Apologetics Session 45 - Catholicism

Catholicism in the Context of Evangelism and Church History

Session that we're going to have. We're launching directly into, well next week is pizza night, next week is pizza night. We're going to have a good time just hanging out. But after that we're going to launch right into the evangelism class, which I am pretty excited about.

So that's going to be a lot of fun. And Philip, Philip the evangelist, as Pastor Jeff likes to say, is going to be up front here doing the teaching. So I'm pretty excited about that. We went over Islam last time.

We had the congregational meeting, but last time we went over Islam. I realized that I gave you an incomplete answer to one of your questions, though. So I wanted to settle that here. We talked about Ramadan and what is important about it.

What I failed to tell you is that they believe that that week is the, or that month, is the month that that Muhammad got his revelation. So that's why it's an important, that's why it's an important time for them to fast and pray and atone and all of that.

But I neglected to mention that, so I wanted to get that off the bat. But today we're going to go through Catholicism. Catholicism is a deep well of a topic. So we are not going to dive into a tremendous amount of detail.

We're going to cover kind of the basics. And what I wanted to focus on was really the differences between Evangelical, you know, Christians and Catholicism, or Catholics.

The Meaning of Catholic and the Apostles' Creed

How many here were once Catholic?

Wow.

Actually got a decent chunk. How many of you knew the doctrines of, a lot of the doctrines of the church while you were Catholics?

Knew some of them.

Yeah, and I think that's indicative, certainly, it's actually indicative of a lot of Christian churches as well, just the lack of understanding. There are some that are very devout and are very in tune with the doctrines of their own belief and some that are not.

The first thing I wanted to get out of the way is what does the word Catholic actually mean? It just means universal. And this is evidenced in the Apostles Creed, and this actually trips up a lot of Christians.

So it says, I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, was buried.

He descended to hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From there he will come to judge the living and the dead, and live in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of the saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

Amen. And there's usually a star just like there is here next to Catholic Church because a lot of Christians go, what do you mean the holy Catholic Church?

We're not Catholics!

And really because this is using the term Catholic in its original context and sense, which is that meaning the universal, the universal Christian Church, not the Roman Catholic Church. So when we use the term Catholic, it's really shorthand for the Roman Catholic Church.

So we're generally referring to that when we say Catholics. We're talking about people who are practicing Roman Catholicism. We're not using it in its, I think it's been sort of co-opted by the Roman Catholic Church, and now it's used as shorthand, and so this is why this trips some folks up.

The Origins of Roman Catholicism and the Council of Trent

All right, so now that we've got that out of the way, we'll talk about about the origin of the Roman Catholic Church. Now some Catholic priests will tell this story a little differently. I'm going to tell it the way that sort of the history books would tell it.

So in the early days of the church, Rome was persecuting and martyring Christians. They were very angry with Christians, mainly because they were monotheistic, and you know, Rome was a was a pagan polytheistic you know, environment.

So they persecuted for hundreds of years, they persecuted Christians all throughout the Roman Empire. But this all changed in 313 AD when the Roman Emperor Constantine, right, he converted, and I'm air-quoting converted, because he professed to be a Christian, but he also still practiced certain Roman pagan practices.

So he wasn't he wasn't fully converted, I guess, is the only way to really say that.

So.

Constantine in 313 issued what's called the Edict of Milan. And this lifted the ban on Christianity, because Christianity was a banned religion. So this lifted the ban and allowed for more religious tolerance.

And he looked at Christianity as a way to sort of unite the people. He wanted to utilize it to bring all Romans together, because you can imagine Rome was you know, comprised of a lot of conquered nations and stuff, and religion can unite people across.

I mean, we talked about this with Islam and the tribes in Arabia, and how Islam was a force for unity amongst the various tribal people in that part of the world. And how that actually bothered a lot of people, because that monotheistic religion, you know, caused people to put less stock in their tribal identity and more stock in their religious identity.

The same thing is true here with the Roman Empire. You would put more stock in your religious identity, and Constantine wanted to use it as sort of almost a political tool in that regard. What ultimately arose, though, was a Christianity that was mixed with some Roman paganism.

So.

In all of the stuff that I was reading, it was really hard to say, this is the beginning of the Catholic Church, right? You look at church history, and it was really difficult to say that, you know, oh, it started on this day.

Like, with Islam, it was really easy, right? Muhammad got his revelation, it was a, you know, three to six year period or whatever, and he started to preach this monotheistic, you know, Muslim religion, and that was the beginning of Islam.

With Roman Catholicism, it was much harder to pin down, because it really didn't start at any particular point in time. It sort of grew up over a longer period of time, because many of the doctrines that the Catholic Church holds to have changed drastically over time, and we'll talk about why that is in a bit.

So,.

Roman Catholicism, because the Roman Catholicism of today doesn't actually resemble the Roman Catholicism of the 300s and 400s AD, it's actually quite different. I was looking through some materials and found that Dr. James White, I'm sure you guys have heard of Dr. James White, if you haven't.

He is associated with Apologia Church in Arizona. You've heard me talk about Jeff Durbin,.

Who's a,.

Who's an apologist and a pastor at Apologia Church, and Dr. James White, who's a debater and a scholar and a pastor. Well, Dr. James White has studied Catholicism in a tremendous amount of detail, and so I go with, I go with him on this.

He basically says that, in his estimation, the origin, the real origin of the modern Catholic Church was actually in 1215 AD at the fourth council of the Lateran. And the reason why he puts the origin of the modern Catholic Church there is because it was at this ecumenical council that the doctrine of transubstantiation and the mass was introduced.

So when you think of Catholicism and Catholic practice, you generally think of Saturday Mass, right? They go to Mass, they take communion,.

They,.

They say a lot of stuff, right?

And...

You go to bingo. And then they go to bingo, yes, and then they go to bingo, right? So, so the, it was in 1215 AD that really the doctrine of transubstantiation and the modern-day Catholic Mass was introduced.

Now, there have been changes to the Catholic Mass over the years, but the Mass still holds, and this was when it was introduced. But whatever date you put on it, Catholics, and Catholic priests particularly, hold that Peter was the first pope.

And that, that the Catholic Church actually goes all the way back to Jesus. And, and, and that, you know, when Jesus had his apostles, his disciples around him, and he said, Simon, you're now Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.

Catholic priests, and there was actually a really good Catholic priest that I was watching a bunch of videos of his. Father Mike Schmidt, I think is his name. And he does a really good job of kind of boiling Catholic theology down to, like, easy bite-size.

And he takes on tough topics and stuff. While I don't agree with him, I thought he was easily consumable to get, you know, really Catholic ideas. And he goes all the way back to that and says that, that when Jesus did that for Peter, that he was essentially making, because Jesus was the king, and he was bringing his kingdom to earth, Jesus, as the king, was making Peter essentially his prime minister, right?

Giving him the authority and saying he was going to build his church on, on them. And that the rest of the apostles were essentially the bishops of the church, the modern-day bishops that you would, that you would see in the Catholic Church today.

And so in modern times, they look at bishops as, you know, it's, it's a apostolic calling, and you're an apostle of the church, right? And the Pope, the Popes that have gone on are essentially successors to Peter.

And we're going to have a whole slide on the Pope. We'll talk more about him. But, but essentially, this is what Catholics and Catholic priests believe. They'll, they'll say that, that actually Jesus founded the Catholic Church, and that is why the Catholic Church is the only true church.

And so, the problem with that is that the early church was persecuted by Rome. Peter never went to, like, there's nothing that talks about Peter ever going to Rome, right? Being the bishop of Rome. That's what the Pope is, the bishop of Rome.

And.

None of the earliest church fathers ever held to any of the Catholic doctrines that are, that are present today. And there are actually good reasons for that. Not the least of which is it's not in the Bible, a lot of it.

But, but also, you know, Catholic doctrine has changed significantly over the years. As we just talked about, transubstantiation wasn't even present until 1215. 1215 years after, after Christ. So, you know, that, that is, that is a difficulty, and much of the Catholic doctrine is in conflict with various scriptures in the Bible.

And this, this Catholic priest, this Mike Schmidt guy, he talked about the Bible being the infallible Word of God, but the church being the infallible interpreter of the Bible. And that's what 1215 is, yes.

So, so that is, that is a difference. The problem I have is, if you have an infallible, perfect document, you don't need an infallible interpreter. You interpret it the way that it, that, that you would read it, right?

And so that gets into a whole nother, a whole nother thing. Alright, so this is somewhat the origin. You could get into, and Ivan sent me slides. It talks about church history. And we could spend the rest of the, of tonight just on church history and going through all that.

We are not going to do that. But, but this is sort of like the summary version of the origins of the Roman Catholic Church, and there's a tremendous amount of more detail. And, and actually, did you already supply those documents with the,.

With the first one? But, but I had to do what you're doing. I had to cut back.

And so, I'm just saying, I want to make it available to everybody. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you are, if you've already made it available in the, yeah, I made it available for them,.

But there's even, there was even more. Yeah, yeah.

And then, so we'll make sure that you guys have access to all those documents. I don't have all of them in this deck. Because we'd be all, we'd be all night on it. But, but I'll provide that. It gives you sort of a timeline with like call-outs of different points of church history.

And it's not just focused on the Catholic Church. It's focused on a much broader topic of church history. So we'll move on. What I did want to call out are things that we hold in common with Catholics.

Shared Beliefs Between Catholics and Evangelicals

So Catholics and evangelicals. Evangelicals is just the broad term that I'm giving all sort of reformed believers. Although evangelicals could have a broader meaning. That's my shorthand for for tonight.

What do Catholics and evangelicals have in common? Well, we believe that there's one God. So we're monotheists. We believe that God created the universe and all of mankind. We believe that Jesus is the Son of God.

That Jesus is in fact divine. We believe in the Trinity. So this is the one being three persons. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We believe in heaven, which is an eternal paradise where Christians will receive eternal life.

And we believe in hell, which is a place of eternal punishment where unbelievers are damned. Those are things that we have in common. Right? Just in summary form. If you, if you asked Catholics, are you Christian?

They would say yes. Right? If they ask, if you asked, am I a Christian? They would probably say yes. Right? There's, there's something we'll talk about called Vatican II, which sort of tried to bring, you know, Protestants or evangelicals and Catholics together.

But we have significant differences in what we believe. These are the things we have in common. Let's move on to the things we don't. So I wanted to talk about what is the Catholic Gospel. Because this is really the heart of the differences between Catholicism and evangelical belief.

The Catholic Gospel, Justification, and the Council of Trent

So this is the most important thing I think we disagree on. There are certainly a lot of things we disagree on, but this is, this is I think, you know, sort of at the, at the core. Evangelicals believe that Christ imputes his righteousness to us when we accept him, and that our good works are a result, not a requirement for salvation.

That grace alone, through Christ alone, is how we're saved. Right? This is the Solus, right? The Sola Scriptura, right? That's, that's the scripture alone, right? Grace alone, Christ alone, right? Through faith alone.

These are, these are sort of the things that came out of the Reformation. Catholics also believe in grace as a means of salvation, but they add to that grace works. So the Catholic Church believes in seven sacraments, and, and these seven sacraments are things that believers must do.

Not all of them must do all of them, but they must do the ones that are appropriate for them to be saved. So the first is baptism. They believe that all Catholics must be baptized. They usually do this as infants.

So you'll have a, you know, a family who has, you know, we have dedications, right? So we'll bring our children up. I did this with all of my children. We'll bring them up to the front, and we'll, we'll pray, and we'll, we'll talk about how we're, we're, we're, you know, dedicating them, and that we're going to raise them in the faith, that we're going to teach them, you know, to, to, you know, to believe in, in Jesus Christ.

Catholics, too, have this, this infant ritual where they, where they baptize them. But if you were to convert to Catholicism, you would still need to be baptized. And they generally do this sprinkling-on-the-head type of baptism.

It's not baptism by immersion, which we believe is how you should be baptized, because that's the picture of how, you know, Christ was baptized. So Catholics believe that infant baptism brings you into the church, so this is how you get into the church, and forgives original sin.

This is why they do it as infants, right? Because you're born into this world with original sin, totally depraved, as we were talking about earlier, and that this is a way of saying, okay, you're new into this world, we're gonna, we're gonna baptize you, bring you into the church, and we're going to, and we're going, and this is going to forgive you of your original sin.

A priest will generally do the baptism. You usually have a godmother or godfather along with your parents, and the role of the godmother godfather is to, is to, you know, if something were to happen to the parents, that person steps in and can raise them in the faith, in the church.

The second is called the Eucharist, which is what we call communion, and we're going to talk a bit about transubstantiation and the differences between what we believe and what they believe with regard to to communion, but this is another act that you must perform within the Catholic Church, and generally this is done by, in the Mass, and it's done every Mass, they will, the priest will call for those to come down, and they will deposit the wafer on their tongue and say the body of Christ, and then you'll drink the the wine, and they'll say the blood of Christ, and, and this is the way you do communion.

You go down the aisle, and you take communion. The third, the third sacrament is confirmation. So, if you have any Catholic friends, or yourself were Catholic, you know that when the kids are young, they get to a certain age, and they have to go through confirmation.

Fifth grade, yeah. Do they call that catechism? No, confirmation. Is that the little book that's called catechism?

No, the book, Missal, is catechism, but you're confirmed when you're in fifth grade. I was anyway.

Yeah, so whatever that, you know, I don't even know what fifth graders are or how old they are, but when they reach that age, they go through confirmation. You'll usually see them also get, you know, so they have like, when they're infants, they have these baptism garments, and usually parents will save those, and then confirmation, they get all dressed up, and the idea behind confirmation is that this strengthens what you got from your original baptism, and enriches you with special strength from the Holy Spirit.

The next, the next sacrament is called penance, and this is confession, right? This is, you go to church on some regular basis, some more than others. You go into one of those little booths with the priest.

Forgive me, Father, for I've sinned. It's been three weeks since my last confession, and the priest goes, what'd you do? And you're like, oh, I lusted after a woman. I lied to my parents. I did this. I did that.

And then usually the priest will say, yeah, say five outfathers, say three Hail Marys, and these are acts of contrition, right? These are acts of contrition, and they're repetition, ritualistic prayers, where you recite this prayer over and over again for a number of times as an act of contrition.

It reminds me very much of, you know, have you ever seen the movies where somebody does something wrong, and they have to go up to the whiteboard, and they have to chalkboard, and they have to write something multiple times?

It's very akin to that, and it's basically penance, right? You're sorry for your sins, and you're doing this as a way to show God that you're sorry for your sins. Go ahead.

So every week when I used to go, as a kid, I used to go to confession. I did the whole thing, add the contrition, two Hail Marys for our fathers, and then he would pray to God. Apparently, during those years, all the years I went there, God didn't know English.

He had to do it in Latin.

Yes, yes.

He was like, God, I don't want to do Latin.

They changed that in 65.

Yeah, in Vatican City. And so, the priest is going to pray for your salvation, right? He's going to pray for your forgiveness, right? So you go in and perform these acts of contrition, and the priest prays that you're forgiven of your sins, right?

And so, this is something that all Catholics are expected to do as well. The next thing is the anointing of the sick. The idea behind this is that it can bring healing or serve as forgiveness if the sick person can't confess.

Is that extremum? I don't know if it's called that. Is that what that's called, extremum?

I'm not sure if that's... You probably know more than I do about it, as you do with most things theological. The next thing is called holy orders. The holy orders is really what priests, someone who's going to commit their life to the church, does.

So this isn't something that all Catholics have to do. Holy orders is really when a prospective priest, whether it's a monastic priest or whether it's what they call a secular priest, will go and they will take their holy orders.

This is supposed to give you sacred power to act in what they call persona Christi, which is essentially to act in place of Christ, right? Which allows you to become a priest, a teacher, or a pastor. And this is, again, where you move from being...

I believe it's called a... I've forgotten it now. I think it's a disciple. Not a disciple. I forget what they call the priest in training. But you go from being a priest in training to being an actual priest.

And then there are multiple types of priests. You could be what they call a religious priest, which is where you're committing yourself to some monastic... Monastic just means like you're kind of a monk, right?

Versus a secular priest, which is what you normally think of when you think of a Catholic priest. This is the person that has the white collar and is essentially... Sometimes they call them a diocesan priest.

I can't pronounce these words. But basically they're assigned to a diocese, assigned to a parish, to actually serve as a priest over the flock in that parish. Versus someone who's going into a monastic order who's essentially going to take a vow of poverty.

So a secular priest assigned to a diocese doesn't take a vow of poverty. They can actually own... They can have their own wealth and they can own possessions. Whereas someone who's going into a monastic order is taking a vow of poverty, which means that anything they get goes back to the church.

So if they're, say, a prolific author, they can write books, and then any of the royalties they get for that book go directly back to the church. The seventh sacrament is matrimony. This one takes very little explanation.

It's getting married. And through this you can help another attain holiness and bring forth children. So these are some of the works that they expect Catholics to perform. And in the absence of performing these, they are not saved.

So they do not believe in salvation through faith alone. And so this is why I say this is the most significant difference between Catholicism and evangelical Christianity. Because they add something to the doctrine of grace.

And any time you add anything to grace, you have essentially corrupted or created a brand new gospel. So it is a different gospel than the gospel that we believe. And the reason I think it's the most significant is because how you are saved is foundational to Christianity.

It is literally everything. Somebody bring out James 2 .24.

Anyone.

You see that a person is justified by words and not by faith alone.

We should all run to the Catholic Church and convert. It says it right there, right? It says it right there, right? So actually let me, I think I have this.

You guys can see this, right?

So right there it says, which one, is this the right one? James 2 .24. You see, this is the ESV, you see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. I mean, it can't get more clear than that, right?

We're all justified by works, right? The problem with this particular verse is that I am doing what I always say. I can do all things through a verse taken out of context. So you have to, just like the three most important things in Realty, right?

Is location, location, location. Three most important things in the Bible are context, context, context. So what James is talking about here, you have to read in the full context. You can't just read it, that verse, by itself.

Because if you take that verse by itself, and a lot of Catholics will argue with folks based on this verse. They'll say, see, it says it right there, that you're saved by works and not faith alone. But the problem is that you have to kind of read this in its entirety.

It's talking about faith without works is dead. So what it's talking about here, it says, What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and if one of you says to them, go in peace, be warmed and filled, without giving them the things they need for the body, what good is that?

So also, faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.

You believe that God is one, you do well. Even the demons believe that and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham, our father, justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?

You see that faith was active, faith was active along with his works. So it's saying here that Abraham's faith was already active, and that his works were simply the demonstration, the proof of his faith.

It's not saying that his works were the catalyst that saved him. It was saying that his works were a proof to his faith that was already active. And it says, you see that faith was active along with his work, and that faith was completed by his works.

The scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed in God, and it was, this is another important one, and it was counted to him as righteousness. He believed in God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.

It was imputed to him, as I said earlier. The faith, the righteousness, was imputed to him because of his faith. And then through his works, he just was living out that faith, he was proving that faith.

And so, again, what I said earlier, our belief in salvation is that we are saved through faith alone, and not by works of the men they boast, but that our works are a proof, they are a demonstration of a legitimate or valid or true belief, true faith.

In the Greek, it's vindication.

Yeah.

And then all you need to do, right, is go to yet another verse of scripture, right, where it talks about, in Romans 4, it talks about Abraham was justified by faith. So Romans 4 brings even more clarity to the same story of Abraham.

And it says, what then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say?

Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. So here it's referring back, right, to what James was saying. So I think Romans 4 helps to clarify what was said in James. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as due.

So again here it's saying that if we're saved by our works, then that is not a gift to us. Salvation isn't a gift to us, it's what we're owed. We're owed salvation because we worked out that salvation, right, as opposed to salvation being actually a free gift from God, right?

And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. Just as David also speaks the blessing of the one whom God counts righteousness apart from works.

Let me skip down here. It then starts talking about circumcision and uncircumcision. It talks about, you know, whether or not someone has to get circumcised before they can be saved, or whether they can be saved even without being circumcised.

And this is going back to Abraham, you know, talking about how he, you know, with him, and so this is really just demonstrating the differences between a works-based faith. And Islam is a works-based faith.

We talked about that before. You're required to, you know, pray five times a day, make a trip once in your life to Mecca, give two and a half percent of your network. There are a bunch of things that you have to do to work out your salvation.

Catholicism, too, adds works to faith in order for you to work out those things and says, and we're going to get to some of the canons that came out of, I think it was Trent. We'll get to it in a second, where it talks about anathematizing Reformed believers.

So, this is a huge difference. Like, this is like the main thing, right, that we want to talk about tonight. Because this is really where the rubber meets the road with the difference between Catholicism and evangelicals.

Go ahead.

It also points out that, like, what Christ did, it makes it seem like in the Catholic belief that what Christ did alone wasn't sufficient enough.

Yes, right.

That we almost are putting ourselves on the same level that there's something incomplete as what Christ has done.

Christ's death on the cross only gets you part of the way.

Right.

Your belief in that only gets you part of the way.

Right, and that we have to put it over the top.

And that's an insult to God.

And it really is, like what Rich is saying. So, that's the way I think of the difference.

Yes.

It's like, we're really saying that what he did was insufficient.

Yes.

A hundred percent.

So, at 35, I became a Christian and was a Catholic.

Yeah.

And I was amazed to find out in my research, because I didn't even know what my own belief was. But, we talk about the incompleteness of Jesus' work on the cross. Until the last decade or so, I forget when exactly it was, they actually believed that each time a priest performed the sacrament of the Eucharist...

We're going to talk about that.

...that they were...

Transubstantiation.

No, no, they were killing Jesus.

Yes.

Yes.

That's it.

Yes.

Unbelievable.

Yes, so we talk about a once for all sacrifice. In Catholicism, the sacrifice is continual.

Every Mass.

Every Mass.

Yes.

You're a hundred percent right. So, we could go through this entire Romans 4. Romans 4 is great. You should read Romans 4. Go home and read Romans 4. It's not that long. Romans 4 is great. It really brings a lot of clarity to salvation.

Read James 2 as well. But, yeah, this is important stuff.

And it's also against Arminianism, too.

Yes.

I mean, Romans 4.

Yes.

So, let me go back to sharing this. Alright, so this kind of gets you to the meat of this particular difference. And, again, the most important difference. This is just something I threw in there that Ivan gave me.

Which just goes through... It's an image that talks about the seven sacraments. And it talks a little bit more detail. A little bit of different detail. I just tried to put one-liners. But this will give you some information as well.

Are Catholics Christians? and the Council of Trent's Anathemas

Alright.

Now, we've been saying... One of the questions is, are Catholics Christians? If you ask a Catholic, they'll say yes. If you ask a Catholic if we're Christians, most of them would say yes. But we obviously believe that our gospel is the true gospel.

And that their gospel is not the true gospel. So the question becomes, are Catholics Christians? And I would say, first of all, I am not God. So it is not for me to say who is and who isn't a Christian.

But second of all, I think it depends on what you mean when you say, are Catholics Christians? Because just like I talked about earlier, what if somebody hasn't heard about the Trinity before? And so they're not sure they believe it.

Can they still be a Christian? Because you have to sort of differentiate between the theologically literate and the theologically illiterate. There are many Catholics who believe that Jesus Christ is God.

Who believe they did it out on the cross to save them from their sins. Who could be believing Christians. Have a true, genuine faith. And there are some that believe all of the doctrines of Catholicism.

And probably believe a different gospel than we believe. And they're not Christians.

What do they say about being born again?

I don't know. What do they say about being born again?

I don't know. What do they say about the doctrine of marriage?

Oh, yes. We're going to get into the way they pray and so forth in a minute.

So to answer that, there is a split within the Catholic Church of true Bible-believing Catholics that believe Jesus Christ died for their sins. And they actually believe that. The other grouping is they believe that, but they believe that the church has total authority still.

And not Jesus or that they are dwelled with the Holy Spirit. And they feel the church is still the one in charge. And that's kind of the split. That's the main, main, main split.