In 2016, circa 30,000 to 40,000 "denominations" ... and counting. Each posits different doctrine, a differing content of the faith, each calling it Christianity.

And great news this is for the Muslims and for the atheist and Talmudic Jews, but also for the Plutocrats. When it comes to self proclaimed "Christian" sects, the more the merrier for the just mentioned. More conflicts and infighting can be stirred up. All of them become more futile and inept, and even comical, like spraying soma gas on the Gamma Minuses, having them slip off into a mental Soma Holiday, crying and blubbering.

Yet this is not expecially new.

Consider, already by the end of the 16th century in which Martin Luther (b. Germany), John Calvin (b. France), Huldrych Zwingli (b. Switzerland), John Knox (b. Scotland) and Thomas Cranmer (b. England) worked their wonders, the number of bickering, often enough warring, denominations was up to more than 300.

Perhaps more than any page on this website, this page, this attempt to make a short story from the content of a library five hundred years in the making, is in its earliest draft stages.

There was a man who had two sons; and the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of property that falls to me.’ And he divided his living between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took his journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in loose living. And when he had spent everything, a great famine arose in that country, and he began to be in want. So he went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would gladly have fed on the pods that the swine ate; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants.”’ And he arose and came to his father. But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to make merry.

Now his elder son was in the field; and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what this meant. And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has received him safe and sound.’ But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, ‘Lo, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command; yet you never gave me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends. But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your living with harlots, you killed for him the fatted calf!’ And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.’”
— Luke 15:11-32 —

The façade of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, of which these base relief images form a part, was completed in 1225 Anno Domini.

...... Once Saved Always Saved ......

But even for Calvin, one could push things too far, make the Judaizing too obvious, and in so doing endanger Calvin's own position. Such was the fate of Michel Servet. A Spanish physician who had real accomplishments — he was the first to describe pulmonary circulation — his published views in Christianismi Restitutio – the Restoration of Christianity (heretics invariably boast that, the gates of Hell having indeed prevailed against the Church for so very long, they will now set things straight), rejecting the most holy Trinity, got him into trouble with his fellow judaizing heretic, John Calvin. Servet also felt himself free to rejected infant baptism.

John Calvin was the author of Servet's execution by burning at the stake, "for the glory of god," though the actually sentence was passed down by a council of 25.

Monolith in Champel in Geneva in Switzerland

"honoring" the 350th anniversary of the "martyrdom," on 27 October 1553 of

Michel Servet – Michael Servetus – Miguel Serveto– Miguel Servet– Miguel Serveto
(c. 29 September 1511 Aragon, Spain – Geneva, Switzerland 27 October 1553)

Actually, it is an obvious piece of hypocritical non-apology by early XX century Calvinist apologists on behalf of their "NOTRE GRAND REFORMATEUR"

Arch-Prideful Martin Luther also felt himself free to delete parts of books from the Canon of the Bible:

Esther
Daniel

and even entire books:

Tobit
Judith
I Maccabees
II Maccabees
Wisdom
Sirach
Baruch

from his Old Testament.

This monument much impressed Hilaire Belloc (Member of Parliament, 1906-1910) when he walked from his then home in central France, across the Alps to Rome and to this Basilica in 1902.

Heresy is the dislocation of some complete and self-supporting scheme by the introduction of a novel denial of some essential part therein. We mean by "a complete and self-supporting scheme" any system of affirmation in physics or mathematics or philosophy or what-not, the various parts of which are coherent and sustain each other.

...

Heresy means, then, the warping of a system by "Exception": by "Picking out" one part of the structure[1] and implies that the scheme is marred by taking away one part of it, denying one part of it, and either leaving the void unfilled or filling it with some new affirmation. ... The denial of a scheme wholesale is not heresy, and has not the creative power of a heresy. It is of the essence of heresy that it leaves standing a great part of the structure it attacks. On this account it can appeal to believers and continues to affect their lives through deflecting them from their original characters. Wherefore, it is said of heresies that "they survive by the truths they retain."

...

For instance, [the Christian] religion has for one essential part (though it is only a part) the statement that the individual soul is immortal that personal conscience survives physical death. Now if people believe that, they look at the world and themselves in a certain way and go on in a certain way and are people of a certain sort. If they except, that is cut out, this one doctrine, they may continue to hold all the others, but the scheme is changed, the type of life and character and the rest become quite other. The man who is certain that he is going to die for good and for all may believe that Jesus of Nazareth was Very God of Very God, that God is Triune, that the Incarnation was accompanied by a Virgin Birth, that bread and wine are transformed by a particular formula; he may recite a great number of Christian prayers and admire and copy chosen Christian exemplars, but he will be quite a different man from the man who takes immortality for granted. ... Because heresy, in this particular sense (the denial of an accepted Christian doctrine) thus affects the individual, it affects all society, and when you are examining a society formed by a particular religion you necessarily concern yourself to the utmost with the warping or diminishing of that religion.

...

[H]eresy in its particular meaning (which is that of heresy in Christian doctrine) is of special interest for anyone who would understand Europe: the character of Europe and the story of Europe. For the whole of that story, since the appearance of the Christian religion, has been the story of struggle and change, mainly preceded by, often, if not always, caused by, and certainly accompanying, diversities of religious doctrine. In other words, "the Christian heresy" is a special subject of the very first importance to the comprehension of European history, because, in company with Christian orthodoxy, it is the constant accompaniment and agent of European life.

...

The study of successive Christian heresies, their characters and fates, has a special interest for all of us who belong to the European or Christian culture, and that is a reason that ought to be self-evident. Our culture was made by a religion. Changes in, or deflections from, that religion necessarily affect our civilization as a whole. ... The whole story of Europe, her various realms and states and general bodies during the last sixteen centuries has mainly turned upon the successive heresies arising in the Christian world.

[Though it will approach a book's length on a web page even if in outline form, list heresies long defeated as error, which reemerge time and again over centuries, soon millennia, when once Authority itself as a Christ-ordained construct is rejected:

• Χιλιασμός - Chiliasm or Millennialism: definitively repudiated and rejected as heresy at the Second Ecumenical Council, the First Council of Constantinople in AD 381;
• Εἰκονομαχία - Iconoclasm: definitively repudiated and rejected as heresy at the Seventh Ecumenical Council, the Second Council of Nicaea in A.D. 787;

As with this entire web page and web site: Under Construction]

Something striking even for secular atheists, is it not? And in point of fact the lapsed Christian Nordic countries have not switched their flags from bearers of the Nordic Christian Cross to carriers of the Islamic Crescent ... not yet anyway.

[Please forgive the present writer, Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ. Though the truth is that there is a strong desire accompanying the present effort to not pursue the tactic of partial truth telling, however advantageous such might seem for scoring points in single disputes. Combined with this is the strong conviction that almost all Christian writers are falling into just such a deceptive trap, however unwittingly. In an effort here to make good this boast, let a point be made and made with emphasis, which point runs counter to the main thrust of our argument. Please forgive again, but do not count on many Orthodox or Catholic writers showing a willingness to do this.

Throughout Europe, prior to the Revolution of Luther and Calvin and Cranmer and Knox, the Holy Scriptures were unavailable to the vast and overwhelming majority of baptized Christians. With the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century came a seismic shift. Thoughout Europe huge intellectual resources were applied to creating complete translations of the Old and New Testaments into the given vernacular of a country, of nearly all countries. Perhaps it will take some effort for 21st century man to imagine this. The Holy Bible is instantly available to all of us, and we do not actually read it. Throughout the first three-quarters of the time period between Christ's earthly ministry and this present writing, that is for 1500 years, only the tiniest minority of people had access to the Scriptures in any language which they could understand. Obviously there was also the question of the Bible and all other books being prohibitively expensive before Johannes Gutenberg's wonderful invention of movable type in the 1450s, but beyond this there was simple nothing to print. Yes, in Syriac and Biblical Greek and Latin, as also much later in Old Church Slavonic, there were Bible translations many centuries earlier. ]

But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.
— 1 Timothy 3:15 —

So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. John 6:53-54

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.
1 Corinthians 10:16-17

And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
Luke 1:28

Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that the antichrist was coming, so now many antichrists have appeared. Thus we know this is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not really of our number; if they had been, they would have remained with us. Their desertion shows that none of them was of our number.
1 John 2:18-19

Soli Deo gloria - glory to God alone

Solus Christus

Sola Gratia - by grace alone

Calvinist-Lutheran spiritual richness

Calvinist church service - St. Peters Cathedral, Geneva

Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine; poetry partly kept him in health. He could sometimes forget the red and thirsty hell to which his hideous necessitarianism dragged him among the wide waters and the white flat lilies of the Ouse. He was damned by John Calvin; he was almost saved by John Gilpin. - GKC, Orthodoxy -

And actually, the necessary rejection of Calvinist understanding of Predestination also carries with it by unavoidable necessity the final rejection of Sola Scriptura. We need God's gift of the Church - one, holy, catholic and apostolic, the Orthodox-Catholic Church.

A question for XXI century Evangelicals:

Have you ever found anything in the writings of Luther or of Calvin which suggests that the Christian life begins, not with baptism, but with an emotionally-hyped born again conversion experience?

"The Puritan substituted a God who wished to damn people for a God who wished to save them." G.K. Chesterton's famous synopsis of Calvin's "contribution" to Christian doctrine

"The strength of Calvinism was the truth on which it insisted, the Omnipotence of God, the dependence and insufficiency of man; but its error, which was the negation of free-will, also killed it. For men could not permanently accept so monstrous a denial of common sense and common experience." Hilaire Belloc, The Great Heresies (1936)

Not an Ecumenical Council or, for smaller matters, the Standing Apostolic Synod,

but rather

John Calvin gets to dictate doctrine and doctrinal nuance, binding on all humanity on pain of Hell,

his TULIP:

Total depravity

Unconditional election

Limited atonement

Irresistible grace

Perseverance of the saints

neo-pagan Freemansonry - Cimetière des Rois, Genève,
grave near Calvin's grave. This is no Christian cemetery

Dear Friends,

Do any of you know where the present writer should begin a discussion of the impact of the Protestand Reformation on Christian unity and the integrity of the Church? I do not. And perhaps I need not. This is not part of the film. And what can be added? A recitation of the fact that there have been women and men of good will and great intellect, as also their wanton and self-seeking co-religionists, on both sides, is this useful? (Let me postpone what I mean by "both sides", as there obviously is not and never was one Protestant faith. The movement started to sub-divide from the earliest years, and as of this writing there are countless separated denominations.) Or should one try one's hand at a capsule summary of relationships among European princes in the 16th Century (or from the 15th Century, if we are to consider the movement of Jan Hus)? Shall I cite as though it were a credential the facts that I was baptized as an infant into the Methodist Church and that all the relations I know of who claim to be Christians at all are Protestants? Or shall I speak of my own intense respect for the enthusiasm and Christian witness of the Baptists? Or maybe some perfunctory acknowledgement of the disciplinary distortions and corruptions within the Catholic Church at the time that Martin Luther and John Calvin were writing and working, as also in our own day, would add something?

Or on the other hand, should I ask of Protestants, if they object to the idea of one bishop being empowered to define doctrine for the whole Church, do they object any less to having one layman so empowered over the people in the (vast) territories he controlled, as per cuius regio, eius religio (whose the region, his the religion)? How about having a boy of nine decide which changes to the established Church doctrine and practice of centuries will be imposed on the people, as could Edward VI, who ascended to the thrones of England and Ireland on the death of his father, Henry VIII in 1547 (H.M. Edward was 15 when he died in 1553)?

And to those few (in percentage terms) Protestants who have made the search and study, may one ask, if you find yourselves saying of those Catholic priests whom you have encountered, "seventy percent of these guys are homosexual," or if you find yourself saying of those Orthodox priests whom you have encountered, "eighty percent of these guys are infected with the heresy of ignorant nationalism," what do you plan on doing about these things? Abandon God's Church to these guys and follow some television charlatan who presumes to the authority to making up Christian doctrine — the content of the faith — based on his personal interpretation of Biblical passages?

... Catholic-Lutheran-Methodist Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification with Annex . [SERIOUS PROBLEMS]

At all events, one figure surely can not be absent from any such remarks, the figure of thirty thousand: 30,000 "Denominations" world-wide and counting, within each the belief that the Bible can be read and each individual, the greatly learned and the exceptionally dull alike, can then define for himself the content of the faith, what Christianity is. The predictable and predicted result of course has been sola scriptura without the Scripture. Thirty thousand, and each year counting.

Thanks Marty!

There was present in the field against the Church a powerful ally for the Reformers: and that ally was the body of immoral rich who hoped to profit by a general break in the popular organization of society. The atheism and the wealth, the luxury and the sensuality, the scholarship and aloofness of the Renaissance answered, over the heads of the Catholic populace, the call of barbarism. The Iconoclasts of greed joined hands with the Iconoclasts of blindness and rage and with the Iconoclasts of academic pride.

Nevertheless, even with such allies, barbarism would have failed, the Reformation would today be but an historical episode without fruit, Europe would still be Christendom, had not there been added the decisive factor of all--which was the separation of Britain.
-Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc in Europe and the Faith-

The Alternative: Obviously, return to the Orthodox-Catholic Church

A real man, a Man for all Seasons – Saint Thomas More (* 7 February 1478 until his martyrdom for Orthodox-Catholic Christian unity and orthodoxy in the Tower of London on 6 July 1535 †). Painting of 1527 in the Frick in New York by Hans Holbein the Younger.

But some bright lights ... sometimes:

Billy Graham, McCall's Magazine, 1/78

Conclusion:

The Protestants will simply have to be convinced to return to the Orthodox-Catholic Church, when once there is an Orthodox-Catholic Church to return to.