Jew here. Please explain the difference between types of Christianity. I know Catholicism has the Pope and the fanciest buildings, but that's about it. What's difference between Protestantism and Lutheranism? And baptists? And what's Eastern Orthodoxy's deal? And how do Jehova's Witnesses enter the equation?
Jew here. Please explain the difference between types of Christianity...
Camden Foster
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Justin Torres
lutherans are just a subsect of protestants. in fact it's the original protestant sect. luther is the guy who's responsible for christianity (=catholism) splitting into protestants and catholics
Jacob Brown
It's easy to remember
>Orthodoxy
true Christianity
>everything else
heresies
Christopher Bell
jw, baptists, lutheran, methodists are protestants, so are mennorites amish and mormons
orthodox and catholism separated during the great schism over authority
Michael Smith
Different calendars, different traditions, different (or no) hierarchy structures, different interpretations of certain parts of the books.
Ryder Martin
As far as I know, the biggest differences are nowadays
>Catholic-Orthodox
The position of the pope, pretty much. Both agree on the primacy of the pope (based on Matthew, where Jesus called Peter the rock (it was a pun, Peter is a conjugation of Petra hich is Greek for rock) on which he'd build his church. The problem is that the Catholics saw him as the big representative of God on earth, whereas the Orthodox church merely saw him as the first among equals in the pentarchy. Not that it really matters, considering Rome is the only city of the pentarchy still in Christian hands.
>Catholic vs Protestant
Mostly things like whether or not Greek concepts like logic and Platonic dualism should be accepted as part of doctrine or not (Luther violently rejected Greek logic), as well as sola fide vs salvation by faith and works. The difference is subtle: Protestants believe we are saved by faith alone, and that good deeds following faith are a happy accident. Catholics also believe inherrently that it is the sacrifice of Christ that saves us, but they believe that the good works are the true expression of that faith. In other words, there is no faith in the absence of good works, only hypocrisy.
And then there's also miaphysite-monophisite-nestorian bullshit about the nature of Christ, but that conflict was mostly resolved around the 3rd/4th century with most sects agreeing on the contemporary doctrine of the Trinity where all three parts are equal in importance and equal to God, but not equal to eachother. This opposed to, say, Nestorianism, which emphasized the human nature of Christ and the son being lower than the father (but the problem with that interpretation is that it devalues the sacrifice of Christ. If it was the mere sacrifice of a mortal man, what importance does it even hold to us?).
>And how do Jehova's Witnesses enter the equation?
Pretty late heretics that went full retard.
James Hernandez
>Both agree on the primacy of the pope
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Owen Perry
About that Schism, some say it went back as far as Charlemagne, who was acknowledged as a new West Roman Emperor by the pope in Rome, and even crowned by the Pope... but obviously not acknowledged by the Byzantines. This sewed the first seeds of conflict about the place of the peope in relation to the rest of the pentarchy (and the emperor). The crusades were an attempt to mend the schism: the popes intended to bring the Byzantines back into the Catholic/Universal flock through signs of goodwill and brotherhood among Christians. But then the Venetians fucked it up.
Julian Lewis
>Pretty late heretics that went full retard.
As a slightly less biased view on this, basically much of European Christianity is too sacerdotal and authoritarian for American tastes, and that, combined with the separation of Church and State and the frontier nature of America, leads to massive splintering and Evangelicalism, which emphasizes one's personal touch with God, as well as Mormonism, which basically agrees with the basic "Jesus died for your sins" of Christianity but shares little else.
Ryder Turner
Are you saying Eastern Orthodoxy recognizes the pope? I've never heard that.
Jace Reyes
As far as I know, early Orthodox Christians did agree that the Bishop of Rome was the superior bishop within the pentarchy and the first amogn equals. Though it did later change to the Bishop of Constantinople, mostly due to conflicts arising with the Pope who claimed total authority as well as doing some things the Byzantine emperors didn't like.
en.wikipedia.org
Recognized. The schism was in part about the position the pope had to play within the church.
Christopher Brown
>Jehova's Witnesses
they're like Mormons in the sense that they're about as Christian as Christians are jewish only they're too retarded to realize their heresy is completely different
Parker Hill
well that is the western perspective
it is not just some say, it is that which divided christianity because byzantine emperors are always sanctioned by the church because he was a duty to protect it, when charlemagne decided to crown himself emperor of the romans they have a problem of having the protection of 2 emperors, etc and so forth
Samuel Rodriguez
he has*
Evan Scott
Wikipedia is a bad source for things like this, user. Pope's attempts at proclaiming supremacy were among the reasons for the schism. But not the only one.
Samuel Rogers
See But agreed more or less; they realized that most of Christian tradition, such as most obviously Christmas, was essentially paganism grafted onto Christian imagery, and wanted to return to a purer form of the religion without such influences, thus necessarily discarding most Christian thought that had happened beforehand.
Austin Barnes
>And baptists
>Jehova's Witnesses
fanatical cancer
>Eastern Orthodoxy's
Decentralised catholicism
Jeremiah Phillips
I do realize they think they're special and unique and that they believe all other christians have everything wrong but that doesn't change the fact that they're christians in name only and barely even that
Elijah White
>Decentralised catholicism
succinetly put
Austin Gutierrez
christianity was basically pulled from the brink by emperor constantine; orthodoxes worship him as their greatest saint because of this. catholics never liked the romans to begin with so they would never worship one of their emperors. protestants are christians who split from either group (mainly the catholics) for various reasons, and lutherans, baptists, and jehovah's witnisses are all subsets of protestants. the main reasons that protestant churches split from orthodoxy and catholicism are because they either see their worship of saints as heresy, see their statues of jesus as idolatry, or just think some of their rules are dumb (confession, tithe, etc). there's also the assyrian church that predates catholicism and orthodoxy and the asian churches that basically just don't give a shit about the other groups, but they keep to themselves so they dont matter much
i only know this because i was raised christian. i'm agnostic now
Parker Ward
Agreed, but Evangelicalism and Mormon Christians are starting to become the religious mainstream of America as others either turn to atheism/irreligion or convert to them.
Hudson Cox
>>Eastern Orthodoxy's
>Decentralised catholicism
very well put
Colton Brown
All of them will accept you with open arms, as long as you accept Jesus as your holy lord and savior. This is all you need to know.
Alexander Wood
>what's eastern orthodoxy's deal
We don't like change, My priest claimed we are the oldest christian church and the others are just break off of us. Don't know how true that is but our style of church is closest to the one of the Roman Empire. It's also very culture based. A Russian orthodox is different from a Greek orthodox or Romanian orthodox.
Da desu