Faith and Reason: The Roman Catholic and the Protestants (Essay Sample)

Faith and Reason
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Introduction
In terms of faith and reason we refer to the different beliefs and reasons of believing in them as true even without seeing them. Their thus exists different practices and beliefs between Protestants and Roman Catholic, who have created divergent views and points of perspective regarding theology, architecture and liturgy. Protestants seem to have inadequate appreciation of sacred aesthetics while the Roman Catholic truly and actively emphasize on aesthetics. Taken to extreme this can make one to truly move away from worshiping of God. Protestants do belief and enter into worldly pragmatism while the Roman Catholics enter into ritualism and ornamentation. In terms of theology it’s wide and broad and both the Protestants and Roman Catholic differ in some ways and still agree in some theological beliefs with their reasons in doing so (Wilkens et al, 2014). In terms of liturgy that refers to the means or ways of worship in a particular Christian dominion. The Protestants and the Roman Catholic believers have different beliefs and their reasons of worshiping in a particular way. The architecture point of view varies to in terms of belief and reason of the Protestants and Roman Catholic. This paper thus discusses the competing views of faith and reason evident in the theology, liturgy and architecture of Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches.
The Roman Catholic beliefs and traditions emphasize on the creation and use of big Churches, which is the one big, holy, catholic and apostolic creed Church. With them their standard churches are huge and big in architecture structure; this has been from the past and has been adapted from generation to generations in the Roman Catholic Churches. In contrast the Protestants emphasize and belief in the small churches and local area congregation. This is evident and true by the increased rise in churches of non-denominational. This thus leads to a religious system with no place theology; this is because the view of the place and Church by the Protestants is less and they believe more in God and serving Him no matter how the place of worship looks like. This is as seen from the past as Protestant churches were small and many. The reason here is that you find that when a preacher moves to another place he or she leaves the other church and builds another one for the people of that area. This makes them through their beliefs and reasons to see the church or place as ephemeral. The Roman Catholic view the church and the place as permanent and thus their belief and reason to build large churches and well decorated (Wilkens et al, 2014).
The Roman Catholic and the Protestants have different belief and reasons of the spiritual and the physical being. Protestants believe in the Christian life being spiritually and inward thus the physical doesn’t matter. They thus take the physical aspects as potentially a taboo or unimportant. There emphasize on the theological Christian life is spiritually inward as they belief from theology scriptures that the heart is what draws near to God and searches Him, thus its saved through the blood of Jesus Christ (Wilkens et al, 2014). They theologically believe that the spirit is what will ascend into heaven while the body will perish, it’s thus unimportant. The Roman Catholic Church take value of both the spiritual and physical being of a Christian, just as they value their Big architectural Churches so they theologically belief that both the spiritual and physical being of a Christian should be taken care of and valued appropriately.
Considering the theology of imminence for the two denominations, they almost have a similar perception about the eschatology whereby they hold to premellenialist eschatology. This means that they belief in a second coming of Jesus Christ before the millennium, both the Catholics and the Protestants belief in the great commission, the assignment that Jesus left for the church as he ascended. A difference comes in where the catholic believers feel that they are the only church that Jesus Christ left and thus other churches mushroomed later. Protestants are so much focused on the end time while Catholics argue a lot about the beginning of their faith trying to prove how right their faith is. By observing the church architecture, the difference in faith and belief between the Protestants and the Catholics is portrayed. Catholics build ample and very strong churches unlike the Protestants who worship from small and mostly simple structures. This phenomenon presents the premellenialist eschatology among the Protestants. They believe that the world is ending very soon (Evans, 2014).
Transcendence is another factor that is contradictory between catholic and protestant denominations. According to catholic faith and reason, church leaders should not have possessions; they should be fed by the church. On the other hand, Protestants that for a church leader to be successful he should have material possessions which will support him or her in the attempt to accomplish the great mission God left for the church. Catholic theology believes that the church leaders, the priests should be left free with all their time and energy to serve the followers of Christ. Involvement in worldly things would affect their service delivery to the church.
Protestantism has over time adapted into the modern culture unlike the Catholics who tend to be rigid in their liturgy. The Protestants allow for changes that enable the church suit in the diversifying world. Catholics follow the liturgical process as it was set from Rome (Evans, 2014). The liturgy in catholic churches is procedural and common for the whole church community. In protestant faith, every church leader, the pastor decides on what he feels the believers need to be taught about especially emphasizing on the adjacent environment. The liturgy is not common. The catholic faith criticizes this by saying that it is possible for a leader to teach according to his or her interests. The Protestants in reaction believe that the pastor speaks what God spoke to him and sent him to deliver to the believers.
The Roman Catholic mass uses a formulaic, standardized as well as stylized liturgy that effectively amalgamated with an architecture that emerged to support it. Roman Catholic is conservative in nature and has not seen a lot of changes as far as liturgy are concerned. It has used the traditional liturgy since its inception and does not show the any signs of change. This has further been pushed for by their faith and reason perspective (Poma, 2013). Their architecture has fully supported the liturgical worship .Most of protestant churches have evolved and no longer use the traditional liturgy as opposed to just a few who have stuck to that overtime. They usually employ informal oriented liturgies; contemporary in scope usually oriented around the preacher and the musician. In this case liturgical needs are served by a simple auditorium se...