Since there is at least some focus this month on the reformation, the protestant reformation and how wide the GAP is between protestant doctrine and Catholicism - lets work out some of the details.
While Luther may have "started" with 95 objections to selling indulgences.. that is not the sum total of the "gap" between protestantism and catholicism.
Foundational in Protestantism is this - (at the very least).
1. Sola Scriptura - Acts 17:11 (testing all doctrine and practice against the standard of the Bible instead of Bible+traditions-of-men). Col 2:22 "—in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men"
2. Grace alone (mankind is saved by grace through faith - Ephesians 2) not saved by powers of sacrament or powers in a "rite" or ritual plus ...
3. Faith alone - justified by faith alone - meaning that when the lost person comes to Christ - they are saved not on the basis of good works done as a lost person - but saved by faith alone.
4. Christ alone - "there is no OTHER name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved" -- so then no earthly priest or pope stands between us and Christ who is the "one mediator between God and man" 1 Tim 2:5-6
We come boldly to the throne of grace - directly to God in prayer. No earthly mediator or Pope between.
(And of course both sides agree that all the glory goes to God alone for the plan of salvation)
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I am not sure that whatever meetings are going on this month and next .. in Germany are going to find agreement on the points listed above.
In addition there is in the "gap" between the Bible and catholicism
1. Prayers to the dead -- called "the Dead in Christ" in 1Thess 4.
2. Claims to confect the "body, blood,soul and divinity of Christ in the mass" - by contrast Christ was offered up "once for all" Hebrews 10 and no earthly priest has been given the powers to confect the "body, blood,soul and divinity of Christ in the mass"
3. The "doctrine of discovery" regarding what Catholics are allowed to do to the natives of newly discovered lands in cases where those natives refuse to convert to Catholicism
4. Infallibility of Catholic church councils and popes.
5. Authorizing violence against Christians for "thought crimes" for doctrinal differences with the Papacy.
6. Editing the Sabbath Commandment to point it to week-day-1
7. Apocryphal books injected into the Bible canon -- (books that even Jerome declared were not legitmately part of the Canon of scripture)
8. The Pope's claim to in any way be the head or leader of any denomination on earth - other than his own denomination - the Roman Catholic Church.
9. Purgatory -- does not exist according to the Bible but the RCC promotes it anyway.
10. Praying to angels
11. Bowing down before images to pray to and to promise to serve those whom they represent.
12. The idea that Catholic Church tradition holds equal weight to scripture or that an understanding of scripture that does not agree with the RCC is by definition incorrect.
13. Monastic celibate orders that appear to have promoted certain forms of sin at some level within the group.
14. "power" in the bishop or the priest to give sacraments power to mark the soul, or effect the New Birth, or forgive sins.. etc.
I am probably missing a few of the topics in "the gap" between Catholicism and Protestantism
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So then what are the odds that the folks in Germany are ever going to be able to close the gap on such key doctrinal points of difference?
