Posted by Ray Kidder on 5/24/2009, 9:47 pm, in reply to "Re: The Catholic Church is viewed as a Noah's Ark"
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Jim,
You wrote of something that is dispensed by the Roman Catholic Church, for you wrote:
"The word 'protestant' arose as a descriptive of those who were protesting RC dogma (it was never doctrine) about sanctity, indulgences and papal authority to dispense."
It seems to me that of the mainline Protestant denominations, the Baptists are the most removed from Roman Catholicism. If I were to ask someone from one of these Baptist churches, "What kind of grace do you dispense at your church?" I suppose I would receive a puzzled look, and then be taught that the grace they dispense is the telling of the good news of John 3:20, and that it would be good if I participated in their altar call the following Sunday.
The low Protestant denominations (i.e. those that consider our sacraments to be mere ordinances) are commonly Baptists and Pentecostalists. Because they have so drifted away from the concept of church authority and the use of sacraments to dispense grace, they tend to overemphasize faith based on a prayer life, Bible study, sermons, and the reading of religious books. Without sacraments, I suppose there is a lesser need for a church structure.
They keep keep on forming new denominations based on differences of opinion about their doctrines. These later Protestant groups are in protest against the older Protestant groups. Without a mechanism of Church authority, and the tendency to interpret the Bible according to one's own private intuition and influence of the Holy Spirit, what keeps them from forming new denominations that are single church entities, based on the doctrines of a single pastor?
Ray Kidder
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