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Posted on 02/23/2003 12:27:57 AM PST by Destro
Edited on 04/13/2004 1:55:56 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The likelihood of a man who has been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ (Ephesians 1:3ff.), who has been filled full in Christ, Who is the Substance (Colossians 2:10), who holds in his own free hands the God-breathed, complete, and fully-adequate Word of God (2 Timothy 3:15-17), being "jealous" of anyone who settles for a big, glittery sham and delusion...
...is about the same as the likelihood of a man with a 32 ounce steam being "jealous" of a bum munching on a plastic carrot.
Maybe the musings and understandings of the Gospel by Northern Europeans of the last century is good enough for you, but if I do ever go for it I would go for true biblical Christianity, the people whose language was the key of the Gospels. I doubt men 1,800 years removed from the Source would get it more right than a peole whose culture and language was tool Christ's Apostoles chose as the basis for the Gospels.
Protestant "Biblical" Christians think they are recovering something that was lost and dig and dig and go back as far as they can to the original and all they do is uncover their hallowness and Orthodoxy's holiness. At least they learn Greek.
I believe Christ set up One Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church...and there is no other.
Pax
For my part, I've studied NT Greek for about thirty years. I find the NT itself is most helpful, but I also compare notes and usage from the classics through the papyrii and the Greek Christian writers.
I don't believe the Gospel was ever lost. Perhaps you're thinking of Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. I believe it was always right there, on the surface of the pages of the Bible.
And as far as all this chatter about 1800 years later and all... maybe you're thinking of the various Ortho's or Roman Catholics. They're great believers in (=insisters on) playing "telephone" with the Bible.
Not Christians, though. We don't rely on men writing 1800 years later, or 1500 years later... or 1000, or 500, or even 100 years later.
We rely directly on God's Word itself. Drives cultists and the otherwise enslaved absolutely nuts (as predicted; Galatians 4:29), but that's what being a Christian is: standing faithfully on the Word of God Himself. It'll steer you straight TO Christ, and PAST silly (at best) diversions like trying to chat up dead people, and all -- to say nothing of the time and energy that goes into trying to spin and "defend" the silly practices.
I cannot recommend it to you too highly.
Dan
"Now people look at Orthodox and think it is just one more denomination," Schaeffer said. "But I look at it as unbroken continuity
From the laying of hands from the Apostles to their chosen bishops to the New Testament - unbroken continuity.
Who?
How about...anyone willing to let the Bible speak for itself, rather than shackling himself to the accumulated errors of centuries of fallible men?
For that softball, I owe you a nice latte' or something if we ever meet. (Gyro?) For now... thanks!
Dan
Those of today know more than the founding fathers who knew and where taught by the Apostles or new men who were taught by the Apsotles and had it explained to them first hand what the Gospels said?
Is the Nicean Creed still valid for this group you champion?
Ah, yes. We Christians call these sorts "believers." Why? They believe God when He says that His word is for them, and not for some specialized class (cf. Romans 1:7; 1 Corinthians 1:2; 2 Corinthians 1:1; Ephesians 1:1; etc. ad inf.). They can't be classed with those so "wise" that they know better than God, and take it out of the hands of His intended recipients, reserving it to their selected shapers and molders.
... without the "shackles" of the work of past biblical scholars, theologians and established practice.
This is so hard for a slave to understand.
I am free to consider seriously all who have labored over the Word, and to benefit from their wisdom. I am simply not shackled by their mistakes! God, speaking to His people through His word (see above), remains the judge.
So when an august individual like Chrysostom or Calvin illuminates a passage, I benefit from the light. But when they stray (as both do), and am not shackled to repeat their mistakes.
If I did, I might end up being chained to silly and anti-God practices like chasing after dead people; or to heresies, like adding my works to Christ's blood to win salvation.
You and your ilk are bound to accumulate centuries of your own errors, and worse ones, I suspect, because you have the hubris to reject the wisdom of past ages.
Yes I will, but that won't be the cause. The cause will be my own fallibility. That is why it is so wonderful that God never chained anyone to my interpretations, any more than He did to Justin Martyr's nor Papias'.
I should think a conservtive would know better
Maybe, maybe not. But a Christian knows to believe God. Slaves of Greece or Rome may do a 2 Timothy 3:5/Titus 1:16 on such passages as 2 Timothy 3:15-17, but a Christian reads it, studies it, understands it, praises God for it, and lives it.
You know, nothing external to you keeps you from knowing the freedom of life in Christ, as a child of God rather than the slave of a sect (Galatians 3:23-29). What Christ says to all, He says to you as well:
"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light"Nothing compares with the excellency of knowing the Lord Jesus Christ. Pride, stubbornness, tradition -- all rubble, compared to that knowledge (Philippians 3:7-11).
Matthew 11:28-30 (ESV)
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Paulicians
Excerpts: Jesus' work consisted only in his teaching; to believe in him saves men from judgment. The true baptism and Eucharist consist in hearing his word, as in John, iv, 10. But many Paulicians, nevertheless, let their children be baptized by the Catholic clergy. They honoured not the Cross, but only the book of the Gospel. They were Iconoclasts, rejecting all pictures. Their Bible was a fragmentary New Testament. They rejected St. Peter's epistles because he had denied Christ. They referred always to the "Gospel and Apostle", apparently only St Luke and St. Paul; though they quoted other Gospels in controversy.
The whole ecclesiastical hierarchy is bad, as also all Sacraments and ritual. They had a special aversion to monks. Under the apostles and prophets were "fellow-workers" (synechdemoi) who formed a council, and "notaries" (notarioi), who looked after the holy books and kept order at meetings. Their conventicles were called, not churches, but "prayer-houses" (proseuchai). Harnack sums them up as "dualistic Puritans and Individualists and as "an anti-hierarchic Christianity built up on the Gospel, and Apostle, with emphatic rejection of Catholic Christianity" (Dogmengeschichte, II 528).
Since Gibbon the Paulicians have often been described as a survival of early and pure Christianity, godly folk who clung to the Gospel, rejecting later superstitions, who were grossly calumniated by their opponents. Conybeare (op. cit. ) thinks they were a continuation of the Adoptionists. Dr. Adeney calls them "in many respects Protestants before Protestantism" (The Greek and Eastern Churches, 219). This idea accounts for the fact that the sect has met among modern writers with more interest and certainly more sympathy than it deserves.
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