I'm at the point of a faith journey where I've concluded both sides of the "Arguement" - Catholic and Protestant, are wrong in many elements of their particular interpretations of Christianity. But they are correct in the main points - the ones we all believe in without effort. But each school's method of reaching God are, in the end...just guesses. No one can know the mind of God, and even when He has revealed things, it's most often in metaphors that the observer must interpret...guess at the meaning. Having been raised on the Catholic "our method is the only way to salvation", and also many years of evangelical "just by faith"...I know first hand the shortcomings of each theology. Fact is, God can reveal all He wants, but our finite minds cannot comprehend the profound, sublime truths of God's dimension.
I submit that 2,000 years of Christian learning, history, tradition and the evolved theology may have led the great majority of believers into dead ends on how to "get God." (I am not saying I have the way). We're flailing, admit it. I admit it.
I had a dream 8 months after my Dad passed away, and what he told me was not only utterly unexpected, but shockingly wonderful...and revealed to me something I'd have never guessed at in my Christian life: that God was gracious, personally kind, and who liked us. In all my years as a believer I had inferred that God was mean and distant. Some time later I read the book "The Shack", which introduces me to a God that was also unlike the God of theology - a God who was wonderful.
Were we taught as Catholics and Protestants that God was kind, gracious, and close? I don't think so, and that's a grudging conclusion after 50 years of faith. We search the scriptures daily...but do you like God and do you think God likes you?
Yes, both Catholic and Protestant "are wrong in many elements of their particular interpretations of Christianity." Catholicism ascended to power during the reign of Emperor Constantine (306-337 C.E.) It became the state religion when Roman Emperor Theodosius I (379-395 C.E.) banned paganism and imposed Trinitarian Christianity as the State religion of the Roman Empire.
French historian Henri Marrou (1904-77) wrote: By the end of the reign of Theodosius, Christianity, or to be more precise, orthodox Catholicism, became the official religion of the entire Roman world. Orthodox Catholicism had replaced true Christianity and had become a part of the world. This State religion was vastly different from the religion of Jesus early followers, to whom he said: You are
no part of the world.(John 15:19)
Another French historian, and philosopher Louis Rougier (1889-1982) wrote: As it spread, Christianity underwent strange mutations to the point of becoming
unrecognizable. . . . The primitive church of the poor, which lived by charity, became a triumphalist church that came to terms with the powers that be when it was unable to dominate them.
Of the Eastern Orthodox church, Timothy Ware (now called Kallistos Ware, born in 1934), an Orthodox bishop, in his book
The Orthodox Church (1993), said concerning it: Nationalism has been the bane of Orthodoxy for the last ten centuries.(pg 77) Eastern Orthodoxy followed the theory of Eusebius of Caesarea (a contemporary of Constantine the Great).
Ignoring the Christian principle of separateness from the world, Eusebius reasoned that if the emperor and the empire became Christian, Church and State would become a single Christian society, with the emperor acting as Gods representative on earth.
Throughout the Middle Ages, both the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic religions continued to be heavily involved in politics, worldly intrigues, and wars. Did the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century mark a return to true Christianity, separate from the world ? (
note: the word Protestant is derived from those who protested against Catholicism, such as Martin Luther in 1517)
The New Encyclopædia Britannica states: The Protestant Reformers of the Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican traditions . . . remained firmly attached to the views of Augustine, for whose theology they felt a particular affinity. . . . Each of the three main Protestant traditions of 16th-century Europe . . . found support from the secular authorities in Saxony [central Germany], Switzerland, and England and remained in the
same position vis-à-vis the state as had the
medieval church. It is like painting a house a different color on the outside; but the house is the same.
Rather than bring about a return to genuine Christianity, the Reformation brought forth a host of national or territorial churches that have curried favor with the political states and actively supported them in their wars. In fact, both the Catholic and the Protestant churches have fomented religious wars.
In his book
An Historians Approach to Religion (1979), Arnold Toynbee (British historian, 1889-1975) wrote concerning such wars: They exhibited Catholics and Protestants in France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Ireland, and rival sects of Protestants in England and Scotland, in the brutal act of trying to suppress one another by
force of arms.
One result was the the Thirty Years' War (1618-48) that was called one of the most terrible wars in European history, according to
The Universal History of the World.(John Hammerton, 1927) The basic cause of the war ? The hatred of Catholic for Protestant, of Protestant for Catholic.
And of World War I, British Brigadier General Frank P. Crozier said: The Christian Churches are the
finest blood-lust creators which we have and of them we made free use.(
A Brass Hat in No Mans Land, published in 1930)
This also came true for World War II, for the churches of Christendom, both Catholic and Protestant, were totally involved, in which German soldiers wore a belt buckle on which was inscribed the words
Gott mit uns (God is with us). German soldiers wore this inscription in WWI as well.
Where then was the true Christianity that Jesus started, for all the churches were totally enmeshed with "the world" rather than following Jesus words to be "
no part of the world" ?(John 17:16)
At Isaiah 2, it was prophesied that the the true Christianity that Jesus began, would come forth again, saying: "And it must occur in the final part of the days [that] the mountain of the
house of Jehovah will become
firmly established above the top of the mountains, and it will certainly be lifted up above the hills; and to it all the nations must stream. And many peoples will certainly go and say: Come, you people, and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will instruct us about his ways, and we will walk in his paths. For out of Zion law will go forth, and the word of Jehovah out of Jerusalem. And he will certainly render judgment among the nations and set matters straight respecting many peoples. And they will have to
beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning shears. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, neither will they learn war anymore."(Isa 2:2-4)
Which of the religions of the world have fully implemented what Isaiah said, that of having ' beaten their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning shears, learning war no more ' ?
