Actually after thinking about this I am not sure if all protestants are Christians. So what then? I believe that as long as we are Baptised into one faith, some do not have the fullness of the faith, but we indeed have the same faith.
Hi rinnie,
The unity of faith. All Christians who are of the body of the Church
believe the same doctrine. “I beseech you . . . that you all speak the same
thing and that there be no schisms among you.” And: "One Lord, one faith,
one baptism.
faith is: to surrender to God, but transforming one’s life. A thing that is not always easy!
But there are different spirits?
there are protestant faiths who believe once you surrender to baptism there is nothing you can do to lose your salvation.
Luther solved this problem for himself by his “discovery” of justification
by faith, which for him meant that it made no difference if he did sin
mortally all the time. If he would just take Christ as his personal Savior,
then the merits of Christ would be thrown over him like a white cloak, and
he could not be lost, he was infallibly saved, saved no matter how much he
might sin. So he wrote to his great associate, Melanchthon :
“Pecca fortiter, sed crede fortius”–which means: "Sin greatly, but believe
still more greatly - or, “Even if you sin greatly, believe still more
greatly.” As a certain bumper sticker puts it: “Christians are not perfect,
just forgiven.” In other words, Christians can sin as much as they want–
they will get away with it. Others, for the same sins, go to hell.
St.James uses the word faith very differently. What do we find? Precisely the same as
what we explained above. Faith is a complex of belief, confidence,
obedience, love. The article even explains Paul’s words in Romans 1:5: “the
obedience of faith” to mean,“the obedience which faith is.” Luther thought
we do not have to obey any commandment at all if we have faith - but** he did
not see that faith itself includes obedience to God’s commands! **
above from
ewtn.com/library/CHISTORY/MLUTH.TXT
faith is a state of mind, it is a particular mode of thinking and acting, which is exercised, always indeed toward God, but in very various ways. Now I mean to say, that the multitude of men in this country have not this habit or character of mind. We could conceive, for instance, their believing in their own religions, even if they did not believe in the Church; this would be faith, though a faith improperly directed; but they do not believe even their own religions; they do not believe in anything at all.
…This is what faith was in the time of the Apostles, as no one
can deny; and what it was then, it must be now, else it ceases to be
the same thing. I say, it certainly was this in the Apostles’ time,
for you know they preached to the world that Christ was the Son of
God, that
He preached to the world that Christ was the Son of God,
that He was born of a Virgin, that He had ascended on high, that he would come again to judge all, the living and the dead. Could the
world see all this? could it prove it? how then were men to receive
it? why did so many embrace it? on the word of the Apostles, who were,
as their powers showed, messengers from God. Men were told to submit
their reason to a living authority. Moreover, whatever
an Apostle
said, his converts were bound to believe; when they entered the
Church, they entered it in order to learn. The Church was their
teacher; they did not come to argue, to examine, to pick and choose, but to accept whatever was put before them. No one doubts, no one can doubt this, of those primitive times.
A Christian was bound to take
without doubting all that the Apostles declared to be revealed; if the
Apostles spoke, he had to yield an internal assent of his mind; it
would not be enough to keep silence, it would not be enough not to
oppose it: it was not allowable to credit in a measure; it was not
allowable to doubt. No; if a convert had his own private thoughts of
what was said, and only kept them to himself, if he made some secret
opposition to the teaching, if he waited for further proof before he
believed it, this would be a proof that he did not think the Apostles
were sent from God to reveal His will; it would be a proof that he did
not in any true sense believe at all. Immediate, implicit submission
of the mind was, in the lifetime of the Apostles, the only, the
necessary token of faith; then there was no room whatever for what is
now called private judgement.
No one could say: "I will choose my
religion for myself, I will believe this, I will not believe that; I
will pledge myself to nothing; I will believe just as long as I
please, and no longer; what I believe to-day I will reject tomorrow,
if I choose. I will believe what the Apostles have as yet said, but I
will not believe what they shall say in time to come." No; either the
Apostles were from God, or they were not; if they were, everything
that they preached was to be believed by their hearers; if they were
not, there was nothing for their hearers to believe. To believe a
little, to believe more or less, was impossible; it contradicted the
very notion of believing: if one part was to be believed; it was an
absurdity to believe one thing and not another; for the word of the
Apostles, which made the one true, made the other true too; they were
nothing in themselves, they were all things, they were an infallible
authority, as coming from God. The world had either to become
Christian, or to let it alone; there was no room for private tastes
and fancies, no room for private judgement.
God bless,
John