Posted by Lennybruce26 on 5/5/2023 6:53:00 PM (view original):
If someone believes that Jesus is the son of God - from the Old Testament with or without the trinity I believe that person is Christian. Many Protestants don’t like Catholics or even each other and definitely visa versa.
Some Christians don’t accept all 4 gospels as equal in their truth.
in every major religion there are significantly different variations of belief with a core that is mutual for the most part. Even Buddhism which technically is not a religion has different bodies of belief and philosophy.
My understanding is that there are so many sects of
Protestant because people can never agree and different groups want their own independent system beholden to no other group.
So while I can certainly agree that LDS seems to be off the beaten track they are a branch like branch Dravidian’s are a branch but they both believe in the divinity of Jesus as in the gospels.
From 60 - 200 there were other competing gospels some still known and even followed to this day.
The 4 gospels won and were bound together.
Every major religion has splintered groups that compete and in some cases even violently fight today and many violently fought centuries ago.
That is very counterproductive and the desire for fundamental believers to try to dominate the evolutionary branches both religious wise and sometimes political is wrongheaded and unfortunate and harmful.
This is a good post.
My understanding is that there are so many sects of Protestant because people can never agree and different groups want their own independent system beholden to no other group.
This portion is of particular interest to me because it's related to much of what i was rambling on about above.
It's also an interesting study with many facets. What I believe to be the case is essentially this:
The early church was in fact Jesus and His disciples. The writers documented quite a lot of what went on during His lifetime and immediately after the Ascension. Most of the writers were martyrd prior to the 2nd century. These stories had been orally transmitted for a few decades and finally started becoming written as early as the 40s AD. Written narratives, as early as the 60s.
Some will point to this timeline as a way to discredit. However, it is imperative to remember a few important points.
First, when Jesus said He would return, the apostles believed it would be fairly soon. At some point they realized maybe He wouldn't return as quickly as they had hoped, and it'd be a good idea to preserve these events in writing.
Second, it was a very illiterate culture. Very few could read and write, so writing something down wasn't a very effective way of "spreading the Gospel". Again they wrote it after realizing "His return may be awhile, so we better preserve His teachings".
Third, this was long before the printing press so preserving multiple copies of a written record was both very tedious and very expensive.
Simultaneously, IMO, the Romans kinda took control over this strange phenomenon they were witnessing. They didn't understand what was going on and why it was having such a profound impact but they knew they'd better gain control over it pretty quickly. IMO this was the first "corruption" of the Truth.
The Roman Catholic Church was, by far, the largest and most dominant denomination of Christianity for literally more than a millenia. Throughout this entire 1500 years or whatever, they determined what was and what wasn't "scripture". Additionally, because of the aforementioned illiteracy most folks didn't own a Bible, nor could they read it even if they did. This presented a great opportunity for perversion of the Word. Popes were revered as having the pinnacle of understanding and communion with the Lord, but as history reveals many of them were wretched and vile men. It is impossible for me to believe that the two can go hand in hand.
Those Catholic leaders who were actually devout, saw their role as shepherd of their flock. Indeed there is much Biblical support for taking this position. In fact, it was even necessary because of the illiteracy of their flock.
Over the centuries, lots of corruption entered the church. It's no coincidence that the protestant reformation coincided with the invention of the printing press. As more people became literate and combined with the newfound accessibility of the Bible, these perversions became more clear to many more folks. With the invention of the press literacy rates grew from barely over 10% in 1500 to roughly 60% by 1750.
While Martin Luther is well known as the "founder" of protestantism, there were plenty of others who had similar revelations due to the ability to now read the Word for themselves.
Because they were seeking truth they were given revelation to help "correct" these errors. The Lord opened their eyes to the doctrinal missteps of the Catholic church leaders, and they separated themselves from what had been THE church for 1500 years.
The Catholic church and their leaders obviously rejected these new teachings. Even the truly good ones were concerned that scripture in the hands of the lay person would ultimately result in ever fracturing sects. The common man hadn't spent years studying and would be likely to draw erroneous conclusions. In many ways, because the church was born out of Judaism, the priests were basically rabbis who dedicated their lives to the understanding the Word. Only real difference being they studied both testaments, while the rabbi studied only the Tanakh.
If every man could assign their own interpretation as the Truth, surely the Truth will get perverted. Ultimately they were proven right, evidenced by the fact that we now have an enormous amount of differing "Christian" denominations. So the protestant reformation was simultaneously a great thing and a bad thing.
Even from the very beginning of the reformation there were factions who could agree that many of the Catholic teachings were wrong, but couldn't cone together among themselves.
This due to having a different understanding on certain issues and which issues were more paramount than others. An immediate catch 22. Some revelation of Truth coupled with some fracturing and blurring of what that Truth might ultimately be.
Over the years more Truth was revealed through some new teacher who shared that Truth with many. Typically, when that new teacher passed away, followers of his wonderful insight would desire to codify his teachings and often called themselves by his name (Lutheran, Calvinist Weslyan (which became Methodists)).
So THAT'S a big part of why there are so many. Along with what you mention, just simple humanism and ego getting in the way of what could have been a harmony of Truths. The pieces are out there, but they have been scattered among all the different denominations.