So as a recent addition to this board I have read a lot of discussions and learned a lot about what I going to hence forth refer to as Catholicism. As a disclaimer, when I say Catholic, really I am referring to essentially all orthodoxy that subscribes to essentially the same beliefs. This is wrong terminology I have learned from reading y'all's discussions, but old habits die hard and all. Through my reading I have had several questions come to mind but not wanting to derail discussions I kept them to myself. Finally I decided to just start a thread for this conversation. So here are a few of my core questions to kick of discussion.
Full disclosure, as I can't recall if I posted on the GTKY thread, I was raised in a Methodist church, and since leaving home have been to both a non-denomination, and a few Baptist churches. I currently am an active member of a Baptist congregation, but have a bit more of a charismatic and "don't hate the gays or the poor/immigrants" than some Baptists or the SBC might be fully comfortable with. All this so you are aware of my background and bias going into this.
- 1) Reading the thread on the catholic reading list, I skimmed the book on heresies and was caught off guard when I saw Protestantism. So first question is do you truly view Protestantism collectively as a heresy, and if so are there any denominations you view as non-heretical?
- 2) With my limited knowledge of the catholic belief on baptism and salvation, combined with a few comments I have read on here I began wondering, do you view the salvation of a protestant to be in question? Here I mean one that has accepted the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross as payment for their sins and made Him Lord in their life.
- 3) Finally, while I understand that differences of theology are important distinctions, and often big enough to make a todo about, but my view has always been that if you confess Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior (assuming you believe in what I will call the core of who Christ is: divinity, humanity, resurrection, trinity, etc.) then you are my brother even if we can't agree on every detail in theology. The stance I have seen here seems to indicate that the position of the catholic church is that, without a full agreement on each teaching of theology by the church, there can be no unity of the type described by Paul in Ephesians as the one body. I guess this really goes back to the core of my first question, but do you truly hold that there can be no true unity between catholic and protestants?
Full disclosure, as I can't recall if I posted on the GTKY thread, I was raised in a Methodist church, and since leaving home have been to both a non-denomination, and a few Baptist churches. I currently am an active member of a Baptist congregation, but have a bit more of a charismatic and "don't hate the gays or the poor/immigrants" than some Baptists or the SBC might be fully comfortable with. All this so you are aware of my background and bias going into this.