@Abathurchan I’m guessing communal recognition would have to count here as a civil instrument? In that case no agreement with nuance. Because in some cases (like this) the wider community (not necessarily the state) would routinely break up these institutions for no reason.
@Abathurchan The point is that it’s God’s first. As a black American, our enslaved ancestors (many were Christians) routinely got married in front of God and the community, but legally were not married. To me they were married because God promised, not because the state sanctioned
@IFFFMEISTER Because Protestant is just being used so broadly, we aren’t aligned by a binding magisterium or infallible doctrine outside of let’s say the first 4 councils in some sense. If you disagree on baptism in Catholicism you pretty much cease to be Catholic
@AndrewTheCalled From my perspective it’s just good to read the texts of different traditions just to see how they are parsing things out, that’s usually fun (and often frustrating) to me. If you like that then go for it lol you probably won’t be convinced though
@AndrewTheCalled It’s a very interesting read but to me it’s much more speculative than anyone will admit and oftentimes goes into random directions that seem unnecessary. If you just wanna see a different systematic perspective I think it’s a good read.
@stantrien@Abathurchan It still doesn’t entail that the church will always be large or something. I think everyone can agree that the church in its entirety will never just die, what that looks like and how exactly that manifests is in dispute
@OrthodoxOrigen@bonesforsales Mainstream Protestant theology regarding sola fide has never separated faith from works in how it comes about in the world. True faith is never alone. Temporally there is no difference, but logically the faith obviously proceeds any good works that come from it
@ErickYbarra3 I’d say the Catholic Church is still fine if you wanna be there, it has the gospel which is good and always had had it for the most part. It just also binds people to things that are false, and in its infancy it just didn’t bind people to dubious doctrine, but now it does