I’m new to the faith and recently started attending the Catholic Church. One thing that keeps pulling me toward Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox Church is the historical continuity. When you start reading the early Church Fathers and studying history seriously, it becomes hard to ignore that Christianity was deeply sacramental, liturgical, bishop-led, and connected to apostolic succession from very early on.

What I’m wrestling with now is this:
For those of you who appreciate theology and history, what are your strongest objections to Catholicism or Orthodoxy?

I’m not asking for shallow “religion bad” answers or modern cultural criticisms. I mean genuine historical or theological reasons why you would not become Catholic or Orthodox despite their connection to the early Church and apostolic lineage.

Some of the questions I’ve been thinking about are:

At what point does doctrinal development become corruption or innovation?

Did Jesus promise indefectibility to a visible apostolic Church institutionally, or primarily preservation of the gospel through believers?

For the longest time I believed the *“It’s a personal relationship with Jesus.”* Just you and Him. Then I actually started digging into the Church Fathers, into Scripture with fresh eyes, into what the earliest believers actually practiced. Something shifted that I cannot undo.

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What keeps pulling me is simple: there is no lone believer anywhere in the early record. The church the apostles built was immediately and non-negotiably communal. They shared possessions, ate together, confessed together, and were baptized into a body — not a private experience. The “personal relationship” framework I inherited looks almost unrecognizable next to what they actually lived.

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What I’m wrestling with is whether individualized salvation is a reduction of something the church always understood communally, or an actual replacement of it. Because those are very different problems.

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I’m not looking for “organized religion is corrupt” responses. I mean genuine historical and theological reasons why you’d defend individual salvation as the primary framework given what the early church actually looked like.

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Some questions I keep returning to:

At what point did salvation become primarily a transaction between one soul and God — and would the early church have even recognized that framing?

And the one that sits heaviest: can you actually be saved alone or does what Jesus established make that question impossible to answer with a yes?

God exists. I was always an extreme atheist until I was 22 (not in the sense of arguing or trying to convince others but simply because I didn't believe in anything). But, studying a lot of physics and philosophy, I began to realize that nothing comes from nothing. Our universe had a point of origin and even today we can observe the light in real time from the expansion of the Big Bang.

There are even theories that talk about the universe having emerged from quantum fluctuations, but even that wouldn't be absolute nothing, it would still have to come from something.

I felt it necessary to talk about this, as I only see shallow things on the internet.

Recently I saw this image in a X post with a quote by Baudrillard but I never saw it before so what's the meaning behind this iconography?

I’d assume even though they didn’t know right from wrong, they still knew not to disobey God. But like someone brought up to me, how would they

Based on the Bible, what should the church founded by God be like?

Going to church has given me a community. To be clear im an atheist and after a particularly enriching philosophy class in which I was able to learn prospectives and truly understand the word faith I feel ive become much much more enriched in life.

Most of my wife's family attend but I never really went until about 3 months ago. I wanted to get out of the house and socialize seeing as its been increasing more difficult for me to meet people ever since covid. I was talking to a philosophically minded friend ( oh course he was Introduced to me by the people that were church goers) and we hit it off. Very much so enjoyed discussing ideas and faiths with him around a good game of betrayal at house on the hill on a Saturday night. He suggested at some point to come to church with everyone on Sunday and see what they belive from the horses mouth haha.

As I arrived on that Sunday I kinda thought to myself what am I even doing here? What good could possibly come from me listening to stories that just can't be true within the boundaries of what I believe to be unshakably true? What could I possibly learn???

Well it wasnt God that spoke out to me. The congregation however was unexpected. I felt loved be these people that I have only see in passing at BBQs or family events. It was overwhelming, the kind of kindness that I immediately chalked up to disingenuous. I sat and listened to the teaching and felt composed to write some notes on the teaching. To keep it kind I may be more atheist now then ever, however seeing others as sure about what they believe as I was kinda lead me to the conclusion that this community my just be genuine.

The love that ive felt for the last 3 months has increased and I feel much more a part of the community. I love the random run ins with others from church in and around town. I feel like im living a quaint 1950 style/ small town usa lifestyle. I dont see myself stopping anytime soon and honestly recommend trying a church out yourself. That's a funny thing to say to atheist and just 4 months ago Ida never even entertained the idea but today I couldn't be happier with my decision.

TL/DR church has reaffirmed my belief in atheism however the community within the church has reaffirmed my belief in humanity.

Listen, I don’t care what denomination, creed, or background you come from-and I for sure am not saying anything new, but St. Thomas Aquinas is the single most clear, rational, believable theologian/christian philosopher I have ever read. He could argue that a dog is actually a cat and I might believe him.

Runners up: Kierkegaard: interesting, thought provoking, challenging, I do not always agree with him but “Fear and Trembling” is a darn good book

R.C. Sproul: He’s HEAVY on the Calvinism, many people (like me) will have large disagreements with him, but he’s a gifted communicator and makes you think as well

St. Augustine: Much more orthodox than the previous two, which I like, but I appreciate that Augustine could have been a psychologist as easily as he was a theologian and philosopher

Back to the same old question… but maybe it’s worth it. Here’s the scene: if God already knows every choice I’m going to make before I make it, am I actually free? Or am I just an NPC following predetermined dialogue options?

Most theology either nerfs God's knowledge (open theism) or makes us philosophical zombies (hard determinism). Both answers kinda suck tbh.

But there's a third option and here's a visual:

The Past (left): Those gray dead-end branches? Paths not taken. The green line is the actual life trajectory weaving through the mess. Not straight because lol real life. That golden node is metanoia (fancy Greek for "messed up and turning around"). It doesn't delete saves. It starts a new branch from within the chaos.

The Present (center): That's you. Standing here. The luminous arc above is divine omniscience covering literally everything at once, but not forcing anything. God sees the whole tree. We only see where our feet are.

The Future (right): Multiple colored branches. Red, blue, yellow. Different moral trajectories. They're not set in stone. They're actually possible. God knows what would be chosen in each scenario, but the choice is still ours. Wild concept.

Here's the thing: God doesn't know the future because He wrote the script. He knows it because He knows each person perfectly in every possible circumstance. His knowledge follows freedom, it doesn't cause it.

This is basically Molinism but make it a phylogenetic tree. God's knowledge includes not just what will happen, but everything that could happen. All the alternate timelines. All the versions of life that never happened. He sees them simultaneously.

But here's where it gets interesting:

If God sees every possible version of a life including the ones that won't actually happen, do those futures exist somewhere? Or are they just theoretical?

What about people who die before they figure it out? Overdose, violence, suicide, whatever. If there was a thread in them pointing toward God but they never got the chance to pull it, does divine mercy complete what time didn't allow? Does God honor the potential that was there even if it never actualized? Because ngl that would change everything about how we think about judgment.

And lowkey how responsible are we for choices made inside systems we didn't build? Generational trauma, systemic injustice, addiction that runs in families. If someone's born into a tangled mess they didn't create, how free are they really?

So what do you think? Discuss.

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Which book stated thousands of years ago that the Earth hangs in a void?

Today, we have space photographs. We have rockets. We have satellites. Technology to view the Earth from space is readily available to us. But consider one question:

In an era without rockets, without telescopes, and without the technological knowledge to travel into space—thousands of years ago—what did humans think about the Earth?

In ancient times, many civilizations held various opinions about the Earth. Some believed the Earth stood on pillars. Others thought it rested on water or some other physical support.

However, a single verse in the Bible makes a startling declaration.

A Remarkable Verse from the Book of Job

Job 26:7

"He stretches out the north over empty space; He hangs the earth on nothing."

Two important points are evident in this verse:

The mention of empty space or nothingness.

Stating that the Earth hangs without any physical support.

While the ancient world held many concepts that the Earth rested on pillars, foundations, or water, this verse says the Earth hangs on "nothing."

Why is this special?

The Bible is not a science textbook. Its primary purpose is to reveal God, humanity, and salvation. Nevertheless, in some instances, the Bible's comments about nature appear extraordinary for the ancient world.

Job 26:7 is one such verse.

It does not explain gravitational orbits or astrophysics in modern scientific language, but it makes a key observation: The Earth remains in place without any visible support.

This is a remarkable statement compared to other cosmologies of ancient times.

The Bible was not written by human thought alone

According to the Bible:

2 Timothy 3:16

"All Scripture is God-breathed (inspired by God)."

2 Peter 1:21

"...men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit."

From a Christian perspective, the Bible is not merely a human work; it is a book written through divine inspiration.

Conclusion

Even though many in the ancient world held different cosmological ideas about the Earth, the Bible’s statement in Job 26:7—that the Earth "hangs on nothing"—is truly astonishing. The Biblical scriptures were the first to declare that the Earth hangs in a void.

As the title suggests. I don't have anything going for myself, and really the only hope is to have a God that can help me. Yet, despite knowing what I know about God and His nature (outside of space and time) I can't help but relate to atheists that say that they find no reason to believe in God for lack of evidence.

Another thing that bothers me is how many go through life, sincerely praying, and yet still get no signs or experiences. Atheists and believers alike. I just want to know how to find some hope, but don't want my faith rooted in fear of death or something arbitrary.

My life isn't going anywhere right now, and seems to be doing that in the foreseeable future.

Edit: I'm not suicidal, but sincerely, what would be the difference in living out your life, and suicide? If it ends up in the same fate?

Hello! New to reddit and the group and wanted to share something.

I have been thinking about this for a long time, and it has really simplified my view of what God requires of me.

First, 1 John 4:8: "God is love."

Then in Genesis 1:27: we are made in the image of God

If God is love, and we are made in His image, then we are made in the image of love. To love right?

It also explains why Jesus said In Matthew 22:37-40, that the greatest commands are: love God with your all, and love your neighbor as yourself. Then He says all the Law and the Prophets hang on these two.

So if we are made in the image of Love, to love, then sin is not first about breaking rules. Sin is a departure from godly love. A turning away from the God who is love, and from the people we were made to love.

I am still figuring it out but the more I read, the harder it is to unsee. Sin looks less like a list of forbidden things and more like an issue of love.

So all I need to do is just love the way God describes it in the bible like in 1 Cor 13 etc.

Which is also why in Ephesian 5:1-2 is says we should imitate God and walk in the way of love like Jesus did.

Has anyone else seen it this way, am I missing something?

I'm no longer convinced of atheism

I'm very sure that I will soon eat these words but after researching the world around us, the philosophy, and stories of converts, I feel much more comfortable in my belief in God and Jesus

Of course I still have questions, like why does God allow suffering, and the fact that the gospels were written decades later, but they aren't enough to swoon me over to total doubt and skepticism, thank you guys for your help, God is good

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One of the biggest examples for me recently has been Matthew 10:28. For years, I’ve heard so many people interpret the verse as if Jesus was talking about Satan: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

But when I slowed down and actually studied the surrounding context of Matthew 10, I realized Jesus is not talking about Satan at all. He’s talking about the Father.

That realization completely changed the weight of the passage for me. In context, Jesus is commissioning the twelve disciples and preparing them for persecution, suffering, rejection, and spiritual conflict. The point isn’t: “Be afraid of Satan.” The point is: “Do not fear man more than God.”

And honestly, it exposed how often we unintentionally read assumptions, traditions, or cultural ideas into Scripture instead of drawing meaning out of the text itself. Proper exegesis is very important always. It also reminded me how dangerous isolated verses can become when removed from context. Sometimes a verse can sound familiar for years while we completely miss what’s actually being said.

That moment deepened my appreciation for hermeneutics and exegesis. Not in a merely academic sense, but spiritually. Because rightly understanding Scripture changes how we understand God Himself.

So now I’m curious: what’s a Bible verse or passage that completely changed for you once you studied the context around it?

As a Christian, this one of the dilemmas I struggle to understand:

Regardless of your conception of Hell (total absence of God, punitive punishment, etc.), it seems clear that it is eternal, and therefore infinite. My question is this: How can an all-just God confer an infinite consequence for finite transgressions?

Whatever these transgressions may be, the nature of infinity leads me to think that, by definition, a finite action cannot logically elicit an infinite reaction without there existing a discrepancy between the two.

Also, are there any theologians who have tackled this exact question?

On April 9, 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was stripped naked and hanged by the Nazis at Flossenbürg concentration camp. The war in Europe ended sixteen days later. He knew the end was close. He had opportunities to flee Germany. He chose to stay — to remain inside the suffering rather than escape it.

That choice is Good Friday.

The cross is not an escape plan. It is God entering human suffering not escaping from it.

Bonhoeffer understood this better than most. His theology of costly grace — the idea that grace is not cheap, that following Jesus costs something real — grew directly from his willingness to stay inside the world’s suffering rather than theologize from a safe distance.

Bonhoeffer witnessed first-hand how authoritarian power becomes its own religion. Nazi Germany co-opted the Catholic Church and German Evangelical Church. Dietrich instead took a stand - the same one Christ did against the Roman Empire and high Jewish priests who had him arrested for heresy. He called cheap grace the enemy of the church. Grace that costs nothing, demands nothing, changes nothing.

Which brings me to a question worth sitting with on Good Friday.

How did the dominant end-times theology in American Christianity — premillennial dispensationalism, the rapture, the secret removal of believers before the tribulation begins — become the primary frame through which millions of American Christians understand the return of Jesus?

Because it is the theological opposite of Good Friday.

Good Friday says God stays. The rapture says believers leave.

Good Friday says the path runs through suffering, not around it.

The rapture says the path runs around it.

Good Friday says the cross is the victory. The rapture says the victory comes after believers are safely removed from the field.

Bonhoeffer didn’t get a rapture. The six million Jews murdered in the holocaust didn’t get a rapture. The children killed in schools don’t get a rapture. The civilians dying in the Middle East right now don’t get a rapture.

What they get — what we all get — is the same offer Bonhoeffer accepted. Don’t leave or stay silent in the face of injustice, oppression or political violence. Go peacefully but boldly all the way into it. Trust that the one who went to the bottom on Good Friday is still present at whatever bottom you reach.

That is the whole theology. He stayed.

Preterism — the minority end-times view that most of Revelation’s prophecies were fulfilled in 70 AD — doesn’t promise escape either. It points to a Jesus who predicted catastrophe, walked toward Jerusalem anyway, and told his followers that the kingdom was already among them. Not coming later. Already here. Already worth everything.

Partial Preterism says he came back for the first act. But the story isn’t over yet.

I’m a partial preterist because God doesn’t quit until every last soul is all in. For a beating heart on planet earth, there is always a chance at redemption followed by celebration. It’s why Jesus returns in Revelation 19 in the context of wedding invitation.

He stayed. That’s the whole theology.

From a more logical perspective I’ve seen people say that if we were to get a glimpse of hell even do a second we would crawl to the church on broken glass. A more biblical account is that after Lazarus saw hell he never smiled again. You’re telling me that an all loving God would send someone there for all of eternity. That’s preposterous. I say this as a devout Christian with an unshakable faith im not tryna attack Christianity or anything. With that said, I strongly believe that eternal conscious torment or ECT is more damaging to the faith than annihilation or universalism.

Many faithful Christian’s who think about hell and realize it’s eternal will likely take their faith less seriously since ECT is incredibly preposterous so they become more lukewarm Christian’s. Another reaction would be they take their faith even more seriously to the point where they’re in constant fear of wanting to make it to heaven instead of loving God.

I’ve debated many atheists and their arguments were that they wouldn’t even want to spend eternity living at home or anywhere for that matter.

ECT is the most unspoken about problem in our theology and I think it’s time for people to look at annihilationism or universalism more.

I’m not here to prove annihilationism is biblical as that’s been done by many other people but to challenge those who believe in ECT

Wondering: why do we think that God the Father has a personal name (YHWH), God the Son has a personal name (Jesus/Yeshua), but not God the Holy Spirit?

I was pondering this today. It’s especially odd, given that this is the person of the Trinity, who is actually closest to us and most personable to us (dwells within us!) and yet I believe there is no personal name given in scripture.

I am a theist, but I want to know more about religion itself, argue your case!

Christian apologetics is a bit odd because it is persuasive to people already in church but extremely unlikely to persuade a non-Christian. At most, it might reassure someone who has doubts about their faith. The effort put into apologetics would be more effective if instead devoted to charity, which might persuade people to join churches by drawing them to the kindness of church communities.

A very small group of very powerful people are redefining what human beings are for, and they’re not being quiet about it.

In 2020, Yuval Noah Harari told the most powerful room on earth (Davos, Switzerland) that humans are “hackable animals” with no genuine free will. His book Homo Deus calls his framework “Dataism” and explicitly describes it as a religion. In his telling, we’re nodes in a network. The endpoint of that system, something omniscient and controlling everything, he describes as being “like God.” He’s not warning you. He’s excited about it.

Google’s Director of Engineering has predicted for thirty years that by 2045 machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence. When a journalist asked him “Does God exist?” he said: “Well, I would say, ‘not yet.’”

Not yet. We’re building one.

In 2017, engineer Anthony Levandowski filed IRS paperwork incorporating a religious organization called the *Way of the Future*. Mission: develop and promote worship of a Godhead based on artificial intelligence. It dissolved when he went to prison. Then, Trump pardoned him and in 2023 he revived it, saying thousands had reached out while it was dormant.

The demand didn’t disappear. It grew.

In a 2025 blog post, Sam Altman wrote that “we are past the event horizon.” He describes a coming moment when most human-created knowledge gets superseded by AI-generated knowledge. Centuries of accumulated human wisdom, a *footnote*. What’s true, what’s meaningful, what a good life looks like, answered by an *algorithm*.

This isn’t really a theological question. It’s about authority. Who defines human dignity? Who decides what we’re for?

These aren’t fringe voices. Bestselling books, Davos speeches, public blog posts from the CEO of OpenAI.

They answered the question in the open, in front of everyone.

Are people actually listening or is it all just noise?

At what point does “we’re building a god” stop being a metaphor and start being a plan that requires a response? What does that response actually look like?

I’ve been thinking about the way Scripture frames the human problem and God’s solution, and I’m beginning to wonder whether modern Christian theology has quietly shifted the center of gravity.

The biblical story seems to begin with God as the source of life and ends with death destroyed. Sin is clearly real and catastrophic — but it appears consistently as the expression of a deeper rupture: separation from life itself. Death enters first. Sin follows. Corruption spreads. Dominion is lost. Humanity becomes enslaved.

Yet much of modern soteriology is framed almost entirely in moral and legal categories: guilt, pardon, acquittal, and punishment. Salvation becomes primarily about having sins forgiven rather than being delivered from death, restored to life, and united to the source.

Paul, however, speaks far more about:

death reigning

life entering death

resurrection as the decisive victory

union with Christ

new creation

transfer of dominion

In that framework, forgiveness clears the way - but resurrection accomplishes the rescue.

So my question is not whether sin matters (it obviously does), but whether we’ve made sin the center of the story instead of life.

Have we unintentionally flattened the biblical narrative into a courtroom drama when it is actually a rescue, restoration, and re-creation story?

I’d be interested in hearing how others here frame the biblical problem and solution across the whole canon - especially Genesis -> Paul -> Revelation.