Posted on 06/17/2013 6:59:32 AM PDT by marshmallow
Can’t we all just get along?
That was the question that Southern Baptists, torn between Calvinists and non-Calvinists, seemed to be asking as they opened their two-day annual meeting in Houston.
Frank Page, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee, created a 19-member advisory committee that produced a report in time for the meeting called “Truth, Trust and Testimony.”
Southern Baptists have been divided over Calvinism since their denomination began in 1845, but Page said Monday (June 10) that disagreements had reached a tipping point.
“The truth is, I see an anti-Calvinism now that frightens me; it’s a vitriol that is nasty,” he said, adding he also has friends who were concerned about “extreme Calvinists.” ‘’So it was my opinion that we need to deal with this. . Trust is hitting a new low.”
Calvinism, based on the teachings of 16th-century Protestant Reformer John Calvin, differs from traditional Baptist theology in key aspects, particularly on the role of human free will and whether God chooses only the “elect” for salvation.
The 3,200-word report calls for mutual respect among the differing factions, saying opponents should talk to each other rather than about each other, especially on social media. Churches and would-be pastors also need to be honest about whether they embrace or shun Calvinism, it said.
(Excerpt) Read more at articles.washingtonpost.com ...
In the absence of any divinely instituted human ecclesiastical authority with competence to rule in this matter, this is the inevitable result. Either this or a rupture.
Both sides will claim the authority of Scripture. Yet they're stuck at an impasse. And where is truth to be found in all of this? Why, in Scripture of course. We simply have different understandings of its meaning so we'll "agree to disagree". Rinse and repeat as necessary.
Is God a God of confusion, compromise or ambiguity? Is there more than one Church, one truth?
No, the ecclesial model here is mortally flawed.
Well my Church is perfect because some man said so.
My my church was imperfect because I said so -
God knew you’d post this
And the waffeling that Rome has demonstrated over the last 2000 years?
Once bookmarked, always bookmarked...
I've been saying that for years. In before the thread hijack.
Too late.
My church was perfect until someone showed up to worship. Oh wait the church is the people, argh now I’m confused.
It was predestined you would write that.
Europeans love having an authority to rule over them. But that simply isn’t Baptist. Baptists go to the word, approach god directly without a human intermediary required, and do not have any centralized structure.
The Southern Baptist convention has no power over any church. Each church may associate with them to share in mission funding, etc. But Baptists have happily fought off that European and foreign impulse to resemble a typical European monarchy.
And Calvin even Baptized infants! Baptists of course do not. Nor do they burn people at the stake as Calvin and some others have done while searching for heresy and witches.
What Christians should be looking at...is what will our reaction be...when the feds show up to close our churches. This is at most twenty years away.
Just another example of what separates religion from Christianity.
There is only one name in which we can be saved, and it is not Calvin, Luther or even Peter, it is Christ.
You are pretty close I think. The revolutionary socialist American government wants them to be a version of the church in the USSR era. They want to remove them utterly from the public arena, and use what cannot be rooted out as a method of people control.
But they have over reached already and will not make that 20 years without a fight they cannot win. So I think we will not see that day that the government closes churches here, (though they wish they could).
If that's the test then St. Augustine was clearly a "Calvinist".
“There is only one name in which we can be saved, and it is not Calvin, Luther or even Peter, it is Christ.”
Well stated.
“I’ve been saying that for years. In before the thread hijack.”
I don’t get it. Did the poster actually not expect discussion and dissent?
Amen and AMEN!
God is the one who justifies. Who is he that condemns?
You have stated the obvious and the issue. It reminds me of things territorial and tribal when all the various Christian doctrines and churches might some day be sitting in conference. I think I would pay for a ticket to see, because unless something changes dramatically, they will not all be able to agree in doctrine and so in some ways will never be able to come together, without of course that dramatic change.
Far better I think to agree in principle that we are a Christian nation, those early pioneers coming here for liberty, freedom, and the good word of God. Far better to get our stuff together along those lines than suffer the consequences of a religious fight being divided along doctrinal lines and watching the nation collapse because we the “church” were not united. I would say the “church” is going to be all that saves this nation, it certainly won’t be government.
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