the advice he gave was given under confession (here he most conveniently returned to Catholic doctrine), and therefore ought to remain absolutely secret.

Moreover, he argued… that this secret permission never implied a public permission. “A secret affirmative cannot become a public affirmative—a secret `yes’ remains a public ‘no’… link

 

[Teflon93]

Inconvenient for some, convenient for others. Look at the lamentable story of Luther’s patron, Landgrave Philip of Hesse, surnamed the Magnanimous.

Of course, the interesting thing about Luther is his constant inconstancy—the man was all 33,000 Protestant denominations in one body. Used to drive his adherents absolutely nuts.

Without Calvin to provide the theological framework, one wonders whether the Reformation would have “succeeded”.

Of course, this very “success” completely stripped authority from the picture and invited the constant schism so evident today.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

…Without Calvin to provide the theological framework, one wonders whether the Reformation would have “succeeded”…

Luther and Calvin did have one notable thing in common and I wonder if the Reformation would have succeeded without it: that is the use of forcible conversions.

 

[Teflon93]

Luther and Calvin did have one notable thing in common and I wonder if the Reformation would have succeeded without it: that is the use of forcible conversions.

A novel solution to the “butts in pews” problem, but a regrettable one.

That is one nice thing about having so many Protestant denominations, though—no real chance of forced conversions today!

 

[Ani_Ibi]

A novel solution to the “butts in pews” problem, but a regrettable one.

That is one nice thing about having so many Protestant denominations, though—no real chance of forced conversions today!

While there are few conversions by means of physical force, I do believe there are significant numbers of conversions by means of misinformation, emotional manipulations, cultishnessness all of which erode free will.

 

[jmcrae]

In John 6, yes. But Jesus prayer for unity was for those who come to have faith in him, not for the whole world. In other words, he wants Christianity to be united (in some fashion).

Is there a “fashion” in which one could be united that would not include doctrinal and organizational unity? (Sounds like the same 'fashion" as The Emperor’s New Clothes, to me.)

However, I’m free to make my own choice.

And how reliable are you at making the right choices for yourself, without a guiding authority? (If you have never been on even one bad date in your whole life, presuming you are an independent adult, then congratulations, you are probably wise enough to choose correctly all by yourself. But if you have ever made an unwise choice in dating, which is in the visible world, then what makes you so much wiser about the invisible world? Just because you won’t experience the consequences of your spiritual choices until after death doesn’t mean that they can’t or won’t be nasty ones.

No. Each individual is free to decide as he or she will, based on the revelation of God to that individual.

And what happens if the individual is not such an extremely gifted, holy Saint, and does not receive personal locutions directly from God, or if he or she can’t discern the difference between locutions from God and the sound of his or her own inner thoughts and desires?

Show me a Baptist tradition (which is held as a rule of faith) that doesn’t have Biblical support. Actually, we’ll probably have to start another thread if you actually can come up with anything.

What about the numbers 1-10 in the Ten Commandments? (I once had a conversation with a Baptist lady who was firmly convinced that the numbers of each of the Commandments are noted in Scripture. She refused to believe me that there are 17 verses in total, numbered 1-17, and that it is a matter of Holy Tradition that we count 10 Commandments in that passage of Scripture - they aren’t actually numbered in the text, as such.)

Show me the hierarchy. Show me any pastor or Baptist leader (since we seem to be focusing on Baptists) that claims to be infallible in his/her/their rulings. Actually, show me any Protestant leader that does this (there could be one or two, but a vast, vast majority don’t).

A heirarchy can exist without anyone in it thinking he or she is infallible. A heirarchy just means that there is another human being or group of human beings to whom one is accountable.

Baptist preachers are typically held accountable to a Board of Deacons, which in turn is held accountable to the congregation as a whole, so the heirarchy of the Baptist church in the local congregation is as follows:

Congregation (at the top)
Board of Deacons (accountable to the congregation)
Preacher (accountable to the Board of Deacons)

 

[jmcrae]

In your example above, and considering that it would have no singular earthly authority, it would be quite a bit more successful.

However, I have another scenario. Given that we know that many (both Roman Catholic and Protestant [not to mention Orthodox] alike) are not true believers, it would seem even better if we were able to recognize those who are not true believers, and actually take it as seriously as they did in Biblical days, throwing out those who bend or break “the rules”. It can’t work starting now, but it could work if you start with the apostles and move forward, with each generation highly valuing the leading of the holy spirit.

If there is no visible Church, then out of what, do we throw them? (And if there is no person in authority, who makes the decision to do so, in the first place?)

Martin Luther got thrown out of the Catholic Church, and that’s how this whole mess got started in the first place, because instead of repenting of his rebellions and his heresies and then being restored to membership in Christ’s Church, he just started up the Lutheran Church and continued to teach his heresies and to promote rebellions.

And when he tossed people out of the Lutheran Church for disagreeing with him, they started up the Calvinist and Mennonite churches, and when people disagreed with Calvin or Menno, and got thrown out of their churches, they just started up their own churches, ad infinitum, until here we are today with an un-countable number of Protestant churches.

 

[Ani_Ibi]

And when he tossed people out of the Lutheran Church for disagreeing with him, they started up the Calvinist and Mennonite churches, and when people disagreed with Calvin or Menno, and got thrown out of their churches, they just started up their own churches, ad infinitum, until here we are today with an un-countable number of Protestant churches.

If being tossed out was the only thing that happened to those who disagreed with Luther, they got off lucky. Others were not so lucky.

 

[Contarini]

If being tossed out was the only thing that happened to those who disagreed with Luther, they got off lucky. Others were not so lucky.

I repeat my earlier invitation to you to name some of these unlucky people. (The peasants do not count–they were killed for taking up arms against their overlords, not for disagreeing with Luther. It’s like saying that the insurgents in Iraq are being killed for not agreeing with the theology of some American Christian preacher, just because that preacher supports the war in Iraq.)

Edwin

 

[Teflon93]

I repeat my earlier invitation to you to name some of these unlucky people. (The peasants do not count–they were killed for taking up arms against their overlords, not for disagreeing with Luther. It’s like saying that the insurgents in Iraq are being killed for not agreeing with the theology of some American Christian preacher, just because that preacher supports the war in Iraq.)

Edwin

Oh, come on—Luther wrote a tract advocating the murder of the 100,000 peasants which influenced the German princes he’d cultivated for his own protection. Your desire to absolve him does not change this fact. He was far from an innocent bystander in this.

What you’re doing is essentially saying, “Other than the Jews and the Russians, name one person Hitler had killed in the camps.”