Which is the original Protestant church?

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TriuneUnity said:
That would be us crotchety Lutherans.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, many confessional Lutherans will not refer to themselves as Protestant, however, since the original context of the word has largely been lost.

The term Protestant was developed due to a dispute within the German nation in which the Lutherans within the kingdom were nixed by the Emperor from being able to have any established political rights. This was at the 2nd Diet (council/court) of Speyer in 1529. The Lutherans “protested” the decision of the Diet and were thus referred to as Protestants. (Hence, the term originally has nothing to do with protesting the Catholic Church, but the Emperor’s decision!).

The term then circulated to those countries where other movements to separate from Rome were occurring, such as among the Reformed communities. As an act of solidarity with the Lutherans, the Reformed adopted the name and so on and so on.

Nowadays, of course, it refers to any non-Catholic Christian communion.

For me, I could care less how the term is used, but I refuse to associate it with those churches that are contemporary evangelical. Oh well!
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If I’m not mistaken, I believe the Moravians are significantly older.
 
christcnection1 said:
Hence, with few exceptions, as I stated. You are correct; this is what was implied.
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As some have talked about the Moravians, one might say that generally all non-catholics except the Orthodox are protestant.
More narrowly, one might say that only churches that came from the reformation are “protestant”. Moravians came from a different separation from Rome, as did anabaptists and perhaps Anglicans, and some others.

I guess it is just easier to refer to western non-catholics as protestants, even though the origins of the term are quite dated.

Jon
 
Our_Refuge said:
According to this book or to the protestants that you know, who do they say gave the world the Bible? Do they at least acknowledge that the Catholic Church decided which books were inspired and which were not?
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According to what I was taught, the “True Church” fathers made the decision about the inspired books in the Bible. But their writings were all suppressed by the Catholic pretenders.

There are some claims that the True Writings from these True Fathers are hidden deep in the Vatican, and are closely guarded so that the Catholic Church can continue to hold so much power.

Sounds like Jack T. Chick? Uh, uh. This belief is held by a lot of very normal Protestants mainly because it’s what they were taught from a young age. Since they trust their pastors and teachers and their seminaries and universities, they trust that this teaching is true.

Face it, most of us do not possess the training in historical research to be able to check out these “facts” for ourselves. We have to depend on others, and most of us will accept the word of people that we respect. Have any of YOU gone to Rome, read through the “original” writings in the original language, combed through the ruins, etc. yourself? Of course not. And how do you know that that translation of the Bible and other writings is accurate? You don’t–you just trust the Catholic scholars, right? I do.

So don’t be too quick to condemn Protestants for following their leaders, because we do the same thing.
 
ibkc said:
What about the Waldensians?
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Are there still Waldensian ‘churches’? I’ve never seen one in the Yellow Pages. Not that the OP asked specifically, but I’m thinking that the question meant a Protestant group that’s still around today.
 
Pixie_Dust said:
Are there still Waldensian ‘churches’? I’ve never seen one in the Yellow Pages. Not that the OP asked specifically, but I’m thinking that the question meant a Protestant group that’s still around today.
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I believe the Waldensians, after their largely failed attempt to start an international movement of churches, settled down to rural centers and started a large grocery chain.
 
Cat said:
According to what I was taught, the “True Church” fathers made the decision about the inspired books in the Bible. But their writings were all suppressed by the Catholic pretenders.

There are some claims that the True Writings from these True Fathers are hidden deep in the Vatican, and are closely guarded so that the Catholic Church can continue to hold so much power.

Sounds like Jack T. Chick? Uh, uh. This belief is held by a lot of very normal Protestants mainly because it’s what they were taught from a young age. Since they trust their pastors and teachers and their seminaries and universities, they trust that this teaching is true.
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I’m having difficulties believing that this above is widespread outside of the circles of Chick-tracts?
I’ve NEVER heard this claim, and it sounds to me like utter folly.
 
1st_Exploration said:
… indicating a lacking of understanding of what Catholicism and/or Protestantism is, if one had the intent of constructing sound arguments. Or, it could be possible, that one could have disregard for the logical contradiction and/or proper use of the word “Protestant” with the intent of making an ignorant polemical statement.
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All of the Protestant founding fathers were Latin Catholics.

Protestant theology is based upon Latin presuppositions which are for the most part, unknown in the east, either in the Oriental Orthodox or the Greek Orthodox, or even for that matter in the Church of the East.

I am not trying to be inflammatory, although you might think so. I am trying to make an important point. The Protestant churches are the children of Latin Catholicism and it is a big mistake for you to disown them. This is recognized by your own Canon Law, which automatically ascribes converts from any “protestant” tradition directly to the Latin Particular church, even if they come through any eastern Catholic churches.

Now take a look at the various “protestant” churches and you will find that it is completely irrational to try to find an “original” one. There is no core protestant tradition whatever. Like the fingers of a hand, there is no “first” or “oldest” finger, they come from the hand, not from one another.

Meno Simons, Zwingli, Luther, Huss and Cranmer were each and every one independent sources for the “Protestant” traditions they founded. They were all seminal thinkers and they were all Latin Catholic priests. They learned their scripture, their piety and their own basic understanding of Christian theology from their teachers in the Latin Catholic church. What they did with it was their own doing, of course, but each of them owe far more theologically to their mother church than to each other, even insofar as they “protested” of it.
*
Michael*
 
Hesychios said:
A good case can be made for the Latin Catholic church…

…at least, some will say that.
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😃 :tsktsk: Hey don’t make me come over there!

freesmileys.org/smileys/ad/starwars.gif

I just finished explaining to Jimmy B that the Eastern Orthodox (along with the Oriental Orthodox, Assyrian Church of the East, PNCC, and Old Catholics) are not Protestant.

(OK, the Star Wars icon is kind of a stretch, but I don’t get to use it too often.)
 
Hesychios said:
All of the Protestant founding fathers were Latin Catholics.

Protestant theology is based upon Latin presuppositions which are for the most part, unknown in the east, either in the Oriental Orthodox or the Greek Orthodox, or even for that matter in the Church of the East.

I am not trying to be inflammatory, although you might think so. I am trying to make an important point. The Protestant churches are the children of Latin Catholicism and it is a big mistake for you to disown them. This is recognized by your own Canon Law, which automatically ascribes converts from any “protestant” tradition directly to the Latin Particular church, even if they come through any eastern Catholic churches.

Now take a look at the various “protestant” churches and you will find that it is completely irrational to try to find an “original” one. There is no core protestant tradition whatever. Like the fingers of a hand, there is no “first” or “oldest” finger, they come from the hand, not from one another.

Meno Simons, Zwingli, Luther, Huss and Cranmer were each and every one independent sources for the “Protestant” traditions they founded. They were all seminal thinkers and they were all Latin Catholic priests. They learned their scripture, their piety and their own basic understanding of Christian theology from their teachers in the Latin Catholic church. What they did with it was their own doing, of course, but each of them owe far more theologically to their mother church than to each other, even insofar as they “protested” of it.
*
Michael*
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I’m not going to respond point-by-point to what you’ve said (at least for now) but I would like to explain my preference for keeping with the “traditional” usage of the term “Protestant” – i.e. meaning Baptists, Calvinists, Lutherans, Methodists, Pentecostals, etc. – by way of this excerpt from C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity:
Far deeper objections may be felt - and have been expressed - against my use of the word Christian to mean one who accepts the common doctrines of Christianity. People ask: ‘Who are you, to lay down who is, and who is not a Christian?’: or ‘May not many a man who cannot believe these doctrines be far more truly a Christian, far closer to the spirit of Christ, than some who do?’ Now this objection is in one sense very right, very charitable, very spiritual, very sensitive. It has every available quality except that of being useful. We simply cannot, without disaster, use language as these objectors want us to use it. I will try to make this clear by the history of another, and very much less important, word.
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The word gentleman 'originally meant something recognisable; one who had a coat of arms and some landed property. When you called someone ‘a gentleman’ you were not paying him a compliment, but merely stating a fact. If you said he was not ‘a gentleman’ you were not insulting him, but giving information. There was no contradiction in saying that John was a liar and a gentleman; any more than there now is in saying that James is a fool and an M.A. But then there came people who said - so rightly, charitably, spiritually, sensitively, so anything but usefully - ‘Ah but surely the important thing about a gentleman is not the coat of arms and the land, but the behaviour? Surely he is the true gentleman who behaves as a gentleman should? Surely in that sense Edward is far more truly a gentleman than John?’ They meant well. To be honourable and courteous and brave is of course a far better thing than to have a coat of arms. But it is not the same thing. Worse still, it is not a thing everyone will agree about. To call a man ‘a gentleman’ in this new, refined sense, becomes, in fact, not a way of giving information about him, but a way of praising him: to deny that he is ‘a gentleman’ becomes simply a way of insulting him. When a word ceases to be a term of description and becomes merely a term of praise, it no longer tells you facts about the object: it only tells you about the speaker’s attitude to that object. (A ‘nice’ meal only means a meal the speaker likes.)
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A gentleman, once it has been spiritualised and refined out of its old coarse, objective sense, means hardly more than a man whom the speaker likes. As a result, gentleman is now a useless word. We had lots of terms of approval already, so it was not needed for that use; on the other hand if anyone (say, in a historical work) wants to use it in its old sense, he cannot do so without explanations. It has been spoiled for that purpose.
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Now if once we allow people to start spiritualising and refining, or as they might say ‘deepening’, the sense of the word Christian, it too will speedily become a useless word. In the first place, Christians themselves will never be able to apply it to anyone. It is not for us to say who, in the deepest sense, is or is not close to the spirit of Christ. We do not see into men’s hearts. We cannot judge, and are indeed forbidden to judge. It would be wicked arrogance for us to say that any man is, or is not, a Christian in this refined sense. And obviously a word which we can never apply is not going to he a very useful word. As for the unbelievers, they will no doubt cheerfully use the word in the refined sense. It will become in their mouths simply a term of praise. In calling anyone a Christian they will mean that they think him a good man. But that way of using the word will be no enrichment of the language, for we already have the word good. Meanwhile, the word Christian will have been spoiled for any really useful purpose it might have served.
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We must therefore stick to the original, obvious meaning. The name Christians was first given at Antioch (Acts xi. 26) to ‘the disciples’, to those who accepted the teaching of the apostles. There is no question of its being restricted to those who profited by that teaching as much as they should have. There is no question of its being extended to those who in some refined, spiritual, inward fashion were ‘far closer to the spirit of Christ’ than the less satisfactory of the disciples. The point is not a theological or moral one. It is only a question of using words so that we can all understand what is being said. When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than to say he is not a Christian.
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Judas was the first proto-Protestant.
Church of Judasyah then come the Lutheran Protestants, then the Anglican Protestants and Jeffrey Dahmer wannabes and now the UU’s…and so on and so forth Period 😉
 
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