You can no more disown the sins of Christianity’s past with the “no true Scottsman” fallacy than the Jews can disown the sins of our own.
I think the word true Christian is used for lack of a better word, at least in my case it is.
It is a word i may apply to very few people and never to myself, what would we be like if we were being true Christians?
If i am broke down along the road i will hope a hell raising rough neck, a lumberjack or some one in that category comes along.
I see a true Christian as some one who is not afraid to give some one a hand even if it may be an enemy, that is what Jesus meant when he talked about love.
Other people may judge them by what they appear to be in Church service.
Some Christians would not have anything to do with any one who has been in jail, blind to the fact that even our lord and his apostles spent time in jail.
Others will spend their life shaking the hands of those in jail.
I am not very familiar with Anabaptists but i believe they were teaching what Jesus taught, if they lived what they were teaching or not i have no idea.
I believe the Amish may go to far in showing that they are not of this world, because they are trying to live in the world of the past but if we are trying to live in the world Jesus lived in we should remember that it was the same world he said,(you are not of this world ).
I am not a Judge of martin Luther nor any one else including Hitler, neither am i a follower of any one, i believe in God and believe Jesus was his only begotten son born of a virgin.
If there is a one and only true Church of Christ ( which i doubt very much )i would hesitate to enter into it because i would defile it.
So i can see very well how Luther could come to the attitude
that he did and his hurt pride that a lot of people did not see it his way.
I think Paul had a little problem in that same direction even though he was most likely right in most of what he said.
The new covenant
Jeremiah 31
34 And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
The Churches were and are to serve that purpose and even with all of the mistakes and even false doctrine there are very few people who has not heard of the gospel of Jesus.
They can tromp on it or they can accept it.
And it has been preserved and translated into all languages so that we can see for our selves what it says.
So while Martin Luther and many others including the Catholic Church had a very big part in bringing all of this about, it is not their word but the word of God which they brought to us that we are to learn from.
btt!