Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Markham
The real problem in getting to the truth is what we have to go on is so little. The Roman Catholic church ran all religion, learning and teaching from 300 AD until very recently, in historical terms. They decided what went into the bible, what people read and taught. To stray from their interpretation often could result in this.
 |
Great discussion, Paul. Here's my contribution:
My quote of your post isolates the KEY PROBLEM. People equate CHRISTIANITY with people WHO CLAIMED/CLAIM to be Christians but acted OTHERWISE (crusades, wars of religion, thinly disguised land grabs done in the name of "fighting heretics", bringing "true religion" to "savages" (aka colonial imperialism using religion to pacify "the natives"), etc etc. It's not like this wasn't prophesied in the Bible. Apostle Paul himself wrote 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 which warned of a "Man of Sin" who will take the name of God and do ungodly things (think: very human agendas like power, pride, and domination). Daniel 7 warns of the "little horn" that would usurp God's law and persecute those who believe God's word. The Apocalypse mentions the power of spiritual Babylon and mixing human agendas with the word of God in order to deceive.
And as you mentioned, it all did come to pass, the Roman "church" killed, ran down, and persecuted those who deviated from its theology (which was really a CONVENIENT mix of pagan traditions and church imperatives clothed in some agreeable biblical justifications)
Many (not all) critics of Christianity are laboring under assumptions which use a straw man argument. It's the classic strawman argument- you create a strawman (catholic abuses / historical abuses by preachers behaving badly / historic abuses of Christianity to pursue all too human agendas), knock it down, and claim to knock down what the Bible really means (personal transformation through surrender to God and sharing in Christ's victory through faith in Christ's sacrifice). In essence, by claiming the destruction of fake worship based on Justification by Works, those who bash Christians also claim they destroyed faith based on Grace through faith...