Before Vatican II (The Second Vatican Council, 1965) Catholics and Protestants argued whether people are saved by faith or works. The argument was irresolvable, because Paul directly stated that people are saved by faith, not works (Rom 3:27, 11:6)(Gal 2:16)(Eph 2:8,9), while everything Christ taught was the works of salvation (Mat 7:21)(Luke 6:47, 18:20)(John 14:15, 15:10, 12). Why was Paul’s theology in conflict with Christ’s?

Protestantism began with this argument. Martin Luther noticed Paul’s claim and intended to take it up with the Vatican. He wasn’t let in. Instead, the Catholics held another council meeting and decreed that people are saved by “faith, hope and charity.” Charity means works. Hope was thrown in for good measure.

The existence of this irresolvable argument for 500 years looks superficially like a quirk. The Catholics hadn’t rejected Paul; so why did they reject a clear statement of his?

The theologian Origen of the third century AD wrote volumously on various subjects, one of them being Paul. Origen picked apart Paul’s errors in detail, much as I and others have done. But he could not flatly state that Paul should be thrown out of Christianity, as Paul was as entrenched then as now. It’s stunning how much similarity there was between early Christianity and the present. But there is a difference: Origen could do a lot more open criticizing than anyone can nowdays.

Why Paul was not thrown out on his ass from the beginning is not the point here, but I’ll say a few words about it. Humans cannot control a social force that large, which tells believers that there are higher forces involved. Could Paul’s corruption have a purpose? It’s like telling an atheist that God had a purpose with Nazism. Some of the large corruptions have super-human purposes, but since they are super-human, humans are not supposed to be promoting them. Corrupters promote them because they can get by with it. So corruptions separate corrupters from honest persons, which is one of the super-human purposes with corruptions.

With Vatican II, traditional Catholicism collapsed. Officially, nothing changed, which means there are a few remnants of previous Catholicism, but very few. For example, St. Peters Basilica at the Vatican was recently restored to its original splendor, while at the bottom of the structure local churches were gutted and required to get rid of old symbols and art, because the religion has changed. Strangely, such requirements did not come from the Vatican but from unofficial mobsters, as one of the results of Vatican II was to create more local control over the religion. The hijackers are controlled at some sort of symposium and publishing level, not by the official structure of the Bishops.

Protestantism never did have a significant structure. It always was controlled through some sort of publishing and preaching force. Yet it remained somewhat homogenous for a very simple reason: It was based on Paul’s theology and held in place by the Catholic opposition.

That type of Protestantism is as gone as traditional Catholicism. It transformed into Fundamentalism, which is now overtaking Catholicism as well. Superficially, Fundamentalism is based on the same theology as Protestantism. But the underlying theology is nothing but a pretext. All corruptions are based on a sanctimonious pretext, while the results are the opposite.

Fundamentalism is a social force which not only replaces real Christianity but attempts to take over the government and schools. It’s a new source of power based on religion. It’s not that believers got carried away with their religion; it’s that corrupters who are forever looking for new sources of power found an opportunity in the transformations of Christianity to synthesize a power structure and give it the characteristics which they wanted unopposed by real Christianity.

At the theological level, Fundamentalism strips the religion to five quotes of Paul which lock in a mechanism for demolishing everything Christ taught. Christ‘s teachings are of course a major obstacle to all corruption.

The five quotes of Paul say that sin was taken care of on the cross through atonement, but only for the “born again” believers, which means Fundamentalists, who are perfected by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit; and these claims cannot be questioned, because Paul’s words are in the Bible, which makes them the word of God. This is where Christianity now stands.

The born again concept comes from Christ (John 3:3), not Paul; but it is given a different meaning when incorporated into Paul’s theology by Fundamentalists. Christ described it as a process which involves following a path (Mat 7:14), while Fundamentalists describe it as a charismatic experience which does magical things.