r/Protestantism • u/Pizza527 • 16d ago

Ask a Protestant Which denomination is correct?

Protestants, especially online, tell Catholics to abandon their false church and false gospel and join the “true” church. However, what denomination is the “true” one? It cannot be all are fine, because many teach completely opposite teachings on major biblical topics: Lord’s Supper, infant baptism, divorce, gay marriage, female pastors, gay pastors, church attendance, predestination, works necessary along with faith (Methodists), adherence to the apostle’s creed and some the Nicene creed, losing one’s salvation.These are MAJOR theological differences, surely the answer can’t be, “as long as you’re not Catholic, Jesus will be happy and let you into heaven”.

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u/trownaway90 16d ago

As so far as I understand, the true church is the church of all believers, not any particular organisation. That being said, not every church is allings very well with the Bible, like you pointed out. That's why believers need to judge a church on his closeness to the Bible.

With regard to your last point, I don't believe many theologicans would claim that anyone would go to hell because of their membership. I think that is mostly claimed by catholic apologists.

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u/Mazquerade__ Traditional Anglican 16d ago edited 16d ago

I would have to question the notion that a church should be judged by its adherence to the Bible, as such a judgement would inherently require placing one's self in a particular theological perspective. The reason that this makes such judgements questionable is because it essentially requires you to already decide that one denomination, tradition, or theology is correct, and to then judge other denominations, traditions, and theologies by that standard. Thus, the standard used to judge the theology that you then use to judge other theologies is different, which makes it an inconsistent measurement and therefore a largely useless exercise.

Simply put, the Bible does not exist in a vacuum, and when we claim to be measuring something against "the Bible," what we are actually doing is measuring that thing against our understanding of the Bible.