Those verses don’t provide us with a common understanding or starting point for our discussion, JMM. They only push it back a step to the question, “What is the biblical definition of church?” I think it’s safe to assume you’d say it’s a hierarchical religious institution, i.e., Roman Catholic Church, a definition which I obviously do not hold.
You wanted a definition of Body of Christ, and I gave it. Now, you want a definition of church, which I assumed would be the next question. Instead, why don’t you give me your definition of church, using Scripture of course.
And you think your definition is the correct one and th Catholic definition is the wrong one ?
I believe the* biblical *definition is the correct one.
Then give the Biblical definition please.
1 Cor. 1:
I noticed you haven’t offered any arguments which contravene my assertion.
One of the reasons I love the Catholic. Church is we are all on the same page. If you attend Mass in Los Angeles, New York, India, Peru, Rome, etc. We all had the same readings today from the Bible
God given authority and unity, its good to be Catholic!Sure they have organized structure. So every one of them is a denomination. You know why? Because they fit the definition that I provided, from the dictionary. Now if you can prove that they don’t have organized structure, then have at it. I am waiting to read the proof.
Read nondenominational Christianity on Wikipedia , they don’t identify as a denomination, and some don’t think that they count as " Protestant " to begin with.
Each independent church IS its own denomination, Star.
The clue is that particular church , a denomination is a sub division of a church like the orthodox , have a heyeirchal system of government of some sort , a cluster or group of local churches if you will , keeping that in mind non denominational churches don’t fit . And if you want to put them in a class/ church there belief system is Anabaptist, so that if you stretch the definition a bit makes them a subdivision of the Anabaptist branch .
That is good for you to stretch the definition. Unfortunately for you, they also fit the definition of a denomination, without any stretching having to be done. So yes, the number of denominations is in the tens of thousands, and exponentially growing at a rapid rate.
LOL!
Or the third choice , only the denominational families count as churches i.e. , Lutheran , Anglican etc , reducing the number considerably . Non denominational churches are theologically Anabaptist so you should count them as such , reducing the number further . The so called 33000 number includes heretical groups that are not actually Protestant , but Catholic apologists class them as such , remove them and you reduce it even further , so what Christian churches you get instead of Catholic plus thousands as falsely claimed what you get based on belief is the following:LOL!
Well, if you want to say that when someone breaks off from another church it’s still counted as part of that church then…
there’s really only 1 denomination–the Catholic Church.
All the rest of the tens of thousands of churches split when you started disagreeing with what the CC professed. And then you started disagreeing with each other and splintering your own churches, forming independent churches with their own theology and doctrines.
So you have to assert that there’s really only 1 denomination, which is clearly absurd…
Or you can count each of of the splintering groups…which makes it tens of thousands (probably hundreds of thousands) of differing denominations, teaching different doctrines.
This is as arbitrary as saying, “Only the churches which are on a main thoroughfare count as denominations”, Star.
They absolutely are not theologically Anabaptist.
Incidentally, this is a nonsensical statement. “Only denominations should be counted as denominations”.
I would put more importance on differences of teachings, as even what some call “non-critical” are still differences.
So you try quoting from a heretical site and put it on par with Protestants , insulting to say the least ,