Catholocism = Christianity?

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Before the reformation There was just christianity, after the reformation, the old christian church became the catholic church, so catholicism is the original form of christianity.

 

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Originally posted by: KruptosAngelos

Originally posted by: Jzero

But catholics don't keep it simple, so why should we simplify it for them? You can't just cut off the other things they believe to make it "ok".

Nobody is making anything "ok." You don't have to become a Catholic. You don't have to simplify anything for Catholics either. Protestant sects also vary on one thing or another. Would you also argue that the concept of predestination goes for or against the Bible and therefore various protestant sects also are not Christian because they either do or do not agree with your judgement of something that really doesn't change the outcome?

The definition of a Christian religion is already quite simple.

You can argue the particulars all days long, but as I have already said, that does not change the foundation in the least. You may *personally* feel that Catholics are not Christian. But they are as Christian as Buddha was Hindu.

You cannot classify a religion as a whole based on it's part, that's what I'm getting at. Then you'd have to say ALL cults that start at the foundation of Christianity are Christian, when in fact they are not.

Of course, if we take this further, Catholicism breaks one part of the foundation. The Bible. The fact that their other beliefs are against the bible just pushes them outside Christianity.

First, there is no "the Bible." Different major branches of the Christian church--Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Ethiopian, Syrian, Nestorian, Gnostic--all have their own Bibles, and they're all somewhat different collections of early Christian writings.

Second, the Catholic church, like many of the other non-Protestant churches, predates any of those Bibles and in fact assembled the core of the Bible used by the three major European branches of Christianity as part of the history and traditions of Christianity. However, the Catholic Bible is only a part of Christian history, ritual, and religion, not the whole of it, a mistake often made by many of the newer, radical fundamentalist Protestant sects.

 

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Originally posted by: Vaerilis
Before the reformation: Christianity = Catholics
After the reformation: Christianity = Catholics + Lutherans + Calvinists + Unitarians + ...

You're much too narrowly focused on Western Europe. How it actually was:

Before the Reformation: Christianity = Catholic + Orthodox + Nestorian + Syrian + Ethiopian + Gnostic + many more if you want to look early enough at the history

 

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Originally posted by: shortylickens

Originally posted by: mugs
Catholics are Christians, but when someone refers to Christians, they're almost always referring to non-catholic Christians.

And therein lay trouble.
Too many folks have meant protestants when they said christians, and eventually we get so used to saying it that sometimes we come up with conflicting statements.

By the way:
There are only two main groups in christianity.
Protestants and Catholics.

What about the over hundred million Orthodox Christians or the 30+ million Ethiopian Christians? Historically, the Nestorian and Gnostic churches were both once larger than Catholicism too, though both are small today.

 

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Originally posted by: DAGTA

Originally posted by: dornick
Please tell me, where do you get the idea that the Bible is the ultimate theological authority? Because, you know, the Bible is just a massive compilation of books, and there were many, many more of them out there around Christ's time.

In 382, the Catholic Church put together a list of all the divinely inspired books and set it as the official canon. This is your closest source? A book compiled by the Cathoic Church itself?

To make matters more complicated, during the Reformation, Protestants simply threw out various books of the Bible. Luther even tried to get rid of James, but didn't succeed.

So I'll ask again: why do you claim a book compiled by Catholics and later modified by Protestants to be the ultimate authority?

Where do I get the idea? All pastors (of various divisions) that I have spoken to claim the Bible is the source. If there is a doubt about something, consult the Bible.

Were they all pastors of one of the Protestant sects? If so, they're going to be a bit biased.

 

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Originally posted by: KruptosAngelos
There are people that argue the world is still flat, but that doesn't make it opinion. Clearly you are the one that doesn't understand the meaning of the word. I know what being Christian means, and I know Catholicism does not follow that definition. Plenty of other people know this, and whether you agree with us doesn't make it anything other than fact. It's plain facts. One one side you have Jesus, and on the other you have the Pope, it's a straight line between them.

This is one of the ironic features of Abrahamic monotheism: its amazing intolerance and resulting fracturing into thousands of tiny churches, all of which are sure that they are the true believers and that everyone else is wrong.