7 Ways Protestants act like atheists 

Hey man, malayali anno?

@@AngelatHeaven I am Malayali. I converted to Catholicism from Pentecostalism when I was 16. This very topic Trent is talking about is one of the main reasons I converted.

@@unnikutta6514 Very based to see young converts. I was a bit older when I converted. I was about 22.

@@unnikutta6514 wow nice...I was raised Catholic but had protestant leaning in my teens because I hadn't completed my catechism...once I did, I got my faith again. Good catechism coupled with an earnest desire to know God is important.

I totally agree. By the way their vocation in life is helping .the Evil One to destroy the Church which Christ Himself instituted.

God bless you on your journey!

How did this video help you?

@@severalstories3420 when approaching a subject like religion having a the right mindset i have found to be important. Realizing I come to this journey with my own set of 500 assumptions. This video is great reminder/realignment of the interference that our background and assumptions cause when approaching this.

@@derrick7442 Right. And all of the interference and assumptions apply equally in the other direction, of course.

@@severalstories3420 sorry if my response came across in anyway as uncharitable. It absolutely applies to both sides and in all sorts of circumstances. It’s one of the things I really appreciate about Trent how he is always so charitable to all sides of a conversation.

If you own and read the catechism your further along than most of us Catholics.

@@MrPeach1 Agreed!

Protestant to catholic:i know that you dont read this book Catolich:you mean Bible?that is protestant misconception Protestant:no..i mean catehisam of CC Catholic:well..yeah bro..you are apsolutly right

@@MrPeach1 very true lol

Read the Book of Mormon, then you will know the truth.

Dan Brown is not merely an atheist. He is a Free Mason. For example, in his book about Da Vinci Code he subtly praises meeting of secret societies involving sex as a sacred tool for ascension. "Hieros Gamos" is essentially paganism. Indeed, he quotes Greek and Egyptian mysteries. The whole "Jesus and Magdalene had sex" is taken from an heresy named gnosticism. He is a pure mason through and throughout.

If you're trying your best to protect your beliefs from challenges, then deep down you know it could be flawed. I know lots of protestants walking away from me after I responded to their challenge to my beliefs. Their reactions are always shocked as if they want to tell me "hol' up, you weren't supposed to know the answer for that!" So kicking you out obviously means they don't have an answer for that, either they know it's a shallow lie, or they automatically believed which was panicking for them because they really don't know the answer.

I wish they would take the trouble to read Church Fathers such as Augustine, who honored Mary and who also went to excruciating length to debunk and even make fun of pagan gods and goddesses. This was not some kind of beige accomodationalism. Rather, high Mariology arose naturally out of a high Christology. Nestorius’s main problem wasn’t that he didn’t honor Mary enough; it was that he misunderstood Christ and didn’t honor Him enough because of that.

@@jackdispennett744 I could not agree more. Finest theology on your part.

Anyone interested in debunking the Constantinian myth go watch "Did Constantine Create the Catholic Church?" on the Christian Virtue and Grace channel

"Faith in God and in the Catholic Church." That's a faith that sounds like it's spread pretty thin. What is faith? What's its object then?

@@severalstories3420 The object is God. And God instituted the Church. Thus faith in His own institution glorifies Him. Who are we to *not* have faith in what He gave us? That's not a thinning of faith in Him, but rather a deepening of it

Agreed. Look at the Bible itself. A common Protestant view on interpretation is that we must read and interpret ourselves, submitting to the Holy Spirit for guidance. I have heard the phrase "the clear meaning of this passage" more times than I can count. The evident truth, however, is that even the "clear" meanings are not clear to all. And scholars like James White will dig into the original Greek and make etymological arguments to determine his views while also warning us to follow the Word of God, not men. But if a man must have an intimate knowledge of Greek and first century culture to arrive at correct meaning, does that not naturally exclude most? We would necessarily need to follow these learned men and adopt their interpretations, and the divided Christianity today demonstrates the errancy of this approach. Instead, I believe Jesus instituted a tangible Church on Earth, giving us access to those who can answer questions of interpretation. This is the only way to ensure that the Word is distributed accurately to the World. Only His authority can interpret His Word. If He passed that authority down, we should follow it. If not, we would have no way to settle disputes.

@@JamesPalen That's not divine faith. That's just a limp trust in people who make big claims for themselves based on conjecture about a shady material history. Faith has a real definition. You can have it, of course, as a Roman Catholic--but I'm always saddened to see how few Roman Catholics are able to describe what they mean when they use the word. You may be able to make an argument against Sola Fide but hell, at least a Protestant knows what Fide is in the first place.

The word Fide IS NOT faith. It is a very bad translation of the word which began with Tyndale. When St. Paul wrote to the Romans he certainly did not write to them in Greek, he wrote to them in Latin. Why would St, Paul write in Greek to the Latin speaking Romans? The word St. Paul uses in Romans is fide. But fide never meant faith and neither does the word enumah (Hebrew). Let us try and understand Roman society, there are the two pagan religions and the Roman civic religion. Roman paganism was divided along classes, patricians and plebeans. The patricians has the Romanized Hellenic deties and the plebians has the Latin, Etruscan, Sabine, and Italic deties and their ancestors. To belong to the Cult of the Emperor did not mean that you worshiped the emperor, but you were a member of the patricians (worshipped the Romanized Hellenic deties as did the emperor ie belonged to the same religio as the emperor). There was the Roman civic religion. It consisted of lauding and praising the emperors (also their ancestors) to show their loyalty. The American pledge of alligence is similar top this. It was a patriotic "religion" in a sense. The patricians showed their "fide" to the emperor by maintaining and supporting the temples to the patrician deities (the temples of the flamen). Fide was a support for the emperor by doing their duty by supporting the temple to the Hellenic Roman deities. For Jews "emunah" had the same connotation: a duty to support G-d by doing their duty towards him. The problem here is language. English is a very poor liturgical langagues as was Low German. Protestants were largely speakers of Low German. High German speaking areas stayed Catholic. Low German areas became largely protestants. This was the dividing line in Europe.

He’s not Roman Catholic, he’s Byzantine Catholic.

He is a Latin/Western Catholic who attends the Byzantine Catholic liturgy. It is very hard for a Latin/Western Catholic to join an Eastern Catholic Church and vice versa once you have been baptized into a rite. You need a apply and obtain a canonical dispensation from the bishop or his appointed judicial vicar to make the move. The only valid reason in such a case is if your spouse is from an Eastern Rite. There is no such thing as a "Roman" Catholic. It was a term invented by Thomas Cranmer, but it never caught on until the Irish Emancipation Act. It is a protestant term and popularized due to Irish Catholics as their papers required them to identify their religion. Since the Anglicans falsely claimed they were Catholics, the REAL Catholics were consigned to using the term Roman Catholic in their identification papers.

@@lucidlocomotive2014 nice. Another schismatic division I didn't even know existed 😂

@@mugsofmirth8101 it’s not schismatic. There are many Rites of Catholicism, they are all in communion with each other. It’s all part of one church, the Catholic Church.

@@lucidlocomotive2014 divisions are schismatic. They don't unite, they divide.

Yeah it’s so funny seeing this video now knowing that now he is Catholic

How so?

​@@theoskeptomai2535 Protestantism was about cutting things away from Christianity that they deemed superstitious and doubtful, thinking they were individually wiser than the Church leaders. This pattern continued, throwing more and more away, until they cut away God, seeing theism itself as superstitious and doubtful and preferring to rely on their own individual minds to the rejection of all Church leadership.

@@Krshwunk Do you think the position of atheism - to suspend any acknowledgement as to the existence of gods until sufficient credible evidence is introduced - to be a rationally justified one?

​@@Krshwunk So is a Protestant entitled to just sling accusations of you guys being like Mormons or pagans or heretics around? Seeing as you've added more and more?* Or is just saying "They have (added/subtracted) on some basis, therefore they are like (other group that added/subtracted far more on some other basis") a silly argument? Furthermore, Protestants have our own positive doctrines - the free gift of salvation, faith alone, etc, which we say Catholics wrongly discarded. Trent Horn starts out by arguing in *this very video* that we do. So it's not even a case of "You only subtract". Everything that Protestants subtracted, from our point of view, was because they had been added in place of doctrines that bad been subtracted by the Catholic church. On balance, we cut more than we added, but it's not one way traffic. FWIW, all the modernist and marxist heresy that is creeping into our churches (Protestant and Catholic) at the moment is clearly on the addition side of the ledger; whenever you see a church (or parish) go woke and apostate, it's because they add social justice dogma first. Modern atheism is all about subtraction? No, friend, it's about adding social justice dogma until it crowds out the gospel altogether. Maybe 100 years ago you'd have a point, but the new wave of woke atheists are a whole different breed. *Yes you have, that's what happens when a church council such as Trent or Vatican I issue new dogma. The Catholic Church doesn't deny it adds, it just says that it has authority to do so and that the additions are correct.

@@SeanusAurelius I didn't say the Protestantism and Atheism only subtract. In fact both of them, in their rejection of Catholic authority, often come up with new doctrines to replace what they've thrown out. Both have often said that the Catholic Church added bad stuff to a previously superior system, whether it's the Protestant claim that they are restoring the early Church or the common atheist claim that they are restoring pre-Christian Greek rationality or what have you. Both tend to have an anti-tradition mindset in favor of individualistic thinking. Marxism and Wokeism are definitely heresies, ones that seem like evolutions of Protestantism in their common tendency to oppose hierarchy in some form or another.

On point 1, shifting the burden of proof happens a lot in any debate (not just atheists, protestants). On point 2, While lacking belief in Catholicism doesn't make you a Protestant automatically, being a non-Catholic Christian that happens to be convinced of protestant doctrine does make you a Protestant. Similarly, a lowest common denominator form of Christianity would be closer to being protestant than to being Catholic. For example, the protocanon would be the lowest common denominator when it comes to belief about the canon of scripture, etc. On point 3, How about the gnostic gospels and pseudo-epigraphies, should those be defended with the same zeal too? I think treating books as uninspired should be the default, and inspiration is only afforded to those books that prove themselves to be inspired. Accuracy is not enough to prove inspiration. We point out the flaws in the deuterocanonical books because they're not considered inspired similarly to how the flaws in gnostic gospels are pointed out. On point 4, I think we inherently are less skeptical of the beliefs we have already been convinced of even if prior to being convinced we may have been as skeptical of our current beliefs as we are about claims that we do not (yet) believe. I don't think Protestant skepticism is selective in the same way that Atheist skepticism is selective, in the sense that atheists seem to (purposely or unwittingly) construct an epistemology that excludes the very possibility of theism, but protestants are just skeptical of new religious ideas in general (no matter if it's Catholic, different Protestant, or Buddhist ideas) On point 5, while it is understandable that these misconceptions and differences in perception between groups arise, I agree misrepresentations should be avoided. On point 6, I think it more or less appropriate for this to happen within Christianity. After all, we share a common source of revelation from which we all claim to draw our worldview, which means that in going directly to the Bible it is possible for you to get the truth without studying each denomination's teachings before deciding what to believe. On point 7, While Pascal's wager makes perfect sense, given the stark differences between atheism and Christianity, it is predicated on the fact that Christianity is at least reasonably supported by evidence and therefore the more potential pragmatic consequences of belief should be given proper consideration in the absence of solid proof. Since there is no difference in pragmatic consequences between Catholicism and Protestantism (which some people would dispute, but that's the way you presented it) all we are left with to meaningfully differentiate is the evidential aspect. To take up Horn's wager therefore is simply to decide to be catholic on a whim and see if it sticks. There is no wager, because there is no benefit to be gained, it's just abdicating reason simply because you would like something to be true. It is no different from a coin flip. Unfortunately, what we like to be true is a bad guide, so I won't be recommending Horn's wager. If you are not intellectually convinced, there is no reason for a Protestant to become a Catholic. ( Pascal's wager is still good, though. )

That interesting. Because the academic work I've read shows that the Catholic Counter-Reformation reintroduced Greek skepticism which lead to the Enlightenment.

Read professor Brad Gregory's book, Unintended Reformation

@@aGoyforJesus I suspect a combination. Indeed, Professor Ryrie points out that both Catholics and Protestants had to simultaneously be sceptical of the heretics while also holding their own incredible propositions. It's a really good lecture series, especially the lecture about how the Reformation enabled atheism. He talks about three ex-atheists: Michel de Montaigne, a Catholic revert; William Chillingsworth, a Protestant-Catholic-unwilling Protestant turner; and Thomas Browne, a Protestant revert. They are all illustrrative of the hazards both sides faced.

@Zachary Trent I buy books for the footnotes and Bibliography

@Zachary Trent does he address the Counter Reformation's use of Phyronic Greek Skepticism and how that fed into the Elightenment?

Yes, not just anyone can understand gods word. people have no business reading the bible. God didnt intend it for people to read. Only men in costumes can understand it.

@Sanctus Paulus Go back to sleep

Indeed. The bible is the story of how the jewish people’s moral philosophy developed over time as guided by God until Christ told us to “turn the other cheek”. It started as “take revenge against your foes with God’s blessing” then moved to “an eye for an eye” and then becomes eventually Christian forgiveness. So obviously the bible, by showing this developing throughout history, needs to be understood in context. Otherwise you could use “an eye for an eye” to refute “forgive others”.

@@bobdobbs943 you're not making any intelligent arguments. You're just mocking for the sake of mocking. No one needs to take you seriously

@@williamavitt8264 Dont act like you dont know what im talking to you about.

If I am born again, saved by faith alone why can't I now spend all my time in a Catholic Church? I am born again and saved right. So now that I am born again why is it ok for me to do NO works and spend all my time in a downtown Bar but not ok to do Good works and spend all my time in a downtown Catholic Church?

"Hey, it worked for me"? "...defining moments of 'MY' life.." I got news for you, Sir: You're more Protestant now than you ever were.

Send me your book, let me read what you have already .... I can help you with it. What is your main thesis?

@@deusimperator Thank you for your offer, but I will embarrass myself to tell you that these are mostly drafts I made. The main point of the book that I'm trying to right is that Athiests and Protestants' level of thinking is shallow and incomplete. What they do most of the time is to find dirt on someone else because they can't make a solid point on their own belief system, so they have this "they have bad people, so theyre wrong, we're right" mentality and attitude. The thing I noticed from Athiests and Protestants is that they will pick one verse from the bible and use it against us without going deep into the who book and chapter from where the bible verse came from. They will dismiss it entirely and will just reiterate their allegations without adding anything about the allegations.

@@seanfernandolopez9139 Modern atheism is born out of Protestant academic skepticism. Protestantism was born in academia. All the protestant reformers were lawyers. The question for Protestants at the time was how does one understand the text of the Bible - since they no longer accepted the Magisterium and Sacred Tradition. Even the protestant Bible is a product of that skepticism and the critical theories. Even the King James Bible was from the beginning to the end a product of academia. All modern protestant bibles are based on academically prepared texts (Just like the KJV - Erasmus' Textus Receptus, well sort of). The American Protestantism was at first a reaction against the academia but over time handed themselves over to the academia. This is why James White and other "Greek" oracles are so highly regarded in protestant circles. Read my comment to the OP Ignatius regarding the deuterocanon.... it will help you ...

@@deusimperator Thank you so much for your input. May God bless you more.

@@colinmatts Atheism is a modern phenomena and is a product of German and English skepticism. All societies had a belief in deities in some form or the other. Not because they were unreasonable but because they were reasonable. So, why not tell us about that atheist position of yours?

Remember that in the latter 1500s the protestants took out Ireanaeus' body and burned it, and then stole the Bible which is now known as Codex Bezea

I mean, the church all the way back to the original father's did not have "similar beliefs". Most of the church fathers had wildly different beliefs, and what rome believes today doesn't represent even 1 church father.

@@christopherneedham9584 clearly you haven't read Polycarp, Iranaeus, the Fathers and the doctors of the Church.

Yes, I had noticed that. But have you ever listened to protestant preachers radio stations? If you are listening to thier misconceptions about Catholics (I had one baptist tell me he didnt want to bash Catholics to my face...) and the amount of negativity, I think it would be easy to slide into the "I don't need" ideas to get away from the idea that we need a spiritual family. Clearly, God is the only one who doesn't need anyone, and we are the ones who need.

@@rebn8346 i am aware of of some of the church fathers. But zero early church fathers would have accepted praying to the Saints/Mary, the other useless physicality, purgatory, or the doctorine of piecemeal grace.

@@christopherneedham9584 So you reject Scripture? Sorry, but the St Joseph prayer was written in 50AD, when Mary and many of the Apostles were still alive. Can you prove through culture, history, language, tradition, and writings that the early Fathers never invoked the intercession of saints? If they didn't, they would be in violation of Christ's command, pray for one another. Praying to the and for the dead was done even in the OT. Before you disregard what God promised at the shut gate of Eden, remember that Mary was designed by God, as His Daughter, Spouse, and Mother! Stop a moment, and contemplate that stunning honor. Mary was a princess of the Royal Line of David. She was a well educated Temple Virgin. "Hail Mary, full of grace the Lord" is with thee. NO ONE ever received such a monumentous greeting in the entire bible. Elizabeth said," Blessed art thou amoung women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, how is it that the Mother of My Lord should come to me? The moment thy greeting sounded in my ears, the babe in my womb kept for joy!" The Church Fathers agree that Christ used Mary's voice to cleanse John of Original Sin. "All generations shall call me Blessed" the Magnificat is a prophecy and praise of God. "And for a sign that shall be contradicted, and thine own soul a sword shall peirce, so that the thoughts of many shall be revealed" Christ fullfiled this prophecy on the Cross, when He gave us not only His last drop of Blood, but His beloved Mother..He kept absolutely nothing for Himself. Blessed art thy who hear the word of God and keep it...can you name the one person in the NT that this constantly refered to? Do not attempt to put under what God has put together.

It's on December 8. Today is the Feast of the Nativity of Mary which falls 9 months after her Immaculate Conception.

U r correct don't know why I keep saying that, just realized. Whoops!

Not inspired ≠ not useful It’s still useful scripture but not inspired

Check your auto suggest text next time,no gunpowder in the OT i suspect 😆

@@stephenmatthews161 I suck at spelling and plan to continue to suck at it for the rest of my days. But good catch.

@@duckymomo7935 how is in not inspired it clearly depicts Jesus 100 years before he came.

@@MrPeach1 lots of books were written before Jesus came, that doesn't make it inspired it's probably because the book of Wisdom was written long way after Solomon had already died.

There is nothing extraordinary about claiming St. Peter was the bishop of Rome, all evidence we have points to this fact. An extraordinary claim would be claiming that St. Peter was not in Rome.

Cameron sounded like Carl Sagan

@@deusimperator lack of evidence. Why do you believe it? Sola ecclesia

@@deusimperator ru-vid.com/group/PLG8ujnM0COm6TzQc8YwjQzYEizTOX4bkC

@@Wgaither1 you think there’s a lack of evidence that Peter was in Rome, such that he probably wasn’t in Rome? I don’t think there is a single mainstream scholar today who would agree with you.

The reason Protestants refuse to accept the deuterocanonical books is because they gave up tradition and accepted academics. This requires a little explanation. Protestantism from its very beginning was movement that originated in skepticism and academia. In academic circles of the time, in the humanistic milieu that prevaded the period of time dictated that the great works should be read in their original language. So, the acadamics began reading the great ancient writings preserved by the Catholic Church in their original languages. After the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem all the Jewish writings in Hebrew were burned in Jerusalem. The duetrocanonical books were only available in Hebrew in Jerusalem as they were the second canon and available in Aramaic or Greek everywhere else. The second canon is a later development during the Ptolmic/Selucid era so one did not keep a copy of the second canon. Even Rabbi Simon Gamaliel III indicates in the Mishna there Greek text (the LXX which has ALWAYS included the deutrocanon) was perfectly acceptable to Jews. When the Jews ultimately canonized the 4th Gen Canon known as the Masoritic text (4gen MT) between 850 and 870 they did so based on what was available in Hebrew. This was not a problem for Judaism, nothing was actually lost because the Deutrocanon in Judaism is part of the Torah Shebaal Peh, it is G-d revealed scripture, just not canonical. Jews use the duetrocanonical books extensively. The whole of Hannukah is based on what exists in the duetrocanon. Now, when the academics went to the Hebrew for the old testament the was only the Masoretic Text available. Most academics could not even read Hebrew. No one knew Koine Greek, most scholars at the time only knew Attic and Ionic Greek as the great Greek words were all written in Attic Greek while a few were written in Ionic Greek. So when Protestantism showed up on the scene they followed the academic scholars of the time. This is the reason they based their NT parts of the bibles on the Textus Receptus and the OT on the 4 gen MT. But unlike Judaism, Protestants denied Torah Shebaal PEh, and the Duetrocanon was dropped because it was not available in Hebrew to protestants. Now they have to defend that by using a whole bunch of contrived reasons. Jews accept the deutrocanonical books as Torah Shebaal Peh, so it was never lost to Judaism.

@@deusimperator I see, so prostestants are somewhat back to square one?

@@ignatius7004 In every generation protestants are always trying to rediscover square one. Even when the Protestants rejected the academics they attempt to rediscover square one. The whole restoration movement in the United States was born out of the Second Great Awakening which was a rejection of the Enlightenment's rationalism. Tradition helps us move on from that square one, it is a tradition of the living where the people of G-d are scripture actualized. This is why G-d commanded Moses not to write down the Torah Shebaal Peh because it was the people and belong to the people and that tradition unfolds among the chosen/elect. If you look at the likes of Jimbo White, and other protestant "scholars" they become the oracles of "what the Bible REALLY means" to protestants. The academic who thinks he knows Greek is now the fountainhead of knowledge, so the protestants chase down the newest scholarship someone dreamed up... ie pull out a turd and presented it as the truth. This is the essence of Protestantism, especially the Protestantism which is pervasive in America. The fact is that Koine Greek is a reconstructed language. Tradition helps us (Catholics Jews) understand the Bible. But for protestants, it is their academic scholars who do for a large part. Why? There are 500 words in the NT which have an unknown meaning ... for example, the word episcopos, what many do not know is that this word appears nowhere apart from the Bible. Epiousios is another. How does one translate the Bible when you do not know what the words mean? They are unwilling to accept the traditional understanding of the words as they are too "Catholic". So they have to try and figure out something else. What they have tried to do is reconstruct the Koine Greek Language. Remember, protestants during the reformation believed that the Holy Spirit invented a version of the Greek language to write the Bible which is why the Greek of the New Testament did not match the Greek they knew (Attic, Ionic). Basically today protestants have thrown out all their old bibles and adopted what is reconstructed Bibles, a Bible they can attempt to defend from skeptics. Westcott and Hort who were essentially agnostic academics created all the modern protestant bibles and their lexicons after they got an idea after learning of a manuscript in Koine Greek in the latter 1800s. Westcott and Hort knew this was a break as if anyone has an old bible translation of the same period into Latin, they can attempt to reconstruct the Koine Greek meaning from a Latin translation, and Latin was well known and extremely accurate language, And who would have this? Of course, there is only one source for this, the Vatican. Westcott and Hort applied to the Vatican as academics for permission to access the secret archives. They already knew of MSS B (c. Vaticanus) which was the oldest Bible known to exist. And if the MSS B has been around for over 1500 years someone must have attempted a word for word translation of the Bible... The Vatican would hardly have given access but the Vatican needed the money and the pope was in exile, so the Vatican agreed. The Vatican provided Westcott and Hort access to MSS B and a couple of OLBs which they knew were word for word translations of the codex. So Westcott and Hort based their new Bible, the American Standard Bible on MSS B and created the lexicon to translate the Koine Greek by translating the OLBs. Today Westcott and Hort's work is carried out by Nestle Aland. Nestle Aland's majority of the underlying text is MSS B (Codex Vaticanus) and it is the Bible that they can defend from the skeptics. The NANTG 28 is the newest edition. Protestantism is always attempting to rediscover that square one... that is why they invented a whole bunch of nonsense... someone discovers his favourite bible verse and starts his own religion... This is how Bornagainism was invented... it is how Dispensationalism was invented. It is how Adventism was invented. Protestantism is so prima facie false. The Bible divides people, it is Tradtion which unites.

The arguments against the deuterocanonicals are some of the dumbest arguments for a Christian to make. Taken to their logical conclusions they would lead to rejection of the entire Canon of scripture

@@deusimperator thanks for this bit of info! This alone can somewhat discredit the sola scriptura claim, considering how the American standard version was supposedly written by agnostics.

If I am born again, saved by faith alone why can't I now spend all my time in a Catholic Church? I am born again and saved right. So now that I am born again why is it ok for me to do NO works and spend all my time in a downtown Bar but not ok to do Good works and spend all my time in a downtown Catholic Church? Amen?

@@SomedayG what’s your question?

@@alaska4939 My question is if someone is born again and saved by Faith alone what harm would there be in going to a Catholic Church? It seems to me that after a protestant is saved by faith alone they should have no problem going to a Catholic Church because they're saved already.

@@SomedayG and I don’t have a problem with going to a Catholic Church… I go almost every week.

Thanks for the reminder

@@deusimperator what you forgot to eat

Your quite welcome

I agree but I always wonder why souls in hell are considered dead?

@@crobeastness because they’re separated from God, the author of life.

Praying for the dead, purgatory, communion of the saints, patron saints, indulgences, praying to the saints etc. are Jewish beliefs customs and practices.

@@deusimperator They are catholic doctrine

​@@brutus896 His point, reading from earlier replies, is that those elements of Jewish beliefs/customs/practices find their continuation in all nations through Catholicism. It's not to say that this continuation is a bad thing (quite the opposite), but rather that those who believe these elements of Catholicism are innovations do not understand their salvation history

Dr?

@@lukehayner3202 He's not a doctor?

@@barelyprotestant5365 Not that I’m aware.

Fundamental Evangelical Christians think Catholicism is pretty much satanism!

@@thekingslady1 One of the worst examples I think it's Lauren Chen. She is married with someone who's catholic and you would expect to more respectful of her husband's beliefs while disagreeing with it, but no. Maybe is just defensiveness, idk

You really can't blame them sometimes... They've been fed propaganda since their childhood and the increasing scandals along with those 'pope is Illuminati' kind of videos with a wide viewership doesn't help either! I being Catholic, had to look hard and long to find reasonable answers. Jesse Romero, Taylor Marshall, Fr Ripperger, Fr Goring are some of those people who've helped me get back to the faith with their testimonies and sermons. You cannot find detailed , intelligent sermons like Fr Rippergers that is so much borne out of solemn reverence for the Lord (coupled with some level of self denial) in any other church. Protestantism on the other hand, is all about 'feelings' and 'being right' and is in accordance with this post- modern American sentiment of 'wanting to be free from the shackles of tradition'. I think Protestantism is rooted in this American culture of consipracy theories, questioning age old practices, individualism etc (these notions aren't always bad, but dangerous when applied erroneously to understand the faith)

@@tinag7506 That's a very good point. Maybe I should explain that I've grew up in a majority catholic country, never hear too much about Protestantism (only theoretically on Sunday class, with a summarized "but they are all our brothers and sisters"), so I never thought too much of it... Until I saw online how some of them talk about our religion, with such despise and full of misconceptions that shocked me, basically. That was my point-of-view...

Have you seen that DeusImperator guy running around in these comments? His ilk are in our (Protestant) channels too. This is not one way traffic, friend. I'm an evangelical, and some of the worst bigotry I've experienced has been from Catholics. Probably not the worst; that belongs to SJWs, but it's close. Not excusing or minimising it though, it's wrong, period. "By this shall the world you you are my disciples, that you abuse people in the most hurtful ways" is not in the Bible. PS Good on you re online discourse. I quit Facebook and Disqus and Reddit and a couple of other social media platforms a couple of months back...people balk at eyes and arms but if Twitter causes you to sin....cut it off.

Exactly. I'm trying to write a book about this.

I have also noticed this. Glad to hear I'm not the only one.

@@seanfernandolopez9139 sounds like something I would like to read

The reality is that atheism, began with Protestants attempting to understand the bible without Sacred Tradtion and the magistrium. They began looking towards the academics to help them understand the bible. Protestant academics employed critical methodologies to be able to do this. However, the critical methodologies were skeptical and this skepticism lead to atheism eventually, the critical methods through Kant, Hagel and Furbach brought in created the prestet miliue.

@@deusimperator wrong again

Be wary of admitting you're are a protestant on here. You might get burned at the stake.

Jkm - the death penalty is biblical. I thought Protestants knew the Bible. That’s why Protestants killed Catholics at the Tower of London in England. They disemboweled , drew and quartered Catholics with horses. Oh so compassionate. In the USA , the Protestant KKK murdered Catholics.

@@Crusader33ad And the Pope and Catholic monarchs had tens of thousands of Protestants burned, tortured, and murdered. Ever hear of bloody Mary? Infact, priests hated some Protestant leaders so much they ground their bones to powder and poured them in the Thames so that they wouldn't rise during the second coming. So, we did terrible things to each other. So did Benjamin and the other tribes of Israel. What's your point?

@@justfiddlinaround1128 I think Philip Joseph was proving the point you just made. Also ‘Bloody Mary’ was called that because the victor tells the story. If you compare her to the England Monarchs that followed, she isn’t nearly as bad. Of course they are gonna call her that she was a Catholic…

Protestant Monarchs at the time we’re far worse it isn’t even a comparison, they just won’t mention that cause well Catholics didn’t win

Yeah I think it would be cool if Trent addresses Anglicanism. But you're right. In America, it seems that the most vocal and well known critics of Catholicism are from those who believe in sola scriptura and sola fide, which is perhaps why he focuses on that.

In America the largest denomination is Baptist with 30% of Protestants being baptist. Only 3% of Christian Americans are Anglicans.

I’m no expert in Anglicanism. I’ve always seen it as a “catholic church” but because it’s founding comes from a King, Henry VIII, that decided he didn’t need a pope’s authority to divorce and became his own pope, that makes it, in my humble opinion, a church that separated it self from the shaft that is The Catholic Church. You can disagree with me, it’s ok, but that is how I see it. God bless!!

Perhaps, check out The Evidence for the Papacy by Colin Lindsay. That is, if you haven't already read the book. He was a convert from Anglicanism. Just copy and paste the line below into google. It should be the first search return. I remember the opening epistle being well written. The evidence for the papacy : as derived from the Holy Scriptures and from primitive antiquity, with an introductory epistle by Lindsay, Colin archive org

@@jonhowerton2537 That makes his lack of focus on it make a lot of sense! As I said, I thought the reason behind it would be connected to his American context. Worldwide, Anglicanism is much larger, especially in Africa (and obviously in the UK).

Trent's argument is that we cannot say "I found an error in this text, therefore it is not inspired" because it is very easy to find what appears thousands of errors in text we all agree is inspired; so Trent WOULD agree that it would be wrong for a Catholic to look at a book that is exclusive to the Orthodox cannon and say "I found an error in this text, therefore..." As Trent says "We cannot settle the question of whether a writing is divinely protected from error until we settle the question of whether it was divinely inspired in the first place." However, this doesn't go against the Catholic position, because that is NOT the reason the Catholic Church puts forward for the Catholic cannon. The Magisterium of the Catholic Church does claim to be able to determine what books are inspired and from that we get inerrancy, not the other way around.

I don't see why it would work against Catholics. Can you clarify that argument, maybe by expressing it in a syllogism? Sometimes if you spell it out explicitly, you can see where the logical disconnect lies. We can set aside the "Gospel" of Thomas; it's a gnostic text dating from after the year 100 and could easily enough be rejected by the whole Christian world merely by saying, "Uh, we've had martyrs and saints for the last 100 years and nobody's heard of this one before, so our best bet is someone yanked it out of his rear end in the last decade and stuck St. Thomas' name on it because Thomas was busy being martyred in India." But as for the rest of the biblical canon? It's a question of witnesses. Protestants typically say of the New Testament canon, "We use these 27 books, because we have early witnesses relating the canon of the Early Church, and while there's disagreement about a few of the books, by the year 200 most of them all say the same things, and by the year 400, there's zero debate. So, we just use what the early church uses; we discard as spurious what the early church discarded as spurious, and we accept as merely devotional what the early church accepted as merely devotional." On that basis they use 1 Corinthians and Mark; they reject the Gospel of Thomas and the Apocalypse of Peter; and they accept as orthodox-but-not-inspired/inerrant things like the Didache, the Shepherd (by Hermas), the letter of Clement of Rome, the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, etc. Now, that argument looks fine...as long as one doesn't ask four follow-up questions: Q1: "Early witnesses? Okay, tell us: WHICH early witnesses? And what ELSE did those early witnesses believe?" Q2: "Why did debate stop around the year 400? Why didn't it just continue?" Q3: "What did it mean, that the early Christians described certain books as canonical? For them, what was the difference between a canonical, and a non-canonical, book?" Q4: "Since you acknowledge the tri-partite division of early Christian writings into canon, devotional, and spurious, what kind of Christianity would the early Christians be practicing if they not only used the canon in their liturgies, but used for devotional reading the books they described as belonging in the devotional category?" These questions cause the Protestant acceptance of the 27-book New Testament to be revealed as logically inconsistent, because: A1: The only early Christian witnesses that affirm the 27-book canon Protestants use today are all, discernibly, non-Protestant in their ecclesiology, soteriology, and/or sacramentology. That is to say: If you examine what they held on other topics, they ALL look Catholic, or, at a stretch, like very papacy-friendly Orthodox. There ain't a Baptist or Seventh-Day Adventist among them. So a Protestant who uses that canon has a choice: (a.) He can keep his canon if he doesn't mind getting it from a bunch of folks whose other views he rejects as heretical. (b.) He can view his canon as uncertain because he can't be sure if it's YET ANOTHER of the early Christians' errors...but in that case, Sola Scriptura is sunk as a way to derive the content of Christianity. Or (c.) he can adopt the FIF (Funny Internal Feeling) test for canonicity, and claim that he doesn't get his canon from the Early Christians at all, but from the FIF he gets when he reads inspired books...in which case we know he's lying because nobody gets an Inspired FIF from the more ponderous bits of Numbers and Deuteronomy, and anyway Muslims and Mormons claim the same FIF from their scriptures. A2: The debate stopped because a bunch of bishops in local North African synods took it upon themselves to adopt the same canon that the Bishop of Rome Damasus I had adopted in the Synod of Rome in 380 AD, and which had been standardized for his diocese by Athanasius in his Easter Letter in 372 AD. The debate stopped because the Christians in those bishops' dioceses took the attitude that the bishops had authority as Apostolic Successors, and that the whole world needed to stay in agreement with the Bishop of Rome as Peter's successor...and anyway Athanasius was the hero of Nicaea. So, in short, Christians stopped holding other views because their view on church authority was Catholic...or at least, VERY non-Congregationalist. A3: When the early Christians described books as "canonical" they weren't primarily meaning that they were "true, and thus our only reliable source for knowing what the beliefs and practices of Christianity should be." That's a modern Protestant view, but that's not what the early Christians meant by "canon." What THEY meant by "canon" was: "Meeting the standard of High Worthiness that made a book fitting to be liturgically read from at Mass." Now, as a further extension of that thought, they wanted to limit the books read from at Mass to those with apostolic attestation of some kind and antiquity of usage...and they believed what Jesus said about the Apostles, that "he who hears [y'all] hears Me." So, by using these particular books they DID expect to be hearing the Word of the LORD. But their primary drive in settling the canon was: liturgical standardization! So when Protestants use that same standard for determining the contents of their New Testament, they're using the standard of "which books did a bunch of Catholics select as sufficiently worthy to be read in the lead-up to the Eucharist?" A4: The early Christians held that gnostic "gospels," like those of Thomas and Mary Magdalene, were obvious Johnny-Come-Lately Fecal Matter. But outside the canon, they also recommended that laypersons read, for their own spiritual edification, books that weren't in the canon, as "devotional reading material." These included "The Shepherd" by Hermas, the Didache, the Letter of Clement to the Corinthians, the letters of Ignatius of Antioch, and a few other things as time went by and more were written. They didn't hold these writings to be Divine Writ, but they held them to be orthodox and good for Christians, like the way many folks would describe "My Utmost For His Highest" by Oswald Chambers, or perhaps C.S.Lewis' apologetics works. And, these devotional works give us a clear witness to the Catholicity of these early Christians. Just as nobody would recommend C.S.Lewis if they thought most of his stuff was heretical, the early Christians wouldn't recommend Ignatius of Antioch if they thought most of HIS stuff was heretical. But in Ignatius we get (a.) an example of Christians referring to their church as "Catholic" when referring not just to the local parish but to the worldwide organization; (b.) an example of belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist; (c.) an example of Christians saying that communion isn't even valid unless it's done by "the bishop, or one to whom he entrusts it"; and various other Catholic-y ideas which contradict modern Protestantism. So, we can see how those four questions, once the answers are given, make the Protestant necessarily uncomfortable with keeping the 27-book New Testament canon he has in his Bible. But what is he to do, then? Regard his New Testament as open to debate, possibly erroneous? In that case, his reliance on "Sola Scriptura" becomes a reliance on "Sola I-Don't-Know-What-A"...not a very secure foundation! It seems he's better off if he accepts that the Early Christians from whom he gets a witness to the proper canon are mostly, if not entirely, orthodox and faithful, not big heretics. That way, he gets to keep his Bible! But in that case, he needs to accept their other views, and will swiftly have "one foot in the Tiber." I hope that clarifies things.

Dr Ortlund is a special case, In the ground scheme of things even the doctrine he agrees where there in early days of Christianity he does not live by. Example he favours Orthodox ecclesiology over Catholic's yet his present ecclesiology bears no resemblance to Orthodox ecclesiology. His approach is really to raise as much objection as possible to the Catholic claims and give no positive case for his own position. Just like you said he begins from the wrong notion that his position equal the early church position without giving a historical evidence Of that. So really I have become impatient listening to him because at the end he is no different from the other people who are not really into the early church. If his position is always raising objections almost like he his job is to try as much as he can to raise doubts in people's faith without offering cogent argument for his position.

Whet exactly made you think that Gavin Ortlund has a "Protestant until proven Catholic" approach ?

@@chukwurahsomadina2897 He has no positive cases in his videos ?? Maybe you need more patience in listening to opposing views.

@@commencater Pretty much everything. One example is his conversation with Joe Hershmeyer on the papacy. And Joe specifically calls him out on it, and uses the exact same phrase.

As a philosophy major, it doesn't. It depends on what the null hypothesis is. Otherwise, you get into shouting matches where someone says "I just don't think the moon is made of cheese like you're claiming" or "I'm not convinced JFK Jr is going to come back from the dead to support Trump". Suddenly the interlocuter says "well, now you've made a claim too! Prove it! He who asserts must prove!" And that's junior-high logic. We're not trying to settle who has to prove what by "who started it", we're trying to find truth. No matter who started it, the person taking the null hypothesis has nothing to prove no matter how they phrase it. The position prior to any evidence, the null hypothesis, is X is not the case. The burden of proof lies on the person trying to overturn that. This is how it works in court. We assume innocent, not guilt. Guilt must be proved. This is how it works in designing rocket boosters. We assume they're not safe for human use, until we have evidence that they are. The burden of proof doesn't shift according to how the convo starts. "Oh well, you said they're not safe and can't prove it, so I'm allowed to think they are safe without giving evidence!" No. That's not how logic works. The null hypothesis is any vaccine doesn't work, until we know it does. The null hypothesis is that Peter wasn't bishop of Rome, until we have evidence he was.

@@stephengalanis That's how it's done legally. He who asserts must prove. If you assert that there's a dragon, then u have to prove it. Not rocket science.

@@jarrod2276 Yes, and in Sagan's analogy, the unfalsifiable dragon-in-my-garage correlates to a god claim. The person who says "I believe there is no dragon" has no burden of proof regardless of who started it, or how it's phrased. Likewise on the god question, the null hypothesis is there are no gods. That is the position before evidence. The person who takes that position, however they phrase it, does not have a burden to prove it. But I'm not sure that with you simplified understanding you'd accept that. Indeed, I think the whole point is to give people holding unfalsifiable claims an out.

Burden of proof is idiotic. One makes a claim and if another has an issue with it.....then the other is the one who has to do the research to verify the claim. Or not Burden of proof is just a debate tactic that kids use

I'm not sure that there is no difference between defaulting to 'mere Christian' verses 'protestant', because being Protestant brings in more groundwork that determines where we even where we draw the base lines for either 'mere Christian' or 'protestant'. For example, if I believe that a being created our world, and that being raised Jesus, the Christ, from the dead; am I a Christian if I believe that Jesus was only a prophet testifying to God, but was not God himself as a Muslim does, am I still a Christian? If I believe that Jesus was god, but I believe the father is also a god, but they are not the same god. And for that matter, another god created the father god, and potentially any number of other gods, and was created by another god who created any other potential number of gods. But I believed that the God the Father is the only god to be worshiped, as the LDS church does, am I still a Christian? Or if I believe that there is only one Creator God, and I also believe that Jesus Christ, his only son, is also one and the same being as God, and was raised by the dead as God, but I do not believe that any of the books of the Old or New Testament of the Bible are without error and I am ready to challenge and reject anything else you believe to be true about God, is this still enough that you would consider it to truly 'Christian' and within the realm of the modern 'Christian' who is not 'Protestant' because they aren't an active reformer, but merely exists apart from the Catholic Church.

There you go atheist , same arguments.

@@ericcarreno then the atheist is right.

@@Justas399 no! Objective truth is not negotiable. Your driver point of view makes your reality.

@@ericcarreno so you don’t think atheist can tell the truth?

@Zachary Trent Here is the problem with papal claims: 1- Peter never claimed to be the supreme leader of the entire church. 2- The apostles never claimed he was the supreme leader of the church. 3- The papacy (supreme bishop leader of the entire church) is never mentioned as a church office in any of the offices of the church described in the New Testament. See I Corinthians 12:28-29; Ephesians 2:20-21, 3:11; I Timothy 3:1-13 and Titus 1:5-9 4- ..."Was there a Bishop of Rome in the First Century?"...the available evidence indicates that the church in Rome was led by a college of presbyters, rather than by a single bishop, for at least several decades of the second century (Sullivan F.A. From Apostles to Bishops: the development of the episcopacy in the early church. Newman Press, Mahwah (NJ), 2001, p. 80,221-222). -Catholic scholar. 5- Roman Catholic scholar Richard P. McBrien concedes, “from the New Testament record alone, we have no basis for positing a line of succession from Peter through subsequent bishops of Rome” (Richard P. McBrien, Catholicism: Completely Revised& Updated, [HarperCollins, 1994], p. 753).

Yes, but when the Apostles received the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, Peter preached to the crowd, saying, "Believe and be baptized..."

When you say "one and only Catholic Church" do you mean the churches that are loyal to Pope Francis and follow his leadership without question?

Sounds like you're saying God bless all the world churches🤔

@Sanctus Paulus I've heard from some prominent Catholic figures that Pope Francis is heretical. How can a church be loyal to a heretic while not being heretical itself?

@Sanctus Paulus also, I'm curious to know why you say the Protestant faction of Christianity is heretical.

@Sanctus Paulus "the authority of the Catholic Church" um OK ... What about God's authority? I guess church authority is paramount in your view. Also, you mention "the importance of Mary" etc... by "importance" you mean the Catholic rite of idolatry - let's be honest.

But what gives you the authority to determine that a book fulfills your standards and thus is Scriptural? I know a Lutheran pastor who claims, basing himself on Luther, that, while he accepts the Epistle of St James as Scripture, he accepts as Christian even people who don’t. You haven’t clearly articulated what an irreconcilable error is and how you have the authority to determine such a thing. Additionally, any book without irreconcilable error to the rest of Scripture could be considered Cañon on your view. For example, the First Epistle of St Clement, the Didache, or even the Catechism of the Catholic Church. What restrains any good and wholesome book which doesn’t have irreconcilable disagreements with the rest of Scripture from being considered such?

@@jmjaquinas7298 Who gave your church authority?

@@Justas399 Jesus Christ. He promised the gates of Hell would never prevail against her and the Holy Spirit would guide her “into all Truth.”

@@jmjaquinas7298 Since the gates of hell have prevailed against the catholic church then that church is not of Christ.

@@Justas399 How do you figure the gates of Hell have prevailed?

Sorry zero evidence

@@Wgaither1 Get lost, the father of blasphemers, liars and fruads, just happens to be your pater.

@@deusimperator I’m not feeling the love

@@Wgaither1 A blasphemous pile of 💩 will feel no love. No one likes a turd stuck to their shoe.

Fair enough! I happen to have been a Southern Baptist (or, occasionally, attending a non-denom or "Bible" church that was functionally a Baptist church in all but name) from age zero to age 35. I only became a Catholic because certain questions arose that I couldn't answer sensibly apart from digging into the writings of the Christians fo the first four centuries. I discovered some unexpected historical details dealing with the canon of the New Testament, the very-pope-like behavior of the Bishops of Rome starting before the last Apostle even died, and the insistence of the earliest Christians that the Eucharist did not merely symbolize, but somehow actually WAS, the "Body and Blood of Jesus which hung on the cross for our sins." So, I followed up on all of that, and wound up a Catholic. But I loved my Baptist upbringing. Those folks taught me to love Jesus -- and I retain that today. Those folks taught me to know the Bible -- and I retain that today. Those folks taught me to pray and to dedicate some time each day to the Lord, and I retain that today (although then and now I'm distractible and inconsistent...the Lord "ain't done with me yet"). Those folks taught me to love praising God in music, and I spent years as a church musician as a result. Those folks taught me to love and value The Truth, with a capital "T"...and that, honestly, was why I spent four years' effort in Bible study and Mishnah-study and Patristics-study, and wound up becoming Catholic in spite of some uncomfortable family situations and strained friendships: The Truth matters. None of that is meant to obligate you, Rosaline! (Just telling my story, as I see it.) But I wanted you to know that, although I'm a Catholic now, and thus think my Baptist Sunday School teachers and pastors were missing some important details, I don't hold that against them. (I don't hold it against ME, either, since I agreed with them for decades!) I love and value my Baptist upbringing. It was God's tool for showing me so much profound love and mercy and blessing. So in that way, I TOTALLY get where you're coming from. All the best, -- CW

@@cw-on-yt What questions arose?

@@DrGero15: That'll be a long story and a long list, but I'll try to abbreviate somewhat. Topic #1 - A married man I know got involved with another woman not his wife, and eventually moved out, abandoning his wife. His wife attempted the Matthew 18 process of calling him to repentance: individually, then 2-3 witnesses, then "take it to the church" (where the latter, in Baptist ecclesiology, meant the church he and his wife had always attended). He made excuses for his actions, undergirded by some novel doctrinal claims. The leadership of his church was working its way through the Matthew 18 process, but he began attending another church along with the other woman. He continued using money from his wife's accounts, however. To prevent that, his wife initiated civil divorce proceedings. When those were complete, the man married the other woman, in the new church, officiated by the pastor of the new church. They personally helped distribute Holy Communion to those who attended the wedding ceremony. The new church is _not_ what I'd regard to be a "liberal" church, but a rather "conservative" and Bible-oriented one; yet, events played out as I've described. Many questions arise from this episode: Q1. The Bible forbids remarriage while a Christian spouse yet lives; if separated the couple must "remain as they are" or else "be reconciled," and marriage to another is "adultery." Why then was this ceremony even permitted to happen at a Bible-believing church? Q2. Ought persons in such circumstances be serving as (temporary) ministers of the elements of the Lord's Supper/Communion? Q3. In what fashion does such a second union mysteriously reference Christ and His Church? Does Christ get tired of His "Bride" and leave her for another? Q4. Most importantly, why did the Matthew 18 process "fail?" I don't just mean why did the man ignore it; that much is predicted as a possibility in Matthew 18 ("if he refuses to listen even to the church"). But I mean, how is it that this dire option of excommunication/disfellowshipping in Church Discipline, which 1 Corinthians 5 regards as "turning [the sinner] bodily over to Satan [!] so that his soul might be saved," is so... _toothless?_ It isn't that the man was removed from the church; it's that he _wasn't_ and actually _couldn't be_ since he can just attend any other church with perfect ease. Jesus gave us the Matthew 18 process; can it really be that _God Incarnate_ didn't anticipate denominations having separate, independent judicial systems? Topic #2 - I was raised in Baptist churches, or non-denom churches with essentially Baptist-Congregationalist ecclesiology. But I also served as a musician and bandleader in a conservative Methodist church for a while, and during this period, my first children were born. This led to a dilemma: My upbringing had led me to expect a sort of "baby dedication" ceremony, but in the Methodist church, babies were _baptized._ Was this okay? What was right for _my_ children? My approach, learned from my Baptist forebears, was to _go to the Bible_ for the answer: But I quickly found that both the Methodists and the Baptists had their own favorite passages supporting their respective traditions' practices of baptism. I concluded that, on this topic, the Biblical evidence was _insufficiently clear_ to resolve the matter with much certainty. Q1. Why wasn't my Bible-trusting approach for resolving a doctrinal dispute _working?_ Q2. I'm not the _smartest_ person around, but I'm a quick study and well-read for a layman, with a penchant for logical analysis. If _I_ couldn't figure out how Christianity was meant to be practiced on such a basic question, what hope was there for someone _less naturally inclined_ towards such puzzles? Did _every Christian dad in history_ require a seminary degree to figure out whether his kids should be baptized? Would even seminary degrees help? ...since there are smart Baptist and Methodist pastors, with doctorates, who nevertheless don't agree? #3 - I spent a lot of time interacting with persons who held that there was nothing intrinsically or even situationally immoral about two men engaging in mutually-masturbatory acts to achieve sexual gratification, and who even felt this was a basis for Christian churches being morally-obligated to officiate ceremonies to "marry" them. The folks who argued for this had alternative interpretations of the Biblical passages that seem, on their face, to strongly repudiate such ideas. They argued that what Paul had in mind was "temple prostitution" or "pederasty" or things of that kind, and that such prohibitions (nay, condemnations) couldn't sensibly be extended to consensual affectionate relationships. Q1. This sounded like they were pulling a fast one, but perhaps that was my own prior cultural bias talking...and I wanted to be open to the Truth, wherever it led. So, how ought I decide whether to accept these alternative interpretations? In wrestling with these questions, it occurred to me that _history could help._ The apostles had disciples, some of whom they installed in positions of church leadership. After the death of the last apostle, these disciples selected and trained yet more faithful persons to succeed them at their ministries, and so on. If _these first few generations_ of Christian leaders -- trained in Christianity by Paul and John and Peter and the like -- made any relevant comments on baptism, sexual morality, remarriage, etc., then I could use these comments to determine what _they_ thought that the Bible was saying...or (even apart from the Bible) what it was the apostles had taught. So I started reading what's called "The Early Church Fathers." I quickly concluded that the arguments in favor of lax sexual morality was totally unsupportable. These early Christians were, if anything, more stern about sexual matters than any Christian I'd yet encountered. Some of them found it permissible, but a tad disappointing, if _even widowers_ remarried. The phrase "husbands of one wife" which I'd presumed to be a prohibition on polygamy turned out to be a prohibition on _serial divorce and remarriage_ (polygamy having already vanished from common practice centuries earlier). And while there were European nobles who openly flouted the rules on marriage, and other marriages that were declared "null" for various reasons, it looked very much like _remarriage after divorce_ was excommunicable until it was revived in Calvin's Geneva in the 16th century! I also concluded that infant baptism was a Christian normal practice. This much was clear once I discovered a dispute about baptism in the early church: People were asking whether, _since baptism was the Christian equivalent of Old Covenant circumcision,_ were parents required to wait "until the eighth day" to baptize their babies, or, couldn't they baptize _immediately_ if the infant seemed in danger of death? "Well," I reasoned, "if _that's_ what they were quarreling about, it's pretty clear that a principle claiming Only Adults Can Be Baptized wasn't even on anyone's mind." I also discovered that when these early Christians were trying to settle disputes about what the Christian faith required, they weren't always _able_ to use my "default Baptist approach" of "looking it up in the Bible," for the simple reason that they (a.) might be unable to read, (b.) might not have all the books of the Bible available in a language they knew, and (c.) might not know which books _belonged_ in the Bible to begin with! They were thus forced to rely on "what was handed down from the apostles to their own _episkopoi,_ [i.e., bishops]" to know the content of the Christian faith. And while most churches had most New Testament documents by 200 AD, it took until 370 AD or thereabouts before all Christians could be certain that books like James, 2 Peter, Jude, Revelation, and Hebrews were authentically part of the Bible! Oddly, it was the decisions of councils and bishops between 370 AD and 400 AD which seemed to settle the matter of the New Testament canon. (I call it "odd" because it seemed not to fit with the presumptions of my Baptist upbringing.) In 372, the hero of the Council of Nicaea, Athanasius, was the first known Christian writer to explicitly standardize the same New Testament canon we use today. In the Synod of Rome (380-ish), Damasus I, the bishop of Rome, said the same. In 391 and 393, two North African councils (Carthage and Hippo) said the same. And then suddenly, the matter seemed settled throughout the Christian world...even in Corinth, where they'd been habitually reading the letter of Clement of Rome in their liturgies alongside the other New Testament epistles, as if it were scripture. Even they, with that venerable tradition, now relegated that letter to the category of "orthodox devotional reading, but not Holy Writ." (Note: In all of the above items, I have abbreviated and simplified. With each conclusion, I considered counterarguments, and counter-counterarguments. I'm trying to answer your question about "what questions arose?" and where those questions led me, not give an exhaustive defense of final conclusions which sometimes took years to settle!) @Dr. Decapod, these weren't the only questions, but they prominently got me started down the direction of trying to understand ancient Christianity and what the early Christians understood the faith to be...and, whether that form of Christianity might be able to settle questions more _authoritatively_ and by more _characteristically biblical means_ than the Christianity of my modern experience. I hope this answers your question adequately!

@@cw-on-yt That is a very detailed answer! Thanks! Did you have any questions/concerns about the Catholic church? How were they answered? Thanks! I'd also like to hear any other questions that came up as a Baptist if you have the time to write them. Thanks for all your time and attention.

@@DrGero15: Oh, I had questions about the Catholic Church, for certain. The first set can largely be summed up as: "Apparently Catholic Christianity teaches something different than my southern-U.S. form of Baptist Christianity, or the Methodism and Presbyterianism that I'm most familiar with outside Baptist-ism. Alright: What _are_ those differences, and what reasons do (informed) Catholics give for believing the Catholic view is correct?" So that naturally led to topics like The Priesthood, the Three Degrees Of The (One) Sacrament of Holy Orders, The Apostolic Succession, The Magisterium, Ecumenical Councils, The Petrine Succession, The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, Baptismal Regeneration, How To Interpret Paul on Justification, Prayers for the Dead, Purgatory, the Intercession of the Saints, the additional Hyperdulia (highest veneration) given to Mary, the Marian Dogmas, and (since I'm a married man) the Catholic teaching on Artificial Contraception. Of those, I found most of them intelligible, reasonably well-defended and relatively congenial, and the counterarguments given by various Protestant sources to be unconvincing. (Some of them, embarrassingly so.) In particular, the Catholic view made much more sense of the problem of fallen-away Christians than the Once-Saved Always-Saved view of my upbringing. There were exceptions, however. The teaching on Artificial Contraception was utterly unintelligible to me until someone sent me to learn the fundamentals of Natural Law Ethics in the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition. I'd been raised in a "God said it, I believe it, that settles it" tradition where "God said it" was shorthand for "it's one of the things stated pretty plainly in the Bible." This is (I still think) pretty good as a declaration of loyalty to God, and trust in Him; and it even included the notion that God's laws aren't arbitrary but exist for our good (like "manufacturer's operating instructions" for the human machine). But what it _doesn't_ do is explain the _rational basis_ of ethics, or offer any hint at how one could _derive the same moral laws_ from first principles, by careful reasoning. I had never, _ever_ heard the word "telos" in all my upbringing. Once I learned what "telos" was and its role in Natural Law Ethics, and my brain got over the novelty of the idea that you _can,_ after all, derive an "ought" from an "is," I began to see the common thread in God's moral laws. _Eventually_ I began to see how the Catholic teaching on Artificial Contraception _probably was true,_ and by that time I'd become so convinced by a few dozen other teachings from the Catholic Church that I recognized the pattern: "This Is An Unusually Reliable Source." So I opted to trust the Church's teaching on faith -- not _divine faith_ exactly; but in recognition of the Church's reliability in other areas. After my own marital practice changed and a few years went by, the remainder of my reservations vanished. (I'm not sure I would have gotten there without that step of willingness-to-trust, though: One's reason can be convinced, but that's not the same as one's will being pliable.) Marian Devotion was another sticking point, but not for logical reasons. It was rather a cultural and aesthetic difficulty: My own culture does not address Presidents, Magistrates, Judges, Feudal Lords, etc., in particularly flowery terms. The Medievals did, and more so in Italy and France than in Ireland and England, which are the sources of my own cultural heritage. My own culture does not address women much differently from men, apart from increased caution about vulgar language. And, even among my own culture, I'm a bit more -- how to put it? "Vulcan," perhaps? -- than the norm. The Medievals waxed poetic in addressing females, producing the French _chanson_ and the troubadours. Thus the habitual language used by the Medievals towards the _wife_ or _mother_ of nobility (let alone royalty!) was what _my_ culture would call "language due only to God," and yet they thought nothing of it, and would have regarded my own habitual address to my own mother, whom I love, as rude, uncultured, and cold! So, when I read the texts of Marian prayers -- not so much the _Ave Maria_ which is just a lot of Bible-quoting, but stuff like the _Hail Holy Queen_ or anything from Louis de Montfort -- it basically "creeped me out." I didn't habitually express my love for Jesus Christ so gushily as _that,_ and He's God, my Savior, and the Emperor of the Universe! I found that I was forced to ask, "Okay, if I were a Medieval Frenchman, how would I ask the Emperor's Mom -- seated at the right hand of her Son, and clad in some hyper-magnificent cosmic version of The Imperial Jewels -- to do me the personal favor of imploring her Son for assistance on my behalf?" And I realized, _yeah,_ it'd quite naturally look like Louis de Montfort's gushing. But I was raised where and when I was raised. So, when I offer sincere devotion to any saint, it _just won't_ be that of a Medieval Frenchman. I'm afraid Our Lady -- and in all her charity, I'm sure she understands! -- will have to "translate" from my relatively pallid and apollonian modes of expression, into whatever's most-natural for her, as a Jewish Mom raised in 1st century Judea! Anyway, those were some highlights in my "first set" of questions. The "second set" came later, as I began to visit Catholic parishes and found them to be, often, a "mixed bag." Sometimes there were faithful, devout, wise, kind priests. Sometimes there were chain-smoking near-atheists doing the clerical version of "collecting pension." Sometimes the music was sublime; sometimes it was _atrocious._ (In my Protestant upbringing and early adulthood, I spent years as a church musician and, at a local-and-low level, as a touring performing artist, songwriter, bandleader, and arranger. Once, a Catholic who was aware of this was beside me in the pews as some particularly bad music assaulted us. I said nothing, but she looked sidelong at my face and burst into suppressed laughter; apparently I looked as miserable and nauseated as I felt!) Sometimes the people were friendly; other times they were off-putting. Sometimes the liturgy was reverent; other times it reminded me of the ill-trained soldiers in the Lone Islands in C.S. Lewis' _Voyage of the Dawn Treader:_ "Everything done in a slovenly and disgraceful manner." So this led to the "second set" of questions, which can all be summed up as: "If, as I have come to suspect, the Catholic Church IS what she claims, and thus has the authority and spiritual resources she claims to have...why on _earth_ doesn't she _make use of them_ to correct some of these problems?" I found that church history bore witness to this pattern, however: The Church would spend time _failing_ to implement disciplinary practices against the wayward, and winceworthy laxity followed. But thereafter, voices of reform -- quite apart from the episcopacy, but remaining faithful to the bishops nonetheless -- would start _converting hearts,_ and when these _converted hearts_ produced a new generation of more-faithful clergy, _they_ would finally implement discipline of the wayward. The turnaround time was often more than a century. So I realized there was no guarantee that I would be born into a period where everything was perfectly "ship-shape" in the Church! ...if any such period had ever happened, which seemed doubtful! In the end, I am _able_ to find holiness and to be "fed" (and what's more, nothing prevents me from _being_ holy and _feeding others_ who need it). All the other things that make a person wince are, as it were, "par for the course." If such problems are escaped by Protestants (and they aren't usually) it's only when a church is relatively new and full of Founders-Generation Entrepreneurial Enthusiasm. But just you give them a couple of thousand years' cultural shifts (if they can last that long!) and look again: If a church has _humans_ in it, it'll always be "a mixed bag." Anyway, my second set of questions was largely around _those_ kinds of topics, once my first set had been answered. I hope you find all that useful! ...and it'll have to do, for tonight. Best to you, CW

You will do better next time Evan. Keep it up !

Best response here. I hated his argument #1 because it has a sneaky premise which is that not being willing to argue for Protestant positions is normal or common. Insofar as it's common, it's about as common as a Catholic just asserting that we're schismatics and/or follow Martin Luther blindly; it's a criticism of the worst element. I'd argue that while he isn't wrong about Protestants needing to make positive arguments for their positions (that's just obviously true), it actually is fair to assume that a "mere" Christian is more like a Protestant than a Catholic by default. Our standard is the Bible, not the Bible plus councils plus papal bulls plus tradition plus the Catechism plus all other officially approved church teaching; a "mere Christian" only believes in a little of the Bible, so his or her set of beliefs most likely approximates a Protestant belief set.

Huh?

@@hayatelaguna7599 It's not at all historically or scientifically supported that atheism is the default. Maybe imagine there's a question mark after the first sentence. I was just commenting on how laughable that is.

I think you should put quotation marks, or else people may think it is you making that claim. :)

It cannot be scientifically proven. It is a philosophical claim. I am assuming you don't think Trent believed that. It is a common assumption of many new Atheists.

@@hayatelaguna7599 He is quoting what atheists say. :) Atheism is NOT the default, because (1) babies experience the transcendent (see the book "Born Believers" by Justin Barrett) and (2) if anything agnosticism would be the default, but you would then still have to decide whether atheist-leaning or theist-leaning agnosticism should be chosen, and pascals wager makes it obvious that theist-leaning agnosticism is the way to go for the religion that has the most amount of evidence (Christianity).

Id like to find one of these churches. Do you believe Charismatics are heretics? I'm one and I'm confused at the hostility. Ecumenism does need to happen and I think the Charismatic Christians are more fertile than your think.

What couldn't you gain from switching from protestantism to catholicism?

Some Lutherans read them as well. I'm a member of the Anglican Church in North America and they are actually prescribed reading included in the daily office along with the rest of the Bible every church year. The official position though is they are not used for any doctrinal teaching.

What eveidence is there that the council of Jamnia even happened

@@damoncoburn / Anglicans & Lutherans every time closer! Huh?

Ecumenism is coming to a head