[the_conscience]

Here's a chicken or egg question that goes with this. Is the authoritarian structure and on going desire to control Christianity a product of the ruling class of this church when it emerged as the dominant church in the west, or is it because they saw no other way to achieve the "full moral potential" of people.

Excellent question, Bill. I'm sure I'm not qualified to answer that. It just seems to me that it is both/and.

What I am confidant in is that both the Secularists and Romanists believe that society should be ordered on the basis of intellectualism and that a ruling elite, due to their supposed intellect, should dictate to the masses what is best for them. So both apply the same form although the expected outcomes differ.

Liberal Protestant Christianity is likewise informed. Believing that man can be perfected by the law.

In the end I think it comes down to that it is inherent in man's nature to try and perfect the Law. That's why the Gospel is so radically counter-intuitive. To place trust in the performance of the Other and to lay aside trust in our own performance seems incoherent to our nature. It's far easier to succumb to the desire to fulfill the law on our own. Only by the grace of God can one be freed from the obligation to fulfill the law and know the law has been fulfilled already by Christ. The freedom to live for the One who set the captives free.

[D-fendr]

There are problems with hierarchies. However, determining and maintaining correct teaching by democratic vote, combined with a proclivity to schisms, IMHO, creates much worse problems of error and heterodoxy.

[Quix]

EXCELLENT POINTS, imho.

Thx.