A History of Christian Doctrine #3 - Online Christian Library

11
Christianity Today
Since the Protestant Reformation, it has been common
to identify three major branches of world
Christianity—Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy,
and Protestantism. The Pentecostal movement of the
twentieth century became so significant, however, that
many church historians have added it as a fourth branch.
A better classification, proposed by theologian Henry
Van Dusen, is to recognize three branches as follows:
Catholicism/Orthodoxy, Protestantism, and Pentecostalism.
Of course, Pentecostalism arose within Protestantism
and affirms the distinctive points of Protestantism in
its opposition to Catholicism. Nevertheless, Pentecostalism
is distinctive enough and large enough to be classified
as a branch in its own right.
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