I actually posted this in another thread, but I don't really want to derail that thread. Here's my thoughts. please feel free to challenge anything:
When did the one Church become two, then two dozen, then a thousand, then tens of thousands? If fragmentation is such a good thing, why didn't Christ start planting independent Churches immediately when He walked among us? Why didn't he establish denominations, with each having autonomy to interpret the gospel independently from the other denominations or even each congregation? Why did Paul exhort the early Christians to hold fast to the oral and written traditions that they passed down to them, if every congregation was meant to have autonomy to read and interpret scripture for themselves?
Christ didn't establish multiple denominations! To say so would be complete nonsense, which only an ahistorical bafoon could defend. Christ came to create a new covenant with God's people. He came to rescue the captives by conquering death. He came to reveal God to us. This revelation is no secret, although through the foggy filter of years of historical divisions, corruptions, and fragmentation the truth has been hidden from many of us.
I grew up protestant, but after beginning a very basic study of what happened from the Ascension of Christ through the first 11 centuries, I could no longer be protestant. I could no longer sit through another Oral Roberts University chapel, which was carefully orchestrated by men and women to lead us students through various planned emotional experiences. It became clear that all of this was so contrived, so man-made, and really man-centered, regardless of how many times they shouted out the name, Jesus. It was nothing like the intensity and powerful witness of the early church I was just discovering. I could not longer attend services centered on a preacher getting up on stage and strutting around for 1/2 an hour or more, wiping sweat from his brow, working hard to get the attention and amens from the audience. These things were nothing like the life in Christ our Fathers of the Faith had experienced and written about.
The early church was more than intellectually stimulating sermons and emotionally titilating worship, it was participation in the reality of life in Christ. Life as One Body, with Christ as it's head. A miraculous union of heaven and earth was experienced in each worship service, where men mystically were united to Christ, through communion. These men weren't sitting around trying to come up with clever, gimmicky sermons, or planning praise and worship services to create emotional responses, they simply believed the revelation of Christ, as it had been passed-down by the Apostles, they held services in the way that they were taught by Christ, and they worked hard to defend the truth from error and pass down the Church without man-made ideas and changes seeping in. What about your particular churches? What have they done? Where did they begin? Are their teachings those passed down by Christ? None are completely absent from some truth, but none have preserved the fullness of the faith.
The Roman Catholic Church departed from the Ancient Universal Church in 1054 A.D., and never returned for many reasons, including the creations of the modern Papacy, with the Bishop in Rome claiming universal authority over all Christians. Errant doctrines arose, such as original sin, immaculate conception of Mary (suggesting that this is different than the way all men are born--without sin), infallibility of the Pope, Mary as Co-Mediatrix, purgatory and indulgences, a very legalistic system of penence, substitionary atonement (suggesting that God required the death of His Son to forgive us), and more.
The Protestants had every reason to break communion with Rome, but did they return home to the Universal Church preserved in east? The Patriarchs of Antioch, Jerusalem, Constantinople, Alexandria, and bishoprics across the growing eastern Church were there, although geographically, linguistically, and politically divided from the west. No, they didn't come home. The began working hard to correct the corruption in Rome, but instead of preserving the truth passed down through the ages, they started to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. They didn't return to the apostolic faith given by Christ, but instead, arrogantly, or foolishly, began creating churches for themselves, based on their ahistorical interpretations of scripture and limited intellects. The intellect of man is finite, unable to see God fully.
We must not imagine doctrine, from independent readings of scripture, but instead, we must accept the revelation of Christ and His Church as He established it. We must accept, by faith, those things which are larger than our minds can wrap themselves around. For example, must accept that Christ wants us to mystically consume His Blood and Body, so that He really can abide in us and we in Him. We must accept that the Holy Spirit comes down on the bread and wine offered and miraculously transforms them into the Blood and Body of Christ. Protestants trie to lay down doctrines which made sense to their finite minds, and in so doing, they lose Christ. They say, "Christ really means this is a symbolic communion." Or they say, "the bread and wine remain as such, since they still taste like bread and wine, but somehow spiritually Christ is present in them." Why all the pandeing to our finite intellect? Why explain how the miracle Christ gave us happens? We are in communion with the God who created the Universe, the God who cannot be contained, especially in our little minds.
Faith is what we must have. Then maybe we won't be so scared to look deeper into Christ's Church and humbly kneel before Christ, becoming part of His Body, not these various man-made entities. The Church may not be what you were hoping it would be, or what you've thought it was your whole life, but it is the Church of Christ. If you love the Lord God, you will earnestly seek the truth. If you don't then you will reap the penalty for eating only of the corrupted fruit scattered by men over the last few centuries.
If any of you have made it this far, sorry so long. Forgive me. I think it's so essential to tear down the false gods we have unintentionally created by creating a gospel we could intellectually make sense of, rather than accepting the revelation of Christ, and His One Holy Apostolic Church, which is Universal, in that it is for all of us and completely fulfills the real needs of us all, if we come home to it. Be one in the Church, even as God is one in Heaven, not divided into disagreeing sects, removed from Christs historic body, whch has been preserved, but often hidden from our eyes by our cunning enemy.
Basil
When did the one Church become two, then two dozen, then a thousand, then tens of thousands? If fragmentation is such a good thing, why didn't Christ start planting independent Churches immediately when He walked among us? Why didn't he establish denominations, with each having autonomy to interpret the gospel independently from the other denominations or even each congregation? Why did Paul exhort the early Christians to hold fast to the oral and written traditions that they passed down to them, if every congregation was meant to have autonomy to read and interpret scripture for themselves?
Christ didn't establish multiple denominations! To say so would be complete nonsense, which only an ahistorical bafoon could defend. Christ came to create a new covenant with God's people. He came to rescue the captives by conquering death. He came to reveal God to us. This revelation is no secret, although through the foggy filter of years of historical divisions, corruptions, and fragmentation the truth has been hidden from many of us.
I grew up protestant, but after beginning a very basic study of what happened from the Ascension of Christ through the first 11 centuries, I could no longer be protestant. I could no longer sit through another Oral Roberts University chapel, which was carefully orchestrated by men and women to lead us students through various planned emotional experiences. It became clear that all of this was so contrived, so man-made, and really man-centered, regardless of how many times they shouted out the name, Jesus. It was nothing like the intensity and powerful witness of the early church I was just discovering. I could not longer attend services centered on a preacher getting up on stage and strutting around for 1/2 an hour or more, wiping sweat from his brow, working hard to get the attention and amens from the audience. These things were nothing like the life in Christ our Fathers of the Faith had experienced and written about.
The early church was more than intellectually stimulating sermons and emotionally titilating worship, it was participation in the reality of life in Christ. Life as One Body, with Christ as it's head. A miraculous union of heaven and earth was experienced in each worship service, where men mystically were united to Christ, through communion. These men weren't sitting around trying to come up with clever, gimmicky sermons, or planning praise and worship services to create emotional responses, they simply believed the revelation of Christ, as it had been passed-down by the Apostles, they held services in the way that they were taught by Christ, and they worked hard to defend the truth from error and pass down the Church without man-made ideas and changes seeping in. What about your particular churches? What have they done? Where did they begin? Are their teachings those passed down by Christ? None are completely absent from some truth, but none have preserved the fullness of the faith.
The Roman Catholic Church departed from the Ancient Universal Church in 1054 A.D., and never returned for many reasons, including the creations of the modern Papacy, with the Bishop in Rome claiming universal authority over all Christians. Errant doctrines arose, such as original sin, immaculate conception of Mary (suggesting that this is different than the way all men are born--without sin), infallibility of the Pope, Mary as Co-Mediatrix, purgatory and indulgences, a very legalistic system of penence, substitionary atonement (suggesting that God required the death of His Son to forgive us), and more.
The Protestants had every reason to break communion with Rome, but did they return home to the Universal Church preserved in east? The Patriarchs of Antioch, Jerusalem, Constantinople, Alexandria, and bishoprics across the growing eastern Church were there, although geographically, linguistically, and politically divided from the west. No, they didn't come home. The began working hard to correct the corruption in Rome, but instead of preserving the truth passed down through the ages, they started to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. They didn't return to the apostolic faith given by Christ, but instead, arrogantly, or foolishly, began creating churches for themselves, based on their ahistorical interpretations of scripture and limited intellects. The intellect of man is finite, unable to see God fully.
We must not imagine doctrine, from independent readings of scripture, but instead, we must accept the revelation of Christ and His Church as He established it. We must accept, by faith, those things which are larger than our minds can wrap themselves around. For example, must accept that Christ wants us to mystically consume His Blood and Body, so that He really can abide in us and we in Him. We must accept that the Holy Spirit comes down on the bread and wine offered and miraculously transforms them into the Blood and Body of Christ. Protestants trie to lay down doctrines which made sense to their finite minds, and in so doing, they lose Christ. They say, "Christ really means this is a symbolic communion." Or they say, "the bread and wine remain as such, since they still taste like bread and wine, but somehow spiritually Christ is present in them." Why all the pandeing to our finite intellect? Why explain how the miracle Christ gave us happens? We are in communion with the God who created the Universe, the God who cannot be contained, especially in our little minds.
Faith is what we must have. Then maybe we won't be so scared to look deeper into Christ's Church and humbly kneel before Christ, becoming part of His Body, not these various man-made entities. The Church may not be what you were hoping it would be, or what you've thought it was your whole life, but it is the Church of Christ. If you love the Lord God, you will earnestly seek the truth. If you don't then you will reap the penalty for eating only of the corrupted fruit scattered by men over the last few centuries.
If any of you have made it this far, sorry so long. Forgive me. I think it's so essential to tear down the false gods we have unintentionally created by creating a gospel we could intellectually make sense of, rather than accepting the revelation of Christ, and His One Holy Apostolic Church, which is Universal, in that it is for all of us and completely fulfills the real needs of us all, if we come home to it. Be one in the Church, even as God is one in Heaven, not divided into disagreeing sects, removed from Christs historic body, whch has been preserved, but often hidden from our eyes by our cunning enemy.
Basil
