Posted on 02/17/2007 11:55:27 AM PST by Titanites
Protestantism and Islam: Points of Contact
Protestantism may well have begun as a genuine movement of reform. Accepting the teachings of the Church, its adherents wanted to bring the practice of the Church into line with its teachings. This is the object of all Christian movements. However, it very soon developed into something far more radical, jettisoning basic Christian teachings, bringing in doctrines entirely new to Christianity, and having to meld the results into a coherent whole. This involved developing doctrinal and practical solutions to new problems in the field of Christian faith and morals.
Most of Protestant teaching was conventional Christianity, with some being revived from St Augustine and the early fathers. Where there is novelty there is also often a strong similarity with Islamic doctrine. Perhaps there is an interestingly similar dynamic involved in the rejection of traditional Christianity that both these belief systems, to varying extents, share. Whilst the very title of “Protestantism” depicts its genesis as a reactive movement, it is the case that strong protests against the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation form part of the Koran and so of Islamic faith. It is also noteworthy that Luther issued his own translation of the Koran in 1542, along with a confutation of its soteriology—the key point of Islamic and protestant divergence.
Islam was not a distant or peripheral force in the Europe of the 1520s. The Ottoman Empire had taken Constantinople in 1454. Many scholars had fled to the west, especially to Rome, bringing with them first-hand knowledge of Islam and its practices. Some of these may well still have been alive when Luther visited Rome in 1510. A resurgent Ottoman Empire took Belgrade in 1520 and Hungary in 1526, coming to the very heart of Europe.
Scriptural Fundamentalism
Protestantism was a move closer to the Islamic view of Scriptural authority. The traditional Christian view is that Christ founded the Church which wrote the Scriptures, ratified them and gains constant nourishment from them. Their definitive meaning derives from the same Church which produced them. Luther’s view that Scripture is the only guide to faith and practice is similar to the Islamic view of the Koran. As Muslims are gradually discovering, this view is too optimistic: all Bible believing Protestants from Luther to the present-day have required a huge substructure of unacknowledged assumptions and beliefs by which they interpret the Bible, and which don’t come from it.
One of the most popular Islamic criticisms of “Christianity” is to show that the divergence in interpretation of the Bible is far greater than that concerning the Koran. Seeing such divergence as evidence against Christianity is based upon the Protestant-Islamic view of scripture (and in any case the gap is gradually closing). The Koran had described Jews and Christians as ‘people of the book’, which can be misleading. All literate religions have sacred books, but to suggest |24| JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 faith that the Scriptures of the Christians and Jews are the key element of these religions is mistaken. The Protestant emphasis did give an added impetus to the wider distribution of the Scriptures in translation. Again, this echoes the Koran, which was written in the language to be understood by the people.
Anti-sacramentalism
The Reformation was also a move in the direction of Islamic belief on the question of the sacraments, and related ideas about the priesthood. Sacraments, by which grace is given to the people, are a crucial part of Christianity. One of the key sacraments is Holy Orders since only the priest says Mass, hears confessions, confirms, ordains and annoints. Islam has no priesthood, no sacraments, no sacrifice, no temple, and no altar. These things are not unrelated. The priest is one who (in any religion) offers sacrifice and the altar is the place of sacrifice. A religion without sacrifice does not have priests or altars. Luther’s denial that Holy Orders is a sacrament changed the nature of the priesthood.
The priest tended to become a minister or a functionary with duties more akin to a schoolmaster than a sacred person. He no longer wore symbolic vestments, but rather, like everybody else, he wore the uniform of his trade. The vessels (if any) were not sacred and could be handled by anyone. The altar became a table, to be moved as required. The church itself commonly became a meeting place, with no sacred character, and needed no special reverence when not in use for services. The services themselves tended to concentrate on the readings from the Scriptures (in the vernacular) and the sermon became a central part of the service.
Protestantism is then a convergence with the Islamic understanding of ministry and religious services. Luther, and most Protestants, retained two sacraments: Baptism and the Eucharist. Both of these soon lost their sacramental character. When baptism became “believers’ baptism”, the decisive step became faith in Christ (and the Scriptures) and baptism became not an infusion of faith and grace, but only the public acknowledgement of faith. This comes very close to Islamic practice; one becomes a Moslem by acknowledging ones faith in Islam in front of witnesses. This is all a shadow of the Judaeo- Catholic sense of God’s abiding, sanctifying, sacrificial, ritualistic presence amongst his people.
Radical Individualism
Two other points relating to the priesthood are relevant here. Firstly, the Christian priest is a Pontifex, a bridge, a constant channel of grace between God and man and is often a channel of prayer from man to God. He prays for the dead. None of these occur in Islam, or in Protestantism. Islam in fact explicitly denies that the living can help the dead in any way, as do most branches of Protestantism. Secondly we have issues of priestly celibacy, monasticism and religious vows. Christianity has always admired and looked up to monks and hermits, seeing in them a real attempt to forsake this world for the Kingdom of God. It has always admired and usually demanded celibacy from its priests. The Koran itself praised Christian monks for their charity and benevolence, but there was no place in Islam for monasticism. Celibacy was despised. Protestants deprecated both celibacy and monasticism and both virtually disappeared from Protestant countries. Luther had been a monk and had taken solemn vows, but readily forsook those vows to get married. Generally, Christians take vows very seriously but in Islam they are easily dispensed if they become inconvenient. In the play A Man for All Seasons St Thomas More says that when we take a vow we hold our very selves in our hands. You don’t get this in Islam, or in Luther.
We turn now to the destruction of images. Luther allowed and other reformers encouraged or even enforced a widespread and devastating iconoclasm. The fury of this destruction may be traced to the sacred or sometimes miraculous reputations of some images, or to their association with prayers for the dead, or perhaps to social causes. A similar iconoclasm had occurred in the Byzantine Empire in the eighth century under the influence of Islam. Islam and Protestantism rejected both images, and the intercession of saints often associated with them.
Marriage and the Position of Women Undermined
Turning to morals, it has often been noticed that the ethics of most religious systems are very similar to each other. Those of Islam and Catholicism differ most in the areas of marriage and the position of women and of the relation between religion and state.
A Muslim is expected to marry. But marriage is a contract with the possibility of divorce is built into it, not a lifelong commitment. Polygamy is also allowed. Less well-known is the fact that a man may also, in certain cases, keep concubines. Traditional Christianity forbids these things but the early Protestants allowed all of these arrangements. One of the scandals of the Reformation was the bigamous marriage of Philip of Hesse, conducted by Luther himself. Luther was not keen on it; he suggested concubinage as a compromise.
One of the greatest and most far reaching of the changes in the social life of Europe caused by the Reformation concerned the position of women. Outside |25| faith the domestic circles, the main channel for education and advancement for women was the church. They were educated at convent schools, could rise to become prioresses or abbesses of great houses and were numbered amongst the scholars, Saints, mystics and martyrs of the church. Many achieved fame for their letters or spiritual writings, women like Juliana of Norwich, Catherine of Siena. and Theresa of Avila.
Furthermore, they could find constant visual aids and role models in Our Lady and the female saints depicted in churches and books. All these were swept away in Protestant countries. This doesn’t seem to have been an oversight. Many of the reformers had a deep distrust of women in any positions of power. The domestic position of women could have become grim as well were it not that that the early Protestant experiments in this area were effectively abandoned. Polygamy never caught on. The official recognition of concubinage was short lived, and divorce became very rare to be indulged in only by the rich.
State Theocracy
What about the relations between church and state? The Ottoman Sultan claimed to be the successor of Muhammad and the spiritual leader of all the Muslims. He was of course still bound by the Koran and Islamic practices, but there was no conflict between church and state. This appealed to many reformers. It became a model for Protestant states, where generally the prince, rather than a priest, was head of the church, and at the highest level directed its affairs. Finally, Luther believed that reason was so corrupted by sin that it could not be relied upon. The radical transcendence of Allah produces a similar downplaying of the harmony of faith and reason.
I have tried to suggest that many of the major Protestant innovations have a relationship with Islam. Perhaps there are sociological similarities. One might even think that some of the Protestant ‘innovations’ were not really novelties at all. I would certainly not suggest that Protestantism imported every idea from Islam, clearly most of the key Protestant ideas are Christian. Nor do I think that all the innovations came from Islam. Outstanding exceptions are justification by faith alone, and possibly the Protestant distaste shown towards pilgrimages and honouring the saints. There may be something to learn from all this about the way in which pious men rebel against the idea of divine, incarnational authority and activity living on down the centuries in the Church.
We value the Bible and it's teachings but we know that the church should be based on the Bible, which is the inspired word of God. We do NOT believe that the Catholic church is the ONE TRUE CHURCH. We believe the one true church is the body of believers who put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ and try to live by his precepts through the infilling Holy Spirit.
But, but, we're not supposed to be outraged, EH. Only RC's here get to do that. We aren't even a true religion, ya know.
Thanks for the ping, but with all due respect to Titanites, I don't believe this article offers anything positive in the way of Catholic apologetics.
It does exactly to Protestantism, what some Protestants on this thread have already done to Catholicism, to whit, likening Catholicism to Islam, with the favorite passage from the Catechism, paragraph 841, which Catholics must constantly address, over and over again, on other fora (and even here from time to time). It's difficult enough, IOW, to address that paragraph without the inflamatory nature of an article such as this.
I believe there is a strategy to apologetics, just as in war, and one must be conscious of one's weaknesses, and not expose them unduly, unless one is prepared to take a loss, or unless it's unavoidable. Always the greatest strategy in war is to take the one action that reaps the greatest benefit, while suffering the least amount of loss. This article generates an opportunity for the more learned Protestant to immediately point to paragraph 841 and shout "hypocrisy!" (note, there are plenty of sound, logical explainations for Paragraph 841 of the Catechism, but even simply having to explain them on a thread like this automatically puts the Catholic on the defensive, and still, with no way to justify the OP)
That's a stalemate, at BEST. No chance for victory here.
Yet they very strongly embrace the union of church and state, which is very much in line with the RCC.
The best thing we ever did was separate from Rome, if that's what we indeed did. There were more Christian churches than that of Rome back in the early days. Rome was NOT the only one. There are protestant churches who are heretical, just as there are Catholic heretics, but there are many, many more that follow the teachings of Christ and who are filled with the Holy Spirit. I'll take a Holy Spirit filled congregation over any other any day.
Amen.
The article this thread is based on is no more than a hit piece on Protestants. It was akin to asking, "When did you stop beating your wife?" and then feigning surprise when offense is taken to the premise of the question.
I suspect posting the thread was intended as a deliberate insult to Protestants as well. Perhaps I blinked, but I saw none of the RC posters expressing outrage at this travesty either.
It's sad, really. People who share so much choose to focus all their attention on their differences instead. The only "winner" in this does not dwell in Heaven.
The religion moderator is human and subject to the same failures as the rest of us. In this case I think he made a big mistake. This thread served no purpose other than to drive people apart.
I have stayed out of the denominational wars, based on the belief that I have much more in common with fellow Christians than I have differences. This thread is the only time I have taken so much offense that I could not pass it by. It appears that some people on FR would rather throw insults than celebrate our mutual Savior, Jesus Christ.
Protestant churches haven't all always been free of that kind of entanglement either & quite honestly, I think the RCC has learned the error of her ways in that area. We are better served in joining together with our Roman Catholic brothers & sisters against the encroachments of Islam & the secularists who are trying to use the separation to silence us, force us out of the public square, than we are by holding their mother church's past transgressions against them.
You blinked. Read bornacatholic's post #37.
You're right. Thank you for pointing me to it. In fact, it was so good I copied it here:
This post is an insult to our Christian brothers and sisters. I think you ought request it be pulled. The idea Protestantism was a move in the direction of Islam is SO absurd is does NOT deserve a response. It deserves derision and outright rejection. It is an embarrassment and it has NOTHING to do with Catholicism as I understand it nor does it have ANYTHING to do with protestantism as I understand it.
As a Christian Catholic, I publicly reject it. Helium could not make this rise to the level of offal.
Many thanks to the poster, bornacatholic.
EH
I use to think along those lines, but not now. The differences between the RCC and other Christian Sects is much greater than I originally believed. I think France is a good example, where the RCC supported a law making it illegal to evangelize.
Even on the social issues where we line up as co-belligerants it is a mixed bag. IIRCC, in the last election the swing vote that put the RATS back in control of the legislative branch were RC's. The position of the RCC in the WOT has been nonexistent as well.
I just read your homepage and you are now on my prayer list whether you want to be or not :)
Wow, this thing is still going on?
You changing positions on me again? About a year ago you were blaming Christians who recognized James as their church leader for the Islam so-called "heresy".
The early church was the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is the only church that traces its beginnings back to the Apostles, back to Christ. Protestantism can only be traced back to the Reformation. It was a heretical movement begun by men, not the true church founded by Christ.
Some of these modern-day mainline Protestant churches are, in fact, filled with some kind of spirit, but they are neither filled with nor guided by the Holy Spirit.
LOL. I'm not sure what Institutes you're reading, but Calvin's Institutes clearly delineate the distinction between a spiritual offering from a physical offering. Calvin believed in the former, and denounced the latter. Precisely like Knox did. Precisely as all Calvinists do.
The "hair's difference" was between Calvin and Zwingli, not Calvin and Luther. Consubstantiation is much closer to transubstantiation than the correct Scriptural understanding of a spiritual bread and body. Shedding the errors of Rome was not an easy or overnight process. It took time and strength.
Knox was only concerned to deny the mass. In his Christiantity I find nothing but the negative.
Nonsense. Knox was truly in the thick of the battle, but his hundreds of sermons were clear articulations of Biblical truth. Let's see if what Knox actually wrote differs from Calvin and the Reformed definition of the Lord's Supper...
First, we confess that it is a holy action, ordained of God, in the which the Lord Jesus, by earthly and visible things set before us, lifts us up unto heavenly and invisible things. And that when he had prepared his spiritual banquet, he witnessed that he himself was the lively bread wherewith our souls are fed unto everlasting life. And therefore, in setting forth bread and wine to eat and drink, he confirms and seals up to us his promise and communion (that is, that we shall be partakers with him in his kingdom); and he represents unto us, and makes plain to our senses, his heavenly gifts; and also gives unto us himself, to be received with faith, and not with mouth, nor yet by transfusion of substance; but so, through the virtue [power] of the Holy Ghost, that we, being fed with his flesh, and refreshed with his blood, may be renewed both unto true godliness and to immortality. And also [we confess] that herewith the Lord Jesus gathered us unto one visible body, so that we are members one of another, and make altogether one body, whereof Jesus Christ is the only Head; and, finally, that by the same sacrament, the Lord calls us to remembrance of his death and passion, to stir up our hearts to praise his most holy name. Furthermore, we acknowledge that this sacrament ought to be come unto reverently, considering there is exhibited and given a testimony of the wonderful society and knitting together of the Lord Jesus and of the receivers; and also, that there is included and contained in this sacrament, [a testimony] that he will preserve his kirk. For herein we are commanded to show the Lord's death until he come (1 Cor. 11:26). Also we believe that it is a confession, wherein we show what kind of doctrine we profess; and what congregation we join ourselves unto; and likewise, that it is a bond of mutual love amongst us. And, finally, we believe that all the comers unto this holy Supper must bring with them their conversion unto the Lord, by unfeigned repentance in faith; and in this sacrament receive the seals and conrmation of their faith; and yet must in nowise think that for this work's sake their sins are forgiven. And as concerning these words, Hoc est corpus meum, "This is my body" (1 Cor. 11:24; Matt. 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19), on which the Papists depend so much, saying that we must needs believe that the bread and wine are transubstantiated unto Christ's body and blood: we acknowledge [declare] that it is no article of our faith which can save us, nor which we are bound to believe upon pain of eternal damnation. For if we should believe that his very natural body, both flesh and blood, were naturally in the bread and wine, that should not save us, seeing many believe that, and yet receive it to their damnation. For it is not his presence in the bread that can save us, but his presence in our hearts, through faith in his blood, which has washed out our sins, and pacified his Father's wrath towards us. And again, if we do not believe his bodily presence in the bread and wine, that shall not damn us, but the absence out of our hearts through unbelief. Now, if they would here object, that though it be truth, that the absence out of the bread could not damn us, yet are we bound to believe it because of God's word, saying, "This is my body" (1 Cor. 11:24); which who believes not, as much as in him lies, makes God a liar; and, therefore of an obstinate mind not to believe his word, may be our damnation: To this we answer, that we believe God's word, and confess that it is true, but not so to be understood as the Papists grossly affirm. For in the sacrament we receive Jesus Christ spiritually, as did the fathers of the Old Testament, according to St. Paul's saying (1 Cor. 10:3-4). And if men would well weigh, how that Christ, ordaining his holy sacrament of his body and blood, spoke these words sacramentally, doubtless they would never so grossly and foolishly understand them, contrary to all the scriptures, and to the exposition of St. Augustine, St. Jerome, Fulgentius, Vigilius, Origen, and many other godly writers." "Here is briefly declared in a summary, according to the holy scriptures, what opinion we Christians have of the Lord's Supper, called the sacrament of the body and blood of our Saviour Jesus Christ.
If you wish to read what Calvin wrote about the Lord's Supper...
Thus it is with the communion which we have in. the body and blood of the Lord Jesus. It is a spiritual mystery which can neither be seen by the eye nor comprehended by the human understanding... Hence also we see how those to whom God has given the knowledge of his truth should differ from the Papists. First, they cannot doubt that it is abominable blasphemy to regard the Mass as a sacrifice by which the forgiveness of sins is purchased for us; or rather, that the priest is a kind of mediator to apply the merit of Christ's passion and death to those who purchase his mass, or are present at it, or feel devotion for it. On the contrary, they must hold decidedly that the death and suffering of the Lord is the only sacrifice by which the anger of God has been satisfied, and eternal righteousness procured for us; and, likewise, that the Lord Jesus has entered into the heavenly sanctuary in order to appear there for us, and intercede in virtue of his sacrifice. Moreover, they will readily grant, that the benefit of his death is communicated to us in the Supper, not by the merit of the act, but because of the promises which are given us, provided we receive them in faith. Secondly, they should on no account grant that the bread is transubstantiated into the body of Jesus Christ, nor the wine into his blood, but should persist in holding that the visible signs retain their true substance, in order to represent the spiritual reality of which we have spoken. Thirdly, they ought also to hold for certain, that the Lord gives us in the Supper that which he signifies by it, and, consequently, that we truly receive the. body and blood of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless they will not seek him as if he were enclosed under the bread, or attached locally to the visible sign. So far from adoring the sacrament, they will rather raise their understandings and their hearts on high, as well to receive Jesus Christ, as to adore him..."...Now, if it be asked whether the bread is the body of Christ and the wine his blood, we answer, that the bread and the wine are visible signs, which represent to us the body and blood, but that this name and title of body and blood is given to them because they are as it were instruments by which the Lord distributes them to us. This form and manner of speaking is very appropriate. For as the communion which we have with the body of Christ is a thing incomprehensible, not only to the eye but to our natural sense, it is there visibly demonstrated to us. Of this we have a striking example in an analogous case. Our Lord, wishing to give a visible appearance to his Spirit at the baptism of Christ, presented him under the form of a dove. St. John the Baptist, narrating the fact, says, that he saw the Spirit of God descending. If we look more closely, we shall find that he saw nothing but the dove, in respect that the Holy Spirit is in his essence invisible. Still, knowing that this vision was not an empty phantom, but a sure sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit, he doubts not to say that he saw it, (John i. 32,) because it was represented to him according to his capacity.
At the heart of Rome's error is its insistence that the mass is a recurring sacrifice. Calvin rightly saw this as blasphemy...
The opinion that the Supper is a sacrifice derogates from that of Christ, and must therefore be condemned as devilish. That it does so derogate is notorious. For how can we reconcile the two things, that Jesus Christ in dying offered a sacrifice to his Father by which he has once for all purchased forgiveness and pardon for all our faults, and that it is every day necessary to sacrifice in order to obtain that which we ought to seek in his death only? This error was not at first so extreme, but increased by little and little, until it came to what it now is. It appears that the ancient fathers called the Supper a sacrifice; but the reason they give is, because the death of Christ is represented in it. Hence their view comes to this—that this name is given it merely because it is a memorial, of the one sacrifice, at which we ought entirely to stop. And yet I cannot altogether excuse the custom of the early Church. By gestures and modes of acting they figured a species of sacrifice, with a ceremony resembling that which existed under the Old Testament, excepting that instead of a beast they used bread as the host. As that approaches too near to Judaism, and does not correspond to our Lord's institution, I approve it not. For under the Old Testament, during the time of figures, the Lord ordained such ceremonies, until the sacrifice should be made in the person of his well-beloved Son, which was the fulfilment of them. Since it was finished, it now only remains for us to receive the communication of it. It is superfluous, therefore, to exhibit it any longer under figure.... "The first error is this -- While the Lord gave us the Supper that it might be distributed amongst us to testify to us that in communicating in his body we have part in the sacrifice which he offered on the cross to God his Father, for the expiation and satisfaction of our sins—men have out of their own head invented, on the contrary, that it is a sacrifice by which we obtain the forgiveness of our sins before God. This is a blasphemy which it is impossible to bear. For if we do not recognise the death of the Lord Jesus, and regard it as our only sacrifice by which he has reconciled us to the Father, effacing all the faults for which we were accountable to his justice, we destroy its virtue. If we do not acknowledge Jesus Christ to be the only sacrifice, or, as we commonly call it, priest, by whose intercession we are restored to the Father's favour, we rob him of his honour and do him high injustice.
A good understanding by Calvin of the real and imagined differences put forth regarding the Lord's Supper is found here...
It is well known that Luther and those with whom he disagreed were prudent men, equipped with singular gifts of God. They were all in remarkable agreement about the whole substance of the faith. They were unanimous in their teaching about what the proper and sincere worship of God should be, and they endeavored to cleanse it of countless superstitions and idolatries and to free it from the corrupt inventions of men. They rejected reliance on works, by which men had been intoxicated and indeed bewitched, and taught the restoration of total salvation in the grace of Christ. They have magnificently lifted up the virtue of Christ, after it had either fallen and lain prostrate or been submerged and hidden from view. Those men do not differ in their teaching about what is the true method of invocation, what is the nature and essence of penitence from which faith arises and produces certain fruits, and what is the legitimate government of the Church. Only on the symbols themselves was there any disagreement. Yet I deliberately venture to assert that, if their minds had not been partly exasperated by the extreme vehemence of the controversies, and partly possessed by wrong suspicions, the disagreement was not so great that conciliation could not easily have been achieved. Even if, because of the vehemence of that dispute, the controversy could not have been resolved properly, is there anything to prevent the plain truth being heard at least now, as in the calm after the storm? We are all very much in agreement about what the true use of the sacraments is. We all teach in common that the sacraments have been instituted in order that they may seal the promises of God to our hearts, that they may be supports for our faith and testimonies of the divine grace. We clearly point out that they are not empty or bare and dead forms [figuras] since their use is efficacious by the power of the Holy Spirit; and by the secret virtue of the Holy Spirit, God is really offering everything that he shows in them. So we acknowledge that the bread and wine in the Holy Supper are not empty pledges of that communication which believers have with Christ, their head, because our souls enjoy him as spiritual nourishment. Everywhere there is agreement about the teaching on all these points. Why then do proud men find such a stumbling block in this connection that it bars the way to the gospel?..."After Luther on the one hand, and Œcolompadius and Zwingli on the other, were successful in their strenuous efforts to re-establish the rule of Christ, there arose that unhappy dispute about the Holy Supper of the Lord, and a great many others have been drawn into association with them. It must be more a source of grief than surprise that that conflict among the foremost leaders causes alarm to overtake beginners. However, so that these same beginners may not be unduly perturbed, they must be warned that it is an old trick of Satan's to rush otherwise prudent servants of God into controversies with each other so that he may hinder the course of sound doctrine. Who wishes to yield of his own accord to Satan's crafty ways? Thus Paul's quarrel with Barnabas reached a violent climax (Acts 15:39). Thus Paul's similar disagreement with Peter broke out into open conflict (Gal. 2:11). In the case of those three men everyone recognizes what I have mentioned — the stratagem of Satan. In the present situation, when it is a question of their own salvation, why are they blind? Someone will object that those were not controversies about doctrine. Why? When certain men were pressing the ceremonies of the Mosaic law, was not this a question of doctrine (Gal. 2:12)? Yet the split was carried so far that it rent nearly all the churches. Or will they say that it was right for the gospel to be rejected on account of that disturbance?
gold star for the dr. - excellent word use
from the article: However, it very soon developed into something far more radical, jettisoning basic Christian teachings, bringing in doctrines entirely new to Christianity
shall we run through the list my reformed friend ?
Mariology
Purgatory
Indulgences
Veneration of Saints
Papacy
Latin Vulgate
transsubstantiation
repetitive prayer
.........ooops - those arent ours
If you mean universal I think you are correct. If you mean Roman or Eastern Orthodox your wrong. Prior to the rise of Rome the Christian community was pretty united, but after Rome began to dominate that unity ended and one group after another left. Also, because of the heavy handed domination of Rome other groups formed that were never a part of that sect.
It's mutated.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
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