[the_conscience]

Irrespective of the mischaracterization of the Reformation position, what you failed to account for was the doctrine of Original Sin.

The Apostolic Church, via Augustine, and against the Pelegians, taught the total corruption of the imago dei that required an all encompassing grace to overcome.

When Rome returned to the Pelegian heresy it lost the essential aspect of the gospel which is God's love shown through free grace.

[Cronos]

The Apostolic Church, via Augustine, and against the Pelegians, taught the total corruption of the imago dei that required an all encompassing grace to overcome. And we stayed true to this anti-Pelagianism.

[Cronos]

And, elaborating on the statement that all the good stuff that the Protestant groupings have (the little that is there) is from The Apostolic Church, you just have to compare the first, second, third, fourth, fifth generations of Protestant groupings.

The First groupings: Traditional Lutheran, Anglican etc. have closeness to orthodoxy and to the Christian Faith.

However, by the time you reach the fourth (Mormon, Unitarian Universalist) and fifth (Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists) etc., the kookiness is clear and these become glarigingly not Christian.

As the Protestant groupings split and re-split, there is a tendency for the wackiness to come out, the further they stray from orthodoxy and Church teachings.

I have no hesitancy in saying that Traditional Anglicans and Lutherans and Methodists have a Christian faith system and similarly have no hesistancy in saying that Mormons, JWs, UUs etc. do NOT have a Christian faith system. The other groupings are on the path between the former and the latter groupings and at times it breaks down to the sub-sub-sub-grouping to even determine if they ARE Christian (e.g. Pentecostalism, a fifth gen grouping has mostly Christian groups like the AOG, but the Word-of-Faith crowd with their concept of multiple gods and the wealth gospel are really borderline non-Christian if not over that border (depending on the preacher)

[Dr. Eckleburg]

Irrespective of the mischaracterization of the Reformation position, what you failed to account for was the doctrine of Original Sin.

The Apostolic Church, via Augustine, and against the Pelegians, taught the total corruption of the imago dei that required an all encompassing grace to overcome.

When Rome returned to the Pelegian heresy it lost the essential aspect of the gospel which is God's love shown through free grace.

AMEN!

The RCC used to be somewhat Augustinian. But it, too, has succumbed to the me-ism of a synergistic theology that says God merely offers salvation, but that it is man who elects himself by his good works.

Which, as you've said, denies the Gospel and demotes free grace to wages earned.

"But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead:

Who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver: in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us;" -- 2 Corinthians 1:9-10

[don-o]

When Rome returned to the Pelegian heresy it lost the essential aspect of the gospel which is God's love shown through free grace.

I was not aware that this had happened. Please supply supporting evidence.