ALL,
While there are a couple of points that we will disagree on, I’d like to keep focused on the bigger picture painted in this article!
Have we, as the church universal, lost our way by not focusing on the full content of the great commission?
Are we really making disciples?
Matthew 28:
18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
I propose a popery-free caucus. Then Christendom can be united.
And think of all the bad calories we’d avoid.
Amen to that
People were trying to have a thread without the usual animosity, and the thread is labeled “caucus”. why are some posters allowed to interrupt? We dont go to Catholic threads and act like this.
In the article we find the following sentence:
“On the basis of the Great Commission-and the many passages that unpack it-the churches of the Reformation affirm that the true church is visible ‘wherever the Word is rightly preached and the sacraments are rightly administered.’”
This is, I think, a true statement. However, it should be borne in mind that there were really two reformations, a conservative one and, a little later, a more radical one. The point of the first was to reform the church, that is to say, strip away all the accretions that had crept in (mission/message creep) since the time of the apostles and that were either contrary to or distractions from the pure gospel of Jesus Christ. For the sake of discussion I will define the pure gospel of Jesus Christ, in condensed form, as that which the Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 2:4-10. However, this is only a condensed way of speaking of the pure gospel. There is, of course, much more that could be said about the gospel, but it wouldn’t contradict what Paul has written here.
The effect of the first and conservation reformation was to leave many outward things in place: historical/traditional orders of service (i.e., liturgy) that revolve around and emphasize “the Word is rightly preached and the sacraments are rightly administered” and a very strong emphasis on the ecumenical creeds (Apostles, Nicene, and Athanasian) as the center of the church’s (i.e. disciples of Christ spoken of collectively) faithful and public response to the truth revealed in the inerrant and infallible Word of God, that is, the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. The basic elements of the service of Word and Sacrament and of the Creeds were to be the confession not only of the church collectively but of all its members individually. In other words, the distinction often made today between so-called “Churchianity” and Christianity did not exist. But two things were recognized: First, that man is sinful, corrupt, and flawed and so just as the visible church had become corrupt in the centuries leading to the reformation, so too could it become corrupt again. Second, that finally only the Good Shepherd Himself knows who are His sheep. All that the church collectively could do was to take individuals at their word (that is, their confession of faith), encourage them by preaching and teaching to live out the holy Christian faith in their own lives, and then trust that God the Holy Spirit will do what we cannot and what the Holy Scriptures say He will do.
The second or radical reformation went much farther in trying to prescribe who and what a Christian is and should be and then requiring of him or her certain behaviors.
As the reader may gather, I am an adherent of the first Reformation and not the second. The second, I would say, was an over-reaction, seeking to do in another way (from the bottom up, so to speak) what the Roman pope tried to do (from the top down): prescribe in detail what is or is not Christian behavior and then endeavor to implement it in the lives of each of its adherents.
It may be that some, perhaps most, participants on this thread will disagree with my description and definitions. But in the interest of disclosure and honesty, it is my sincere and strongly-held perspective. And I am willing to discuss it with, hopefully, a large measure of civility.
It is further my opinion that the visible church in the United States today is very much subject to “mission creep.” I would even say frighteningly so. To the extent the church adjusts its message away from the centrality of “we preach Christ crucified,” (1 Corinthians 1:23) it engages in “mission creep.”