I am just curious about a few things. I thought Methodist church was one of the oldest Protestant denominations out there and it affirms the faith of the early church in terms of God's nature. I know this because my wife's was accepted into Orthodox Church without requiring baptism, her Methodist baptism was valid, and that was done in the name of Trinity. Now there is a character on this forum flashing the Methodist faith icon. He rejects Trinity, skeptical, if that is correct magnitude of the word, about gospel authorship and early church history. Here is a couple of pearls...
I am a member of the Methodist Church, an organization. Trinitarians, or nontrinitarians are those profess a belief or lack of belief in a late pagan polytheistic tradition originating in Grecian mythology.
One can be a member of any organization and profess one or the other.
Here is my question, does Methodist Church, this "organization" as our friend puts it, that adheres to the doctrine of Trinity in their Statement of Faith on their official website, also approves/acknowledges otherwise? The dude is pro-Arian heresy. Being Orthodox, there is no gray area to this for me, maybe we can say that, in the Episcopalian church, their liberal approach towards homosexuals etc, that can be considered a gray area for them, is this a similar situation for the Methodist "organization" where non-Trinitarians can deny one of the main tenets of Christian faith? I believe not... It is possible that this person is a dishonest individual posing as Methodist to gain access to certain forums.
__________________ ...And by His stripes we are healed...
Absolutely not, Methodism is trinitarian, no two ways about it. Something like this would be more visible if there was any contention over it at all. I've certainly never come across a Methodist non-trinitarian controversy.
However, what I think this is a case of is a lack of congregational discipline - as far as I know, Methodist churches don't practice excommunication (which IMO would somewhat seem at odds with the open communion practiced by most, if not all, of them). I'm sure clergy, on the other hand, can have disciplinary action brought against them and defrocked for things like this. I just don't think that the congregation is subject to it also. That said, this would certainly be an extremely isolated situation.
The use of calling it an 'organization' also strikes me as a tad fishy. Organizations don't have to be internally consistent (for instance, the members of the World Council of Churches surely don't agree with every single other member on every single issue, but the purpose of it is to further the ecumenical cause); denominations, on the other hand, do have to be internally consistent to even be called a 'denomination' in the first place. There's bound to be some internal differences of opinion in any denomination, but the relative differences between conflicts within one denom would logically be smaller than the differences to an entirely different one.
When it comes to gospel authorship, I don't know what the official statement is, if there even is one. However, I'd assume it's in line with Tradition on the matter; I'm not sure if the talk about Q and all the developments on that front are opposed or not.
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Well I appreciate this, at least I know I was not wrong about the beliefs of Methodist Church. Would you be interested to see this individual and his arguments in the subforum I was talking about?
__________________ ...And by His stripes we are healed...
I'm not really in a position that I'd feel comfortable getting involved (and actually, this sort of thing I'd see as an administrative issue - unless the rules have changed, using any of the Christian faith icons requires acknowledgment of the Nicene creed), although as some of the other posters in this section are ordained clergy, it might be something to bring up with them. They'd be qualified to know how to handle it.
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The methodist church is strictly a trinitarian and nicene creed confessing church.
We have something in common with every other denomination. That is we are composed of human beings. Within any denomination there are always people who like to walk to the beat of their own drum. But they in no way speak for the Methodist church.
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