catholics v protestants

Great Debates
1

I always struggle to get my head round the whole faith v works argument. Its like a logical and intellectual black hole wherein all the arguments close in on themselves.

Bearing in mind what religious extremists are capable of, as we are seeing around us at the moment, it seems to me that the catholics are winning the argument because they are taught that they have to be good in order to go to Heaven.

Whereas protestants are taught that they don’t need to be good, they just need faith.

If they have faith then they will automatically be good.

If they have faith then they can do anything, and it will still be good. This is what the Taliban believe.

They believe that what they are doing (in the way they order their society) is the true will of god.

They believe they must oppress women because that is the will of Allah.

Because they are carrying out the will of Allah (however harsh it may seem to their common sense) they know they are doing good.

This is the result of faith over works.

It breeds religious extremism.

I think its safer to teach kids that they have to be nice to people.

2

Could you phrase that in the form of a question?

3

I think he’s asking, “Who would win in a fight?”

I say the Protestants. It’s always seemed like they have fewer qualms about fighting dirty.

4

Ah, you need to read up on your ecclesiastical history then… :wink:

5

Gee, faith v works is such an oversimplification as to be not remotely near the truth to what the difference is. I’ll take a stab at the point of “our” protest:
God saves through his love and His sacrifice by giving me the holy spirit directly. There is no intermediary at all. No amount of good deeds makes me worthy of God’s sacrifice or love, my choice is merely to accept it or not. Acceptance and understanding bring me God’s peace. God makes obvious His will in my life and that is my calling and my good works: my whole life. While I may occasionally take some time to do traditional “good works”, I feel deeply obliged to make every single aspect of my life a good work for myself and others.

The suggestion that if I hang out with the Knights of whomever one weekend every six months, drink beer and raise some money for the local shelter is a good work that may save my soul is one I disagree with. “It is more difficult for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.” A good work will not save your soul, only the love of God will.

6

“Whereas protestants are taught that they don’t need to be good, they just need faith.”

Got a cite for that proposition? And while you’re at it, a cite that Catholics are taught they need to be good – 'cause there are plenty of Catholics who believe Protestants are going to Hell, no matter how good they are.

“They believe they must oppress women because that is the will of Allah.”

And Muslims are the only religion that do that…?

7

I disagree, killing people because you sincerely believe it’s the will of your paricular flavour of deity is works, or at least it is if you believe that your deity will reward such action (which I hasten to add seems not to be a core belief of the vast majority of Muslims)

Besides, both Catholics and Protestants are taught :

If they don’t do that, they are faking it anyway, and might do anything.

8

organised religion doesnt work as a whole, it promotes doing things because god has willed it or the church decrees it, surely everyone should base every decision they make on whether what they are doing is right or wrong. i have no problem in people believing in god, but creating a society where the top man, the one that makes all the laws, might not even exist, and where the men directly beneath him tell everyone of these laws might just be making them up, isnt the most intelligent thing to do.

9

I really don’t know what to say about the above, except that it rates nearly five Erms on the Mangetout scale of uncertainty.

[sub]An Erm is a standard unit of doubt or uncertainty, in much the same way as an Erg is a unit of energy[/sub]

10

I’ll take a stab at cleaning up sarky’s incoherent post.

“Neither salvation by faith or salvation by works are a tenable basis for a solid society. Both require faith in a supreme being that may not exist, and use that faith to determine a code of conduct. Since that being may not exist, following that code of conduct is foolish. Instead, people should simply do what they believe is right, without reference to any sort of God. So in answer to the OP, I, sarky, say, ‘Neither!’”

  • Rick
11

I don’t want to get into the whole “Does God exist” debate. I was talking about the “faith v works” debate.

In order to be a protestant all that is required is simple faith, you don’t have to do anything else.

But, for a catholic, faith on its own is not enough. You also need to demonstrate your faith every day of your life by being “good” in your dealings with other people.

schplebordnik said:

Catholics probably believe this because protestants don’t comply with the “Obligations” of the catholic church. By not complying with these Obligations they commit Mortal Sin which is a serious offence, the punishment for which is “Go straight to Hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200”.

Mangetout said:

Its not works in the conventional catholic sense of the word.

The difference is that OBL’s boys believe they have God on their side. They are absolutely convinced of this. There is not a shred of doubt in their mind. They have absolute faith.

This is the same type of faith as the protestants use.

Catholics also have faith but they then have to supplement this by good works. They don’t know what form these “good works” should take (no one knows) so they have to use common sense.

Whenever common sense comes into the equation, I believe you are likely to get a more reasoned person than one who is acting solely on the basis of faith.

A catholic would think “OK I believe the Bible is telling me to fly a jet into the WTC” - this is the faith part of the equation, but then a catholic would bring into play the common sense part of the equation and think “Hmm, but if I do that then thousands of innocent people will die, so no its probably not what God wants me to do after all. I must have misunderstood the Bible, Id better go and have another look at it”.

My point is that any religion that relies solely on faith negates the need for common sense. If you negate the need for common sense then you are more likely to get unthinking robots as followers.

This why I said in my first post that faith over works breeds religious extremism.

If you negate works then you negate common sense.

If you negate common sense then you get Osama Bin Laden.

This form of faith is what the protestants also use. They say “Don’t worry about the works you do, your works will inevitably be good if you have faith, all you have to do is blindly follow wherever your faith leads you”.

12

I don’t know. Historically, both Catholics and Protestants have been willing to kill innocent people. If you’ve ever studied the history of the Crusades, the Inquisition, and 17th century wars of religion, there’s been religious cruelty on both sides. The question is, who defines what “good works” are?

13

As much as I appreciate your implicit and explicit assumptions in favor of the “good works informed by faith” aspect of the Catholic church, I think I’m going to decline the favor.

The Church has, regrettably, been the source of many ill-informed and cruel actions over the years. While it would be nice to believe that the “common sense” element would prevent such things, there’s no real evidence suggesting this is so.

I remain convinced that Holy Mother Church is, in essence, an infallible teacher of doctrine. But the details and the execution thereof, done by man and not the Holy Spirit… don’t always work right.

  • Rick
14

I thought we were instructed not to judge one another. Instead of pointing out where you feel you are right and they are misguided (Catholic/Protestant), try looking at what you share in common and love each other. If you don’t begin on that basis, you’ll never come together.

As stated previously, both groups have behaved grievously towards their fellow man based on false pride of their religion. This is in direct disregard to Christ’s commandment to love one another.

15

A request for clarification:

I thought that Luther had stated that faith alone, without the rituals of sacraments, without giving money to the church for dispensations, was all that was required, but that the church had always felt, since Paul, that the way to God was through faith rather than through works. Can someone futher elucidate the diference?

16

I have come to believe that faith and works are just two sides of the same coin. If you have faith in selfishness,
you will show that in your works, no matter what comes out of your mouth.

If you have faith in selflessness, you will show that in your works.

If you don’t feel faith, but try to be more kind, more gentle, more patient, more longsuffering, etc. and keep an open mind, the faith will come.

Trying counts.
Oh, btw, did you know that Martin Luther had the idea of
‘Justification by Faith’ come to him while sitting on the toilet? He always found that quite amusing.

17

The inherent differences between Catholicism and Protestantism lie in the intermediate sources of authority, not in the “faith vs. works” foofaraw – which happened to be an abuse of Catholicism (so identified by the Council of Trent, a notably Protestant group :rolleyes: ) which happened to arouse Luther’s ire.

In both faith traditions, salvation is by the grace of God mediated by the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ, received by faith in Him, and showing itself in a life committed to Him and His teachings, and as such by the doing of “good works.” “Faith without works is dead” is not a statement involving salvation, but one involving sincerity. If Joe Jeezer says, “I took Jesus as my personal Savior and Lord” and fails to live the life in accordance with Jesus’s teachings, he has definitely fallen short of what is expected of him by his Lord in explicit language, and might take a very close look at the Parable of the Sheep and Goats, and learn from it.

The “intermediate sources of authority” business runs as follows: While both faith traditions place ultimate authority in God and in Christ (and let’s not get into the identity/difference argument here), Catholicism views the authority derived from Him as vested in the Church, founded by Christ through the Apostles and the Bishops, priests, and deacons they appointed to succeed them, and in particular in the Bishop of Rome, Patriarch of the West and successor to Peter as Head of the Church under Christ. Protestantism, in general, founds its authority in the Bible as interpreted by the individual, who is free to opt into any given faith community that fits his understanding of his beliefs. Catholicism would take Bible, Church Tradition (with a complex definition distinguishing it from “tradition” with a small T), and reason as equally sound and complementing each other to achieve the bases on which the authorities teach.

18

Polycarp,

I’m going to get in over my head here, but what the hey.

I am presuming that the “intermediate sources of authority” has to do with the Catholic concepts of “Holy Orders” in which the power to change bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus (and to forgive sins) is passed on via a laying of hands from one priest to another in a line back to Christ himself. Correct? Do the Orthodox churches have anything similar?

Do your statements apply to all Protestant movements? For example, the Calvanistic Presbyterian predestination bit seems to be inconsistent with your premise, unless I’ve misunderstood.

19

Well, ol’ Jack T. Chick is one Protestant who’s convinced that Catholics are all headed straight for Hell:

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0082/0082_01.asp
http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0071/0071_01.asp
http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0074/0074_01.asp
http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0054/0054_01.asp
http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0047/0047_01.asp

20

DSeid: Precisely. The right to teach authoritatively, as well as the right to administer the sacraments which you note, is handed down from Bishop to Bishop in a lineage going back to the Apostles. If I were a bishop, I would not be speaking on my own authority, but on that handed down intentionally by commissioning by men who were themselves so commissioned, linking back to the Apostles and Christ who commissioned them. Orthodox, Anglicans, Swedish and Finnish Lutherans, and all flavors of Catholics (not just the Roman Catholic Church but the Jansenists and Polish National Catholics, etc.) adhere to this line of thinking. Note that it is bishops, not priests as you said, who do this. (I myself can trace my lineage as an Episcopal layman to the bishop who confirmed me, who was consecrated by the Presiding Bishop of the time, who was consecrated by… heading back through Presiding Bishops of the Episcopal Church and Archbishops of Canterbury to Theodore of Tarsus, who could in turn trace his succession back to Irenaeus, the original Polycarp, John the Beloved Disciple, and Jesus. --Which is, in a nutshell, a part of where my screen name came from.)

Most Protestants don’t have any truck with this. Sources of authority vary all over the lot, but are basically founded on the authority of the Bible.

As you note, Presbyterians, who conceive of the idea of bishops as a flawed understanding of the oversight (episcope) given elders (presbyteroi) with a gift for administration in the early church, often have a moderately bizarre view of this whole picture, based on the transmission of the Apostolic Succession through presbyters. And I don’t feel competent to analyze it beyond that.