Your argument is non-sensical, as, every group claiming to be Christian also claims to have the best (or only) understanding of truth.
To say Protestant groups haven't agreed on everything, therefore that makes them all false, is like an atheist saying, "All religions for thousands of years have not decided on an definitive answer to ONE SINGLE QUESTION! Therefore they must ALL be false!" That's a statement which I know you'll agree, is ridiculous (even though that's what your typical agnostic/atheist will say...).
I think what gets lost in the whole "Protestantism causes divisions" argument is the plain fact that RELIGIOUS LIBERTY (as most vividly illustrated in the American experience) 'causes' divisions--and the only times and places in history without divisions among Christians, is when and where there was no religious liberty--and heretics were subject to burning at the stake.
Is it a coincidence that most of the world's major cults (Mormonism, Jehovah's Witness, Christian Science, etc.) started in the USA where full religious liberty was finally realized? Until coming to America, most of the larger Protestant Churches were, like the Roman Catholic Church before them, state churches (Lutheran, Presbyterian, Anglican) and the free churches here(in early America, Methodists and typically various baptistic sects) were persecuted minorities back in Europe.
Historically the only proven alternative to divided Christian groups--is a state enforced official religion (which until the 1500s was Roman Catholicism in western Europe) something which no true American lover of liberty will endorse.
I agree with what you say. One of the unfortunate side effects of the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the spread of secularization.
Another, more fortunate result was greater religious freedom.
Actually, I have long thought that the greatest beneficiary of the Reformation was the Catholic Church. The Church did not change her teachings, but the Church did have to do more persuading and less commanding. Catholics became free to be Catholics because they chose to.
Protestantism splintered into sects and subsects. The Catholic Church adopted to the Enlightenment and the new ideal of Democratic freedom.
No group of human beings is ever perfect, of course. The Catholic Church has had its problems with the modern world. But on the whole, the Church has benefited. It is mostly Protestants who have suffered in various degrees from breaking away from the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
I was born and bred an Episcopalian but converted to Catholicism, so I’ve seen both sides. There is (or was) plenty of good in the High Episcopal Church. But it wasn’t the fulness of Christianity.
I sometimes wondered why God sent the “Protestant wind” that scattered the Spanish Armada. Evidently He chose to favor England over Spain at that juncture, and I think in the long run that was a very good thing. For Catholics as well as Protestants. And certainly for Americans.
Analogus Wrote:
So-called Protestantism All groups taken together who call themselves “Christian” or the “one true Church” (which is not a religion or an organization)
Call Protestants whatever you want, I can’t call them something that they are not. They are not “one”, and they do not definitelly espouse one single doctrine (absolute truth), and they are not a Church. Those are the facts.
verdadjusticia had WRITTEN:It has not decided on an definitive answer to ONE SINGLE QUESTION! In almost 500 years it still has not even decided if Jesus Christ is God, or if you must be baptized to be saved.
AnalogReigns ASKED: Your argument is non-sensical, as, every group claiming to be Christian also claims to have the best (or only) understanding of truth.
verdadjusticia ANSWERS:
That is not accurate, for not one Protestant organization has maintained FOREVER the same doctrines. Truth is unchangeable. Protestants do not claim absolute truth. ONLY the Catholic Church has unchanged doctrines that are absolute truth and are unalterable. There is no other religion that has servived the test of time on their so-called “truths’. they have abandoned them all.
AnalogReigns ASKED: to say Protestant groups haven’t agreed on everything, therefore that makes them all false, is like an atheist saying, “All religions for thousands of years have not decided on an definitive answer to ONE SINGLE QUESTION! Therefore they must ALL be false!” That’s a statement which I know you’ll agree, is ridiculous (even though that’s what your typical agnostic/atheist will say...).
verdadjusticia ANSWERED:
I don’t agree, there is only one religion that has decided the definitive answer to those questions which it has defined dogmatically. So, your analogy is wrong misapplied to Catholicism.
AnalogReigns ASKED:
Historically the only proven alternative to divided Christian groups—is a state enforced official religion (which until the 1500s was Roman Catholicism in western Europe) something which no true American lover of liberty will endorse.
verdadjusticia ANSWERED:
the unity of doctrine of the Catholic Church has nothing to do with the populace. The Catholic Church today numbers about 1 billion people. If it was only 50,000, the unity of doctrine would still prevail. Protestants have no unity of doctrine. They actually have no defined doctrines which they have not changed.