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I Don't Understand Christianity!!
SmallLady
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I have a question that stems from the American Presidency thread, it derailed for a couple pages about how Mormons are not, or half Christians, then all these OTHER types of Christians or how catholics are Christians.
and i don't get it
so anybody care to explain or have a discussion on all the different flavours of Christianity and how they are different and why? maybe even how they view each other?
and i don't get it
so anybody care to explain or have a discussion on all the different flavours of Christianity and how they are different and why? maybe even how they view each other?
"we're just doing what smalllady told us to do" - @Heels
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not what the beliefs are and how that makes them different >_<
and I'll admit. I was also kinda hoping for some witty commentary.
Read a book. I'm sorry to be so blunt but you're basically asking us to explain the last two thousand years of history of the Western world to you.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
All Christian denominations believe essentially the same thing, with the differences being in the rules, and how they practice their faith.
Are you intentionally tricking the OP, or do you just know nothing about the Reformation?
This is almost completely wrong. Please stop talking.
OP, do not listen to Tubular lest you get even more confused.
So I'm not typing that all up again. Go to wikipedia for christ's sake.
Well I'll admit that I don't know much about non-Catholic branches, and if someone knows more, they're welcome to answer him.
The criticism doesn't like in your knowledge about the denominations but your idea of how they came about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Reformation
OP (and Tubular), read or at least skim this.
This made me laugh
Anyway, while this could be an interesting topic this thread is doomed. Overly broad opening and before a page is even up full of nonsense.
Hmm. I stand corrected.
Now to remember who misinformed me and go ask them what the hell they were thinking.
hey, look, more distortion on the internet! Really?
article of faith 8
"we believe the bible to be the word of god as far as it is translated correctly we also believe the book of mormon o be the word of god"
try www.mormon.org
Arch,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_goGR39m2k
Mormonism, while often placed under the larger umbrella of Christianity, is a whole nother beast unto itself, thanks to the magical gold tablets known as the Book of Mormon. Look up some of what they believe---it's quite entertaining. The whole "spirit children" and "getting your own planet" thing is odd, but it's the special underwear that I always found strangest of all.
Touche :P
Keep it coming, i hope your ready to read thesis long explanations. I just spent two years talking to others of different religions, im pretty good as explaining our beliefs, ( please dont try to tell me what i believe, you'll just get it wrong, most likely on purpose, since that is the goal of most anti's)
Arch,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_goGR39m2k
Summarizing and skipping a lot of details, also feel free to correct me if I get something major wrong:
By the time things settled down after the fall of Rome, ie the Dark Ages, the Catholic church had managed to basically establish a monoploy on Christianity in Christendom (Europe). Although some some parts were a bit wierder than others, like the Irish catholics.
IIRC, the eastern part of the Roman Empire that became the Byzantines had a seperate church which had some dissagreaments with the Vatican about idolatry and some other stuff, and this resulted in the Eastern Orthodox branch.
They maintaned this stauts quo for a pretty long time. Then various socio-economic forces converged behind Martin Luther to cause the Reformation and the Protestant movement. Basically they favored a personal relationship to Jesus and God over one mediated and run by the priesthood. This is best embodied in the creation of lay-language translations of the Bible.
However, because this new approach lacked central authority, that being the whole point, it quickly turned into fifty bajillion individual creeds. Calvinists, Baptists, Puritans, etc. It also resulted in a couple dozen wars.
And then that whole thing with Henry and the Anglican church happened.
A couple hundred years later, some guy in New England comes up with a new testament about Jesus teaching the Native Americans or some such and it somehow catches and that creates the Mormons.
Right, so if the bible contradicts the book of mormon, which one is correct?
Nowadays yes. There was a time, for several hundred years in fact, when there were real fundamental questions still very much up in the air among Christians. Whether the trinity is bullshit. Whether jesus was even divine at all. Whether he died on the cross or whether his "sacrifice" involved suffering. Whether St. John of Patmos was just a fucked up crazy hermit wacked out on shrooms (note to protestants: this was essentially the view of Martin Luther). Whether the gospels are Divine Scripture or just what the great-grandchildren of the people described happened to remember and write down. The validity of personal revelation vs. tradition.
On all of these questions there were differing views in various communities throughout the roman world. Even in Rome itself there was in the 2nd century a community of "gnostics" (the word gnostic is about as precise as the word "christian" is today. it covers a lot of different beliefs) among the worshipers of the bishop of Rome.
Nearly all of this diversity later died out of course. And by "died out" I mean was ruthlessly stamped out by one particular christian sect who gained Imperial roman favor. More Christians died persecuted at the hands of their fellows then ever were at those of the pagan Romans.
Several discoveries in the last hundred years have started to shed light on just how divided the early Christian world was. The single most important find was of course at Nag Hamadi but there have been many. Scholars today have progressed to the point, thanks to improvements in linguistics and archeology and science in general, where we probably know more about the early church than anyone has for more than 1500 years.
I mean it, people who simply follow the word of god are some of the more devoted christians I know, and generally are pretty against the whole idea of denominations.
One they dont, two, if the Bible contradicts itself, THEN WHAT? I can, and will go into an indepth coverage of the Great Apostasy, which basically explains how christianity became the apostate form that is in. Which will show how the teachings of Christ had been maniuplated and distorted ever since his ascencion which eventually led to the establishment of the Catholic Church, some 300 or so years after the church that christ established fell, during which time doctrine was distorted so by the time the catholic church even emerged, it only resembled what christ originally taught. Also, to claim that the bible contains anything near all of god's revealed word is just ignorance, you really think that after 34 years of life, 4 years of ministering, that what is contained in the gospels is the only thing that Jesus ever taught or said? The word bible comes from latin which means library, kind of like biblioteca in spanish. It is a collection of books, put together by the catholic church, but excludes many writings that were even mentioned in the Bible. Basically the corrupt priests of the catholic church, excluded them, and what we were left with is the bible.
Arch,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_goGR39m2k
33AD-ish - 300AD - Christians were persecuted and killed in Rome. Romans don't like people who say that there's an authority above the Emperor.
300AD - 400AD - Constantine is in power in Rome. He's Christian and he basically says "Hey hey Jesus is OK." A side effect of this is that he elevates the Pope, previously a mostly religious leader, to a political leader as well.
400-ish AD - 1000 AD - Christianity spreads throughout Europe, becomes dominant religion through most of Europe and a lot of Western Asia.
1000 AD - 1100 AD - The Western Christians (who speak Latin and believe in the dominant authority of the Pope) piss off the Eastern Christians (who speak Greek) by well, asserting the universal dominant authority of the Pope. The Eastern Christians say "fuck you, keep your papal bullshit in Rome where it belongs" and go form Eastern Orthodoxy, while the Western Christians form the Roman Catholic Church.
1100 AD - 1400 AD - Western Christians worship under the authority of the Church. Illiteracy is rampant but that's okay because the only way to get a book is to have a monk copy it by hand, so books are stupidly expensive. If you want to understand the Bible, you have to get a clergyman to explain it to you. He might explain it to you, he might just try to sell you something.
1439 AD - The printing press is invented. Like all good forms of media, it's first used for pornography. Then it's used for the Bible. Funny how things keeps happening that way.
1439 AD - 1600 ADish - People learn to read the Bible all on their lonesome without the Church telling them what to think. Shock, horror. Other people start translating the Bible into vernacular languages like English and German. Shock! Horror! Some people decide that they don't like the way the Roman Catholics have been teaching the Bible and start to get all growly and grumbly about the arrogance and greed of the Vatican. Shock! Horror! Martin Luther tells the Pope to go piss off, the Pope tells him to go piss off, so he does, lives in a castle for a few years, and founds Protestantism. King Henry VIII and his lackeys say, "Hey, we don't like that Martin Luther guy much, but if he can tell the Pope to piss off, then so can we!" and the Anglican Church is born.
After that things get all cattywompus because now anybody who thinks they can found a church goes off and does so and you end up with Calvinists and Baptists and Mormons and Puritans and so forth, not necessarily in that order.
Today, you can roughly categorize all Christian denominations as Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Protestant. Protestants, because they trace their lineage back to Martin Luther, emphasize personal knowledge of the Bible and of God without much central authority, consequently they're the most fractured and varied. There are more Protestant churches and doctrines and sects than any of us could possibly remember by name.
Most Christian sects differ on one or more of the following elements of doctrine:
- The authority of the Pope. Some believe that the Pope has religious authority over Roman Catholics only, some believe that he has authority over all Christians, some believe that he has no authority at all. This one is the biggie and is the reason behind most of the big Christian splits in history.
- The nature of salvation. Catholics believe that the best (but not necessarily only) path to salvation is through the Church, Protestants believe that the only path to salvation is through Christ. Whatever the hell that means (and it means different things for different people).
- The divinity of Jesus. Oh, all modern Christians believe that Jesus was divine. But some believe that he is on equal footing divinity-wise with God, some believe that he is a part of God (as in the holy trinity), some believe that he was divine but not really quite at God's level, more like a little below and to the right.
- Whether or not there is a holy trinity or a holy spirit.
- Whether to read the Bible literally as a historical account or figuratively as a work of myth and legend. Or if different parts are literal, which parts.
- What the hell the book of Revelations (and Daniel and other end-of-the-world prophecies) means. Some believe that it is a literal account of what'll happen when the whole world goes up in flames, others believe that it is figurative, and others believe that it is a poetic account of what happens to an individual soul at bodily death. Baptists are fond of reading this part pretty literally.
- Belief in the authority of various prophets after Jesus. Specifically, Mormons believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet while other Christians believe that he was just a nutball.
I think I've pretty much covered the major points. For anything else... well, I'm pretty sure there's a Christianity for Dummies book somewhere.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
The holy ghost is considered the 3rd member of the god head, that is, 3 seperate beings, (God the father, the son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost) who are unified in purpose but not substance or matter. Just like a football team all has the same purpose.
Every single one of us is a spirit, before this life, we lived with our heavenly father as spirit children. At this point only God the father had a body of Flesh and bones ( though his is different than ours at this point, having been ressurected his body is glorifed and not subject to the fall like ours), Jesus did not, since he was yet to be born into a body of flesh and bones like the rest of us. a main part of the creation and purpose of the plan of salvation was so that we could recieve bodies of flesh and bone. The creation happened, man was on the Earth, and eventually Jesus was born, so now he also has a body of flesh and bones. The Holy Ghost is yet to recieve a body of flesh and bones, it is his purpose as a spirit, to witness to us on earth of the divinity of Christ. That is why someone can recieve the gift of the Holy Ghost, it is to have his companionship with you at all times, literally putting you in the prescence of god, seeing as how he is a member of the god head. thats it in short, but it is a huge subject to tackle. Also all the "christians" are going to hate me for what I just said, but I'm used to so called christians claiming that I am not.
Arch,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_goGR39m2k
Thanks!!!
So, for example,
Alma 7:10 And behold, he shall be born of Mary, at Jerusalem which is the cland of our forefathers, she being a virgin, a precious and chosen vessel, who shall be overshadowed and econceive by the power of the Holy Ghost, and bring forth a son, yea, even the Son of God
And
Matthew 2:1 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem.
Seem to say different things. But that's by the by.
You seem to be saying that the Bible isn't complete and has been tampered with (or at least not been collected honestly), wheras I assume the Book of Mormon hasn't had this corrupt influence from Catholic priests is that right?
Take any faith that could conceivably be linked to Christianity. Catholics, Mormons, American Baptists, Pentecostals, whatever.
The follower of that religion who volunteers at a soup kitchen because she wants to help the community? She's an example of that religion.
The preacher who tries to balance what the book says with what he learned at seminary and preaches the closest message to that balance that his congregation will be able to understand? He's an example of that religion.
The dude who goes to church once a week, cuts off somebody in the church parking lot, then goes home and doesn't think about religion for the next seven days? He's an example of that religion.
The woman who believes that it's worth smearing someone else's good name in order to shame people into living the way that she thinks they should, and in fact has so internalized it that she doesn't even give it a second thought? She's an example of that religion.
The guy who wants to pass legislation to make his religion the law, by violence if necessary? He's an example of that religion.
There is no core belief system. The Bible has been rewritten, revised, retranslated, and altered both deliberately and accidentally over the centuries. Some versions are closer to the original than others. None of them can claim to be the best. Nobody knows. Heck, even if you got the absolute words of Jesus on tape, there'd be questions about whether we should practice Jesus's literal words (what he actually said), what Jesus most likely meant when he said what he said, or what Jesus was trying to convey by saying what he did (which differs because Jesus was talking to people in language they could understand, so him differentiating between a good slave and a bad slave may not imply an endorsement of slavery). The first is the most restrictive and hardest to apply to daily life, while the last has the most room for human error given the difficulty of deciding what Jesus thought about stem-cell research when the stem cells were recovered from the cord-blood of a baby who was the result of in vitro fertilization.
From the very get-go, Christianity has been tied up in politics, starting with a retake on Jewish eschatology while trying not to tick off Rome and then working its way into Rome and then either igniting Crusades or arguing against new military technologies (it was a big bad sin for a Christian to use a crossbow on another Christian in warfare for awhile, although heathens were fair game) depending on which way the winds were blowing.
I love what I understand of Jesus's teachings, but any branch of modern religion is connected to Jesus in the same way that Dubya is a down-home country boy cowboy (despite being an upper-class former Yalie cheerleader) -- the words of the simple shepherd have been changed, edited, and twisted through politics so many times that the resulting organizations may be either good or bad, or most likely some combination of the two (or just depending on which church you go to), but no longer really tied to Jesus except as a branding package, a symbol that people can get behind.
I'm strictly an amateur in bible studies, so take all that with a huge grain of salt. My understanding, though, was that the seminaries kinda break down into the places where you learn about all that political stuff and then try to figure out a way to balance the truth and what their congregation is prepared to hear... and the places that will shout, "Uh sure yes but that's because God wanted it, go go go!" and teach people to cherry-pick Bible quotes as a debate tactic.
And ultimately, for me, it's less about historical accuracy than it is about hearing a message I want to hear, a message that challenges me to grow in the ways I think I ought to grow. Back in California, we went to a fantastic episcopal church -- pro-peace, middle-aged lesbian couple sitting in the front row and welcomed by everyone, Jesus as a teacher and source of hope and inspiration, charities and drives to help the less fortunate, all kinds of good stuff. I wish I could have taken that place up to Canada with us.
Generally, the BoM, since that one is supposed to be directly translated, and the KJV Bible (which is the one Mormons believe is the closest translation) has been filtered a few hundred times.
Edit: How about an extremely brief and vague history of Christianity?
First there was Jesus, he kind of started The Way, where people would follow his teachings and meet in each others homes to share bread and wine and tell stories from his day/the Bible later (which was written as early as 70 or so years after he was crucified). A bunch of Romans did not like this new sect of Judaism, so there was a good bunch of persecution and so the Way went underground. It gained popularity until it eventually was approved as a religion that could be openly practiced by Constantine with the Edict of Milan. Christianity became pretty damn popular, but there were some major differences in the Eastern and Western church. At first in both churches Priests could marry and all sorts of stuff, but the Western church buckled down on that and said no while the Eastern church said go for it. These difference culminated when the Western church added a few things to the creed without asking the Eastern church, and the Iconoclast controversy (stuff about icons). They split formally and excommunicated one another, becoming the Roman Catholic church and the Eastern Rite and Orthodox churches. And for a time things were alright, with momentary bursts of violence and such on top of the mutual excommunications, until the Crusades! The Islamic empire was huge and totally messing with pilgrims to the holy land (or so that was the excuse). After the first crusade or so, the Islamic empire happened to start attacking the Byzantine empire. Some Eastern bishops asked the Roman Catholic church for assistance, even offering to change their own doctrines and rejoin the Roman Catholics. The Roman guys said yea sure why not, and we sent a whole bunch of guys over there. Instead of helping, we kind of sacked Constantinople and ran off with a whole bunch of priceless relics and the like. This kind of pissed them off, but we killed most of them already. Blah blah blah Crusades blah...
THE BLACK PLAGUE! The black plague killed everybody, but especially clergymen and religious order people, because they kept helping the sick! Because of this, the church had to relax some of their standards for recruiting and education of their new clergy, resulting in superstitious priests who knew barely any more latin than their parish! This brought about a whole new era of corruption, simony,and pluralcy (having more than one diocese/church under you to collect tithes). This lasted a good 200 years until...
THE REFORMATION! Martin Luther, guy who was originally studying law, had an epiphany and joined the order of Saint Ann I think. He was really pissed off after he went to Rome and saw all of the corruption. He wrote these 95 theses stating everything he though sucked about the church, but mostly about the sale of indulgences. He never wanted to break from the church, but he was kind of forced to. Word from on high said that either he give up his words or be excommunicated! He said fuck it and broke off, this kind of opened him up to writing about EVERYTHING that bothered him. He was big on Scripture, didn't care about Tradition. After being excommunicated, the Pope got Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor) to try Luther and sentence him to death! Luckily Luther was smuggled out by his local Duke and went into hiding. He translated the Bible from Greek and Hebrew into German and released it to the public. That caused a lot of hubub. Lots of German peasants thought that he was teaching social equality rather than spiritual equality, causing them to rise up and overthrow nearby princes and such. He condemned this and suggested they be put down, a good 100000 died. He felt bad about this. Anyway a whole bunch of other guys thought it was an awesome idea and broke off, including Calvin and Zwingli and those freaky Anabaptists that kept preaching tolerance! I mean, who does that?
HENRY THE 8TH! Married to the wife of his brother after he kicked the bucket, was not his idea. Wife didn't give him any sons, and he wanted strong rulers. He asked the Pope to annul his marriage since she was his brother's wife first. Pope said no because he already wrote a dispensation making it not a sin for him to marry her! Henry is pissed. Originally he was totally anti-protestant, such that he earned the title Defender of the Faith. Then he wrote the act of supremacy and broke off from the church.
Soon after this the Catholic church went through their own counter-reformation cleaning up their act a bit. Fast forward many years! It's the 20th century now and everyone thinks the Catholic church is full of Socialists! That kind of dies down after a while. Fast forward again to the 1960s and Pope John XXIII. Originally meant to be a transitionary Pope because he was really freaking old and they were planning on him croaking within a year and not being able to do much, his first action was to announce a new council to totally update the church! Unfortunately he died soon into Vatican 2 but his successor Paul VI continued his work and rocked out an awesome council that brought the Catholic church to almost where it is now. After he died Pope John Paul I came about, he lived for a little while then died (very nice guy), then John Paul II! Everyone loved John Paul II, he's my favorite Catholic guy. He died a few years back and now we have Benedict XVI, who is pretty damn conservative but at least he hasn't burned anyone yet.
That's a bit of it, I'd be happy to expound on anything real interesting to you. By the way, I was raised a Roman Catholic.
Okay, why did the Catholic church move away from Latin services, mortification of the flesh, and pleniary indulgence (okay, I get this one, but the other two.) They got rid of most of what was cool about their religion and kind of de-elevated themselves down to the same bland flavors of Christianity the Reformation gave us.
Logical conclusion? Alma wasn't perfect. He had never been to the eastern hemisphere, 2, Bethleham is literally 5 miles away Jerusalem. You see how in my avatar is says I'm from olympia, well I'm not, i lied, im actually from Lacey, which is essentially just as close to olympia as Beth. was to Jeresulem. I just say Olympia because nobody knows where Lacey is, but everyone who has ever had 5th grade geography has memorized that Olympia is the capitol of Washington. Now Alma at this point is talking to a bunch of other people that have never been to the eastern hemisphere, all of them born and raised in the Americas, and many of them knew very little of it, but they had heard of Jerusalem. So is it not possible that he simply said Jerusalem so that they could understand a relative location of where Christ was to be born, where as if he had said Bethleham, they would have no idea where that was, it could be antarctica for all they knew, so again, he saved them confusion and got to the main point, which is the birth life and ATONEMENT of Jesus Christ, something you seem willing to negate in this part of scripture.
Arch,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_goGR39m2k
Well, the move away from Latin services was to better allow people to understand the actual lessons they were being taught. Prior to this, nobody knew what the hell actually was in the bible (at least Roman Catholics didn't know) and thus relied on the homily. The switch from Latin to vernacular was just one of many changes to the mass that was made. All of the changes were to bring people closer to God and involve them more in the mass, by allowing them to be Eucharistic ministers and all that.
Mortification of the flesh was phased out when people realized that straight physical pain wasn't a true sacrifice and that there was a better way to serve the lord and atone, by helping others. Mortification could be considered rather selfish, as nobody benefited from it other than yourself as a sick way of atonement. Helping other and suffering along with them is closer to the true meaning of atonement.
A..are you seriously claiming to know what Alma was thinking when he was writing down a prophecy of the coming of the Messiah? Because