Hey,
I am 100% new to these forums and not really sure where to start. To be honest i'm 100% new to religion as well. I grew up in a home where religion is looked down upon so i kinda have some skewed ideas of what it's all about. so i finally decided to look into what it's all about and i have actually felt good about what i've been seeing. But i do have a few questions so if anyone could help me out that would be perfect! (i hope i don't offend anyone!)
I'm reallllly confused with the division between christianity and catholic religion, does it have to mainly do with saints or different views of the bible?
Hello, welcome to the forums, I'm new here as well
. It's very understandable how it could be confusing, there is much disagreement within Christianity and you will find people who call themselves Christians with entirely different outlooks on the world from each other.
First to answer the question on the differences in Catholics and Protestants, and let me start out by admitting I am a Protestant so my post will be from the Protestant side of the debate. We generally call Christians who aren't Catholics, Protestants -- although there are some exceptions, but Baptists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, Lutherans, Puritans, etc are all considered "Protestants". The word "Protestant" comes from the Protestant Reformation which took place in the 16th century. We Protestants view the Reformation as a move back toward Biblical Christianity, the Christianity originally taught by Jesus and the apostles.
That's not to say that the Catholic church was always wrong, we agree with many of the early Catholic church fathers, but we believe that gradually errors in doctrine crept into the Catholic faith and it eventually reached the point to where the church needed reform.
The main idea behind the Reformation was that the Bible is authoritative in all matters of dispute. The Catholic Church teaches that popes, councils, and traditions are also authoritative. Protestants are not against tradition or councils unless it contradicts what the authors of the books of the Bible wrote, and we believe there is clear evidence that the Catholic Church has strayed from a Biblical understanding.
Some key disputes the Reformers had with the Catholic church were:
(1) Salvation by grace alone through faith alone. The Catholic Church teaches we are saved by both faith and good works, while the Reformers believed we can have no merit before God based on our own works. Jesus is the only one who lived a life worthy of heaven; everyone else deserves hell. That's why Jesus had to come and live a perfect life and die, so that we, who have nothing to offer God and have sinned wickedly against him, can be brought into his presence and receive a reward which we did not earn. Thus the Reformers taught we are not saved based on our own performance but on the performance of another, Jesus. It is because God is gracious with us that we can have eternal life.
(2) Christ is the only mediator. Catholics believe that priests are needed to act as mediators between God and man, while Protestants believe Jesus Christ is our high priest -- thus making him the only mediator between God and man. Protestants have pastors who preach but not priests who act as mediators. We do not need to have priests confess for us; we can confess straight to Jesus who is God.
(3) Glory to God alone. Protestants do not believe they should pray to saints or to Jesus' mother who was a human, but only that we should pray to God. We do not give praise to other humans as if they are worthy of glory and honor, although we do thank God for the people he uses to help us grow toward him. At the end of the day we realize God is ultimately the one from whom all good comes.
There are many other differences, but those are the major differences between Catholics and Protestants.
Also I am kinda science oriented so i have troubles with the evolution debate, i do believe that evolution did occur but more so divine intervention. What are people's and the church's view on this?
There are tons of different views on evolution. The Catholic Church officially supports evolution. There are disagreements among Protestants. Some Protestants believe in theistic evolution (that God guided evolution), some reject evolution -- although most who reject "macro-evolution" accept "micro-evolution", which is basically variation among "kinds" of animals. For instance, they would claim dogs probably evolved from wolves since those are easy-to-distinguish kinds of animals, while horses didn't evolve from rodents since they're very different kinds of animals. People have different interpretations of Genesis 1. Some believe the 6 days described in Genesis 1 are literal days, while some believe they're just metaphorical "days" representing thousands or millions of years. I, personally, do have a strong stance on the creation account. My suggestion to you would be to not worry about it right away; whether or not we evolved is not really what Christianity's all about, and it's distracting from the real message of Christianity to get too involved in that debate.
my friend told me that the bible was written by several people under the influence of God at different times and in different areas in the world, is this true?
Yes that's true. Job is generally considered the oldest book in the Bible, written around 1000 BC, give or take a few hundred years. The last book in the Bible written is generally believed to be Revelation, written around 90 AD. The author of the first 5 books (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) is generally believed to have been Moses. The first 4 books of the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) bear the names of the writers. Matthew and John were apostles (an apostle is someone who Jesus personally appointed to spread his message and be a leader of the early church). Mark and Luke were disciples of apostles. Most of the middle of the New Testament is letters written by Paul (an apostle) to different churches, which were saved by those churches. The end of the New Testament has some letters from the apostles Peter and John and a couple others.
We believe that the apostles, prophets of the Old Testament, and other writers were inspired by God to write what they wrote, although they did it in their own style of writing. The reason we believe the apostles can be trusted is because Jesus personally appointed them to spread his message and the prophets of the Old Testament were also personally appointed by God. There were some criteria the other writers had to meet to be included in the Bible (they had to have been approved by the writings of the apostles and had to have seen Jesus after he rose from the dead).
What's the difference between christian, presbaterian, gospal, etc?
A Christian simply put is someone who follows Christ. Presbyterians are one type of Protestant. Presbyterians generally agree with the teachings of John Calvin, one of the Reformers. Gospel means "good news" and is the term used for the message of Jesus: that Jesus died in the place of sinners to bring us to God (John 3:16, 1 Peter 3:18).
Any other questions?
I hope you find this helpful! I encourage you to read the Bible yourself and see what it teaches. John is a good place to start; it is one of four books which tell the life of Jesus. Then Acts is the book right after John and it tells the lives of some of the apostles after Jesus' resurrection.
Feel free to message me anytime. Just so you know, I consider myself undecided between being a Presbyterian and a Baptist. The differences between the two are minor and I haven't been able to make up my mind yet which one I think is more Biblical.
"Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God" (1 Peter 3:18).
