• @squashkin@exploding-heads.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    21 year ago

    Of course this isn’t all baptists but over time it really has made protestantism look dramatically different to Catholicism or orthodoxy to me

    I was just reading the text of the divine liturgies, common to eastern Catholics or orthodox… it sounds like a lot more overlap in beliefs. And then you get protestants who can widely diverge from this.

    I’ve seen these kinds of things create practical issues. Like, if all you need is faith to be saved, why does it matter if they have a lesbian minister or not? They can tend towards moral anarchy or antinomianism as a result.

    Theologically, antinomianism is the belief that there are no moral laws God expects Christians to obey.

    Of course also there are a lot of protestants who believe they ought to live good lives on the honor system because they have faith, and they do make some attempt, and so in practice I’m not sure how much a “faith alone” approach affects their approach to doing good works.

    Sometimes it goes to the opposite extreme with the protestant work ethic. I’ve also seen some polls that seem to indicate a lot of protestants do seem to think works matter for salvation (even though this was traditionally associated with Catholicism… and orthodoxy?)

    But yeah in the West there’s often a focus on Catholic versus protestant and idk why orthodoxy gets forgotten.

    • @Lovstuhagen@exploding-heads.comOPM
      link
      fedilink
      English
      11 year ago

      Protestantism, to me, is often really just Bible only beliefs and they’ve stripped from it many of the benefits of the classic Church. I can be empathetic with them in the sense that the Church at times was far from correct in its applications. It is, after all, an institution that is run by fallible men.

      … But when you go over to Bible only concepts with no heritage of theology that is 100% adhered to in terms of necessities, it creates this sort of chaos, doesn’t it?

      BTW, the article I linked was because it was an interesting, obscure part of history. I think that guy is a massive liberal Chrisitan if he is a Christian at all. He wrote another article abshing Chesterton.

      Sometimes it goes to the opposite extreme with the protestant work ethic. I’ve also seen some polls that seem to indicate a lot of protestants do seem to think works matter for salvation (even though this was traditionally associated with Catholicism… and orthodoxy?)

      Yes and I prefer to think of it as transforming your life through repentance as a sort of work… but it is actually just the manifestation of the prayer life, IMO.

      But yeah in the West there’s often a focus on Catholic versus protestant and idk why orthodoxy gets forgotten.

      I am glad that this is changing more and more but I must admit too many Orthodox get self-righteous or overbearing on a lot of this stuff.