Catholicism versus Protestantism down the centuries

Tempe 12ft Chicken suggested we might want to continue this discussion that got started on the Links and Information forum, in a new forum where it more properly belongs. I'm fine with that, it will probably get me going on the research I've been wanting to do more of for some time.I regard my position to be classic Reformation Protestantism, that originally was truly a protest against the Roman Catholic Church that had dominated the world for some thousand years in the Holy Roman Empire. There had been objectors all along who got themselves burned at the stake for their opposition, and even whole populations of dissenters outside the Roman Church who were true Bible believers, who were persecuted and murdered by Rome for "heresy" long before the official Inquisition got started.God then raised up a number of men in one generation from within the ranks of Roman Catholicism who saw Rome's errors by the light of the Bible and finally saw it as in essence not merely rife with errors in need of moral reformation, but doctrinally opposed to the true gospel of Jesus Christ.But I don't want this to be just about the Protestant Reformation, but about the whole history of the conflict back to the beginning, between the man-made traditions of Rome and their persecutions of the true followers of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is something I've known for a long time but only in the last year or so started learning about as an ongoing battle that is alive and well in our own time. There's lots of evidence but I haven't been good about keeping track of it so I'll have to re-collect a lot of it as we go.Note: Although such a topic is bound to get people riled up I want to emphasize that this is not about ordinary Catholics or Protestants, it's about an institutional war that is headed by the Vatican in the name of the papacy. There's been a lot of skulduggery, forgeries, plots and conspiracies I had no idea about until fairly recently, in the effort by the Counter Reformation, led mostly by the Jesuits, to defeat the Protestant Reformation, hidden doings that very few know anything about. The conventional histories are not to be trusted.What I've been learning has been eye opening for me, and I'll try to muster the evidence for it but my participation may be on the slow side as I do that.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Tempe Chicken suggested continuing what we'd already started so I agreed to it and proposed this topic, but I realize I'm not up to arguing this case right now. If others want to continue the subject, fine, but otherwise I'd ask that the topic be cancelled. Sorry.Thanks for opening it.

Perfect correctness isn't the point, the ultimate point is the nature of salvation, the gospel itself, that's THE dividing line between Romanism and Protestantism. That's THE error the Reformers all independently discovered by the light of the Bible, and all Protestant denominations share that recognition despite other differences, though some have been compromising on this crucial point over the last few decades. Since it's an error that makes the difference in where a person spends eternity it's really an infinity-sized error.

All I said was that the Protestant Reformers discovered from the Bible that the gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel of how a person is saved, is different from what Roman Catholicism teaches, MEGA different, and I was answering Ringo who was getting lost in the thicket of small differences when this is THE one big glaring difference between Romanism and Protestantism, The Historic Difference, and since it's about how one gets saved it's huge.I made no claims beyond that. Now you can believe either one or the other or neither, but you can't believe both.

No, Dirk, I'm not saying I don't know, I'm a Protestant, I believe in Salvation by Grace Alone Through Faith Alone In Christ Alone, but it's a matter of whom you believe, it's not a matter of some other kind of evidence. If you believe Rome, that's up to you, if you believe neither, that's up to you. The point of my post on the Giant Sized Error was to get across that there are HUGE theological differences between Protestantism and Catholicism, and that's true no matter which side of the issue you're on, or neither one.

It is true that England became Protestant for some questionable reasons if all you are looking at is Henry the 8th, but nevertheless there have been great British Protestant Reformers and some of the best have taught from the pulpits of the Church of England. Also some of the worst.

You've got two different subjects going here, what Protestants believe and what you get out of the Bible. There's probably not a whole lot of overlap.Protestantism definitely defines itself by salvation by grace through faith in Christ, all the "solas" of the Reformation. Sola Scriptura Sola Gratia, Sola Fide, Solus Christus. If this isn't taught or isn't emphasized in a church you may doubt their adherence to the principles of the Protestant Reformation.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Well, Rahvin, I know that point of view about Luther and Hitler is very popular, but it's at least oversimplified. Luther started out wanting to make friends with the Jews, he was no "anti-semite" at that time. He discovered the blasphemies against Christ in the Talmud (born of a prostitute among other things) and went ballistic, being a staunch defender of the honor of His Lord. You can say he overreacted, perhaps, but his overreaction had some cause.As for Hitler, Mein Kampf, "My Struggle," Is actually based on his twisted ideas of Darwin's theory of the "struggle for existence" and survival of the fittest and all that. He did appropriate Luther into his nefarious plot as well, but Hitler was a Catholic all his life and died in the good favor of the Vatican, regarded as a "true son of the church who had been working to further Christianity" or some such notion, and the Vatican had no love for Luther so take it with a grain of salt.

Oh right, jar, the Reformers had NO cause to defect from Rome, right, they can't tell the difference between salvation by faith and salvation by faith-plus-works. Oh I'll try to dig up the evidence for you but maybe we could just ask the Catholics here how they understand one gets saved according to Catholicism.Is faith in Christ's sacrifice enough, all ye Catholics?

Thank you, Tempe, for acknowledging that. And thank you for being polite too. But we do. This is preached all the time.Here's the difference, which I hope I can explain clearly enough:Catholicism says you are SAVED by faith plus works. The works are essential to salvation.Protestantism says you are saved by faith alone in Christ alone through grace alone: Not of works, lest any man should boast.That is, if our works contribute to our salvation then we can boast and take credit for our salvation, but all glory and honor go to Christ for saving us without our help.That's one aspect of it.Another is that if our works have anything to do with whether we are saved or not it puts us on a treadmill of anxiety about whether or not we've ever done ENOUGH to merit salvation, and if we're honest we know we could never do enough. If any of it depends on me, forget it, I'm sunk, no matter how much I try to be a good Christian. Sometimes I have fallen into a works-based consciousness myself without really being aware of it and had to pray myself out of it. Yikes.Luther felt this strongly as a devoted Augustinian monk. He drove his confessors crazy with long drawn out sessions in which he tried to confess every little thing he ever did wrong and never felt he'd reached a point where he could relax and accept forgiveness of his sins. You could say he was obsessed and no doubt he was, but he was also right, he recognized the problem and didn't know how to solve it. His superior tried to get him to trust God but Luther was too aware that even one little unconfessed sin would damn him. That would include any sin of omission, any failure to perform a good deed that was called for. When his longsuffering superior tried to get him to focus on the love of God, he could only confess "Love God? I hate him!" because nothing he did could release him from his sense of condemnation for his sins at God's hand.He went on in this state for a long time. He didn't grasp the principle of salvation by grace alone until after he'd nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church. Those theses were intended as points for debate, and reflected a common practice of the day. He had no intention of leaving the Church, he was only seeking reform at that point.Perhaps you know this famous story. One day as he was studying the Bible, Romans 1:17 suddenly appeared to him in a new light. He knew the verse very well, but it had always contributed to his sense of condemnation. He thought it was simply showing God's immeasurably superior righteousness which could only condemn a worm like himself who could never stop sinning. But then suddenly he saw that it was saying something else: that God's righteousness was shown in His justifying sinners by faith, that He had decreed that "The just shall live by faith." You cannot possibly be just in yourself or achieve justification in yourself, it is something you can only receive from God. "It is a gift, lest any man should boast."That was the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.BUT, also WORKS FOLLOW FAITH, are the evidence of faith, and cannot be done in the Spirit of Christ without saving faith. The verses from Ephesians I quote above are followed by this verse: We are HIS workmanship. We are "created in Christ Jesus" and we are created "UNTO GOOD WORKS." In Him who has saved us we now do good works that He has ordained for us, by the power to do them in His Spirit which we now have. We are no longer driven by a need for perfection because He has saved us. We now try to learn to depend completely on Him and do what HE wants of us -- by faith.I hope this makes sense.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

It's OK to call it God's whim, but there's no way His whim has anything to do with works, because if it did -- well if it did it wouldn't just be a whim, there would be a reason for it -- and if it did I could never have been saved, being by nature a selfish self-centered crabby sort of person with a long history of sins galore. I'm well aware that I did nothing to deserve His favor, He just sovereignly decided to make a saved person out of this lost person, and I'm SO grateful He did.Works won't save anybody, according to the Protestant Reformers. That's how they understood the message of the gospel and that's how I understand it. You can of course agree with Rome or any of the other works-based religions if you prefer.

BY FAITH ALONE IN CHRIST ALONE THROUGH GRACE ALONE.As I said.

The answer I gave answers that question.

Nope, there are many passages in scripture that assure us that we can and should know we are saved.

I'm not using my own faith to try to convince you of anything, I'm just answering the questions put to me.Do you believe that Jesus Christ is God incarnate in human flesh who died to pay for the sins of those who believe in Him, that He alone did the work of salvation, that you are a sinner who cannot do anything to deserve it but that He did it for you? Then you too have the faith that saves.