Which Religion is the TRUE Religion??

Great Debates
1

After reading this post, it pointed to this graph.

Anyway, I’m a Roman Catholic, and as far as I remember I’ve been taught that Roman Catholicism was the true direct lineage of Christianity… now from reading I discover that it seems that the Eastern Orthodox Church has the direct lineage, in the way that Anglicanism split from Catholicism because of remarriage issues, Roman Catholicism split from the MAIN lineage (Eastern Orthodoxism) becasue E. Orthodoxism didn’t allow “westerners”.

Am I reading this correctly? Have I been following the wrong crowd?? :smiley:

(…and please stay to the topic - we all know our own religion is the one true faith)

2

Google FSM for your answer.

3

I don’t think this can be dealt with for long in GQ. Moving to GD.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

4

You will only be able answer this question if you can say what, in your view, constitutes the appropriate method of determining “true lineage”. Because you can bet that each church that claims to have the “true lineage” will have a method of determining “true lineage” that results in them having it. The only realistic response to your OP is implied by your footnote.

5

It is the nature of schisms that each side maintains that they kept the true faith, and that it’s the other guys who split away. I don’t know of any objective way to settle this.

6

Aren’t all branches of Christianity an offshoot of Judaism?

7

Correct answer: D, none of the above.

8

Well, the See of Peter in Rome certainly had early prominence. But so did the Sees of Alexandria and Antioch. The ‘filioque’ and the like was the real problem (and still is), and the discussions on the Nature of Christ were conceived of quite differently in the fifth and sixth centuries.

But doctrinal issues won’t resolve who has the ‘real lineage’ because the early Church was far from unified in its doctrine or in its practice. Each side has an equally legitimate claim, depending on how they frame what the ‘real lineage’ means.

9

All of them. Pick one that works for you. Born and raised RC, my brother went Eastern Rite because of the antiquity reasons, while I went ELCA because I have no use for the anti-female tendencies of the RCC. Having a wife and three daughters will do that to ya. :wink:

(It’s still Monday, right? So I’m still a theist?)

Really, and I KNOW mine wife will disagree (but she was raised Methodist and is a bit dogmatic), but there are many paths to the Godhead. Or they might all be false (it’s getting close to Tuesday and my faith is wearing off).

Back to my original suggestion, pick one that you can follow fairly closely, be nice to people, and either put your fate in God’s hands or just hope for the best. I mean, I find Mormon theology preposterous and based on the claims of a conman, but my Mormon friends are damned good people and, if there’s an afterlife, they belong in. Er, as long as I’m not stuck with them forever. I’d prefer to spend most of my time in Italian Heaven, though the occasional visit to Mormon Heaven to dry out might not be a bad idea. :smiley:

10

Thank you for the replies so far (and FSM :D) … maybe I should have been more specific. I was mainly looking at that graph.

OK, RULE IS, that the greater the horde , the “truer” the lineage. So with some cites is there any historical evidence of how many people “followed” Roman Catholicism compared to “Eastern Orthodoxism”??? I know that groups rarely just split suddenly - for argument’s sake, lets give the splitting time of 100 years. So over this period what percentage of the Christian population said the Roman Catholics are right, and what percentage of the population said, hell, these guys are wrong, I’ll remain a “EO”.

Have I lost you already?? In a VERY BASIC example of Anglican and Catholicism (the split was quite quick) and only a portion of the Roman Catholics decided to follow the Anglican religion. That PORTION of people being most of the United Kingdom. (True lineage in this sense being Roman Catholicism)

Colibri - I plead to the jury to move this back to GQ, as I am not looking for a debate, but a factual answer, one that I couldn’t find myself… I don’t even own a bible.
Marty

11

In terms of which group has consistently followed a set of traditions without a clear break from those traditions, the Orthodox and Catholics and the Copts can each assert their lineage to the foundations of Christianity. Each will point out where the others “went wrong,” but they have all held pretty true to the interpretations of the faith that they have received, even as they began to differ from the traditions of the other groups.

Of course, those groups without a continuous tradition will simply note that the others “strayed” from the “true” course and that any interruption in the tradition was merely a necessary correction to bring them in line with what was supposed to be the true religion.

Your best bet is to find the denomination, (if any), whose doctrines resonate with you and not worry about claims of primacy or superiority.

12

The “greater number” argument is spurious as the numbers were often determined by the size of a country in which the ruler(s) chose one division over another.

Currently, there are more Catholics than any other single denomination, but that includes separate attrition in other groups due to Muslim encroachment on lands originally held by Orthodox.

We really can’t even decide when the Schism should be formally declared:
Should the date be 867 when the East first declared the Filioque heretical?
Should the date be 1054, (the date traditionally used in the West), when a small group from the West, visiting the East, got into a pissing match with the Greek Patriarch so that they mutually excommunicated each other, (even though the Western pope had died, nullifying the actions of that delegation while the Eastern Patriarch’s actions weere only aimed at the delegatesand not the entire Western church)?
Should the date be 1439 when Eastern delegates returning from the Council of Florence, (they were still meeting with the West in councils), were met by angry groups who demanded they rescind the ratification of Conciliar decrees from Florence?
The relative population sizes differed in each of those years.

There really is no single unarguable answer to your question and you might want to invest in learning more of the whole tortured history to understand just how complex it is.

13

(snort of friendly bemusement) I believe MarcinCiez was hoping for more, like an absolute answer, but you are leading him(?) down the (completely NOT) primrose path where he ends up questioning not only everything he ever believed, but EVERYTHING ELSE, TOO?

MarcinCiez, I really wish faith was simple, but, unless you grab onto a single theme, to the exclusion of all else, you are really, truly screwed. Unless you, like some of us here, find “really, truly screwed” an interesting place, theologically. If so, welcome to the SDMB. tomndebb is RC, Diogenes the Cynic is an atheist who knows more about the Bible than (I assume) anybody you know, and I’m, well, really, I’m just the gadabout welcoming you.

14

Hi tomndebb

… Yeah… i’m not changing my religion, and yes I know that “Each will point out where the others went wrong”…

You partially answered my question with your follow up post… it’s what (not exactly - read on) I was looking for. I know my argument is spurious - but I want the answer to it. You pointed me to a few dates and events which I will google/read upon. I was hoping for ONE such date and a magic book with numbers of people, which will be hard (which I knew already) to find, let alone pinpoint (as you point out) an exact date. MAYBE another person can point to yet another date??

I love these threads and I love reading them, even the shitty questions, becasue even in them someone will point to a cite, which in turn will get me to read further into the relevant post.

I’m still hoping someone will jump in and point me to a great website to do my further reading… and I’m still hoping one nice moderator (such as yourself) will move me back to GQ :stuck_out_tongue:

Marty

15

Thanx dropzone for the welcome… FINALLY someone said hi to the noobie :smiley:

And no… I’m not going to change my religion, I’m not a strict catholic and I have my own spin on the bible (which was written by people such as yourselves)… Hey… I believe the jewish God, Christian God and Muslim God are the same… people just decide to have arguments and to put the other down say “their” god is better.

16

Last week, I was firmly in the Cthulian mythos, secure in the knowledge that I was one of the lucky ones to be eaten first, this week, I’m firmly in the camp of Frisbeeterianism, the belief that when you die, your Soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck, although I have to admit, the FSM is rather tempting (and delicious, may His Noodly Goodness be praised…)

:wink:

17

If the question is about which tradition or denomination has the best claim to being traceable directly back to Jesus and the original Christian movement (which probably couldn’t really even be properly called “Christian,” but was a Jewish sect), then the answer is that we simply don’t have the data to know. We don’t actually have direct, primary documentation for exactlywhat the original Jesus movement taught and believed, or how the original disciples viewed Jesus. The Pauline Christology which took root after Paul’s mission to the Gentiles, and which became the basis for proto-orthodox Christianity was far from the only Christian movement which was active in the first couple of centuries.

If I had to hazard a guess as to which known, early Christian sect had the best chance of being directly descended from the original Jesus movement, it would be the Ebionites.

18

Great reading - thank you for the link. This is the type of thing I would be looking for if I was comparing “Jamesicism” and “Paulinism”.

I see my fore fore fore fathers followed “Paulinism”, which became the mainstream Christianity (VERY LOOSELY STATED)

If we can pinpoint a time/event similar to this where the ‘EO’ gang said “enough of this ‘RC’ crap” (or vice versa) … I will be happy. (And I’m still reading upon the previous dates mentioned.)

EO=Eastern Orthodox , RC=Roman Catholic

PS… see… we’re getting closer to my factual answer … so why is this post still in GD?? :wink:

19

DAMN… I’m gonna have to hijack my own thread… It’s following on from reading about the Ebionites. Just found somethng interesting and wanted to share it :slight_smile: …

“Prior to Marcion’s revival of Paul’s theology, Christianity was much identified with Judaism. At that time, the Christian Bible was only the Old Testament. After Marcion openly published the first New Testament in Rome (AD 116), there arose four great divisions in Christianity. These groups were denominated: the Gnostics, the Catholics, the Judeo-Christians and the Marcionites.
Before Marcion published the first truly Christian Bible, Christianity already had been divided into two groups. In Paul’s words, there were the “Judaizers” and there were the Pneumatics (the “Spiritual”). The Judaizers were more allied with Peter and James. The Pneumatics upheld Paul’s Gospel of freedom.”

20

Oh, if I did not have a midterm on Veda and Torah right now, I would sooooo be able to write a sweet answer to this question!

However, just a few quick and probably imprecise thoughts that I wanted to make on reading the early responses before I come back and make the big scholarly answer that does not actually answer anything but looks good on my future application for tenure…

The schism happened for lots of reasons, most of them having to do with politics. As the Papacy developed and began to be much more independent of any Imperial influence, the Roman Emperor having long since moved out East, the Papacy began to develop more its Latin character and assert its authority, all Churches agreeing that the seat of Peter held some sort of nebulous primacy, differing to the extent depending on whom and when you ask. Bishops tended to be jealous of their authority, as is natural.

In the meantime, Constantinople, as the new capital, began, both by its own desires and through the desires of various Emperors, to seek more power, claiming to be the “New Rome.” As you can imagine, that sparked a lot of arguments. As Muslim powers took over many formerly Byzantine lands, and simultaneously the Byzantine Empire had something of a Golden Age, formerly higher ranked Sees like Alexandria (the traditional second See, after Rome) and Antioch lost a lot of influence and power in the East in favor of Constantinople. The two Big Sees kept butting heads, and, eventually, had a bunch of splits and reunifications (which generally did not affect the common people as much as the whole Crusades invading armies thing did), not permanently splitting off until Ottomans took Constantinople and killed a bunch of people and reinstalled new Church leaders who were anti-Roman. This, I believe, led to the main reason why the split is still around today, and why I think that reunification is likely once the generation that grew up under Communism dies off. Of course, there was also general Russians being Russians that did not help, and Rome was hardly blameless of arrogance or a lack of tack.

Umm, yeah, so, that is my nutshell history, that I advise you take with a big grain of salt because I have hinduism on my brain and no sources on hand. I’ll come back and expand on it later, promise ^^

The point is, that the lineages did not really split off for doctrinal reasons, in my view, and that the doctrinal disputes that the East tends to have is a byproduct of the geopolitical situation. It doesn’t really matter which crowd you follow, both have relatively ok lineages. So, from the Catholic perspective, the split is really just a superfluous tragedy that will one day be corrected when people get their heads out of their a****, 1000 years at least too late.

The Oriental Orthodox represent a whole other cool history that I will neglect for now, even though you should look into it if you like that sort of thing.

Other thoughts: To say that Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism reminds me of the funny debate in the very early Common Era about Esau and Jacob. Both sides agreed that that metaphor applied to their situation, but each assigned to the other the role of Esau, the elder (and bad one). The point is, that at the time Judaism was changing a lot, and I believe the proper and consensus view among religious historians is to view them as sister faiths rather than one being older than the other.

On what the original Jewish Christians taught - Ummm, try reading Clement, for a view on non-Pauline Christianity, such as it was. Far from complete, though. Haha, I really wish I was not busy today…

This is a good book, if a bit controversial, about the split between Judaism and Christianity.