Catholicism versus Protestantism down the centuries

Faith and I have remarkably similar views on this issue: --Percy

God forgives you your sins. But Christians who believe they are saved routinely accuse other Christians who believe they are saved of having been fooled by Satan. Obviously the feeling of having let Jesus into your heart is prone to error. A logic similar to Pascal's Wager applies here. Seeking grace through both works and faith covers all bets.--Percy

According to this webpage: The total defense budget for 2013 is $902.3 billion, while the combined budget amounts for family and children, housing, and social protection is only $214.4 billion.You'd have a better chance of convincing people if you used facts that were true. Or maybe after looking at the actual facts you'll decide to change your mind. Personally I think I'd rather live in a country that spent more on helping its own people than on defense.--Percy

Your chart claims spending on welfare in the trillions of dollars. Don't be ridiculous. Like I said, you have to have correct information before you can persuade anyone.Looking at your chart a little more carefully I see that usgovernmentspending.com has a chart building facility. Did you make up that chart yourself or copy it from someone else?Anyway, anyone can go to that website and create a chart with a false title. What you or someone evidently did back in 2010 or so was create a chart of total federal spending and gave it a title of "Welfare". Then you put a copy of that chart on your website. Right?Like I said, anyone can do this, here's an updated version of your lying "welfare" chart, maybe you want to update your website: --Percy

Hi Kofh2u,You're somehow missing the elephant in the room. Here's your chart: Notice that the y-axis is in thousands of billions of dollars, which is trillions of dollars. For example, your chart says that in 2008 the welfare budget was roughly $5.5 trillion. That's actually the size of the entire federal budget. The actual figure for 2008 is around $500 billion.So, again, if you want to convince anyone then it would be better to use accurate data that isn't off by about 10 times. Here's a graph of the welfare budget over the past 10 years with projections for the past 2 years: And here's a graph of the defense budget for the same period: Using these real figures one can accurately point out that welfare costs have risen dramatically since Obama took office. But aid to families and children is only around $150 billion of the welfare budget at most, nowhere near the size of the defense budget.--Percy

Hi Jar,Wanting to check my understanding of Sola fide (grace through faith) I read through the Wikipedia article and found this: I do find sound your arguments that the Bible does not teach grace through faith alone, but nonetheless that does seem to be the mainstream Protestant conclusion. The article calls it "foundational." But it also says that grace through faith "distinguishes *most* Protestant denominations," so I assume that at some point in its history your branch of Protestantism evolved away from this belief. Can you fill us in on the history?--PercyEdited by Percy, : Clarify.

Hi Faith,It could easily be argued that some details of the definition of genocide are open to debate, but by and large what people are trying to tell you is true, that murder is not a necessary defining characteristic of genocide. This is from the Wikipedia article on Genocide: You can read a variety of attempts at defining genocide at the Wikipedia article on Genocide Definitions. There are a few which share your view equating genocide to the killing of people, but the majority recognize elimination of a race, religion or culture as the key defining factor and not the method.But we're not here to debate the definition of genocide. It isn't necessary to agree on which terms most accurately apply to the past deeds of Catholics and protestants since we can simply compare and contrast the deeds themselves.--Percy

Omigod, all those poor missionaries, damned to hell - what were they thinking! Who you accept on faith, and therefore by the doctrine of grace through faith the sins that you blame on your self-centered crabby nature are forgiven. Neither whim nor reason matter since forgiveness is granted based solely upon acceptance of Jesus as Lord and Savior. Except that in protestantism everyone is saved by "asking Christ into your heart," accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior on faith alone.--Percy

Hi Jar,I dont' care to dispute whether anyone who believes themselves Protestant based upon their own personal reading of the Bible is Protestant, and I don't think Faith should, either. Doesn't seem like it's relevant to this thread's topic.Grace through faith as foundational is a fact of Protestant history, and it remains a foundational principle of most Protestant religions today, including Episcopalianism according to this excerpt from the Wikipedia article on Sola Fide: The concluding sentence repeats your own argument about works but makes clear that acceptance of this view is far from universal. Though some realms of Protestantism do embrace some aspect of grace through works, Faith seems correct in pointing out that grace through faith is a defining characteristic.--Percy

I'm not interested in posting a mid-thread summary if discussion is going to resume. Are there any plans to reopen this thread?

I don't understand why Faith can't see that any group, religious or otherwise, will always make up demonizations about competing groups. The Catholics do it to the Protestants who both do it to the Muslims who do it to the Jews and so forth.In particular, neither Catholicism nor Protestantism is wrong because of past atrocities, which are merely what people do to other people using whatever excuse is convenient. Religion, race and nationality have been popular excuses since the beginning of time.The shared Protestant and Catholic belief in the sanctity of Christ dwarfs all differences.--Percy

Faith agrees that one of the key principles of Protestantism is personal interpretation of the Bible.But Faith also believes that Protestantism possesses additional principles equally foundational to being Protestant. Personal Biblical interpretations lying outside this framework cannot be considered Protestant, because they're consistent with only some core Protestant principles.In other words, it fulfills some but not all of the requirements of Protestantism.My understanding of the counterargument is that if personal interpretation of the Bible is a core principle of Protestantism then any set of beliefs deriving from personal interpretation must be Protestant. If I've got that right then I can only say that while I understand the argument, it seems specious.--Percy

If a Hindu joins a mosque while still holding Hindu beliefs, is he a Muslim?Corner cases (and maybe you're one) are fascinating to consider, but they seem largely beside the point in general discussions. Maybe you and Faith could discuss whether you're a Protestant in some other thread.--Percy

I have no opinion how wrong Faith may or may not be about Peter and the rock, but there are still foundational principles of Protestantism that define what a Protestant is. The definition of Protestant is not, "Anyone who interprets the Bible for himself."Faith wants to discuss the differences between Catholocism and Protestantism, tracing them all the way back to the early church, but it's turning into a discussion of who's a true Protestant. I've been urging Faith to ignore such distractions, no matter how determined.--Percy

It's more a question of my interest level. I was pretty interested in the original thread proposal, but not so much in this digression. I'd prefer not to have to sit through what strikes me as the boring stuff about true Protestantism before getting to the interesting stuff, like how the early church fathers went wrong and so forth.--Percy