/christian/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

https://youtu.be/WDEBz25lGdY

Get saved

Probably by reading the bible

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2014/05/pre-christian-apologetics.html

This goes over everything leading to the Christian faith by a great philosopher, very insightful and in depth.

But they key things is to go to a Catholic Church and ask to enter the RCIA program and be baptized.

Everything else is a bunch modern novelties that have a history going back at most 1 or 2 hundred years.

If that's not enough prepare to study a ton and not know anything for sure for a couple years.

A measure of the true religion though is reasonable to use, because it isn't realistic for everyone to become a historian and theologian. (however this still logically only comes after establishing the metaphysical and philosophical principles Dr. Feser covers)

If you figure out some of the key principles any potential claim to the true religion has it makes it easy to discount all the obviously false ones.

A key first principle would be first to establish that theology and the truth of theology matters. God is obviously the most important thing, so anything about him has to be of greater importance then the details of anything else. What follows from this is that God cares that whatever his religion is has an accurate view of them, this seems obvious but it's important to make clear.

Any religion that has any potential claim to be true, has to have a system that values the truths of their theology.

There are a couple things we can get from this.

They have to be united theologically (historically and currently). Since theology is just describing truth there can't be multiple contradictory views of it, and it won't change overtime.

That means any claim to Christianity has to have some mechanism ensuring that people hold to the truths that have always been maintained. It doesn't make any sense to say different groups like Unitarians and say Anglicans are in any way the part of the same religion, as they have totally different theology.

This also works within groups, say pentecostals or mormons, they greatly differ in theology not only with other groups but within themselves. This means that pentecostals or mormons don't have any claim to be even possibly a true religion.

God is perfect, loves us, and to give us a false view of him is evil so it's not something his religious would do.

So there has to be among whatever the true religion is Unity historically and currently in theology.

This comes to another issue, any religion with a ton of people will have people with misunderstandings or just likely to come up with stuff on their own. If God is important, he'd want a way so people can correct their misunderstandings and avoid inventing error. This means the true religion has to have in some way an authority to teach truths about God. Theology is complicated, and as I said earlier it just doesn't make any sense to expect everyone to become a theologian and find the true religion, so rather it makes more sense that there would be some sort of teacher established that God assures us we can trust. This way anyone, from the greatest theologian to the simplest peasant could be confident they know the basic Truth's about God.

And as soon as you get to this point nothing but Catholicism is even possible, just from the idea that theology is important we can totally eliminate all other claims of being the true religion, and Christ teaches this as well.

If you want to read something

https://archive.org/details/thechurchofthepa00pracuoft/page/n11

or listen to something

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faIB-sOBDKk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl3pD4l0K5U

These go in depth on it

>>810745

In st. Peter Christ established a true guide so that we can come to God without depending on our personal knowledge and judgement. As I said theology is important, so it's not just left to any random person with scripture to invent their own religion.

Also for clarity you can check out the catechism which is a collection of the Church's teachings

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM

But you'll have this stuff covered in RCIA.

RCIA is another interesting thing on this point, before becoming a Catholic it's required you study the Church and it's teaching for several months before joining. In the early Church this period went on for several years but fortunately it's lighter nowadays. This is because as I said, we are the only group that thinks theology, and therefore God, is important. You cannot (rationally) profess to be a Catholic unless you believe and follow the teachings the Church has taught with the authority Christ gave it. Yeah there are some problems, and many people who claim to be Catholic despite rejecting it's teachings but like I said it's simple. Christ gave us a certain authority to teach about theology, and outside of it there can be no unity. So people can claim it but if they aren't actually united in thought with the Church then they are actually rejecting the authority Christ has over them so they remove themselves from it. It's not perfect but it's literally the only possible way to have any confidence in any truths about religon, otherwise it just leaves it up to our personal judgement which prone to many errors. So it's not even a matter of the Catholic Church being the best option out of all those who pass the test, it is the ONLY possibility. God made it very clear for us, he doesn't want to make it difficult for people seeking truth.

If you look at the other groups like protestants (literally no unity historically or currently).

Oriental Orthodox (not very clear as a source of truth, are limited almost totally geographically to a small area)

Eastern Orthodox (Also no clear source of truth, many major internal theological disagreements that aren't resolved because they have no clear source of unity, are almost totally limited to a small area geographically, this seems to be less true because they had refugees recently but historically they've never really evangelized anyone and as I said are still almost totally limited there.)

Here's a quote from a great eastern Church Father which expresses it well

ST.MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR

"The extremities of the earth, and everyone in every part of it who purely and rightly confess the Lord, look directly towards the Most Holy Roman Church and her confession and faith, as to a sun of unfailing light awaiting from her the brilliant radiance of the sacred dogmas of our Fathers, according to that which the inspired and holy Councils have stainlessly and piously decreed. For, from the descent of the Incarnate Word amongst us, all the churches in every part of the world have held the greatest Church alone to be their base and foundation, seeing that, according to the promise of Christ Our Savior, the gates of hell will never prevail against her, that she has the keys of the orthodox confession and right faith in Him, that she opens the true and exclusive religion to such men as approach with piety, and she shuts up and locks every heretical mouth which speaks against the Most High." (Maximus, Opuscula theologica et polemica, Migne, Patr. Graec. vol. 90)>pt.2

>>810744

What did the Christians do for the first 400 years before there was a bible? Let alone before printing technology was invented.

>>810744

The Bible is a not an easy read, so I wouldn't advise it to someone as new to the faith as OP claims to be.

>>810745

me again

If you want a single book this one is good.

http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/130/pg130-images.html