Catholicism versus Protestantism down the centuries

Faith without works is dead. Period. Can it really be more simple than that? Did we not just have this same discussion with foreveryoung about a week ago?Is James 2 just empty words. How could a Christian believe that?

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1Even so faith, if it has not works, is dead, being alone.

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18 But someone will say, You have faith, and I have works. Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. 19 You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believeand tremble! 20 But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead?

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21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? 22 Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect? 23 And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.[d] And he was called the friend of God. 24 You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.

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25 Likewise, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way?

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26 For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

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Yes, you are saved by Grace through faith. You did not earn salvation. But having received Grace how can you sit there on your hands when there is work to do?

I'd enjoy a chance to chase this stuff down, but it's already so far off topic that even this message is one too many.

This explanation is pure sophistry. How can the Pope authorize the use of torture and then claim to simply be doing his duty when torture is carried out? Under this definition of non-culpability, any action can be justified as long as it furthers a legitimate aim of the state. There is no circumstance under which torturing someone until they recant is a justifiable activity.And in the US the government is required to tolerate speech and other actions that undermine its authority.

1. President
2. Vice President
3. Supreme Court
4. Courts of Appeals
5. District Courts
6. House of Representatives
7. SenateNext I'll list Baskin and Robbins seven ice cream flavors.The numerology is the least stupid part of the posts.For example: What kind of argument is this anyway? The Rosenbergs were executed for treason involving attempts to pass secrets to the Soviet Union, therefor Giordano Bruno's burning for disagreeing with the state on religious doctrine is excusable? What kind of state does this dude want to live in, anyway?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Do you worship Martin Luther? After all, he's just a man.The reasons you supply for denouncing the Jews are exactly the same as the excuses you could find mouthed by anybody on alt.revisionism back in the day. Luther was a passionate, but flawed person, and not everything he did was virtuous. He hated Jews for being what Jews are, namely non-converts to belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ.

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First, that we avoid their synagogues and schools and warn people against them. And such should be done to the glory of God and Christendom, that God may see that we are Christians and have not knowingly tolerated such lying, cursing and blaspheming of His Son and His
Christians. For what we so far have tolerated in ignorance (I myself did not know it), God will forgive us. Now that we know it, however, and in spite should before our very noses tolerate such a building for the Jew in which they blaspheme, curse, spit upon and disgrace Christ and us, that would be simply too much, as if we did it ourselves and much worse, as you well know. Moses writes in Deuteronomy that where a city practiced idolatry, it should be entirely destroyed with fire and leave nothing. If he were living today he would be the first to put fire to the Jew schools and houses. [followed by proofs from Scripture.]

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Secondly, that you also refuse to let them own houses among us. For they practice the same thing in their houses as they do in their schools. Instead, you might place them under a roof, or stable, like the Gypsies, to let them know that they are not lords in our country as they boast, but in exile as captives; like without ceasing they howl bloody murder and complain about us before God.

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And then you try to pretend that the man was justified in his attitudes. Do you not understand that Martin Luther advocated that the Jews be driven out of their lands and killed? Only a few people in history wanted the Jews out of Germany as vehemently as did Martin Luther. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

No, his reasons were not good. How can you claim that his reasons were good and then claim not to be defending him.Martin Luther wanted Jews persecuted for having Jewish beliefs and for practicing their religion unabashedly. He wanted to have their schools, houses, and synagogues burned for those reasons. I think we know what to call that. Because your rationalizations of Martin Luther's anti-semitism seem akin to worship as does your celebration of Luther as the great reformer while seeming to know little re: the 95 theses. I admit to engaging in a little hyperbole with my question.

I know that you consider in such a way. And further, you think Luther's reasons were rational as expressed below. In other words, you believe that Luther's hatred of Jews was rational and thus, not anti-semitic. You even find his reasons for hating Jews honorable, though you decry his recommended action.First of all, your definition is nonsense. I don't care why Luther hated Jews and I'm not impressed by the idea that Luther liked Jews before he really got to know them. If he hated Jews as a group because of their beliefs, he was an anti-semite.Here is a definition that most people would agree with. If you are determined to use some other, non-standard definition, then your opinion that Luther is not an anti-semite is essentially worthless. Luther fits a reasonable and accepted definition of the term.Antisemitism - Wikipedia

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Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. A person who holds such views is called an "antisemite".

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Secondly, even using your definition, Luther was an anti-semite. Yes Luther had a rationale for hating the Jews, but his rationale was irrational. He hated Jews for beliefs that follow directly from accepting that Jesus was real but not the Messiah. Further, If you hate Jews to the extent that you don't think they should be allowed to own houses, your hate is not rational.Thirdly, your expression of Luther's hatred, (yes, not his actions), as rational and honorable is deplorable and disgusting. In fact, the entire premise of this thread is hate filled garbage of the type I would have hoped was diminishing in the world. Is there some kind of competition with you and kofh2u for most odious poster?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I thought we had stomped a mudhole into this particular paranoid rant. Apparently not...You don't have to wait for Faith to post hate filed diatribes about the Jesuits. Just type 'evil Jesuits' into any search engine and you can find this crap yourself.This thread was opened because Faith claimed she had evidence and not just stories. But like all Faith's threads, evidence supporting her position seems as visible as hens' teeth.But yes you can read how the Jesuits were behind the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy, how there is a secret 'Black Pope' that gives orders to Pope Francis, how the Jesuits inspired Himmler, how they invented Spanish Fly, etc.Remove the word 'evil' from your search and you get a completely different picture. But don't let that stop you from hating. 'Tis what haters do.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I... think I'm in love!!!

This post is well thought out. It is a shame that you don't post here more often. I suppose real life intrudes. I think this is rather the point. I think calling this selfish is something of a stretch, but calling it 'human' really captures the essence. If they missed the point, we should not be surprised even if they were well-meaning when they did so.The point is that the supposed Golden Age of the church included a lot of missteps. In the Bible we are reading about churches that Paul took personal responsibility for. But being only human, he did not get to every single group of people who claimed to be following Christ.

No, she does not. She only claims to believe that. She believes a particularly set of truths about the Bible only some of which can be obtained from a literal reading, others of which must be obtained by ignoring parts of the Bible. And the ignoring even includes things that Jesus said.As JonF has pointed out, somehow Christianity has been changed by some to only be about what it takes to go to heaven when you die. Jesus talked about a whole lot more than that. And so did Paul for that matter.

That unity barely existed among the disciples when Christ was walking earth among men. The Bible itself contains stories of bickering among disciples and I at least have the impression that we are not a party to all of the times the disciples acted like regular human beings, which appears to be all of the times prior to Jesus correcting them. And that means times before and after the resurrection.Yes, there was some evidence that there was more unity among the disciples after the resurrection, but the apostles were not every where and Christianity sects popped up all over the place. Surely we don't believe that Paul went to every gentile church, yet his description of the things he found in the churches that he did attend were quite full of tales of human failings.The truth of the matter is that it is much more difficult to find evidence and examples of a church family united around Christ than it is to find people off the beaten path.Very basic concepts about the nature of Christianity were completely unsettled during the first century. How could they have been? Some of those things are difficult to find in the Bible at the best of times, and there was no Bible back then. I'm sure there were plenty of family sized groupings that propped up during those early years, but the opportunity for them to go astray on doctrine was great even for the well meaning.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

No it does not. That's exactly my point. Note that my question was about all of Christianity including the obligations of Christians, and not just what you get to call yourself.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Exactly. I make a statement about Christianity often being considered to be just about salvation, and the only thing you can even manage to comment on through three exchanges is salvation.I cannot imagine a better demonstration of my point.

Exactly right. The point of setting up the criteria above is to allow fundies to exclude Catholics and Jehovah's witnesses without excluding themselves. When it is time to exclude more people, then we add the adjective "true" as if it were not always understood to be present.There are plenty of definitions of Christian that can be supported textually. One definition is that a Christian is a person who "loves" Jesus Christ and hence does and believes the things Christ said such people do. Another is that a Christian is someone who follows Christ's teaching, which of course include the means for salvation. But since many fundies don't really appreciate the sentiment of may of the red words in the Bible, definitions like that don't appeal much to them. In fact, many fundies are actually goats.My definition of Christian would include believing that Jesus Christ lived and rose from the dead, in salvation through faith, and endeavoring to follow the example set by Jesus during his time on earth. That definition a fairly conventional one, and it likely does not exclude the overwhelming majority of devout believers on earth.Other people use one of the various Creeds as their definition. Nicene Creed (the definition used by most Christians), the Apostles Creed, or some variation. Those definitions can all be defended textually.Among the questionable things about using any of those definitions is that none of them deal with the Trinity or the Jesus divinity; at least not directly. None of them even mention repentance of sin. People divide themselves into sects based on where they fall on those issues, and the truth of the matter is that they label each other as non-Christian based on those differences.