re: An update, honestly if anyone cares...

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No their Bible comes from England.

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And what happened to the people who translated and published those early Bibles?
And who was behind those grisly deeds?

I was raised Baptist but about half my family is Catholic and I have attended mass many times with different family members. My wife was raised Catholic and had only ever been to Catholic services. We discussed this at length while we were engaged as far as how we would raise our children. I told her that I would be ok raising them Catholic but I would not convert to Catholicism. Just too many things I disagree with and I would be luring to myself and to God to do what they required to convert. Again, had no problem attending Mass just not doing the conversion stuff.
My wife said she wanted to attend some Baptist services with me. We went to Sunday school and regular service several times and she said she actively like she learned more about the Bible and enjoyed the services more than she ever did at Catholic mass. We decided to raise our future children Baptist and that we would not be having a Catholic wedding. Needless to say, my MIL was not happy.

Now here’s a funny story. My MIL moved in with us several years ago. A friend of mine is the pastor of Word of God in Shreveport. I don’t attend that church mainly because it’s just to far and I’m happy with the church we attend close to home. However, when we don’t go to church on a Sunday, I always catch the live broadcast of my friend preaching from Word of God. My MIL is not mobile enough to attend Mass anymore but loves watching my buddy every Sunday. I pick at her and tell her all the time that she would have made a good Protestant.

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( What do the kids do?)

I believe that it is important that that decision is made before kids ever come into the picture. Ma mother was a devout Catholic and my father was raised Protestant. Before they were ever married, he agreed to do everything he could to make sure that all of their children were raised catholic. I spent a lot of time with my father hunting fishing, etc., but he always made sure that I was at mass on time and did everything he could to support me in my Catholic faith. As well as my five brothers and sisters.

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Rome made no theological changes during Trent.

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right because it didn’t need to make any theological changes

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The Church added requirements to a gospel that needed no additions. Those should have been revoked.

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Unchecked papal primacy remained unchecked, and all of the rigid systems of canon law, including the entire Fourth Lateran Council, remained unchanged.

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what is the problem with this?

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The Church added requirements to a gospel that needed no additions. Those should have been revoked.

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No cup for the laity still.

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uhhh - that isn’t the case nowadays

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What kind of argument is that? Yeah, thankfully, in 1962 the Roman Catholic Church began to adopt early church practices by allowing the laity to drink from the cup of salvation.
Seems like a theological change to me.

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all of those nasty anathemas were dished out.

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because they go against core beliefs of the Catholic Church? If you know what the Catholic Church stands for - then why would these be a problem? Transubstantiation is a big one, Original Sin, etc.

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The core beliefs of the Catholic church changed over time as they added requirements for salvation. So they anathamatized those who dared to correctly disagree with said additions.

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it existed for 1,000+ years before the 1534 Act of supremacy

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Augustine of Canterbury was sent to England to convert Anglo-Saxons in the late 500s but he went in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church - there was no separate church

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Correct. It never was separate. And Henry, who threw off the yoke of a papal monarch simply allowed the catholic church in England to return to the state that it enjoyed before all of the papal abuses of power.

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She's already left him for someone more fun.

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let me guess. He wears bedazzled skinny jeans, spikes his hair, and plays the electric guitar for ‘the ministry’ ?

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But when I'm not actively preaching the gospel, how can I not be considered a monster? This is a good argument from David Bently Hart. This is him writing about someone who teaches in a seminary and is a devoted husband and father of five:

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I'll address the quote you provided in a second here but again, this just reiterates my point. God's word and Jesus himself told us many times to focus on things that are not earthly and to fix our eyes on what is to come. There is a reason for this. Eternity is real and people will spend it somewhere. God has seen fit to task us with the great commission of making disciples from all nations, tribes and tongues and when we fix our eyes solely on the matters of this world, we lose the initiative of what God has put us here to do. That's the entire point and a tragic one at that, the idea that many people will spend every breath of their life chasing things that ultimately are going away. Now for the quote you posted.......

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If he truly thought that our situation in this world were as horribly perilous as he claims, and that every mortal soul labored under the shadow of so dreadful a doom, and that the stakes were so high and the odds so poor for everyone—a mere three score and ten years to get it right if we are fortunate, and then an eternity of agony in which to rue the consequences if we get it wrong—he would never dare to bring a child into this world, let alone five children; nor would he be able to rest even for a moment, because he would be driven ceaselessly around the world in a desperate frenzy of evangelism, seeking to save as many souls from the eternal fire as possible. I think of him as a remarkably compassionate person, you see, and so his more or less sedentary and distractedly scholarly style of life to my mind speaks volumes, even libraries. If he were really absolutely convinced of the things he thinks he is convinced of, but still continued to go his merry recreant’s way along the path of happy fatherhood and professional contentment, he would have to be a moral monster. But I do not think that he is a monster.

So I have to think instead that, in his heart of hearts, at a level of calm conviction so deeply hidden beneath veils of childhood indoctrination that he is all but unaware of its existence, he keeps and treasures the certainty that in the end—in the words of Dame Julian of Norwich (1342–1416)—“All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” And I believe that at that same level he also knows that nothing can be ultimately well if the happy final state of things for any of us has been purchased at the cost—or even only at the risk—of anyone else’s eternal misery.

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Firstly, I can understand the heart breaking realization that not all will be saved and some will reject the Lord in the end. Does that mean that we should wash away Jesus' words on judgement and simply refuse to acknowledge them because they make us uncomfortable?

Second, we are NOT the authors of salvation. Even our ability to evangelize the gospel is a gift from the Lord that he did not have to extend. Knowing that way are not the authors of salvation, we can understand that we are not ultimately responsible for the eternal destination of those around us, we are only responsible for sharing the gospel.


Third, there's a gigantic problem that comes with universal salvation that the author speaks of that ultimately makes God a willing participant in injustice. We are all responsible for our sin and we all deserve punishment for what we have done. Jesus has paid that penalty for us so that we can be made holy on his account, not on an account of our own goodness. If the implication here is that Jesus cleanses all whether they repent and trust in him or not, wouldn't that make God a compromised judge of injustice? Wouldn't that make Christ a liar? If we truly all could be saved through Jesus no matter what, whether we accept him or not, how can we trust him at his word when he tells us things like John 14:6? How can God apply Jesus' righteousness to one who trusted and accepted Christ yet still apply that righteousness to another who rejected and denied the sacrifice of Jesus? Put in short, if Jesus tells us that he is the way, the truth and the life but people will be saved apart from him, is Jesus lying, misinformed or incompetent?

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To expand on the first quote about the subject not desperately evangelizing the entire world, I'd assume he views his responsibility as his family and close community. We ARE called to make disciples of all nations but there's a distinction between disciples and believers. Paul wrote to Christian churches around the world to transform them from mere believers to disciples - disciplined followers of Christ. My heart is to tell everyone I know about Christ and to bring the gospel to them, but ultimately, Christ says in John 6:44: No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.

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And for the record, it's not lost on me where he's coming from. Eternal judgement is a really scary thing to ponder and it's extremely uncomfortable to think about relative to actual humans that we know. I don't want anyone to go to hell, I have too much respect for the severity of the punishment. I absolutely understand why the concept of universalism would be an appealing one from the human perspective but I just think of how much it must breaks God's heart in all of this.

He's entirely just in his judgement of us but imagine how it must feel to create someone you love dearly, knowing full well what the eternal destination of those apart from Christ looks, sounds and feels like. Then imagine paying that penalty for that person you love and making a way for them to avoid all of that misery and they look back at you and say, "no thanks."

I think that's why the bible talks of God not taking pleasure in the death of men. He desires repentance and salvation more than judgement. I can't imagine the heartbreak seeing his creation march towards a fate that they don't have to endure.

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The rituals and relationship with God only through priests qualifies as a cult.

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I'm sorry that you don't understand the beauty of liturgical worship. However, there's a lot of validity to the way I've described low church evangelicalism. I'm not confused in the slightest.

On Philip J. Lee's book Against the Protestant Gnostics:

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Lee examines North American Protestantism in particular and finds that much of it is not very Christian at all, but gnostic. By ‘gnosticism’ Lee means a religion that centers salvation not in concrete, historic, specific acts by God, but rather in a rather nebulous, general, and spiritual knowledge (gnosis = ‘knowledge’) or illumination within us. Gnosticism mainly involves the mind or soul of the individual, rather than life in a community and church. Because Protestantism began with a kind of rebellion against the existing institutional Church and perceived abuses of the sacramental system, it always has a bias towards the individual and his personal spiritual experience.

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He's entirely just in his judgement of us but imagine how it must feel to create someone you love dearly, knowing full well what the eternal destination of those apart from Christ looks, sounds and feels like. Then imagine paying that penalty for that person you love and making a way for them to avoid all of that misery and they look back at you and say, "no thanks."

I think that's why the bible talks of God not taking pleasure in the death of men. He desires repentance and salvation more than judgement. I can't imagine the heartbreak seeing his creation march towards a fate that they don't have to endure.

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This begs the question of "then why did he create them?"
I'm not a univeralist though. I'm more of an annihilationist.
I appreciate your responses and can ackowledge that they are honest and true. I was just tossing some ideas around earlier.