“The Apostles Creed is a good reference for belief in what or whom.”
Okay, let’s see if that works: Sola scriptura, sola fide, Consubstantiation. Three Lutheran doctrines. Show me where you see any of those three in the Apostles’ Creed. Oh, that’s right. They’re not there. The simple fact is the Apostles’ Creed is the barest of summaries of the faith and comes no where near summing up the beliefs of any Christian group.
“Yes, Lutherans did not exist before 1520, but they exist as Christians after 1520. Where you worship isn’t very important when compared to who you worship.”
Who said anything about “where”? The point is if Lutherans only started in 1520 - which you just admitted - then that means Christ didn’t start their sect.
“Then stop calling my church a sect.”
So you’re not a Protestant? Protestants have sects. Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have Churches. There are no Protestant Churches in the proper understanding of the word Church because they can only have sects. Remember, they’re all just recent man-made sects.
“I am a Christian, just as you are a Christian.”
Oh, we’re both Christians, but we are not the same. A sectarian cannot have the fullness of faith. This is not about anything personal about you or me. This is simply about the Truth which existed before us and is independent of us. Christ founded one Church. He founded no Protestant sect. They came 1500 to 1970 years later.
“We are both part of the body of believers, the Invisible Church.”
Christ established a VISIBLE Church. To ignore it is to reject part of the work of Christ.
“For you to claim that Christ’s finished work on the cross is insufficient because we do not use the same rituals for worship is to deny Christ altogether.”
When did I EVER claim Christ’s “finished work on the cross is insufficient”? You COMPLETELY made that up. You made that up out of thin air. I defy you, I DEFY YOU, to find a single time I ever said any such thing. You will utterly fail because I know I have NEVER, EVER SAID ANY SUCH THING. I have never once impugned the work of Christ. EVER. How can you just make up something like that? Seriously, do you not believe bearing false witness is wrong?
“For you to claim that your traditions and rituals complete the work of Christ is ludicrous.”
Again, WHEN AND WHERE DID I EVER SAY THAT? Seriously, how can you just make up things like that and call yourself a Christian in the same post? How can you do that?
>>Again, WHEN AND WHERE DID I EVER SAY THAT? Seriously, how can you just make up things like that and call yourself a Christian in the same post? How can you do that?
OMG. You whine like a little liberal girl! Do you have your own hashtag campaign? Gonna go do a campus protest? Give me a break.
You claim that Protestant churches are real churches and therefore Protestants aren’t real Christians...unless they go join your church. That is saying that Christ was not sufficient because it is YOUR church that matters. Your silly bigotry is so tiresome.
"There are no Protestant Churches in the proper understanding of the word Church because they can only have sects."
Says who?
Says the partisan sectarians of the Latin Church, and perhaps some others who hold to the notion there must be some (imagined to be) unbroken chain of man-occupied office of Church administration in order for an ecclesiastical organization to at all also be a Church. The Lord Himself set no such artificial limitations.
When Ratizinger wrote about (his own views) of what Church was, and what qualified, he didn't stoop to calling all those ecclesiastical organizations outside of Roman Catholicism "sects" as your have done here. Yet his own definitions undo & unravel themselves once one looks towards the root word for "Church".
Additionally, proof-texts which Romanists read-in-between-the-lines of, where they claim that Christ did set such limitations; that Christ's own ekklesia would never be in error ----and that that one ekklesia is (of course!) their own and absolutely none others ---is about as sectarian as it gets.
The ones who originally invented that limitation were as [then] latter-day Sanhedrin, inventing doctrines that perhaps had some initial sourcing from within Scripture, but came to the fore in the shapes which they did more from within their own developing traditions, which arose not narrowly shaped from the Word and original Church traditions, but also strongly influenced by their own mere & lesser customs concerning those considerations.
Similar to what rabbinical teachers propound, portions of what they would insist upon were God's own instructions simply were not the Word of God as they (the Sanhedrin, and the latter-day Sanhedrin) were wont to advertise those doctrinal inventions to be.
It would be good to remember right about here that Paul, as he noted, was taught by no man --- meaning that he was not taught by other Apostles concerning Jesus, yet was used by God as instrument within the Church in establishing and furthering the Church.
From outside of the initial circle of chosen Apostles was added by God (not coming up through the ranks of church teaching, through submission to the teachings of the Apostles) the very one who (arguably enough) most defined what the Church was in it's various assemblages of that which came to be known as (plural) Churches of the one universal Church.
Many members -- but one body, and not one which necessarily had as it's headquarters one particular ekklesia from among them all to rule over all the rest.
Using later arising man-made shifts of definition for what the Church is in order to allege that; ecclesiastical organizations arising from the Reformation are not Churches, is nifty self-serving circular reasoning, but circular still.
There must be definition of what Church is coming from outside that very thing, a word not being able to define itself, lest that Word be God Himself. Hence the need for such precepts as sola scriptura to keep promoters of that inevitable alternative, sola ecclesia, in check.
Despite your own and many other 'Catholics' steadfast denials, the Word of God as supreme (reliance upon the Holy Writ foremost to guide) being over and above whatever exercise of ecclesiastical authority there may be ---WAS among early Church precepts & understanding, Christ Himself providing examples of the principle in his own actions, and words.
I think it best that we all take Him at his own word, rather than rely upon partisans -- like [Roman] Catholics who think their own ekklesia the only one, along with all the blather about others "not having the fullness of faith" etc., when that alleged fullness includes "extra" inventions far outside of (and at times in conflict with) the more original Church purposes and charter.