Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!sdd.hp.com!wuarchive!bcm!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: mitel!spock!watson@uunet.uu.net (Steve Watson) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: The Ground of the Church Message-ID: Date: 25 Oct 90 07:17:11 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Mitel. Kanata (Ontario). Canada. Lines: 84 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Better late than never (I was a good boy and waited for our poor moderator to catch up, then there was an apparent net.disconnect which put several newsgroups off-the-air for a few days at this node). From Local Church posting (my apologies for misplacing the attribution): >The brother answered: "I belong to the same church to which you belong, the >same church to which the Apostle Paul, the Apostle Peter, the Apostle John, >and Martin Luther belonged, and same church to which all believers belong." >When he heard that, he said," That would be wonderful!". ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Amen. But starting your own new sect won't accomplish that. Our moderator gives several approaches to X'n unity: >(1) To separate the human organizations from t he Church as the body of >Christ. That is, we are all members of the same Church, established.... I'd vote for this approach anyday: we can have a 'spiritual unity' which is independent of the organizational kind. >(2) There have been a number of people who have decided that all >existing denominations think entirely too much of themselves, and that >the only way to have true Christian unity is to abandon the existing >denominations and simply have one Church of Christ. The problem with >this is that this new Church of Christ forms its own organization, has >its own opinions that do not allow other Christians to join it in good >conscience, and generally behaves exactly like the denominations it >intended to replace. Thus it becomes yet another denomination, and >contributes to the problem it tried to solve. This has happened a >number of times. The currently denomination called the Church of >Christ is in fact the result of one such attempt. > As a former member of the Church of Christ, I can attest to the truth of CLH's comments about that denomination: "We're just Christians", they say, but then go on: "Of course the Bible teaches, and every True Christian believes that ". So you're right back to Square One, with just another denomination. Except that this NEW denomination refuses to acknowledge itself to be such, and goes around with this very arrogant superior attitude towards those who haven't yet seen the light. So actually you're WORSE off than when you started: you have a 'non-denomination' which exhibits all the worst characteristics of denominationalism! Even some of the inter-denominational evangelistic groups (e.g. Navigators, Campus Crusade) occasionally fall into this error :-(. BTW, there is a peripheral connection between Local CHurch and C. of Christ: Watchman Nee (mentioned in the LC posting) was much read and admired by C of C people I used to know (I'm not sure if he was ever formally connected with the C of C). He was also an associate, at one time, of Witness Lee, who started the Local Church. >3) [Join the Catholic Church] >--clh] I'll probably get royally flamed by the RC's for this, but here goes.... The Catholic Church (in the view of this not unsympathetic outsider) seems to have acheived exactly the OPPOSITE of the desired effect (as expressed in my comment under option 1 above). They have an organizational unity, but their internal diversity is almost as great as that existing across Protestantism. When I see the debates about birth control, American bishops vs. the Vatican, Latin vs. vernacular, anti-Vatican-2 bishops (e.g. LeFebvre in Montreal), Liberation Theology etc., I question whether there exists a church-wide spiritual unity. Not to condemn; just I don't think RC's are any better off than the rest of us. Sigh. -- ====================== disclaimer =============================== "Blame me, not the Company I keep..." - Steve Watson UseNet: mitel!spock!watson@uunet.uu.net [If you want to achieve Christian unity through organizational unity, i.e. by having just one organization that *is* the visible Church, then the sort of diversity that you see in the Catholic church is exactly what you'd expect. I don't think it's their goal to make everyone the same, but simply to have them all in communion with each other in a single organically united Church, agreeing on a set of essential doctrines. By the way, my comments about organizations calling themselves by names like The Church Of Christ was not meant to apply to any specific denomination. There have been several efforts like this. Some have managed to escape the limitations implicit in the way they started. --clh]