According to the scriptures, Christians were from the beginning
subject to persecution by some Jewish religious authorities, who
disagreed with the apostles' teachings (See Split of early Christianity
and Judaism). This involved punishments, including death, for Christians
such as Stephen[Acts 7:59] and James, son of Zebedee.
Larger-scale persecutions followed at the hands of the authorities of
the Roman Empire, first in the year 64, when Emperor Nero blamed them for the Great Fire of Rome. According to Church tradition, it was under Nero's persecution that early Church leaders Peter and Paul of Tarsus were each martyred in Rome. Further widespread persecutions of the Church occurred under nine subsequent Roman emperors, most intensely under Decius and Diocletian.
From the year 150, Christian teachers began to produce theological and
apologetic works aimed at defending the faith. These authors are known
as the Church Fathers, and study of them is called Patristics. Notable
early Fathers include Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Justin Martyr,
Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen.
State persecution ceased in the 4th century, when Constantine I issued an edict of toleration in 313. On 27 February 380, Emperor Theodosius I enacted a law establishing Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. From at least the 4th century, Christianity has played a prominent role in the shaping of Western civilization
Constantine was also instrumental in the convocation of the First Council of Nicaea in 325, which sought to address the Arian heresy and formulated the Nicene Creed, which is still used by the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglican Communion, and many Protestant churches
The presence of Christianity in Africa began in the middle of the 1st century in Egypt, and by the end of the 2nd century in the region around Carthage. Important Africans who influenced the early development of Christianity includes Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen of Alexandria, Cyprian, Athanasius and Augustine of Hippo. The later rise of Islam in North Africa reduced the size and numbers of Christian congregations, leaving only the Coptic Church in Egypt and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in the Horn of Africa. The History of Christianity in Africa began in the 1st century when Mark the Evangelist started the Orthodox Church of Alexandria in about 43 AD.
With the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the west, the papacy became a political player, first visible in Pope Leo's diplomatic dealings with Huns and Vandals. The church also entered into a long period of missionary activity and expansion among the various tribes. Whilst arianists instituted the death penalty for practicing pagans (see Massacre of Verden as example), Catholicism also spread among the Germanic peoples, the Celtic and Slavic peoples, the Hungarians, and the Baltic peoples.
Around 500, St. Benedict set out his Monastic Rule, establishing a system of regulations for the foundation and running of monasteries. Monasticism became a powerful force throughout Europe, and gave rise to many early centers of learning, most famously in Ireland, Scotland and Gaul, contributing to the Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century.
From the 7th century onwards, Islam conquered the Christian lands of the Middle East, North Africa and much of Spain, resulting in oppression of Christianity and numerous military struggles, including the Crusades, the Spanish Reconquista and wars against the Turks.
The Middle Ages brought about major changes within the church. Pope Gregory the Great dramatically reformed ecclesiastical structure and administration. In the early 8th century, iconoclasm became a divisive issue, when it was sponsored by the Byzantine emperors. The Second Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (787) finally pronounced in favor of icons.
In the west, from the 11th century onward, older cathedral schools developed into universities (see University of Oxford, University of Paris, and University of Bologna.) Originally teaching only theology, these steadily added subjects including medicine, philosophy and law, becoming the direct ancestors of modern western institutions of learning.
Accompanying the rise of the "new towns" throughout Western Europe, mendicant orders were founded, bringing the consecrated religious life out of the monastery and into the new urban setting. The two principal mendicant movements were the Franciscans and the Dominicans founded by St. Francis and St. Dominic respectively. Both orders made significant contributions to the development of the great universities of Europe. Another new order were the Cistercians, whose large isolated monasteries spearheaded the settlement of former wilderness areas.
From 1095 under the pontificate of Urban II, the Crusades were launched. These were a series of military campaigns in the Holy Land and elsewhere, initiated in response to pleas from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I for aid against Turkish expansion. The Crusades ultimately failed to stifle Islamic aggression and even contributed to Christian enmity with the sacking of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade.
Over a period stretching from the 7th to the 13th century, the Christian Church underwent gradual alienation, resulting in a schism dividing it into a so-called Latin or Western branch, the Roman Catholic Church,and an Eastern, largely Greek, branch, the Orthodox Church. These two churches disagree on a number of administrative, liturgical, and doctrinal issues, most notably papal primacy of jurisdiction.The Second Council of Lyon (1274) and the Council of Florence (1439) attempted to reunite the churches, but in both cases the Eastern Orthodox refused to implement the decisions and the two principal churches remain in schism to the present day. However, the Roman Catholic Church has achieved union with various smaller eastern churches.
Orthodox theologians charge that, in contrast to Orthodox theology, western theology is based on philosophical discourse which reduces humanity and nature to cold mechanical concepts.Orthodox theologians argue that the mind (reason, rationality) is the focus of Western theology, whereas in Eastern theology, the mind must be put in the heart, so they are united into what is called nous, this unity as heart is the focus of Eastern Orthodox Christianity involving the unceasing Prayer of the heart:
Practicing the Jesus Prayer is strongly linked to mastering passions of both soul and body, e.g. by fasting. For the Eastern Orthodox not the body is wicked, but "the bodily way of thinking" is; therefore salvation also regards the body.
The mystical practice (the prayer and the meditation) doesn't lead to perceiving representations of God (see below Palamism). Thus, the most important means of a life consecrated to praying is the invoked name of God, as it is emphasized since the fifth century by the Thebaid anchorites, or by the later Athonite hesychasts. For the Eastern Orthodox the power of the Jesus Prayer comes not only from its content, but from the very invocation of Jesus' name. Theologically, the Jesus Prayer is considered to be the response of the Holy Tradition to the lesson taught by the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee, in which the Pharisee demonstrates the improper way to pray by exclaiming: "Thank you Lord that I am not like the Publican", whereas the Publican prays correctly in humility, saying "Lord have mercy on me, a sinner"
The Roman Catholic Church's attitude was expressed by Pope John Paul II in the image of the Church "breathing with her two lungs". He meant that there should be a combination of the more rational, juridical, organisation-minded "Latin" temperament with the intuitive, mystical and contemplative spirit found in the east.
The Eastern Orthodox reject the rational and philosophical foundations of Western Christianity as pagan and heretical and assert that until the Western Church learns to see God and know God as the Eastern Church does, there cannot be even the remotest possibility of reconciliation.
As the Church both Eastern and Western teaches, there is no place where God is not, and God's love is for all human beings, including sinners. Hell is described as self-exclusion from communion with that universal love, as cutting oneself off from love, or but as an enemy of God.
Protestantism is popularly considered to have begun in Germany in 1517 when Martin Luther published his Ninety-five. Theses as a reaction against abuses in the sale of indulgences by the Roman Catholic Church, which purported to offer remission of sin to their purchasers. However, the term derives from the letter of protestation from German Lutheran princes in 1529 against an edict of the Diet of Speyer condemning the teachings of Martin Luther as heretical. Although there were earlier breaks and attempts to reform the Roman Catholic Church—notably by Peter Waldo, John Wycliffe, and Jan Hus—only Luther succeeded in sparking a wider, lasting, and modern movement. In the 16th century, Lutheranism spread from Germany into Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Estonia, and Iceland. Reformed (or Calvinist) denominations spread in Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Scotland, Switzerland and France by reformers such as John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, and John Knox. The political separation of the Church of England from the pope under King Henry VIII began Anglicanism, bringing England and Wales into this broad Reformation movement.
- The three fundamental principles of traditional Protestantism are the following:
* Scripture Alone (Sola Scriptura)
Christian Fundamentalists read the Bible as the "inerrant, infallible" Word of God, as do the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican churches, to name a few, but interpret it in a literalist fashion without using the historical critical method.
By contrast, the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox Churches teach that the Scriptures are not the only infallible source of Christian doctrine. For them Scripture is but one of three equal authorities; the other two being Sacred Tradition and the episcopacy. These churches also believe that the Church has authority to establish or restrict interpretation of Scriptures because, in part, it implicitly selected which books were to be in the biblical canon through its traditions, whereas Protestants believe the Church passively recognized and received the books that were already widely considered canonical.
* Justification by Faith Alone (Sola Fide)
The subjective principle of the Reformation is justification by faith alone, or, rather, by free grace through faith operative in good works. It has reference to the personal appropriation of the Christian salvation, and aims to give all glory to Christ, by declaring that the sinner is justified before God (i.e., is acquitted of guilt, and declared righteous) solely on the ground of the all-sufficient merits of Christ as apprehended by a living faith, in opposition to the theory —then prevalent, and substantially sanctioned by "the Council of Trent— which makes faith and good works co-ordinate sources of justification, laying the chief stress upon works. Protestantism does not depreciate good works; but it denies their value as sources or conditions of justification, and insists on them as the necessary fruits of faith, and evidence of justification.
Roman Catholics from the Diet of Worms and Council of Trent until the present day (e.g., Sungenis) have criticized this phrase on several grounds. First and foremost , it appears to them to indicate that one can be justified without any actual change of life. Hence the strong language of Trent: If any one saith, that men are justified, either by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ, or by the sole remission of sins, to the exclusion of the grace and the charity which is poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, and is inherent in them; or even that the grace, whereby we are justified, is only the favour of God; let him be anathema.
Second, Roman Catholics point out that the only use of the formula "faith alone" (sola fide) is in James 2:24, which appears to deny the sola fide concept: "You see that a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone.". Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy argue that this passage disproves the doctrine of justification by faith alone (or sola fide), whereas the early and many modern Protestants continue to believe that Catholic and Orthodox interpretations "go astray through the ambiguous meaning of a term [dikai??] and resolve James' and Paul's apparent conflict regarding faith and works in alternate ways from the Catholics and Orthodox. The debate over justification remains unsettled.
In addition, there is the passage (in for example, Matthew 25:31-46) describing Christ's judgment at the end of time. The just, those who are to enter into the Kingdom, are separated from those who are to go into everlasting punishment, on the basis of their actions in life:
'Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in..
Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire.. for I was hungry, and you gave me not to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me not to drink.
And these shall go into everlasting punishment: but the just, into life everlasting.'
Hence, they claim that Scripture upholds their rejection of sola fide justification.
* Justification by Grace Alone (Sola Gratia)
Sola gratia, or "only grace", specifically excludes the merit done by a person as part of achieving salvation. Sola gratia is the teaching that salvation comes by divine grace or "unmerited favor" only, not as something merited by the sinner. This means that salvation is an unearned gift from God for Jesus's sake.
In fact Catholics also believe in sola gratia. The Catholic Church teaches that good works done after regeneration (at baptism) and justification are (if certain conditions are met) meritorious and can contribute to salvation and attainment of eternal life, but only hand-in-hand with, soaked in, enabled by, grace, which alone saves us. The true Catholic position will always include the works alongside grace and faith. We teach neither sola Scriptura, nor sola ecclesia, nor sola traditio. Pope Benedict XVI stated in a General Audience (Nov. 8, 2006): “it is to him and his grace alone that we owe what we are as Christians.”
Throughout Europe, the divides caused by the Reformation led to outbreaks of religious violence and the establishment of separate state churches in Western Europe: Lutheranism in parts of Germany and in Scandinavia and Anglicanism in England in 1534. Ultimately, these differences led to the outbreak of conflicts in which religion played a key factor. The Thirty Years' War, the English Civil War, and the French Wars of Religion are prominent examples. These events intensified the Christian debate on persecution and toleration.
Partly in response to the Protestant Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church engaged in a substantial process of reform and renewal, known as the Counter-Reformation or Catholic Reform. The Council of Trent clarified and reasserted Roman Catholic doctrine. During the following centuries, competition between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism became deeply entangled with political struggles among European states.
In the era known as the Great Divergence, when in the West the Age of Enlightenment and the Scientific revolution brought about great societal changes, Christianity was confronted with various forms of skepticism and with certain modern political ideologies such as versions of socialism and liberalism.Events ranged from mere anti-clericalism to violent outbursts against Christianity such as the Dechristianisation during the French Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, and general hostility of Marxist movements, especially the Russian Revolution.
Separation between religion (again, specifically Catholicism) and the state is found to a great degree in France and Italy, countries where the state actively opposed itself to the authority of the Catholic Church. The combined factors of the formation of nation states and ultramontanism, especially in Germany and the Netherlands but also in England (to a much lesser extent), often forced Catholic churches, organizations, and believers to choose between the national demands of the state and the authority of the Church, specifically the papacy. This conflict came to a head in the First Vatican Council, and in Germany would lead directly to the Kulturkampf, where liberals and Protestants under the leadership of Bismarck severely restricted Catholic expression and organization.
Christian commitment in Europe dropped as modernity and secularism came into their own in Western Europe, while religious commitments in America have been generally high in comparison to Western Europe. The late 20th century has shown the shift of Christian adherence to the Third World and southern hemisphere in general, with western civilization no longer the chief standard bearer of Christianity.
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Culture - The cultures of both halves of the Church were different. This caused the potential for petty misunderstandings that escalated into abuse on both sides.
Power Base - Their centres of power were far from each other. The Pope resided in Rome (Italy), but the subordinate head of the Eastern Church resided in Constantinople (Turkey).
Language - Their languages were different. People in the Western Church spoke Latin. People in the Eastern Church spoke Greek. This difference fuelled confusion.
This division meant that Christians had to be more specific about their religious identity. Where before 1054 every baptised follower of Jesus was a Christian in the Catholic Church, now they had to identify themselves as Catholic (ie Latin Rite Catholic or 'Roman Catholic', because the Pope's headquarters were in Rome and they spoke Latin; or 'Eastern Rite Catholic' - a significant number of Eastern Christians remaining faithful to the Pope) or Eastern Orthodox (because their headquarters were in the East" also called Greek Orthodox but this is only one branch of it, the majority being Slavic). In recent years both the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches have tried to solve their differences, but unity under the Pope has not been achieved so far. [Catholic Education Office, Western Australia Yr 11 text book, God, Religion and Me]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
State persecution ceased in the 4th century, when Constantine I issued an edict of toleration in 313. On 27 February 380, Emperor Theodosius I enacted a law establishing Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. From at least the 4th century, Christianity has played a prominent role in the shaping of Western civilization
Constantine was also instrumental in the convocation of the First Council of Nicaea in 325, which sought to address the Arian heresy and formulated the Nicene Creed, which is still used by the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglican Communion, and many Protestant churches
The presence of Christianity in Africa began in the middle of the 1st century in Egypt, and by the end of the 2nd century in the region around Carthage. Important Africans who influenced the early development of Christianity includes Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen of Alexandria, Cyprian, Athanasius and Augustine of Hippo. The later rise of Islam in North Africa reduced the size and numbers of Christian congregations, leaving only the Coptic Church in Egypt and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in the Horn of Africa. The History of Christianity in Africa began in the 1st century when Mark the Evangelist started the Orthodox Church of Alexandria in about 43 AD.
With the decline and fall of the Roman Empire in the west, the papacy became a political player, first visible in Pope Leo's diplomatic dealings with Huns and Vandals. The church also entered into a long period of missionary activity and expansion among the various tribes. Whilst arianists instituted the death penalty for practicing pagans (see Massacre of Verden as example), Catholicism also spread among the Germanic peoples, the Celtic and Slavic peoples, the Hungarians, and the Baltic peoples.
Around 500, St. Benedict set out his Monastic Rule, establishing a system of regulations for the foundation and running of monasteries. Monasticism became a powerful force throughout Europe, and gave rise to many early centers of learning, most famously in Ireland, Scotland and Gaul, contributing to the Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century.
From the 7th century onwards, Islam conquered the Christian lands of the Middle East, North Africa and much of Spain, resulting in oppression of Christianity and numerous military struggles, including the Crusades, the Spanish Reconquista and wars against the Turks.
The Middle Ages brought about major changes within the church. Pope Gregory the Great dramatically reformed ecclesiastical structure and administration. In the early 8th century, iconoclasm became a divisive issue, when it was sponsored by the Byzantine emperors. The Second Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (787) finally pronounced in favor of icons.
In the west, from the 11th century onward, older cathedral schools developed into universities (see University of Oxford, University of Paris, and University of Bologna.) Originally teaching only theology, these steadily added subjects including medicine, philosophy and law, becoming the direct ancestors of modern western institutions of learning.
Accompanying the rise of the "new towns" throughout Western Europe, mendicant orders were founded, bringing the consecrated religious life out of the monastery and into the new urban setting. The two principal mendicant movements were the Franciscans and the Dominicans founded by St. Francis and St. Dominic respectively. Both orders made significant contributions to the development of the great universities of Europe. Another new order were the Cistercians, whose large isolated monasteries spearheaded the settlement of former wilderness areas.
From 1095 under the pontificate of Urban II, the Crusades were launched. These were a series of military campaigns in the Holy Land and elsewhere, initiated in response to pleas from the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I for aid against Turkish expansion. The Crusades ultimately failed to stifle Islamic aggression and even contributed to Christian enmity with the sacking of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade.
Over a period stretching from the 7th to the 13th century, the Christian Church underwent gradual alienation, resulting in a schism dividing it into a so-called Latin or Western branch, the Roman Catholic Church,and an Eastern, largely Greek, branch, the Orthodox Church. These two churches disagree on a number of administrative, liturgical, and doctrinal issues, most notably papal primacy of jurisdiction.The Second Council of Lyon (1274) and the Council of Florence (1439) attempted to reunite the churches, but in both cases the Eastern Orthodox refused to implement the decisions and the two principal churches remain in schism to the present day. However, the Roman Catholic Church has achieved union with various smaller eastern churches.
Orthodox theologians charge that, in contrast to Orthodox theology, western theology is based on philosophical discourse which reduces humanity and nature to cold mechanical concepts.Orthodox theologians argue that the mind (reason, rationality) is the focus of Western theology, whereas in Eastern theology, the mind must be put in the heart, so they are united into what is called nous, this unity as heart is the focus of Eastern Orthodox Christianity involving the unceasing Prayer of the heart:
Practicing the Jesus Prayer is strongly linked to mastering passions of both soul and body, e.g. by fasting. For the Eastern Orthodox not the body is wicked, but "the bodily way of thinking" is; therefore salvation also regards the body.
The mystical practice (the prayer and the meditation) doesn't lead to perceiving representations of God (see below Palamism). Thus, the most important means of a life consecrated to praying is the invoked name of God, as it is emphasized since the fifth century by the Thebaid anchorites, or by the later Athonite hesychasts. For the Eastern Orthodox the power of the Jesus Prayer comes not only from its content, but from the very invocation of Jesus' name. Theologically, the Jesus Prayer is considered to be the response of the Holy Tradition to the lesson taught by the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee, in which the Pharisee demonstrates the improper way to pray by exclaiming: "Thank you Lord that I am not like the Publican", whereas the Publican prays correctly in humility, saying "Lord have mercy on me, a sinner"
The Roman Catholic Church's attitude was expressed by Pope John Paul II in the image of the Church "breathing with her two lungs". He meant that there should be a combination of the more rational, juridical, organisation-minded "Latin" temperament with the intuitive, mystical and contemplative spirit found in the east.
The Eastern Orthodox reject the rational and philosophical foundations of Western Christianity as pagan and heretical and assert that until the Western Church learns to see God and know God as the Eastern Church does, there cannot be even the remotest possibility of reconciliation.
As the Church both Eastern and Western teaches, there is no place where God is not, and God's love is for all human beings, including sinners. Hell is described as self-exclusion from communion with that universal love, as cutting oneself off from love, or but as an enemy of God.
Protestantism is popularly considered to have begun in Germany in 1517 when Martin Luther published his Ninety-five. Theses as a reaction against abuses in the sale of indulgences by the Roman Catholic Church, which purported to offer remission of sin to their purchasers. However, the term derives from the letter of protestation from German Lutheran princes in 1529 against an edict of the Diet of Speyer condemning the teachings of Martin Luther as heretical. Although there were earlier breaks and attempts to reform the Roman Catholic Church—notably by Peter Waldo, John Wycliffe, and Jan Hus—only Luther succeeded in sparking a wider, lasting, and modern movement. In the 16th century, Lutheranism spread from Germany into Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Estonia, and Iceland. Reformed (or Calvinist) denominations spread in Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Scotland, Switzerland and France by reformers such as John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, and John Knox. The political separation of the Church of England from the pope under King Henry VIII began Anglicanism, bringing England and Wales into this broad Reformation movement.
- The three fundamental principles of traditional Protestantism are the following:
* Scripture Alone (Sola Scriptura)
Christian Fundamentalists read the Bible as the "inerrant, infallible" Word of God, as do the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican churches, to name a few, but interpret it in a literalist fashion without using the historical critical method.
By contrast, the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox Churches teach that the Scriptures are not the only infallible source of Christian doctrine. For them Scripture is but one of three equal authorities; the other two being Sacred Tradition and the episcopacy. These churches also believe that the Church has authority to establish or restrict interpretation of Scriptures because, in part, it implicitly selected which books were to be in the biblical canon through its traditions, whereas Protestants believe the Church passively recognized and received the books that were already widely considered canonical.
* Justification by Faith Alone (Sola Fide)
The subjective principle of the Reformation is justification by faith alone, or, rather, by free grace through faith operative in good works. It has reference to the personal appropriation of the Christian salvation, and aims to give all glory to Christ, by declaring that the sinner is justified before God (i.e., is acquitted of guilt, and declared righteous) solely on the ground of the all-sufficient merits of Christ as apprehended by a living faith, in opposition to the theory —then prevalent, and substantially sanctioned by "the Council of Trent— which makes faith and good works co-ordinate sources of justification, laying the chief stress upon works. Protestantism does not depreciate good works; but it denies their value as sources or conditions of justification, and insists on them as the necessary fruits of faith, and evidence of justification.
Roman Catholics from the Diet of Worms and Council of Trent until the present day (e.g., Sungenis) have criticized this phrase on several grounds. First and foremost , it appears to them to indicate that one can be justified without any actual change of life. Hence the strong language of Trent: If any one saith, that men are justified, either by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ, or by the sole remission of sins, to the exclusion of the grace and the charity which is poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, and is inherent in them; or even that the grace, whereby we are justified, is only the favour of God; let him be anathema.
Second, Roman Catholics point out that the only use of the formula "faith alone" (sola fide) is in James 2:24, which appears to deny the sola fide concept: "You see that a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone.". Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy argue that this passage disproves the doctrine of justification by faith alone (or sola fide), whereas the early and many modern Protestants continue to believe that Catholic and Orthodox interpretations "go astray through the ambiguous meaning of a term [dikai??] and resolve James' and Paul's apparent conflict regarding faith and works in alternate ways from the Catholics and Orthodox. The debate over justification remains unsettled.
In addition, there is the passage (in for example, Matthew 25:31-46) describing Christ's judgment at the end of time. The just, those who are to enter into the Kingdom, are separated from those who are to go into everlasting punishment, on the basis of their actions in life:
'Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in..
Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire.. for I was hungry, and you gave me not to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me not to drink.
And these shall go into everlasting punishment: but the just, into life everlasting.'
Hence, they claim that Scripture upholds their rejection of sola fide justification.
* Justification by Grace Alone (Sola Gratia)
Sola gratia, or "only grace", specifically excludes the merit done by a person as part of achieving salvation. Sola gratia is the teaching that salvation comes by divine grace or "unmerited favor" only, not as something merited by the sinner. This means that salvation is an unearned gift from God for Jesus's sake.
In fact Catholics also believe in sola gratia. The Catholic Church teaches that good works done after regeneration (at baptism) and justification are (if certain conditions are met) meritorious and can contribute to salvation and attainment of eternal life, but only hand-in-hand with, soaked in, enabled by, grace, which alone saves us. The true Catholic position will always include the works alongside grace and faith. We teach neither sola Scriptura, nor sola ecclesia, nor sola traditio. Pope Benedict XVI stated in a General Audience (Nov. 8, 2006): “it is to him and his grace alone that we owe what we are as Christians.”
Throughout Europe, the divides caused by the Reformation led to outbreaks of religious violence and the establishment of separate state churches in Western Europe: Lutheranism in parts of Germany and in Scandinavia and Anglicanism in England in 1534. Ultimately, these differences led to the outbreak of conflicts in which religion played a key factor. The Thirty Years' War, the English Civil War, and the French Wars of Religion are prominent examples. These events intensified the Christian debate on persecution and toleration.
Partly in response to the Protestant Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church engaged in a substantial process of reform and renewal, known as the Counter-Reformation or Catholic Reform. The Council of Trent clarified and reasserted Roman Catholic doctrine. During the following centuries, competition between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism became deeply entangled with political struggles among European states.
In the era known as the Great Divergence, when in the West the Age of Enlightenment and the Scientific revolution brought about great societal changes, Christianity was confronted with various forms of skepticism and with certain modern political ideologies such as versions of socialism and liberalism.Events ranged from mere anti-clericalism to violent outbursts against Christianity such as the Dechristianisation during the French Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, and general hostility of Marxist movements, especially the Russian Revolution.
Separation between religion (again, specifically Catholicism) and the state is found to a great degree in France and Italy, countries where the state actively opposed itself to the authority of the Catholic Church. The combined factors of the formation of nation states and ultramontanism, especially in Germany and the Netherlands but also in England (to a much lesser extent), often forced Catholic churches, organizations, and believers to choose between the national demands of the state and the authority of the Church, specifically the papacy. This conflict came to a head in the First Vatican Council, and in Germany would lead directly to the Kulturkampf, where liberals and Protestants under the leadership of Bismarck severely restricted Catholic expression and organization.
Christian commitment in Europe dropped as modernity and secularism came into their own in Western Europe, while religious commitments in America have been generally high in comparison to Western Europe. The late 20th century has shown the shift of Christian adherence to the Third World and southern hemisphere in general, with western civilization no longer the chief standard bearer of Christianity.
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WHAT CAUSED THE SCHISM BETWEEN EAST AND WEST?
The first major schism of the Christian Church happened in 1054 when the Eastern half of the Church split from the Western half. This resulted in the Catholic Church continuing as before under the Pope. But the Eastern Church rejected obedience to the Pope as the Supreme Head of the Christian Church as Christ had commanded. The reasons for the schism are as follows:Culture - The cultures of both halves of the Church were different. This caused the potential for petty misunderstandings that escalated into abuse on both sides.
Power Base - Their centres of power were far from each other. The Pope resided in Rome (Italy), but the subordinate head of the Eastern Church resided in Constantinople (Turkey).
Language - Their languages were different. People in the Western Church spoke Latin. People in the Eastern Church spoke Greek. This difference fuelled confusion.
This division meant that Christians had to be more specific about their religious identity. Where before 1054 every baptised follower of Jesus was a Christian in the Catholic Church, now they had to identify themselves as Catholic (ie Latin Rite Catholic or 'Roman Catholic', because the Pope's headquarters were in Rome and they spoke Latin; or 'Eastern Rite Catholic' - a significant number of Eastern Christians remaining faithful to the Pope) or Eastern Orthodox (because their headquarters were in the East" also called Greek Orthodox but this is only one branch of it, the majority being Slavic). In recent years both the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches have tried to solve their differences, but unity under the Pope has not been achieved so far. [Catholic Education Office, Western Australia Yr 11 text book, God, Religion and Me]
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WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CATHOLICS & PROTESTANTS?
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