salvation by faith, not by works as there is no amount of works you can do to be worthy of salvation.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2742677&forum_id=2#26825465)

This is more lutheran, baptist, methodist, whatever the fucks

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2742677&forum_id=2#26828291)

"We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, and not for our own works or deservings."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2742677&forum_id=2#26842005)

Catholicism is a joke breh. they intentially kept the bible from being printed in the common tongue so they could make shit up to control people and make money off them

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2742677&forum_id=2#26829859)

-First off, let's take a big historical perspective. For the first 1500 years of Christianity, the Church couldn't suppress the printing of the Bible because there was no printing, period. All Bibles had to be handwritten, and so like most books they were extremely valuable and rare. So, at the most basic level, the idea of the church halting book printings to control people's minds is very false.

-The idea that the Catholic church suppressed all translations of the Bible is false. For example, before Luther, there were actually MANY translations of the Bible into German. Here's one of most of the Old Testament from the 1300's:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenceslas_Bible

Here's a major one from France:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_Historiale

These translations were often done by clergymen and were anything but illicit. One translation, the Acre Bible, was possibly even made for Louis IX of France, who is now a Catholic saint.

-The Church's concern wasn't vernacular Bibles, but rather heresy. So, in locations where heresy wasn't a major concern, you actually saw a good number of partial vernacular translations produced and distributed. However, in places where heresy WAS in play, they were more aggressive in stamping them out, because the vernacular texts were often tied with heresy. This wasn't simply a matter of "oh shit, people asking questions, BURN EVERYTHING," but instead the belief that people with heretical beliefs should not be handling the translation of sacred texts because they could translate them in a way that would promote heresy (or include notes/additions to the text promoting it).

-The fact the Church's concern was heresy is borne out by the fact that there were never any restrictions on the creation or reading of the Vulgate, the Church's official bible translation into Latin. Any learned person in that era would have learned Latin, and any non-learned person probably wasn't literate in the first place.

-Once the Reformation took off, the Catholics were pretty quick to come around towards producing their own vernacular translations of the Bible rather than simply condemning all vernacular texts. Douay-Rheims, the major English translation of the period, predates the King James Bible.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2742677&forum_id=2#26833810)

but on this issue the reformed position is that the works come by having faith in the first place, not that they don't matter at all

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2742677&forum_id=2#26824964)

Other big differences besides the faith/works disagreement:

-You've probably heard of the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura, literally, "Scripture alone." The doctrine holds that the Bible is the sole source of valid Christian beliefs, while Catholics hold that church tradition (in particular, beliefs that were widespread in the early church) is also a valid source. Catholics will often criticize sola scriptura by pointing out that 1. the Bible itself does not call for sola scriptura, making the Protestant position self-refuting, and 2. saying that the Bible's book make-up was determined by the early church tradition the Catholics are drawing other beliefs from. Besides causing Protestants to reject some things (like purgatory and all the Mary stuff) that Catholics believe in, this belief also helps to drive the Protestant emphasis on personal study and interpretation of Scripture, as well as the rejection of a big church hierarchy. Catholics, on the other hand, argue that a united Church organization is, among other things, essential for maintaining the continuity of orthodox, traditional beliefs.

-Churches in the Reformed tradition have traditionally believed in predestination. That is, God chose in advance only some people to be saved, and all others are damned no matter what. The basic source of this idea is the notion that if Jesus dies for somebody's sins, and that person ends up damned anyway, then it would undermine God's absolute power. Therefore, God must only have acted to save the Elect, who are saved no matter what. This belief has commonly been attacked for being anti-nomian, that is, it supposedly undermines the Law of God, since nobody has any reason to follow it. Ironically, old-schools Calvinists have generally been the MOST puritanical when it comes to morality (and yep, the Puritans were Reformed).

-Other than Anglicans, Protestants have generally condemned Catholicism for promoting idolatry through the veneration of saints, use of icons, and so forth. They condemn praying to saints for their intercession and insist that prayer and praise should be reserved for God alone. In particular, Protestants have been strongly critical of Catholic zeal for Mary, and Catholics responded by doubling down on it; the years after the Reformation saw a notable upsurge in devotion to Mary with new feasts in her honor and the like. Among them is Our Lady of the Rosary, which is still celebrated today and was initially created to celebrate the Battle of Lepanto.

-Protestants generally (again, sans Anglicans) reject the need for any sort of priestly office. Catholics treat the existence of priests as essential and view the office as created by Christ through his Great Commission to the Apostles. In contrast, Protestants don't necessarily need ministers, though of course they almost all have them because they provide moral leadership, Scriptural scholarshp, and the like.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2742677&forum_id=2#26829738)

So, Christianity is pretty credited as long as people don't take it too seriously, right?

That's why the Anglican/Episcopalian church is the most credited of the Christian churches, because they take themselves the least seriously.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2742677&forum_id=2#26835408)

/thread

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=2742677&forum_id=2#26836103)