Thank you for clearing up that part about denomination. I’d thought you were a Baptist because you were asking me to affirm the historic legitimacy of the Baptist church; and also because this thread is about the article by Albert Mohler, a leading and respected (by me!) Baptist.
I assume you think of the Church as the Body of Christ (?) (again correct me if I’m wrong) and I assume that means you have a living connection with all Christians, who are members of the same Body.
As a member of Christ’s Body, the other members cannot be “SO unimportant.” Rather, they areso vitally essential to me, because they are --- as Paul says --- the eyes, ears, nose, hands, feet of my Lord, the One who has saved me, the One who brings meaning to my life.
It is sad to think of the eye saying to the ear, “I don’t need you,” and of the hand saying to the foot, “I don’t need you.” It is sad also that some Christians see our departed as if they were, not only unimportant, not only un-needed, but “dead”. Jesus rejected such thinking on the part of the Sadducees when he said that our God is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob ---“ and He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”
Thus those who look away from the other members of the Body through twenty centuries of church life, are looking away Scriptures and away from Jesus.
This body includes Christ-followers who associate with Roman Catholicism and Baptist doctrine, etc. – in your words --- and it includes saints both canonized and uncanonized, both on earth and in heaven. We have a living, vital connection with them and always want to be ever-stronger linked to them; learn from them and never stop learning from them; love them and never stop loving them.
But to move on to what really concerns me here:
All this leaves unmentioned the initial problem posed by Mohler, which is that there are active homosexual Christians "out there" ---
Take a look: http://tinyurl.com/GayChristian101
--- who assert that they love and serve the Lord Jesus Christ, who disagree with the"errors" of the "tranditions of men" and the lexicons which translate "arsenokoitai" and "molokai" as homoxual tout court, and who claim that by adherance to Christ Alone, they can be practicing "gay Christian" -- pracitcing gay and practicing Christians.
I think, of course, that their arguments can be refuted; but not, however, without making reference to what 2,000 years of living Church teaching had to say about "arsenokoitai" and "malakoi".
Please do check this out http://www.gaychristian101.com/Malakoi.html --- becuase my underlying concern is to combat erroneous "Jesus-only" "gay scripture scholarship" that cares not what the Church has said for 2,000 years.
Um. Huh? I don’t understand this sentence that you wrote: “As a member of Christ’s Body, the other members cannot be “SO unimportant.’”
Are you saying that members of the Church are unimportant? Because I sure didn’t.
I said that, in comparison with Jesus, “denominations” are unimportant. I’m concerned that you make much of your denomination, at the expense of making much of Christ. You claim that the RCC is the repository and fullness of truth (dissing other Christ-followers by doing so), rather that promoting Jesus as the repository and fullness of truth.
I also said that drawing attention *to* Rome and its artifacts necessarily causes people to look *away* from Christ.
Regarding the rest of your comment, I agree that 2,000 years of Scriptural analysis by Christ-followers should not be rejected out-of hand, as “gay theology” does.