Who founded your denomination?????

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JoaoMachado:
OK, I posted this question on another forum I belong to, a Protestant Forum, and I got no responses . Not at all what I expected? If there are any Protestants here, why do you think no one is posting on a question like this?

apologetics.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/ubb/get_topic/f/1/t/001197.html

Joao
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Good question. But I am Catholic so I know Christ founded my Denomination. Bump! Just to keep the discussion on top. 😃
 
“Denomination” ? it doesn’t seem right to call the Catholic Church a “denomination”… Rather it seems like it should be called “The Church” and the rest are “denominations”
 
James_2:24 said:
“Denomination” ? it doesn’t seem right to call the Catholic Church a “denomination”… Rather it seems like it should be called “The Church” and the rest are “denominations”
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2 points for your reputation! 🙂 I agree! 👍
 
Simply put, Catholicism isn’t a denominatino. NOt at all. A denomination, at least in American Protestantism, can trace its origins to either a group (or more often) a single man (or woman). Denominations are free to change their doctrinal beliefs as they see fit. Not from a head-figure, but as a communal decision, I believe.
Catholicism, ok, so we can trace our origin to one man: Christ (who is also God, of course, so I’m not sure thats a good comparison!). But, we are not free to willy-nilly change beliefs. Thank goodness. We have a Dvinely appointed leadership, that though the men and women of said leadership have failed numerously in the past, it is not their authority we trust in. We trust in the Church solely because it is Christ’s Church. It is solely because of faith in Christ that we place faith in the Catholic Church. I for one, could never place faith in a church founded by man.
The word denomination should never be placed near the word Catholic without a negative!
 
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JoaoMachado:
OK, I posted this question on another forum I belong to, a Protestant Forum, and I got no responses . Not at all what I expected? If there are any Protestants here, why do you think no one is posting on a question like this?

apologetics.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/ubb/get_topic/f/1/t/001197.html

Joao
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Joao, While I admire your effort at trying to get the Protestants to realize the obvious (that their church was not founded by Christ in the same way that ours is) I would recommend maybe posing the question in a more personable way. Protestants do not make the connection that just because their church did not physically go back to Christ that it is not valid. To them it is a virtual church, an invisible church. Their denomination is to them just a modern manifestation of that invisible church. They see only the spiritual side to the Church not the physical side. We have to reach out to them at their level.
 
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javelin35:
Joao, While I admire your effort at trying to get the Protestants to realize the obvious (that their church was not founded by Christ in the same way that ours is) I would recommend maybe posing the question in a more personable way. Protestants do not make the connection that just because their church did not physically go back to Christ that it is not valid. To them it is a virtual church, an invisible church. Their denomination is to them just a modern manifestation of that invisible church. They see only the spiritual side to the Church not the physical side. We have to reach out to them at their level.
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Ahhh, maybe that is my problem, I was not trying to make any deep theological point. I was expecting, various people to just start a laundry list of their denomination and founders. But I did not expect this kind of reaction…
 
The Mother Church of all the churches in the West today is the Catholic Church. All our protestant Churches follow on the heels of Martin Luther, who was a Catholic priest before he became a protestant. It still startles protestants today to hear that at one time all Frenchmen, Englishmen, Germans, Italians, Dutch, Scandinavians, etc. were at one time Catholic. From this they have to wonder how all their separate religions got started. Did Christ’s Church cease to exist for a thousand years and then resurface under a thousand different flags, all of them united by one mere gesture … thumbing their nose at the Successor of Peter?
 
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Carl:
The Mother Church of all the churches in the West today is the Catholic Church. All our protestant Churches follow on the heels of Martin Luther, who was a Catholic priest before he became a protestant. It still startles protestants today to hear that at one time all Frenchmen, Englishmen, Germans, Italians, Dutch, Scandinavians, etc. were at one time Catholic. From this they have to wonder how all their separate religions got started. Did Christ’s Church cease to exist for a thousand years and then resurface under a thousand different flags, all of them united by one mere gesture … thumbing their nose at the Successor of Peter?
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Wow, strong! I may have to save that little statement!
This thread is definitely going in a different direction than I planned, BUT I LIKE IT!!!

Joao
 
I, too, have posed this question to our separated brethren with little success. I havenoticed that in my experiance it is better to build a strong rapor with the person first, then phrase it something like “what was the church of the upper room?” Let them do a little thinking. If they cannot say it, then start tracing it back.

I have also noticed that the way so many protestant denominations divide, the fact that their church was started recently (last week, year, century) is of no consequince to them. After all, how could someone logically say that the New Church that was founded when the Third Baptist Church split up last year is the church founded by CHrist?
 
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ralphinal:
I, too, have posed this question to our separated brethren with little success. I havenoticed that in my experiance it is better to build a strong rapor with the person first, then phrase it something like “what was the church of the upper room?” Let them do a little thinking. If they cannot say it, then start tracing it back.

I have also noticed that the way so many protestant denominations divide, the fact that their church was started recently (last week, year, century) is of no consequince to them. After all, how could someone logically say that the New Church that was founded when the Third Baptist Church split up last year is the church founded by CHrist?
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Yes, I am definitely seeing how this question can be used as an apologetic. This is going to require more thought and prayer.

:coffee: anyone?

Joao
 
Now, remember they weren’t all following the lead of Martin Luther. I don’t think the King of England cared too much about what Luther was doing. When I took at Protestant Christianity class in college we were taught there were actually 4 distinct reformation groups. I don’t have my notes (and it was a few years ago), but I know Luther was one and England was another.
 
I am American but I also have German heritage. I am a Minnesotan but I once lived in South Dakota. Countries and boundaries are a man made thing and only visible if you look at a map or representation of the world drawn by man. We name things Germany and South Dakota because we as humans would be confused if we did not categorize things. Germany, South Dakota, China, and Mesopotamia are all from the singular body of Earth.

Lutheran, Baptist, Anglican, Catholic,… - we are all from the singular body of the church catholic created by Jesus. Just as Germans, Chinese, Lebanese… are all from the planet Earth created by God.
 
James_2:24 said:
“Denomination” ? it doesn’t seem right to call the Catholic Church a “denomination”… Rather it seems like it should be called “The Church” and the rest are “denominations”
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Agreed. Denominations are created by men.

There are only two religions on Earth that are founded by God.

Judaism and Catholicism. The latter is a fulfillment of the former.
 
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Shibboleth:
Lutheran, Baptist, Anglican, Catholic,… - we are all from the singular body of the church catholic created by Jesus. Just as Germans, Chinese, Lebanese… are all from the planet Earth created by God.
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Do you think that Christ wanted his Church to be split between Lutherans, Baptists, etc.? Do you think that it is beneficial for Christians to be divided like that? This argument completely ignores the physical presence of the uniform Church.

You seem to imply that all the “denominations” are the same in God’s eyes. How can that be true? When denominations say contradictory things, they can’t all be right.
 
God never wanted us to fully understand him. He didn’t give us knowledge of Evil and Good, Satan tricked us into thinking that we should understand him as such, so we ate the apple.

Man wanted to unify themselves under one name, language, and understanding of God. So they built a tower at Babylon and God came down and said this is not what I want. I will scatter the people, confuse the languages, and make it so that at no time can they become as one body again to make such bold claims.

God does not want or even expect us to understand him infallibly. Even if the Bible consisted of 10 billion pages of perfectly translated material we could never understand him completely.

Our inability to understand God, our languages, and our distances are what separate us and cause denominations, it was God will that it is thus. But he did send his son to establish the church catholic but not as a singular body in the human sense of the word, but that we might understand him a little bit. We as humans still have our faults and limitations given to us by God. Those limitations are going to divide us, but if we follow those basic things that make us Christian then we are of the church catholic.
 
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BobCatholic:
Agreed. Denominations are created by men.

There are only two religions on Earth that are founded by God.

Judaism and Catholicism. The latter is a fulfillment of the former.
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Agreed!

And that which has been created by man is bound to decay, whither and die. Only the supernatural fulfillment of Jesus’ pledge to us by the creation of His Catholic Church (“upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it”) is incapable of destruction.
 
So are you saying that because God created the Jewish religion and that they are the first and have not fallen that they cannot be wrong? Why would God mislead his original Church? Why would God make the Pope infallable but not the decendants of Moses?
 
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Shibboleth:
Lutheran, Baptist, Anglican, Catholic,… - we are all from the singular body of the church catholic created by Jesus. Just as Germans, Chinese, Lebanese… are all from the planet Earth created by
God.
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The statement you made does not logically follow.
You are confusing ethnicity (which we don’t have any control over) with denominational membership (which we do have control over)

Remember, Christ founded only ONE Church, with ONE set of doctrines. Doctrinal relativism is NOT of God.
 
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