Good question. Christ founded ONE Church (the Catholic Church) around 33 A.D. Protestantism was founded by Luther, Calvin, etc. 1500 years later and has splintered into thousands of denominations which don't even agree on basic beliefs such as infant/adult baptism, justification, etc.
Look at history. There has been chaos and confusion since before Protestantism, before Jesus even. You might as well say "Why don't Christians reflect on the fact that Christianity didn't come along until Judaism had been going for several thousand years and has done nothing but cause confusion and chaos since its inception?" Or even "Why don't Jews reflect on the fact that Judaism didn't come along until Paganism had been going since the dawn of humanity and has done nothing but cause confusion and chaos since its inception?"
This is because they would rather spend their time trying to invalidate the authenticity of the CATHOLIC CHURCH as being the one and only CHURCH that Jesus Christ established.
Sometimes, the truth hurts... but Jesus also said that many have been called, and only a few respond.
*** FOR ALL THE CATHOLIC HATING PROTESTANTS OUT THERE...***
I will continue to pray for you all, so that you may one day come back home to the TRUE CHURCH --- CATHOLIC CHURCH. Don't worry too much though, we CATHOLICS still love you as GOD's children... you just happen to be a bit lost in your ways. Like the Prodigal son... we will take you back....
Also, please open your Bibles to Matt 16:18-19 and find out who the authority was left to... St. Peter (Vicar of Christ)...
If you really want to know the truth, read what the early Church Fathers said about the faith. From there you will see that there is only ONE TRUE CHURCH... The CATHOLIC CHURCH.
I dare you... read Tertullian, Irenaeus, Origen, etc... Or are you too afraid to find out the TRUTH...
The Catholics were the first protestants, dividing themselves from the Orthodox church in protest over who would hold political control in what city. Know history. God bless you.
The very founder of the "Reformation", Martin Luther, was the "regrettable" one, as he surveyed the damage that his rebellion against authority had caused. His writings show that he lamented his deed when he penned the following remarks...
"This one will not hear of Baptism, and that one denies the sacrament, another puts a world between this and the last day: some teach that Christ is not God, some say this, some say that: there are as many sects and creeds as there are heads. No yokel is so rude but when he has dreams and fancies, he thinks himself inspired by the Holy Ghost and must be a prophet."
De Wette III, 61. quoted in O'Hare, THE FACTS ABOUT LUTHER, 208.
Calvin
You are mistaken in supposing that we desire to lead away the people from that method of worship ping God which the Catholic Church always observed
?all we have attempted has been to renew that ancient form of the Church? as evidenced in the writings of Chrysostom, Basil, Cyprian, Ambrose, and Augustine. Here we see the constant refrain from the Protestant reformers: The evangelical doctrine is not innovation, but is itself the ancient faith of the Church.
Really, the fact that 300 years after Christ's death they decide he was a God and not just a man, by a vote isn't the cause of the derision at all?
How about the fact that the gospels were not written until 80 years after he died, or the fact that there is no secular evidence supporting that Jesus even existed at all.
Thank God for Luther. Did you know that the Bible was formed before the Catholic church canonized it? It was done by real Bible believers who are not protestants. They are the ones who were executed by the Catholic church.
Probably for similar reasons that Catholics don't reflect on the 300 years past before the actual creation of the Catholic Church, in addition to all of the Protestants that they have killed merely to protect their image.
As soon as New Testament Christians realize that the oldest book in the New Testament was written around 80-100 A.D.
It's been around less then 2000 years but people act like it's the only holy book ever written.
'Christianity' itself didn't come until at least 50+ years after the supposed death and resurrection of 'Jesus Christ'.
I don't necessarily think it is bad in and of itself (like Gandhi said, 'I don't hate your Christ, I love your Christ, it's just that Christians are so unlike your Christ) the main problem is that it propagates superstitious belief and blind acceptance.
Throughout the centuries, various groups have managed to use Christianity (and other religions) as tools for controlling populations through fear and ignorance.
This includes both catholic and protestant faiths, as well as Judaism, and Islam. The so called 'Abraham faiths' all seem to share a common thread of spreading their beliefs at the tip of a sword, or the barrel of a gun.
Believers and zealots argue endlessly over who is 'right' - never taking into consideration that the answer might be 'none of the above'.
Protestants are actually closer in beliefs, etc. to the early church. Because the Catholics, in time, moved away from what was originally accepted to be truth. Mainly that salvation comes by faith not by doing good deeds, and the Catholics moved farther and farther away from that. When this was recognized, Protestants left in order to "go back to the basics" -- with just the Bible, not the Apocrypha, or the Rosary, or whatever.
We were to busy running for our lives . It cost something to be a christian back in those days. You could be burned as a stake...50 million Christians lost their lives during those dark ages . Thats why we flocked to America - No king, No pope ....Religous freedom !
Salvation by faith in God alone, bought by the blood of Jesus, is described, practiced and amplified beginning in Genesis 3. The Roman Catholic protocol supposedly began with the apostle Peter 4,000 years later.
wait a minute - aren't you forgetting the great East- West Schism in 1054 or a myriad of other confusing and chaotic times that occurred long before Martin Luther was born?
Confusion and chaos was part of the "catholic church" long before the rise of "protestantism." There have always been controversies and dissensions in the christian church.
But even more importantly, why do you say "has done nothing but cause confusion and chaos?" Me thinks you need to read your history book and realize that much social good and spiritual blessing has emerged in the world because of Protestantism.
1) The divinity of Jesus was created at the council of Nicaea in the year 325. The early Christians believed that Jesus was the SON of God, not that he was God himself.
2) The Catholic church was not one and united until protestantism. In 1054, the leaders of the Roman Catholic and the Greek Orthodox churches both excommunicated each other (the excommunications were not lifted until 1965). But there had been other "alternate belief systems" before that: see Arianism, Nestorians, Monophysites.
3) Luther is credited with starting the Protestant Reformation circa 1517. This had nothing to do with divorce or the English King Henry VIII. The separation of the Church of England from the Catholic Chruch did not start until about 1533.
Its called PRIDE. Protestantism is a watered-down version of Catholicism with nothing but modernism, humanism and individualism to show for it. Catholicism is the original protestant movement and an offspring of the original church, the Orthodox Church.
Why don't Protestants reflect on the fact that Protestantism didn't come about until
