[Gathnet] catholics/protestants and the bible

[Scott McClatchey]

Elissa,
    I rarely reply to these but I think I want to encourage you both to 
read about the history of the Bible and the church. For example, most of 
the Bible was written by the Jews (except for Luke and Acts, both 
written by Luke; I think Luke was a gentile). In addition, there have 
been several church denominations since long before Luther, including 
the Eastern Orthodox, the Coptics (Egypt) and the Ethiopian church.
    I cannot pretend to be a scholar of these things myself, but the 
details are interesting and the real stories often surprising. Your 
father knows this much better than I do, I think.
    Perhaps the biggest underlying difference between the Roman Catholic 
and the protestant churches was started by Luther himself: Catholics 
treat the developed traditions and scripture as equal in authority (thus 
the authority of the Pope); protestants rely on a subset of the Catholic 
Bible for authoritative scripture, rejecting both the authority of the 
Pope and those Catholic doctrines that cannot be demonstrated by reason 
from the scripture.
    Unfortunately for protestants, taking the Bible as the sole 
authoritative word results in many, many divisions (and even wars) 
because of varying interpretations and varying levels of what 
denominations accept from the Bible. There is no one protestant doctrine 
set; there is one official Catholic doctrine set.
    I think that the tables are somewhat turned these days compared to 
the times of Luther. Catholics seem to tend to accept challenges to 
their beliefs: evolution and an old earth is accepted. Many 
fundamentalist protestant churches insist on a narrow interpretation of 
scripture, rejecting out of hand any reason or science (such as 
evolution, geology, astronomy, paleontology, biology, and physics) that 
contradicts their young-earth creationist view. I side with the 
Catholics on this.

Scott McClatchey