Lol, its peasants like my ancestors, who helped create this country, with crazy ideas that they read, in books like the bible.
Take Rev John Wing for example, a unworthy minister who lived about 500 years ago.
He claimed that we had our own connections to god, we didnt need a pastor to tell us what god was thinking. Stuff like this is the basis of western democracy.
I know, and the degenerate dying culture we live in now, that touted western democracy, is the logical conclusion, the fruit of the theological and ecclesiological fallacies of the reformation. Was the Catholic Church corrupt? Sure it was and it still is. But that doesn't mean the protestants were correct in uprooting Christianity from its tradition and reinterpreting everything as they pleased, creating as many interpretations as there are people reading the text. Christianity is all about tradition and succession. That's why we get the full linage of Jesus in the gospels, or the many references to the OT, the rituals which are taken from OT and transformed by Christ, the liturgy or the "laying of hands" as a way to pass on the Holy Spirit. Take all that away and you get a guy (if you're lucky) in a suit preaching their personal interpretation of Scripture in an office building. That's a self-help session, not a liturgy and it has nothing to do with the early Christian Church.
If it werent for "peasants" like my ancestors, wed still be relying on priests and kings/queens to interpret gods will for us lmao.
Why is that bad? Do we fare better now having 1000+ fake churches and various new age demonic interpretations of Scripture? There is only one truth in Christ. In fact Christians still rely on the Church for interpretation because that's the only true interpretation there is - through tradition, apostolic succession and the Church. The Bible (both testaments) was written by the Church Fathers inspired by the Holy Spirit, it's a product of that tradition.
I know, and the degenerate dying culture we live in now, that touted western democracy, is the logical conclusion, the fruit of the theological and ecclesiological fallacies of the reformation. Was the Catholic Church corrupt? Sure it was and it still is. But that doesn't mean the protestants were correct in uprooting Christianity from its tradition and reinterpreting everything as they pleased, creating as many interpretations as there are people reading the text. Christianity is all about tradition and succession. That's why we get the full linage of Jesus in the gospels, or the many references to the OT, the rituals which are taken from OT and transformed by Christ, the liturgy or the "laying of hands" as a way to pass on the Holy Spirit. Take all that away and you get a guy (if you're lucky) in a suit preaching their personal interpretation of Scripture in an office building. That's a self-help session, not a liturgy and it has nothing to do with the early Christian Church.
Why is that bad? Do we fare better now having 1000+ fake churches and various new age demonic interpretations of Scripture? There is only one truth in Christ. In fact Christians still rely on the Church for interpretation because that's the only true interpretation there is - through tradition, apostolic succession and the Church. The Bible (both testaments) was written by the Church Fathers inspired by the Holy Spirit, it's a product of that tradition.