Unfortunately, what the Roman Catholic Church considered to be good deeds varied somewhat throughout history. Pope Urban II promised absolution and remission of sins for all who died in the service of Christ, which gave us the Crusades.
Christian Evangelicals - not all are made equal
- Thread starter Nevermore
- Start date
That's true.
but
The thing to remember is that the Crusades weren't particularly egregious by the standards of the time. After all the Pope called them at the request of the Byzantine (Roman) Emperor.
And he was trying to reclaim the Holy Land, which had been Roman but was conquered by the Muslim Arabs during Islam's initial expansion out of Arabia.
And the Romans got it when they occupied Judea.
So the notion of right by conquest was seen as valid back then. Yes you had European Christians who were anti-Crusade but they were, and I cannot over-emphasize this enough- a tiny minority.
I'm not trying to justify the Crusades either. Merely putting them in a historical context. By our standards they were brutal and indefensible, and yes historians should be able to call that stuff out even if it was deemed acceptable by the standards of the time.
But my point is standards of the time
A belief system that emphasizes good deeds is flexible because it can adapt with the times and adopt modern ideals of what good deeds are.
Whereas "faith alone" is forever rigid and forever gives people the excuse to do terrible things so long as they have faith.
I think that's why Baptist churches are popular. They put more importance on God's Word over the Church, and the individual, personal relationship with God.
They emphasize, "Once saved, always saved. "
Once you accept Jesus Christ into heart, you're saved for life, no matter what you do. No one can take that salvation away from you, not even you.
Amazing Grace how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.
They emphasize, "Once saved, always saved. "
Once you accept Jesus Christ into heart, you're saved for life, no matter what you do. No one can take that salvation away from you, not even you.
Amazing Grace how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.
But you're preaching control, I'm preaching:
For without freedom, there can be no love. What would you do without freedom:
Someone who accepts Jesus and then murders a bunch of people doesn't deserve salvation.
First off find a better spokesperson than an antisemite and a racist.
Second I'm not preaching anything. I'm not a priest or a rabbi or an imam or any religious authority.
Thirdly I'm talking about a person's capacity for good, and how a person is defined by the deeds they do. It has nothing to do with control.
Finally, one last question for you @diamondgirl and you should answer this now because otherwise I'm going to be asking you it a lot.
Why don't you post anything on this forum related to Transformers?
I don't make the rules, I just enjoy them.
I'm a diehard G1 80's Transformers cartoon and comics fan, really into the nostalgia. I've found that this new generation of Transformers fans don't like hardcore gee-wunners, and actually are into the live-action movies which in many cases is their first exposure to Transformers.
They're interested in the new stuff, while I like the old. I don't want to be seen as holding them back.
It's sort of like how I like the Old Testament, the past, when the New Testament, the present and the future, is what really matters.
You need to understand that your version of the rules doesn't apply to everyone.
Here's where I'm at. You have signed up and made an account here, a Transformers message board.
And yet not a single post of yours before this one is talking about Transformers.
Most of your posts are in this thread or the thread about antisemitism.
Which strikes me as odd that someone would make an account on a Transformers fan forum and then never talk about it. Seems like you're here for other reasons.
That's about the nicest way possible to say "Take your 'thoughts and prayers' and shove it".
Martin Luther, the celebrated catalyst of the Protestant Reformation, famously took issue with the book of James. He didn’t think it expressed the “nature of the Gospel,” it appeared to contradict Paul’s statements about justification by faith, and it didn’t directly mention Christ.
“Therefore St James’ epistle is really “a right strawy epistle” or “an the epistle of straw”, compared to these others, for it has nothing of the nature of the Gospel about it.” —Martin Luther
It’s often said that Luther was so opposed to the Book of James that he suggested it didn’t belong in the biblical canon.
Nice to see the Protestant ideal of picking and choosing which parts of the Bible were worth following was baked in from the start.
Yes. I know. I alluded to it in my previous conversation with you. I said at the time that even Lutherans now accept it as canonical, despite Luther's own issues with it.
I'm a seminary graduate with an MDiv. At the risk of sounding pompous, I know quite a bit about this stuff.
And as I said in that previous conversation, councils had actually been doing this for centuries before then, for a variety of reasons (NOT limited simply to agreement/disagreement with theology, although of course that was very much a consideration).
Which is bad because it means all you have to do to get "forgiven" (as if anyone other than the person actually wronged has any right or ability to do that) by a church is to say you've prayed about it.
And the toxic part is that they then shame victims if they don't forgive those who hurt them.
Catholics have the most institutionalized problem with abuse (and their own belief that "forgiveness" comes from priests is a key part of the cause), but have you really not noticed any of times similar things in Baptist churches made the news?
Exactly. That's exactly what's wrong with it. "Once saved, always saved" means that Christians can literally get away with murder, as far as consequences from God are concerned.
That's also why so many people convert to Christianity in prison.
And what is anyone even being "saved" from anyway?
The ludicrous idea that people "deserve" hell by default cannot be justified either morally or logically; the most common excuse is "original sin", which is just God unjustly punishing all people for something the first two people did.
Amazing Grace was written by someone its lyrics actually applied to (a slaver who gave God credit for having survived a storm even though he'd done nothing to earn second chances, and eventually became an abolitionist afterward), and is not a description of how anyone who's never done anything seriously wrong should ever feel.
Convincing victims that they "deserve" punishment they actually don't, and that they should be "grateful" for being shown the baseline level of respect that all people deserve, is how abusive relationships function.
Yeah I didn't say it was essential to all forms of Christianity (though it certainly is very common; even ones that don't take it to the toxic extreme of saying works don't matter at all still often believe that no amount of works without faith is sufficient), just that it's the worst part of the forms that do have it.
In regard to the question of what being "saved" means, I should note that the evangelical construct (not limited to them, of course) of eternal torment in Hell (that is, for those not saved) is not necessarily what the New Testament authors believed (and the Old Testament authors definitely didn't). As one of my seminary professors once told me, the idea that the human soul is intrinsically eternal (a requirement to be destined to Hell if not saved to go to Heaven) contrasts with the idea that only God is eternal. Yet most Christians never stop to consider the implication that, if only God is intrinsically eternal, then for souls to be eternal would require that God made them so. That would (in my own opinion) be even worse than the usual concern of God destining some souls to Hell, as it would suggest that those damned souls wouldn't even be eternal for such a fate if God did not make them so.
Thankfully, Christianity does offer alternatives (although to get into them is a derailment I'd rather not get into at present).
Thankfully, Christianity does offer alternatives (although to get into them is a derailment I'd rather not get into at present).
Martin Luther changed the course of human history more than any other person who ever lived. He brought about the modern world. By translating the Bible from Latin and Greek into German, Luther spread literacy to the masses. If not for this and the Protestant Reformation all of Europe would be ruled by the Catholic Church. Instead, Europe was broken into pieces. Luther ushered in individualism, capitalism, the Enlightenment, the American Revolution, Science and Technology, just to name a few. Knowledge and education was no longer exclusive to and controlled by the Catholic Church. It was made available to everyone, so that people could think for themselves and make up their own minds, rather than depending on the interpretation of the Catholic Church.
I was wondering how long it would take before we'd see a PragerU video in this thread.
Jews for Jesus - Wikipedia
They are an Evangelical Christian movement dedicated to infiltrating and replacing Judaism as a religion. There are no Jewish denominations or groups that accept its members, or any other "Messianic Jews," as actually being Jews.
Now that we have the internet, the need for a physical church is almost obsolete.
We now have remote worship or worship-from-home, and contactless worship following the Amazon model.
I think that's great and marvelous!
We now have remote worship or worship-from-home, and contactless worship following the Amazon model.
I think that's great and marvelous!