The American Spectator : Killing a Church

Text Size

Killing a Church

By Mark Tooley on 8.3.10 @ 6:06AM

The long and tragic decline of the Episcopal faith.

Mortal Follies: Episcopalians and the Crisis of Mainline Christianity
by William Murchison
(Encounter Books, 288 pages, $25.95)

Virginia's Supreme Court recently ruled against conservative former Episcopal Church congregations trying to keep their property as members of a new theologically orthodox Anglican denomination. Hundreds of local churches across America are agonizing over whether to remain in the old and increasingly heterodox Episcopal Church or depart, potentially losing venerable church properties.

Former Dallas Morning News editor and current syndicated columnist William Murchison remains in the old denomination. He published his book about the Episcopal Church just in time for the denomination's implosively historic 2009 General Convention, which officially sanctioned gay clergy and same-sex unions. Himself a long-time active Episcopalian in the theologically orthodox Diocese of Dallas, and partial to the church's Anglo-Catholic wing, Murchison sagely traces the church's fall from America's most culturally elite church to an increasingly marginal, though still highly entertaining religious sideshow.

The Episcopal Church's current crisis technically began with its 2003 election of openly homosexual Bishop Gene Robinson, igniting growing tensions with the nearly 80 million member Anglican Communion, especially its increasingly dominant and conservative African members. But Murchison traces the church's wrong turn to the 1960s, when Episcopal elites increasingly chose for cultural conformity rather than cultural transformation. Like other Mainline Protestant elites, Episcopalians began to shed "exclusivist" claims about Christianity in favor of pluralism, where every ideology has a voice except for orthodoxy.

Not surprisingly, the rejection of orthodoxy in favor of cultural and political fads, whatever the spiritual consequences, has been disastrous for Episcopalians and all Mainline Protestant denominations, all of which have been losing members since the 1960s, between 25 and 40 percent. Former Presbyterians and Methodists and Lutherans either gave up on organized religion, or they joined evangelical or Catholic churches, or they, more permanently, died (!), leaving few if any descendants, as Mainline Protestants, especially Episcopalians, have notoriously low birth rates. The current Episcopal Presiding Bishop even celebrated this demographic collapse, claiming that Episcopalians were protecting the planet by abstaining from children.

Sixty years ago, Murchison recounts, the first president of the National Council of Churches was an Episcopal bishop whose robust goal was: "a Christian America in a Christian world." Somewhat presciently though, Jewish theologian Will Herberg noted of 1950s spirituality, despite the crowded churches, that it all seemed a "secularized Puritanism, a Puritanism without transcendence, without sense of sin or judgment." Middle class religious complacency gave rise to impatient 1960s radicalism, when socially aroused church elites, following through on the political dreams of early 20th century Social Gospel theorists, began to rebel against church traditions in favor of political revolution.

Notorious, and highly charismatic, California Episcopal Bishop James Pike, who graced the cover of Time magazine, embodied this new restlessness. At the church's 1964 General Convention, he bewailed "outdated, incomprehensible, and nonessential doctrinal statements, traditions, and codes," having seemingly forgotten his own consecration vows to steadfastly resist all "strange and erroneous doctrine." Pike urged a "theological revolution" to make the Gospel "relevant," which entailed junking "myths" of past centuries, like the Virgin Birth and the Trinity, which were "unintelligible." Eventually Pike pushed so hard that heresy charges were formally pressed. But ultimately, the Episcopal Church nervously shrank from ousting Pike for his apostasies. Pike's unprosecuted rebellion foreshadowed expanded chaos for the church, as it succumbed to the surrounding secular culture's demand for personal autonomy, accompanied by moral fragmentation.

Although Pike and his supporters strove for a "relevant" church, their influence helped spiral the Episcopal Church from 3.5 million in the 1960s to barely 2 million today, across 4 decades when the U.S. population increased by 50 percent. The embodiment of this decline was Bishop John Shelby Spong of Newark, whose best selling books deriding the Virgin Mary as a possible prostitute and speculating about St. Paul's sexual preference got him on Phil Donahue. But the years of his progressive leadership, which included the ordination of actively homosexual clergy in defiance of church policy, saw a 40 percent decline of his diocese's membership. "Why Christianity Must Change or Die," was the title of one Spong book. But the form of doctrine-less Episcopalianism attracted only white, upper middle class, highly educated suburban liberals, and not very many of them. In recent years, respective Episcopal clergy have professed to be a Druid, a Muslim and a Buddhist. The first two ultimately left the ministry, and the third was denied election as bishop. But who's to say their bi-faith choices were necessarily wrong?

Unlike other Mainline denominations, some with larger memberships, the Episcopal Church's antics, and decline, gets more media play. Many of America's founders were Episcopalian, after all, and the church, having reached America's shores at Jamestown in 1607, is America's oldest. It has served as America's religious finishing school, often offering refined worship and beautiful buildings even on the frontier, when Methodists and Baptists prayed in more rustic fashion. The Vanderbilts, Astors and Roosevelts were Episcopalian and, by one account in the 1950s, three-quarters of social weddings in the New York Times were Episcopalian. Once derided as the church of Wall Street, and the Republican Party at prayer, Episcopalians since the 1960s have quickly compensated for lost time, pivoting left, and professing to be the voice of the voiceless, even as most members are still wealthy or upper middle class suburban whites.

Murchison argues that Old Money helped define, and unravel, the Episcopal Church. Growth and dynamism require entrepreneurship and risk. But who wants that when you have endowments and beautiful buildings? Provocateurs like Pike and Spong could push far, but there was far too little push back. Why risk the conflict? Meanwhile, comfortable Episcopal elites, ever with a sense of noblesse oblige, embraced the Civil Rights Movement, denouncing segregation in 1955 as "contrary to the mind of Christ." Ten Episcopal bishops joined Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. The Episcopal Church then and now has few black members. But commendable civil rights activism sated a thirst for social change among Episcopalians that led directly into the feminist movement, including the 1970s ordination of women, and ultimately homosexual causes in the 1980s to the present. No longer mostly confined to saving souls, church elites saw themselves as liberating American society from "privilege."

Meanwhile, the church accepted divorced clergy in the early 1970s and easily accommodated the 1973 legalization of abortion. Christian traditions about the priesthood, marriage, and human life were crumbling, as the Episcopal Church struggled to stay apace with secular America, while distancing itself from much of Christianity. Fresh from the Civil Rights movement, the church professed to be social justice minded. But it was silent, if not actively complicit, in the break-down of family structure, with the disastrous impact upon children, especially among the poor, including inner city blacks, for whom fathers married to mothers was becoming an oddity.

In attempting to elevate the poor and racial minorities, the Episcopal Church, like other social organs of liberalism, unintentionally but actively contributed to their further social impoverishment. Likewise, in its 40 year pursuit of "diversity" and pluralism, Episcopalianism is now succumbing to uniformity. The last General Convention insisted that all Episcopalians shall oppose Defense of Marriage laws, seemingly without regard to personal conscience.

Murchison laments this long and tragic decline of a once great church body. He offers no specific solutions for recovery except reliance on the Holy Spirit and historic Christianity's mystical doctrines, which no Episcopal prelate can ever truly override. About 100,000 mostly former Episcopalians have formed the new Anglican Church in North America, which, while not yet recognized by the Archbishop of Canterbury, is recognized by most global Anglican archbishops. And at last year's Episcopal General Convention, at least two dozen bishops responded to the votes for gay clergy and same-sex unions by affirming their own continued fidelity to the historic faith and the global Anglican Communion.

So in parts of what used to the great Episcopal Church in America, there are embers of renewal, even while most of the old temple collapses, with most of its attending priests apparently not even noticing. Murchison, whose own conservative diocese is so far remaining in the Episcopal Church, tells the story well, with some sadness, but also hope. Anglicans both inside and outside the Episcopal Church will appreciate his account.

About the Author

Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and author of Methodism and Politics in the Twentieth Century.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (258) | Leave a comment

kat| 8.3.10 @ 8:02AM

Both my husband and I are former Episcopalians who shrank from the increasing chaos and left-leaning declarations of the bishops in that denomination. We decided together to jump the Tiber and become Roman Catholic. None of our extended family attend any church whatsoever. The Episcopalians have committed suicide by their doctrine and the refusal of many of their members not to have children. We, on the other hand, are active in our Catholic parish, and homeschool our 6 children using a Catholic program. I feel sorry for the decendants of those beautiful buildings who sacrificed and now find themselves without a pot to piss in, but I remind them that there is plenty of room in the non-socially compromising Catholic Church.

Kitty| 8.3.10 @ 9:40AM

I left the Episcopal Church and turned to the Roman Catholic Church for the very same reason. I walked out in the middle of his sermon when the minister began preaching politics from the pulpit. So far, I haven't heard any reference to "social justice" in the Catholic Church I attend.

Paul| 8.3.10 @ 12:22PM

Was the Episcopalian "minister" who "began preaching politics from the pulpit" at your church a bishop, priest, or deacon?

Miss Alabama| 8.3.10 @ 10:32AM

Viva John Shelby Spong!

My husband and I are devotees of John Shelby Spong, and we both highly recommend The Sins of Scripture.

In this important contribution to theological thought, Spong takes on the hateful and hate-filled biblical texts that we have often used in our world to justify mysogyny, injustice, hatred of blacks and Jews and gays, the mistreatment of the planet, child abuse, and violence. He explores, in depth, those passages which have been used by bigots throughout history to support their own hateful bigotry. For Spong, however, it is not just a matter of these texts being misinterpreted, but that the text themselves do not truly reflect “God’s Word.” These texts, according to Spong (and I agree) do not belong in the Bible and should be expunged. Spong challenges this understanding of Biblical texts because no matter how you re-interpret or re-think these passages, their very presence in the Bible suggest that there is a fundamental problem with understanding the Bible as God’s Word – especially in a literal sense.

After reading Sins of the Scripture, I want all Christians to confront head-on the violent, evil scriptures that are based on ignorance.

Yes, ignorance! Ignorant Bronze Age men, who believed the world is flat, who knew nothing about science, pyschology, genetics wrote the Bible while sitting under tents, and waited on hand and foot by their women--their property to do with as they wished.

What Spong has to say should be heard and discussed with civility by all Christians.

And my husband and I are regular church-goers--Episcopaliens, by the way. We thank God for John Shelby Spong, and we are constantly recommending his books to friends and family.

Dave| 8.3.10 @ 10:50AM

Another know-it-all. I'm sure you'll have many converts while figuring out if the Bible is really the Bible.

Toto| 8.3.10 @ 10:21PM

Any God that is threatened by new truth from any source--say from Bishop Spong, i.e.-- is clearly dead already.

Write on, Bishop Spong! Write on! Write on!

There's hope that you can someday pull the fundamentalists--"Every word of the Bible is God's word"--out of the murky, primordial swamp that has swallowed them.

BackToBasics| 8.4.10 @ 12:33AM

You and Miss Alabama confirm the premise Mark Tooley Makes about the decline of mainline Christianity. You truly do not understand real evil or you would not agree with the sentiments that speaks of "evil scriptural verses." If our society starts to break down, people will understand again that sin and evil are very real and that it is wise to call sin a sin and not try to whitewash it, ignore it, or call the verses that point it out as "evil."

wwm46| 8.8.10 @ 9:03PM

Only God speak truth. Spong does not know what truth is. He is a liar.

Dave II| 8.3.10 @ 11:12AM

Are you really church members? Especially of TEC? Easy to see theologically, but "Episcopaliens"? Is that the Episcopal Church of Mars?

Ryan| 8.3.10 @ 11:24AM

Here's the problem.

Shelby's premise is that the Gospel isn't relevant.

How is it not relevant that I am a sinner in need of salvation?

Mark| 8.3.10 @ 12:01PM

If there is no such thing as revelation, why should I do what you think I should do? How do you suggest I ascertain right and wrong? I ask these questions to folks like you all the time. They can never answer.

Toto| 8.3.10 @ 12:16PM

Miss Alabama and Spong are urging Christians to confront the ignorant and hateful scripture in the bible and discuss it civilly.

I, for one, have had a problem with the evil scripture that is supposed to be "the voice of God."
"Bash the babies brains against the rocks. . ." this sort of thing and there are hundreds of other angry, evil god scriptures.

I try to live by the gospel of Christ.

Ryan| 8.3.10 @ 1:56PM

What, then, is the Gospel?

JS| 8.3.10 @ 2:00PM

What chapter and verse is your quote found?

Tatiana Goldenberg| 8.3.10 @ 2:15PM

All of you right-wing Christian fundamentalists can wallow in your self-righteous ignorance all you like. Truth will out, and, in my opinion, Spong has spoken the truth!

Glory Hallelujah! The truth at last. Praise God!

The antisemitism inherent in the New Testament was a major factor in the Holocaust.

I'm sure you right-wingers are still supporting obscene orthodox "Christian" Mel Gibson--a famous Jew hater. I imagine you were not even offended by his unspeakably violent and obscene outbursts. After all, the victim of his physically and emotionally violent rage was merely a woman. And we know how right-wing Christian fundamentalists think about women. They think women are inferior to men and that man should be the boss. Well, Mel was the boss all right. But here's one who is hoping the boss spends some jail time for spousel abuse.

And don't you dare speak to me about "biblical truth" regarding women or any other denigrated people.

Ryan| 8.3.10 @ 2:21PM

Seriously, how do you define the Gospel?

Anna R.| 8.3.10 @ 2:24PM

Way to go, Tatiana!

I left the Southern Baptist Church years ago because their beliefs are positively evil! When bible-thumpers assault me, I let them have it with passages I have memorized from Spong's brilliant books. I leave them speechless.

Hey, any Baptists out there? Time to read the truth. Read Spong.

JITT| 8.4.10 @ 8:44AM

Spong is just a man who is "wise in his own eyes." Proverbs 3:7, "Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil." His religious group rejected the truth and thus lost it. The truth was taken from them and given to those who are worthy. This religious group would have no problem extending their supposed love and compassion to a homosexual, but they reserve their true hatred for "followers of Christ" whom they refer to as bigots and racists. You cannot even see your own confusion because you have LOST the truth - darkness blinds! Anna R - do not rejoice in your revelings of man, turn unto God and pray for eyesalve that you may see. You are as one who presumes to know better than God, so you rip every warning sign out of His Word as you speed toward destruction. Repent! You have simply tailored God's Word or cast it behind your back to meet your own needs. Where is the wisdom in that? Where is your fear of God?

wwm46| 8.8.10 @ 9:09PM

The only reason they were speechless is because they couldn't believe the nonsense they had just heard from you. You had better get your head on right.

JS| 8.3.10 @ 2:43PM

Well apparently someone needs to go to anger management.

You say you know how "right-wing Christian fundamentalists think about women" and "Jews" and what not. Do you really? Did you look into my heart and see exactly how I feel or into my mind and see exactly how I think? If so, then you are god. You use the actions of one person who you dislike to lump all Christian males into a category so you can neatly deal with them in your own little mind - a mind whose knowledge would fit on the head of a pin with ample room to spare.

First of all, don't lump me into some steriotypical group that you made up. You are a self hating, feminazi, fool. You say we hate Jews. Really? My Lord and Savior was a devout Jewish Prophet. I stand by Isreal and support them.

Second, I guess you missed the part of the bible that talkes about the strong woman who managed the family business, was the spiritual leader of the household and took care of all the family affairs while her husband sat by the gate. This was a strong woman and a good solid role model for women and girls.

You're so caught up in who has wronged who and who owes who what that you can't see that no person is perfect and that we all need God's grace. Grace and forgiveness are fundamental parts of the Christian faith. I recommend you become familiar with them.

You really do have anger issues about how you've been wronged in life. Get over it. Everyone is wronged some how by something or someone. One of the measures of a person is not how they've been wronged, but how they handle being wronged. In your case it is a FAIL. I don't really care how or where or why you've been supposedly wronged. Your response to my question is proof that you are a suck tit and not fit for conversation in an adult world. "So why don't you just go and cry about it". R Lee Ermey.

J. T. Eversole| 8.3.10 @ 4:54PM

Bishop J.S. Spong was a speaker at a religious retreat I attend. At first hearing I was startled by his theology. However, I began to read his books, and my wife and son joined a study group on his works, and we are all now convinced that Spong is a deeply religious, spiritual leader, and reading him has made us better Christians.

He is a devout Christian, and his books radiate with Christ's teachings of love, compassion and brotherhood.

John Shelby Spong has certainly made me a better man, and I think I can say the same for my wife and son.

My son, after attending the Spong workshops, has repaired his marriage and become a devoted father to his two children. And we are Methodists, not Episcopalians, but I think Spong has much to offer all Christians who have open minds and open hearts.

Ryan| 8.4.10 @ 8:26AM

What about Christ's exclusivist statements? What about His teaching as to why we need a saviour? What about sin?

tdiinva| 8.3.10 @ 3:51PM

Calm down, take your meds. The last time I checked Progressivism is the home of today's neo-Nazis (well actually the original guys were pretty progressive too!) not the Christian right. In case you don't know Mel has more in common with Hollywood Progressives on other issues then he does with the right. He opposed the war and hates Bush as much as you do. I guess he doesn't dress up his anti-Semitism with right verbage like Oliver Stone to make you happy

KyMouse| 8.3.10 @ 2:21PM

It's Psalm 137, especially verse 9. The psalmist is lamenting the captivity of the Hebrews in Babylon. He mourns over their absence from their beloved Jerusalem, and ends the psalm with a curse on the Babylonian captors.

It's important to remember that the Bible is a warts-and-all kind of book -- not everything in it shows human beings at their best. The psalmist does indeed curse the Babylonians, but we do not read that God approved of, or acted on, his request.

JS| 8.3.10 @ 2:55PM

KyMouse,

Thank you for listing the verse and for putting it in context. What the people above don't or won't understand is that the Psalms are songs and prayers to God to give future generations (us) insight into what they were going through and what they prayed for. No where does it say that "God seized infants and bashed their heads against rocks" or "God ordered people to seize infants and bash their heads against rocks." That would be what Molech would have ordered. Interestingly enough our modern liberal establishement worships Molech through the practice of abortion.

Archangel Bob| 8.3.10 @ 3:48PM

Don't forget Hosea 13:16 .

KyMouse| 8.3.10 @ 4:48PM

As a prophet of God, Hosea is sent to warn the Hebrews that they have become like his adulterous wife, Gomer (no, not Pyle). God declares that they've earned His terrifying judgment because of their idolatry and disobedience toward Him. It's the unfaithful men and women rebelling against Him who are responsible for the punishment that comes against their people, including their children ("Samaria shall become desolate, for she has rebelled against her God").

Even so, God offers His mercy, if the Hebrews will repent. Chapter 14 says:

"O Israel, return to the Lord your God, for you have fallen by your iniquity...Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols?..

"Who is wise, and he shall understand these things? prudent, and he shall know them? for the ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them, but the transgressors shall fall therein."

You may disagree with God all you like, Bob, but He made you, you are accountable to Him, and you will answer to Him, just as the ancient Hebrews did. The good news is that He loves you so much, He paid for your sins -- John 3:14-18 explains how you can receive that gift.

Assyrian atrocities| 8.4.10 @ 9:40PM

From a historical perspective -- Hosea 13:16, mentioned above, is the prophet's description of what will happen when the Assyrians take the Northern Kingdom captive. The Assyrians were known for their cruel treatment of their captives. Hosea is warning the Hebrews, at God's command, what their disobedience will bring.

BackToBasics| 8.4.10 @ 12:42AM

You mean the Gospel where Jesus called religious rulers and lawyers whitewashed tombs, hyppocrites, blind leaders of the blind and where He overturned tables in what was considered legitimate commerce in the temple. Or how about when He would not even speak to Herrod, "that fox" as He called him. That was rude and unchristian of Him, certainly by American sensibilities these days. Or is it the Gospel where John the Baptist also called the religious leaders a brood of snakes. What, they were JUDGING people and even railing against them!!! So which Gospel of Christ is it that you subscribe to, only the mushy love, love or to a balanced and strong faith that is not afraid to call sin a sin.

JITT| 8.4.10 @ 9:02AM

The Bible makes clear that man rejected the Word of God and thus death entered into the world. This world's rejection of the truth (i.e. Episcopalian, Spong, etc.) is what has resulted in so much death, misery, pain and suffering. Man is fallen and corrupted and less than what God desired. God deals with man in this present condition in order to restore man to God's truth. Psalms 23:3, "He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake." God, as Creator, speaks righteousness and declares those things that are right (Is 45:19) - the truth that ALL of His creation must live by. The Episcopalians and Spong have simply rejected God's Word in favor of their own - like so many followers of the devil before them. After all, to set yourself against the Word of God is to align with that which opposes God (hint: devil). So, man's suffering and misery is the result of man (his heart is desperately wicked). This is why Jesus said you must be born again - born of water (repentance) and the Spirit (Spirit of truth, Jn 3).

Stuart Koehl| 8.4.10 @ 9:41AM

Didn't Marcion try this in the Second Century? That worked out well. Guess that there are no original heresies, just as there are no original sins. Most heresiarchs are just too stupid to make up anything new, let along convincing.

Conan the Contrarian| 8.3.10 @ 12:09PM

Miss A, who is Jesus of Nazareth? Is He the Messiah, the Son of God, God the Son? Or someone, something else? Just wondering what you think.

Paul| 8.3.10 @ 12:30PM

John Spong may be correct in some of his assessment of certain parts of scripture, but great Christian thinkers and theologians (and just the intelligently devout) use the Holy Scriptures with discretion. What you are talking about is a social and political agenda that he is instituting and which you are biting the bait of...hook, line, and sinker. Spong does not believe in the Divinity of Christ Jesus (the Incarnation), the Trinity, the Atonement, the Resurrection of Our Lord, or, for that matter, an objectively existing God. What, Ms. Alabama is you stand on these issues?
If John Spong and other Episcoplians such as yourself do not believe in basic Christian teaching, then you should have the moral and intellectual integrity to leave the Christian Faith and take up the secular humanist neo-Marxist ideology that you now espouse.

David| 8.3.10 @ 1:38PM

Jesus said: "I have given them thy Word and the world hath hated them. I am a believer in ALL the Bible. God will judge sin, including homosexuality. You have made peace with sin and that which opposes God. Demonizing true believers as bigots just proves Christ's Words. Even so, I do pray for you and your husband to start grieving, sighing and crying over sin. Turn unto Jesus, the Word of God made flesh (born of a Virgin).

wrx43| 8.3.10 @ 2:03PM

"Demonizing true 'believers' as bigots just proves Christ's words"

True, literal, bible inerrancy believers are intellectual tadpoles.

I refuse to lobotomize my brain and "believe" the mysogynistic, violent, inhumane, and immoral verses Miss Alabama is alluding to, although you "a true believer" will cling to those verses to support your rancid bigotry.

These verses were written by flawed human beings--desert dwelling Bronze Age men--all men--with extremely limited knowledge.

David| 8.3.10 @ 2:28PM

wrx43 - Thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness (Ez 28:17). The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee (Ob 1:3). Even so, I will pray for you that the One True God will turn your heart unto the true light.

Ryan| 8.3.10 @ 4:37PM

Then you aren't reading the right people.

Beth Moore, John Piper, RC Sproul, etc - there are plenty of modern theologians who are innerantists who are FAR from "intellectual tadpoles."

The knowledge may have been limited, and there may have been times where they didn't understand what they were writing, but there was inspiration and Revelation there.

Jeremiah| 8.3.10 @ 9:10PM

I would think an intellectual giant like you, wtx43, might have some clue about when the bronze age actually occurred. But it has been my experience that those who wax eloquent about how much smarter they are than other men are usually relying on the Cliff Notes version of history - and they usually have borrowed from someone else's crib notes, at that.

As for me, I'll keep swimming with the tadpoles and leave you giants alone.

If you are going to continue to brag about your intellectual prowess, you might try to actually study some time so you don't suffer from such extremely limited knowledge.

Stuart Koehl| 8.4.10 @ 9:47AM

Um, if you are going to toss odium at orthodox believers, at least get your facts straight: the Old Testament was not written in the Bronze Age but compiled well into the Iron Age, between the years 1000 BC and 100 BC. The New Testament was written by literate, cultured men living in the Hellenstic society of the first century AD. Certainly they were all men, but most of the early followers of Jesus were women, who accepted and passed down the teachings as they received them.

It is a mistake to think of these people as having limited knowledge. They may not have had certain bits of scientific information that we have, but they knew how to do many things you don't--and, we discover every day, they were far more advanced technologically than we previously believed. As far as ignorant goes, I would certainly put any of the Apostles or the Fathers up against you, wrx43, and have no doubt that they would stack up very favorably as compared to you.

DDN| 8.3.10 @ 2:21PM

God formed a nation out of Abraham (Israel). God gave this nation a Promised Land which was taken from the wicked nations that occupied the land. God told Israel that it was not for the Jews righteousness, but for the wickedness of the other nations that He drove them out. Israel was the instrument of God's judgment. Now, along comes Spong who thinks himself more righteous than God. Spong leads his religious denomination to embrace those very things or wicked practices (homosexuality, abortion, etc.) for which God judged the pre-existing nations in the Promised Land. Spong is the anti-Abraham, but worse - anti-God. God destroyed nations without mercy that did evil. Spong now calls God evil and embraces the same wicked practices of the evil nations and calls himself righteous.

Episcopalians - you are a very confused lot.

wwm46| 8.8.10 @ 9:00PM

You and your husband are to be pitied for having lost your way. You have hitched your wagon to a devil.

Brent| 12.12.10 @ 4:48AM

You say nothing of God revealing Himself to us. You speak only of social justice without looking at the consequences it is having on your church. Here's the thing ma'am if true revelation is not first, if Christ is not our God who has become Man, then I don't care about social justice one bit. If there is no revelation then all those people you fight for and even the people I care for can burn, I would even do it myself if there were no revelation. However, there is a God, a God who works for our salvation just look at Advent, the Resurrection, and Pentecost. This God of love who is the source of our redemption, compassion, and glorification is the reason one should do anything. Your bishop does nothing but try to take all the good God has done away from the very people he claims to care about and fight for.

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.3.10 @ 8:04AM

In all kindness, please turn to the New Testament. There you will discover the founding of the church, not catholic, not protestant, not anglican, not episcopal. Christianity, plain and simple. Today in the U.S. there are 30,000 "denominations . There cannot be 30,00 versions of truth. In fact we are taught in Gal 1:8 "But even if we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you than what we have (past tense in Greek) preached to you let him be accursed." The gospel had already been taught by this time. So who are we to believe, the scriptures or are we to trust our souls to someone to tell us the truth? Is Jesus a liar when he states in John 8:32," And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free" ?.
And in response to this: "In recent years, respective Episcopal clergy have professed to be a Druid, a Muslim and a Buddhist. The first two ultimately left the ministry, and the third was denied election as bishop. But who's to say their bi-faith choices were necessarily wrong?
Jesus says it is wrong, he is exclusive in his statment, "Jhn 14:6 Jesus said to him "I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."

There is truth, will we heed it?

Ryan| 8.3.10 @ 8:30AM

I actually see a benefit to some denominational separations. Some are better at certain aspects of ministry than others.

Your initial statement, by the way, is often repeated in various ways by most of those denominations.

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.3.10 @ 1:13PM

It still doesn't change the scriptures. Jesus said again and again that there was ONE church, one faith, one baptism. Denomination means - "a part of." If you think "denominations" serve a purpose then you are against the unity that Jesus prayed for. All we have to do is study the N.T. scriptures. Want to find the New Testament church??? Find one that follows the scriptures and pattern for the first century church and you will find Christ's church yet today. We make Christianity too difficult and mystic, even early Christians were easily led astray. 2Cr 11:3 But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

David| 8.3.10 @ 1:44PM

Kevin,

Just ignor him. What you say is true and hold fast to it. I seems apparent that Ryan likes to be argumenative.

Ryan| 8.3.10 @ 1:59PM

You're assuming the first century Church got everything right. From every epistle that we have, I would say it was almost the opposite.

First century Christianity had to rely on word-of-mouth preaching and copies of letters from the
Apostles. Most of the epistles were written to correct errors in the Church and give guidance.

JS| 8.3.10 @ 2:10PM

What you say is true. We are all part of the Body of Christ. If the church you go to preaches the Gospel, then that is ok. Denominations really don't matter. I am a Christian who is currently worshipping at a Methodist Church. That has changed in the past and will probably change in the future. I don't look at a denomination, I look at the message the individual church is bringing. What matters is if the message the church is bringing is biblically sound.

Denominations are like different flavors of ice cream. I like cookies and cream while some like chocolate or vanilla or strawberry. As long as they are getting the 'ice cream' it doesn't really matter what flavor. I know this is simplistic but the premise hold true.

JP| 8.3.10 @ 8:11AM

The Episcopal Church has always occupied a kind of no-man's land in America. It was sandwhiched between the ancient Christian religon known as Catholicism and the more organic American flavored confessions that grew out the revival tent. The Episcopals traced thier lineage back to King Henry VIII and his protests concerning a divorce he sought. And while they mimicked the Catholic rubrics and customs, the Episcopals never could get over the fact that thier religion was founded by an Adulterer. But, by attempting to keep thier Catholic roots alive, the Espiscopals found themselves at odds with other newer Protestant denominations.The Episcoplas thought they solved the problem with the establishment of the High and Low Churches. The High Churches were more European; Thier buildings had an old, traditional feel to themr; thier Masses strongly resembled Catholic Masses (incense, Latin style prayers, etc...) The Low Churches were the simple wooden structures, that hosted more down to earth services one would be accostomed to in the back woods of Appalachia and East Texas. Both served a purpose culturally. But they were doomed to butt heads. The Cultural Elites chose cultural liberalism and theological hetrodoxy, while the Low Churchmen flocked to Fundementalism, and the Bible Churches. The Elites may have the expensive properties and status, but they don't have the congregation. In my old hometown, an old beautiful Epsicopal Church lost its real estate value with the decay of the old urban nieghborhoods during the 1970s. It once served the political, civic, and economic elites. Today, this once proud structure houses a tiny pentacostal congregation (mostly poor African Americans and a few aging hippies) who cannot afford to even keep the lights on.

tdiinva| 8.3.10 @ 10:38AM

Part 1: The [traditional] Anglicanism as we know it today was not founded by Henry VIII. He remained theologically catholic until his death. Thomas Cranmer was the leader of the English Reformation and he did not feel secure in issuing The Book of Common Prayer until Henry was on his deathbed. The first book was decidedly Lutheran in tone. Cranmer's first revision swung over to Calvinism, the tenor of the Prayer Book remains so today.

Part 2: I dispute the claim the Episcopal Church's decline only dates to the 1960s. The first nail in coffin was hammered by the 19th Century Anglo-Catholics of the Tractarian Movement. The Church's failure to uphold the Articles of Religion undermined both traditional Protestant based Anglican theology and the authority of the bishops. The reason that modern Episcopal worship looks a lot like the Roman Catholic Church is the domination of the Anglo-Catholic wing.

Paul| 8.3.10 @ 12:36PM

Henry VIII did not found the Church of England or any church at all. What he did was declare that the Bishop of Rome (the Pope) had no authority over the Christian Church in England. He remained a very orthodox and devout Catholic right to his deathbed. The Church of England continued being was it always has been since even before Saint Augustine of Canterbury, the Church of England. (Though now, like the Episcoplains, it is committing sabotage against much of its Christian foundation and belief. Postmodern, neo-Marxist, political correctness wins the day.)

Bill| 8.3.10 @ 8:12AM

As a former Episcopalian who fled the church due to their loss of focus and mission of the church, I can feel the sorry of those who are still dealing with this travesty. We fled to the Lutheran Church Mo. Synod where our children were schooled in the love, grace and mercy of God. His redemptive power still is the most powerful influence in all our lives. Yet is it true that God will always keep a few faithful present to recall the wayward back and to provide a foundation to build upon.
My prayers and heart go out to those who labor for what is right.

Appleby| 8.4.10 @ 7:22AM

My family have all left the Episcopal Church. My brother is now Antiochian Orthodox; my sister is Foursquare and her daughter is Lutheran (said daughters husband is Antiochian Orthodox). I am Catholic. We left the Episcopal church for various reasons, but all of us left when they started openly worshipping homosexuality. My formerly Anglo-Catholic congregation opened its arms to abortion, homosexuality and left-wing politics and despite the fact that I miss the beautiful music (Catholics refuse to sing), I do not miss the weekly tension in the pews as I waited for something to be said that would mean I would have to walk out.

And the beat goes on. Recently an Anglican priest here in Toronto gave communion to a dog. Soon they will join the United Church of Canada as a playground for aging hippie scum and be forgotten.

Meanwhile, conservative Catholic congregations continue to grow.

Ed| 8.3.10 @ 8:16AM

I am not an Episcopalian, but I have attended two Episcopalian services that were pretty traditional. One was in Colonial Williamsburg and the other was in Kapaa, Island of Kauai, Hawaii. The church in Williamsburg made reference to a bishop in Africa and was thus a breakaway church. I am not sure about the status of the Hawaii church.

For conservative and traditional Espicopalians, my advice would be to break away from the liberal denomination, find a conservative bishop, and build a new church from scrap. You'll be better off for it. At the rate things are going, you'll be able to buy newly shuttered Episcopalian sanctuaries for a song! :-)

canuckistani| 8.3.10 @ 8:33AM

Good points.
I've always marvelled at the whining and hand-wringing protestant churches go through when their is a "protest" in thier own midsts. Reminiscent of the schisms of the past, the relexive moves by the power elite to preserve their standing is like deja vu all over again.
It is also amusing watching the Anglicans flocking back to the Roman church as their religious leader, QE2, is incapable of doing anything to stop it.
When institutions are built on false pretenses, they are doomed under the weight of their arrogance. I'm just impressed it lasted this long.

Jocon307| 8.3.10 @ 12:44PM

"At the rate things are going, you'll be able to buy newly shuttered Episcopalian sanctuaries for a song!"

Excellent point! I hope many "break aways" see this comment and realize how right you are.

Start that savings fund now!

Doctor Right| 8.3.10 @ 8:52AM

The problem with the Episcopal Church, and with many mainstream Protestant denominations, is nicely summed=up by the following:

"Christian traditions about the priesthood, marriage, and human life were crumbling, as the Episcopal Church struggled to stay apace with secular America, while distancing itself from much of Christianity."

WHY would any nominally Christian Church view it's goal as anything BUT teaching and preaching Biblical Christianity???

Oh well...Whatever. The Episcopal Church is an off-shoot of the silly Anglican Church, whose sole purpose was to allow Henry VIII to bed as many women as possible. The Anglican Church itself was an offshoot of the Catholic Church, a church with serious problems of it's own whose legitimacy as THE Christian Church has been hotly debated on this forum repeatedly.

All I can say is...Apostasy breeds more apostasy breeds more apostasy until we have the idiots like His Narcissism, John Shelby Spong, and the ordination of gays...

Stick to the Bible, folks...

JP| 8.3.10 @ 9:01AM

"Stick to the Bible, folks... "

And that is THE problem. Millions upon millions of people read the Bible and derive thier own interpetations. As Martin Luther himself once complained, "...that even the lowly milkmaid thinks herself a theologian".

The explosion of so many diverse Christian sects is a result of serious disagreements over what the Bible actually means.

Ryan| 8.3.10 @ 9:36AM

And yet, since we settled the Reformation and its political wars (done under the auspices of theology), all we've had were the occasional harsh words at each other.

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.3.10 @ 10:00AM

"2 Pe 1:20 knowing this first that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation." There is NO private interpretation...this is another man-made tradition to allow him to do what he wants despite the warning from the scriptures.

Ryan| 8.3.10 @ 10:26AM

What, then, is the solution?

PS, posting the entire passage below. It's dangerous to use one part of one verse.

2 Peter 2: 16For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.
17For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, such an utterance as this was made to Him by the Majestic Glory, "This is My beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased"--
18and we ourselves heard this utterance made from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain.
19So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts.
20But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation,
21for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.3.10 @ 1:28PM

I am in complete agreement that we can never take a scripture out of context. i.e. We can take it to an extreme: Mar 10:9 "Therefore what God has joined together let not man separate." We could use this verse and say we could never cut open a watermelon since it was God that put it together. Granted that example is humorous but other textual excerpts can cost us our souls. In order to save writing space I did use one verse, however it was used with its backgound being in "private interpretations." Christianity is understandable. Mar 12:37 "David therefore himself calleth Him Lord; and whence is he [then] his son? And the common people heard Him gladly (with pleasure). " Jesus said we can know the truth.
If we say that we can not understand the Bible then think about this...What kind of loving God would leave us His word in a form that we could not understand and then punish us for not comprehending it. A poor God indeed.

Ryan| 8.3.10 @ 2:05PM

I'm not disagreeing with you, just saying that your argument needs to be fleshed out some.

I think the argument plays true, particularly in eschatology, where we're not entirely certain what is going to happen, and how literal we take Revelation and other similar instances.

Other than that, most scripture tends to speak pretty well for itself. I think that particularly we need to be careful about difficult passages from the prophets, which can be twisted (which is what Peter may allude to being done in the references above, I think).

Doctor Right| 8.3.10 @ 10:02AM

You're always going to have cranks and crack-pots who believe what they want to believe, and find "inspiration" for whatever tickles their ears in obscure, or out-of-context Biblical quotes.

However, tat does NOT negate my point: Stick to the Bible. Study it. Discuss it. Educate yourself.

Otherwise, what will you use as your starting point? The teachings of men?

That road leads to ruin...Like the current state of the Episcopal Church.

JP| 8.3.10 @ 10:42AM

Not to sound snarky, but who possesses the Truth? Unless the average Bible reader possesses an advanced degree in ancient Greek and Aramaic, finding what the "Truth" actually means is difficult at best. On the other hand, our divinity schools churn out highly trained and credentialed theologians who become either athieists or neo-pagans. But still on the other-hand, uneducated but ministers who appear filled with Christ's Grace seem to possess all of the Christian virtues early on, but end up running off with one of the parishoners daughters and the Church's purse to boot. Which, in turn lead the confused Christian to conclued that it is best not to put one's faith in Men, but Christ. Which leads us back to square one. Christ desired to have a Church. As a matter of fact, the Church came first; the Bible came much later. But, what does a Christian do when he is told his practices (which date back to the 1st Century conflict with the Bible (per some one's interpetation of said Bible)? And on and on it goes.... a new chuch is formed every few minutes.

Always Question| 8.3.10 @ 11:24AM

Quality translations of the Bible have proven to be remarkably accurate and faithful to the original writings - there is much research to support that. However, I believe God's word is revealed in Holy Scriptures, and I believe God reveals Himself through Holy Scriptures to each of us. While we may disagree on minor points, the major points are clearly and repeatedly emphasized. The failure to understand and grasp the simple truths of faith alone in Christ alone - a concept demonstrated throughout the Old and New Testaments - is not by God's design, but Satan's.

JP| 8.3.10 @ 11:54AM

"While we may disagree on minor points, the major points are clearly and repeatedly emphasized. "

I beg to differ. If the points are so obvious, we would all be Lutherans today. But Luther had many detractors. Luther, like the RCC believed in a teaching magesterium (namely, himself and fellow-travelers), a hierarchy that alone possessed the authority to interpet scripture. And while he dispensed with many of the "Traditions" of the RCC. He retained a large number of them. He didn't think Marian deviotion was unbiblical, nor confession or what we today call The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. But after Luther came Calvin, Knox, the Baptists and Anabaptisits, Mennonites, Huegonots, etc... All had claims to "Biblical Truths". All claimed possession of the Heavenly Authority to interpet scriptures. And today, there are more new churches sprouting up then Burger King franchises.

We miss this truth in our egaliterianism (Every Man a Minister). We oscillate between extremely noisy emotional "echt Amerika" form of religisosity and very private (Everyman is his own theologian and confessor) individualistic self help. All the while we reference the Bible to justify our beliefs.

Siegfried X| 8.3.10 @ 4:29PM

There is no Lutheran "devotion" to Mary. Lutherans don't pray to her or any of the other saints. Mary is treated as just another Christian mother. Lutherans don't use non-biblical pagan titles for Mary like "Star of the Sea".

Stuart Koehl| 8.4.10 @ 9:51AM

Sigfried, you main problem is you don't know what you don't know. Acceptance of this is the first step on your path to recovery.

Albert| 8.3.10 @ 11:08AM

I agree. The Bible was meant to be read. One aspect of the Reformation was to put the Bible in the hands of the lay person for him to read. It's nice having theologians studying and interpreting the Bible, but overall it is not that difficult to understand the basic tenets, given a good, scholarly translation to work with (and yes, I understand that good scholarly translations come from good, scholarly theologians). The Bible is not so obscure or mystical that common people can not read and understand it. And if you want cranks and crack pots, look at the Episcopal leadership to start with. What amazes me most is how they can profess a belief in God and the omnipotency of God, but deny His ability to do what the Bible describes. Then this church leader applies his own personal moral standards to God, expecting God to conform to the ideas and beliefs of the "enlightened" church leadership. The basis of Judeo-Christian faith, its history, its beliefs, are contained in scripture, yet it is scripture that people like Spong decry and denouce. With what are we to replace scripture? Revelations from Spong and his ilk? 5,000 years of Judeo-Christian history is to be dumped in favor of the Gospel according to Spong? That's the same line Mohammed used.

JS| 8.3.10 @ 3:03PM

You hit the nail on the head. Christianity is easy. People make it difficult. Jesus said His yoke was easy and His burden light. Leave it up to us stiff-necked people to make something easy, difficult.

Siegfried X| 8.3.10 @ 4:14PM

Having different interpretations of the bible is not a problem. And having a lot of denominations can be a strength instead of a weakness. Like if one church leader declares himself infallible, then he still can't hurt Christians in other denominations. Or if one denomination shelters child abusers for decades, and is sued for it, the money of the other churches is still safe.

I am glad for Christian freedom, and I respect the right of fellow Christians to bow before another man, and let him tell them what to think.

Others like myself will home church and submit only to God. We will stand with Martin Luther, "Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason---I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other---my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand."

Stuart Koehl| 8.4.10 @ 9:53AM

"And having a lot of denominations can be a strength instead of a weakness. "

If you say so, but it sounds a lot like special pleading to me.

"I am glad for Christian freedom, and I respect the right of fellow Christians to bow before another man, and let him tell them what to think."

Don't be an ass, Sigfried.

Ryan| 8.4.10 @ 11:52AM

Here's a breakdown of strengths:

Southern Baptists - evangelism
Assembly of God - corporate worship
Presbyterian (PCA) - academics
Catholicism/Orthodox - historical preservation
Methodism - openness

Stuart Koehl| 8.4.10 @ 12:24PM

I notice truth doesn't rank high in among your criteria. But objectively, you're also wrong. As far as evangelism goes, I don't think anyone holds a candle to the Latin Church, which is why it remains the Big Dog on the block, and has significant success not only among the unbaptized, but also Protestant converts. And although they are relatively smaller, don't write off the Orthodox, who were converting the Siberian animists and the Aleuts while Baptists were busily exterminating Indians on the American frontier. More recently, they have established missions in Africa, Latin America and East Asia, as well as, of course, the United States, Canada, and Western Europe.

On corporate worship, again, pride of place to the Catholics and the Orthodox, especially the latter, for whom corporate (i.e., liturgical) worship has always been the norm.

On academics, please, don't make me laugh! The PCA in comparison with the myriad Catholic and Jesuit (I make the distinction on purpose) universities?

Historical preservation--I could be contrarian and say that in their aversion to frequent communion many Protestant communities are retaining a very medieval attitude towards the sacraments, but that would be unfair. Let's just say that Catholics and Orthodox do not preserve the past for its own sake, but because Tradition, properly understood, is the present in communion with the past looking forward to the Parousia.

Openness--is not and never has been a virtue, particularly not as practiced by the Methodists.

Ryan| 8.4.10 @ 12:44PM

If you don't see the evangelical efforts of Southern Baptists, you're not looking closely enough. They're pretty much spread worldwide, with continuing commitments in reaching the world for Christ - and they're serious about it. They've been at the forefront of modern evangelism for a century or more, because they have the resources to do it.

I guess you've never been in an AoG church, then. Spontaneous worship, emotional responses - which CAN be Biblical, myriad use of talents in worship...not just organs and choirs here. African-American baptists and the modern praise and worship music birthed out of the Passion conferences abound as well from a Protestant standpoint - all with Biblical frameworks and solid theology and worship.

I've been in several Protestant churches, and the PCA is the smartest among them. I have yet to meet many laymen as educated scripturally in the Catholic churches as I do the Protestant ones.

Stuart Koehl| 8.4.10 @ 3:20PM

I have seen it, and while I believe it is well intentioned, too often it is directed against other Christians, mainly Orthodox and Catholic. I believe St. Paul had something to say about plowing in another person's field.

Aside from that, the methods used by the Baptists (and other Evangelicals) strike me as being misguided and overly materialistic, thus apt to produce superficial conversions of what, back when the Methodists were converting the Heathen Chinese, were called "rice bowl Christians". Hence there is a tendency, particularly among the Christian converts, to return to their original confession once the emotional high has worn off and the goodies have faded.

The problem with spontaneous worship is just that--it's spontaneous, and everybody thinks they can do better on the spur of the moment than the Fathers of the Church did over the course of centuries. Remember Sturgeon's Revelation applies in church, too.

As for choirs and organs, in my church we use only a cappella congregational singing of the Liturgy by heart, for only the living human voice is a fit instrument to worship the living God. Praise and worship music is sloppy, sentimental and far too concerned with the first person singular pronoun for my tastes.

As to the PCA being the smartest of the Protestant denominations, well, best we not go there.

Ryan| 8.4.10 @ 3:42PM

David didn't exactly plan out some of his spontaneous reactions in his worship, and there's a lot of "I's" in the Psalms.

As well as massive use of other instrumentation.

What is your basis for "only the living human voice is a fit instrument to worship the living God?" in light of instrumentation used in the Psalms? Are musical talents - with instruments - not valid tools for praise?

I would also say that the mass conversions used by the Catholics - such as on the Native Americans - hold even less water as the sometimes easy Christianity preached by televangelists.

If you read the Westminster Confession and listen to several reformed pastors, you'd probably understand my statement. If anything can be said about PCA pastors, they do more homework than just about anyone.

Stuart Koehl| 8.4.10 @ 5:30PM

I've heard too many outstanding Orthodox and Greek Catholic homilists to credit that.

Betsy| 8.3.10 @ 8:55AM

Stereotypes are problematic. I am both "traditional" Episcopalian and conservative Republican, a combination not as unusual as the media these days would lead the public to believe. Rather than listening to third-hand accounts, I welcome your readers to visit one of our parishes and find out for themselves what we believe, how we worship, who we are. Just as what goes on within the Beltway does not necessarily reflect what's going on in the Heartland, neither does what goes on in the national leadership of any denomination reflect what is in the hearts, minds, and souls of the people in the pews.

JimP| 8.3.10 @ 11:09AM

But, when church leadership espouses blasphemy as official doctrine it is no longer Christianity. That is when, IMHO, it is time for the parishers to renounce their church and find a home in a denomination whose leadership still believes in Christian doctrine.

David Brown| 8.3.10 @ 8:57AM

The reality of the matter is very few people take Episcopalians, Presbyterians or Methodists seriously anymore. I was raised a Methodist, and I quit that "Church" (I use that term loosely), when during a sermon, I felt that my beliefs and who I am (A conservative) was the enemy. Not Satan, sin, or the other usual suspects. Even in popular culture they are marginalized. In the film "Fools Rush In". Matthew Perry decides to follow his wife (Salma Hayak's) way of doing things. The family values, the belief in signs from God, and finally electing to stay in Las Vegas (Instead of going to NY), and knowing that their daughter will be raised the Traditional Catholic way, with lots of family to guide her, instead of the secular liberal Protestant way of his family.

JimP| 8.3.10 @ 11:03AM

The best line from that movie was when Hayak's mother said Presbeterianism wasn't a religion. As a former Episcopalian, aware of the devolution of mainstream Protestantism in America, I laughed until my side cramped. That lined said much more than the mere words.

bill carson| 8.3.10 @ 9:06AM

Well, you gotta wonder about any religion that "votes" about sin--one day the vote is that abortion is murder, then at another time, the vote is that abortion is wonderful and should be funded by taxpayers. How could anyone believe in a "religion" like that? Why don't they just vote that nothing is a sin so they can all be saved in a very easy and convenient way?

The fact is that truth never changes and can never, ever be voted upon.

Harry the Horrible| 8.3.10 @ 9:20AM

My father was an Episcopalian. When that church went weird, he, and most of the congregation abandoned it and its "venerable property" for a Anglican Church governed by a Ugandan Bishop.
This church is one most pious and dedicated that I have ever encountered.
Its is kind of scary to contemplate, but the Christian Church of Africa, having overcome in the spiritual struggles on that continent, may return to evangelize and save us!

canuckistani| 8.3.10 @ 10:04AM

...and to think Africans would abandon the usual revenge attitude of the white man to save us.
Blessed are the.....

JS| 8.3.10 @ 3:07PM

It is ironic that Africa is sending mission teams here to preach the Gospel. I do believe that Africa will be our country's spriritual saviors by returning the US to a Gospel based doctrine within the different denominations here. We've already seen it in the Methodist Church.

upo78| 8.3.10 @ 5:32PM

As a Methodist, I do not want an ignorant "gospel based doctrine" preached to me. The Methodist Church should focus on social concerns.

Our motto now is "Open hearts, open minds," but I want the minds of Methodists to be opened to the works of Bishop Spong. Religion must evolve. We can't cling to the "truths" of 2,000 yrs ago and expect to be enlightened. And a humane, moral enlightenment is what the church needs now.

Ryan| 8.4.10 @ 11:49AM

How is a "gospel-based doctrine" ignorant?

josepg r godleski | 8.3.10 @ 10:05AM

the simple choice is the original church the holy eastern orthodox apostolic catholic faith founded in 33 ad pentecost she is the same yesterday,present, future just as christ never changes nor does his church
you cant go wrong when you stick with the church christ and his apostoles founded

Stuart Koehl| 8.3.10 @ 10:42AM

In theology and ecclesiology, as in daily life, it does not do any good to drink one's own bathwater. Even I, as an Orthodox Christian, would not endorse your statement, as it is easily disproven.

Sorry my karma ran over your dogma.

joseph godleski | 8.3.10 @ 2:35PM

you must not really be eastern orthodox then if you have doubt in your own faith the eastern orthodox faith can back up its claim in holy traditions the bible and church history the erly church fathers and apostles unlike the church of rome which broke from us because she wanted rome to be the center of importants in christianity and be a headquaters to all christians with the pope as its head the eastern orthodox church believes all patriarches are one among equal with constininople have a place of honor not supremacy over the othe patriarches i think stuart you need to read more about our faith before you make comments about our faith
sorry if i stepped on your ego

Stuart Koehl| 8.3.10 @ 2:46PM

I not only can and do, but I know how to use the shift key and punctuation marks, to boot. Your knowledge of Church history is on par with your mastery of the keyboard.

joseph godleski | 8.3.10 @ 3:15PM

sir it does not matter if i have good grammar the most important thing is that what i say correct as for me and 300 million eastern orthodox christians worlwide which would agree that we are the true and original church as i said
church history the traditions of the church the early writtings of the eastern church fathers and the bible and the apostles back up these claims
can i ask you which branch of the eastern orthodox church do you belong to and are you a cradle eastern orthodox or a convert you used the word carma in your first response which is a unchristian belief this and the way you talk against our church leads me to believe you are either not truly a eastern orthodox or one who lacks knowledge of the thelogy the history and beliefs of our church and do not understand what i am trying to express or you just like to controdict others to get your jollys from

Stuart Koehl| 8.3.10 @ 4:29PM

We can start with your first claim that there are 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide. Unless you are also counting the Oriental Orthodox, this is preposterous. Russia is the largest Orthodox country, and of its 140 million people, perhaps 70% are nominally Orthodox. There are some 45 million Ukrainians, of whom about 70% are also nominally Orthodox. Then you can count Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania and all of the Western countries with Orthodox communities, and you would not get a number much larger than 150-160 million. But that's a quibble. The Catholic Church claims there are a billion Catholics, but all that really means is a billion people had a Catholic grandmother, not any real commitment to the faith.

The Orthodox Church--or at least some of its more zealous and simplistic adherents--like to pretend that Jesus celebrated the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom in the upper room on Great and Holy Thursday, that St. Paul administered the Eucharist using a small golden spoon, and that, in general, what you see in the Orthodox Church today is what you would have seen back in the time of Constantine, or at least Chrysostom. Immobilism is one of the most cherished myths in certain Orthodox circles.

Of course, if the Church never changed, that would be good evidence that the Holy Spirit had departed from her, for the reason we were freed from the Law and given the Paraclete was to be led into all holiness and perfection, which of course means the Church has to change in order to meet the challenges it faces in every time and place.

And to aid us in doing so, we have the Tradition, which is not the mindless repetition of that which our babas and their babas and their babas did or said, but rather the outflowing of the Holy Spirit within the entire Body of Christ--it is not doing what the Fathers did (although we do) but thinking as the Fathers thought. And the Fathers were far more open minded than their later expositors make them out to be.

In short, you might want to read that eminent Orthodox convert, Professor Jaroslav Pelikan, who famously observed that "Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living". I live in the Tradition, and have no time for the dust of traditionalism. I suggest you follow Pelikan's advice--the first step of which is to dedicate yourself to the truth, and not to pious myth. Unless you understand how the Tradition was formed, and why, you'll never really live inside the Tradition.

joseph godleski | 8.3.10 @ 5:40PM

dear sir you pull figures out of your butt
their are 140 million in russia their are 50 million in the ukraine which 90 prcent are orthodox then you have belarussia , georgia ,moldavia bessarabia part of russia which borders romania , then you have pockets of orthodox in the other republics of the former soviet union then you have romania montengro, bosnia -herzagonia ,serbia.macadonia ,greece
bulgaria parts of poland the czech and slovak hungary the western eurpeon and northern europeon nations have pockets of eastern orthodox christians ethiopia ,syria lebanon palestine egypt many african counties have eastern orthodox christian throughout asia in china korea japan indonesia australia new zeland
in central america south america in mexico in the u.s.a and canada armenia by the way the greek church has healed the rift between the oriental and the non oriental orthodox churches guess you dont read church news i use to attend a antiochen archdiocese parish under metropolitan philp in
florida the priest over 20 years ago gave commuion to the indian .ethiopian and it was because of charity but we couldt receive their commuion i hear it was all a misunderstanding on thier part of the understanding of the dual nature of christ oh i forget the millions of orthodox in india also

Stuart Koehl| 8.3.10 @ 6:12PM

My dear Joseph,

I have been to most of these places, and if we believe what you say, then every person in Russia who is not a Muslim must be Orthodox. Same for Ukraine. But, sorry to say, even if they were baptized into the Orthodox Church, they do not practice their faith, and as you well know, unless one cooperates with the indwelling gift of the Holy Spirit we receive at our illumination, the gift will not bear fruit. As I said, being born Orthodox does not make you Orthodox, just as being born Catholic does not make you Catholic. It is not a social distinction, but a spiritual one. On any given Sunday in Greece, only five percent of the nominally Orthodox population attends the Liturgy. The figures are somewhat better for Ukraine and Romania, but in Russia, regular participation in the Liturgy does not exceed ten percent of the nominally Orthodox population (which, according to every source, including the Russian government, amounts to some 60-70% of the total population of Russia).

joseph godleski | 8.4.10 @ 6:02AM

okay i agree their are nominal orthodox but they are still orthodox even if they dont practice the in the eyes of the church but my question is why the hostile attitude towards the church you
have done
nothing but fight with me on every comment i have made i and many in the orthodox church wish to win those dissatified
with the protestant and catholic and episcopalin and independent catholics churches
to the eastern orthdoox faith and you give a opinion of being on different sides this i do not understand why

Ryan| 8.4.10 @ 11:48AM

Is "nominal" faith really faith at all?

autumn mansfield| 7.21.11 @ 3:40PM

i agree with you joseph you know what ur saying and ur are smart and dont let anyone say ur wrong about russian orthodox cause you say it like it is wtg keep doing what ur doing i with u 100% keep up the good work

autumn mansfield| 7.22.11 @ 9:13PM

joseph dude chill out lol its just comments let them say what ever they say ur a tru:e orthodox they are not lol dont get worked up over this lol come on ur better then that :)

Ryan| 8.3.10 @ 11:27AM

Really?

Did priests always wear fancy vestments and sit on thrones?

Stuart Koehl| 8.3.10 @ 12:57PM

Pretty early on, they did. The design of ancient churches dating back as far as the third century show a thonos for the bishop in the apse behind the altar. There is also a row of raised seats on either side of the throne, where the presbyters sat. In this, the Christians were obviously copying the usage of the ancient synagogue, and indeed, most early Christian ecclesiastical titles, such as episkopos and prebyteros have direct correlation to synagogue offices. The Christians deliberately eschewed calling their ministers "hieroi", or "priests", because it was a fundamental article of doctrine that (a) Christ was and is the true high priest; and (b) all Christians share in the universal priesthood of Christ. It's only an accident of the English language that there is but one word for "priest" that subsumes both meanings, and creates endless confusion.

As regards liturgical vestments, what is worn today in the Orthodox Church is nothing more than the court regalia of the late Byzantine Empire. When it was adopted, it would not have been considered outlandish at all. Prior to that, as ancient icons attest, deacons, presbyters and bishops tended to wear the costume of the Greco-Roman upper classes.

Ryan| 8.3.10 @ 2:09PM

That was relatively intelligent.

What I find interesting is that there's a lot of church history - on many sides - that claims some sort of originality when we really don't have much clue as to what was going on in the first centiry outside of the NT.

Baptism, for instance - there's just no information as to what was specifically being done in the first century, and only afterward do we have consistent records of infant baptism as the general practice.

JP| 8.3.10 @ 2:46PM

The Book of Acts records baptisms of both adults and infants. I believe the 1st Century Didache also mentions it as a requirement. We do not have the intimate details in all cases for the obvious reasons that the Church was often being persecuted, and also for the obvious reasons that many locales didn't have a means to record them all.

Stuart Koehl| 8.3.10 @ 2:55PM

Many of the rites had not taken on final form, and some of them were treated as esoteric knowledge by the Church, open only to full initiates. Thus, just as one did not talk about Fight Club, early Christians did not talk about the Eucharist, and catechumens were dismissed and excluded from the latter half of the Liturgy of the Eucharist, just as they are still today (nominally) in the Byzantine Orthodox Divine Liturgy ("All catechumens depart, all catechumens depart! Let no catechumen remain. . . The doors, the doors! In wisdom, let us profess our faith"--followed by the Creed).

As baptism was conducted in the context of the Eucharistic liturgy, only initiates could be present, and only initiates would know the details of the rite.

Ryan| 8.3.10 @ 4:41PM

There's nothing definite in Acts about infant baptism, just an allusion to "household baptisms."

Honestly, I have no real problem with the practice as Presbyterians do it (replacement of circumcision); however, I DO debate its efficacy toward salvation.

Personally, I tend toward the Baptist line.

Stuart Koehl| 8.3.10 @ 5:18PM

"Household" had a definite legal and social definition in hellenistic culture. It meant everyone living under the patria potestas of a senior male family leader. A household therefore consisted of everyone--male, female, free and slave, adult and infant. If Cornelius was baptized together with his entire household, then it conveyed the understanding that this included infants.

Going beyond this, baptism for the early Church was meaningless except in the context of Eucharist. Writing at the end of the first century, Ignatios of Antioch defined the Church as a Eucharistic society headed by a bishop, assisted by his presbyters and deacons, surrounded by his people. "Where the Eucharist is, there is the Catholic Church", he wrote (coining the term "Ekklesia Katholike", meaning the "fullness of the Church" in the process). One was baptized in order to partake of the Eucharist, for, as Scripture says, "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood, abides in me and I in him" and "He who does not eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man has no life in him". Because of this, infants were admitted to communion immediately after baptism, and received the Eucharist as full members of the assembly from that day forth--as is still the practice of the Eastern Churches (it was also the practice of the Western Church until the 13th century, and in fact is still normative though largely ignored).

Since the universal practice of the entire Church was infant communion and infant baptism from the end of the first century, it is difficult to claim that this was not the practice of the Church from its inception. If it had been an innovation, it would have been controversial--and there were plenty of controversies raging, which generated reams of polemic and apologetic documents.

But not one on infant baptism.

So, if anything, the Baptist understanding is a Reformation innovation based on late Scholastic rationalizations for NOT admitting infants to communion.

This illustrates why reliance on Scripture alone gives a highly misleading picture of early Christian beliefs and practices, leaving aside all exegetical difficulties that ensue from reading Scripture in a vacuum, outside the matrix of Tradition, and without reference to extra-scriptural sources that might shed some additional light on the subject.

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.4.10 @ 7:40AM

There is not one example of infant baptism in the entire New Testament. Christianity is a thinking religion. Everyone is responsible for his or her actions. Household means those able to understand, either by age or mental ability.
I reference Romans 15:4 "For whatever things were written before (Old Testament) were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope." Even though the Old Testament is no longer valid for our salvation, it is there for our learning (because of space - a short quote-Col 2:14 "Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; " So now we see that we can use the O.T. for study and research let's turn to Nehemiah 8:2 "And Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation both of men and women, and all that could hear with understanding, upon the first day of the seventh month. " This was the first time in several generations that the law of God was read to the people. KEY: those that could understand...and it does mean having the mental ability to comprehend. The mentally deficient, babies and children can't comprehend and thus are not lible. See the entire chapter of Ezekial 18. Sins are our own responsibility.
* No one is amenable to the gospel of Christ who is incapable of assuming the responsibilities connected with conversion. Jesus taught that those who wish to follow him must be willing to separate from loved ones—even parents—if necessary. He must be daring enough to forfeit his own life if it should come to that (Mt. 10:37; Lk. 14:26; Rev. 2:10). How could a small child possibly be held accountable to such a rigorous standard? Is a young child physically, emotionally, or socially capable of accepting such a challenge?
*Wayne Jackson

Ryan| 8.4.10 @ 8:38AM

I concur with your last statement, I think we just might disagree on the lines of authority.

Infant baptism just wasn't a controversial matter until the Reformation with the anabaptists and such, and even then there probably wasn't a major denomination that didn't practice it until a few hundred years later.

The history of infant baptism is the main reason that I'm not opposed to the practice so much anymore; I simply think that baptism (and communion) as a requirement for salvation is a bad conclusion from a hyper-literal reading scripture that was also historically made until it was questioned.

There's a genuine case to be made for post-conversion baptism as a matter of faith rather than a work of men.

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.4.10 @ 10:22AM

*In the first place, there is rarely any such practice as infant “baptism.” The Greek verb baptizo means to immerse. Babies, whenever they are administered what is commonly called “infant baptism,” are almost never immersed. Whatever else one may wish to call the practice, it is not infant “baptism.”

Second, there is nothing in the New Testament remotely related to the custom of applying water to babies in an effort to secure their salvation, or to demonstrate salvation on behalf of such. There is no divine command, apostolic example, or inference (reasonable or necessary) that would sanction such a procedure. Rather, the practice had its genesis in the post-apostolic era when a divinely-foretold digression already was well underway (cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:1ff; 1 Timothy 4:1ff; 2 Timothy 4:1ff).

Note the following concession from celebrated cleric Albert Taylor Bledsoe (1809-1877), of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who himself engaged in the practice of “infant baptism.”

“It is an article of our faith, that ‘the baptism of young children (infants) is in any wise to be retained in the Church, as most agreeable to the institution of Christ.’ But yet, with all our searching, we have been unable to find, in the New Testament, a single express declaration, or word, in favor of Infant Baptism” (Southern Review, St. Louis, Vol. XIV, April, 1874, p. 334).

Bledsoe went on to attempt his justification solely by inference — a most futile endeavor indeed.

Post-Apostolic Testimony
The first hint of an inclination in this direction came in the 2nd century A.D. when Irenaeus (cir. A.D. 130-200), a religious leader in southern Gaul, declared that: “He [Christ] came to save, through means of himself, all who through him are born again unto God — infants, children, and boys and youths, and old men” (Against Heresies 2.22.4). The quotation reveals that the idea that infants needed salvation was evolving already.

On the other hand, Tertullian in Africa (A.D. 160-220) opposed this inclination. He argued:

“Let them come while they are growing up; let them come while they are learning, while they are being taught to what it is they are coming; let them become Christians when they are susceptible of the knowledge of Christ. What haste to procure the forgiveness of sins for the age of innocence. . . Let them first learn to feel their need of salvation; so it may appear that we have given to those that wanted” (On Baptism, 18).

By the time of Cyprian (A.D. 200-258), a theologian in Carthage, the error of “infant sin” had taken a full grip on some who professed Christianity. Cyprian argued:

“But if even the chief of sinners, who have been exceedingly guilty before God, receive the forgiveness of sins on coming to the faith, and no one is precluded from baptism and from grace, how less should the child be kept back, which, as it is but just born, cannot have sinned, but has only brought with it, by its descent from Adam, the infection of the old death; and which may the more easily obtain the remission of sins, because the sins which are forgiven it are not its own, but those of another” (Epistle, 58).

In the same general timeframe, Origen (A.D. 185-254), a teacher in both Alexandria and Caesarea, contended:

“Infants are baptized for the forgiveness of sins. Of what sins? Or when have they sinned? Or how can any reason of the laver in their case hold good, but according to that sense we mentioned even now — none is free from pollution, though the life be the length of one day upon the earth. And it is for that reason, because by the sacrament of baptism the pollution of our birth is taken away, that infants are baptized” (Homily on Luke, 14:5).

Conclusion
The historical evidence has been succinctly summarized by the Lutheran scholar H.A.W. Meyer:

“The baptism of the children of Christians, of which no trace is found in the N.T., is not to be held as an apostolic ordinance, as, indeed, it encountered early and long resistance; but it is an institution of the church, which gradually arose in post-apostolic times in connection with the development of ecclesiastical life and of doctrinal teaching, not certainly attended before Tertullian, and by him still decidedly opposed, and, although defended by Cyprian, only becoming general after the time of Augustine in virtue of that connection” (Commentary on Acts [16:15], New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1883, p. 312).

The practice of “infant baptism” is not authorized by the New Testament. It is a most dangerous custom for it raises a sense of false security in those whose parents impose it upon them. Salvation is a matter of personal obedience (Hebrews 5:9); it is not a blessing that can be accessed by one person on behalf of another.
*Wayne Jackson

Ryan| 8.4.10 @ 11:48AM

Two things:

First, on baptizo - look at the context - the time and place of some of those scriptures. There were several instances where dunking just didn't appear to be practical.

Next, it just wasn't a controversy in the early Church and simply not addressed. You may be partially right, but you don't address the "household" argument, either.

Calling it explicitly non-biblical IS an exaggeration, particularly in a historical light.

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.4.10 @ 1:29PM

May I please have those two incidents and accompanying scriptures? Thanks.
Reasons to be baptised:
1. Because God commands it. Acts 10:48
2. To fulfill all righteousness. Matthew 3:15
3. To be a friend of Christ. John 15:14
4. Because you love God. I John 5:3; John 14:15
5. Lest you reject the council of God against yourself. Luke 7:30
6. To COMPLETE the “new birth.” John 3:3-5; Titus 3:5
7. To enter the kingdom. John 3:5
8. For remission of sins. Acts 2:38
9. To receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Acts 2:38
10. In order to be saved. Mark 16:16
11. To wash away your sins. Acts 22:16
12. To get into the death of Jesus where blood was shed. Romans 6:3
13. To be buried with Christ. Romans 6:4
14. To be raised with Christ. Romans 6:4; Colossians. 3:1; 2:12
15. To rise to walk in the newness of life. Romans 6:4
16. To be a child of God by faith. Galatians 3:26-27
17. To get into the body, which is the Church. I Corinthians 12:13; Colossians 1:18
18. To have a good conscience. I Peter 3:21
19. To get INTO Christ. Galatians 3:27
20. Because “baptism doth also now save us.” I Peter 3:21; Mark 16:16
21. To be “reconciled unto God in one body by the cross” Ephesians 2:13-16
*In its most basic and fundamental sense, the act of baptism "consist(s) of the processes of immersion, submersion, and emergence" (W. E. Vine, Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, Volume I, p. 96). Standard lexicons (Greek dictionaries), such as Arndt and Gingrich's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, define "baptism" in this way: "dip, immerse," and point out that in "non-Christian literature" it means to "plunge, sink, drench, overwhelm, etc." (p. 131). Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament defines the Greek verb for "baptism" as "immersion, submersion" (p. 94); while Liddell and Scott, in their Greek-English Lexicon, define the word to mean "dip repeatedly, dip under" (p. 126). Alan Richardson's Theological Wordbook of the Bible defines the word in this manner: "dip, plunge under water, sink or swamp" (p. 27).

Thus the English word "baptize" does not adequately translate the idea of the action contained in the original Greek word (baptizo); in fact (as we can see by comparing the Greek word and the English word), it is not a translation at all, but rather a transliteration. It merely transposes Greek letters (transliterates) into English letters, instead of selecting any of
a number of English words (such as dip, plunge, immerse, submerge, overwhelm, etc.) which would correctly convey (translate) the idea of the Greek, baptizo. (It is also interesting to notice that a separate Greek word -- rantizo -- meaning "to sprinkle" could and would have been used if that were the action being contemplated.)

But one does not necessarily need a knowledge of Greek or access to a Greek lexicon to learn what the Bible means by "baptism." Perhaps the best way to establish that the word itself indicates its own meaning is to examine passages of scripture in which the word is used. One of the best descriptive passages with regard to "baptism" is found in Acts 8, the record of the conversion of the Ethiopian treasurer. From the account beginning in verse 35 and continuing through verse 39, we learn that the act of baptism involves a coming unto water (v. 36), a going down into the water (v. 38), and a coming up out of water (v. 39).
*Hamilton

Ryan| 8.4.10 @ 1:54PM

You're using a good example that almost speaks to both sides. The eunuch and Philip BOTH went into and out of the water in the verse...and that wasn't the Baptism, which happened in between "into" and "out of."

Also, keep in mind that you're using a singular, literal use of "baptism" - and that some things such as "Baptism into the Holy Spirit" didn't involve water at all, but were purely used as a metaphor.

The other side is that it's fairly exclusive to the NT. OT the picture we have is the sprinkling of blood on the altar to give us the picture, as well as circumcision.

I'm not completely debating the reasoning nor method of Baptism here - I'm essentially a Reformed Baptist myself; I'm just presenting the idea that immersion wasn't the historical method, wasn't fought over until recently, and if you hold that it's the only method, then you may be condemning many good Christians throughout the past 2000 years to Hell.

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.4.10 @ 2:21PM

What is a Christian? If baptizo means to be buried, covered over, and we disobey, should we be held innocent just because we trust someone to tell us the truth? God will be the judge, but it is his commands that shall be used to judge. Hence why we are told not to trust every speaker that comes along. Even Satan himself can be seen as an angel of light.
I'm kind of confused by your, "and that wasn't the Baptism, which happened in between "into" and "out of."
As far as the scriptures show that is the only type of Baptism that took place. They would not go down into the water for the "Holy Spirit" baptism.
The baptism of the Holy Spirit was not an everyday occurrence. It had only occurred twice: on the day of Pentecost and at the teaching of Cornelius' household.

Please notice that the coming of the Spirit did not make Cornelius good or religious. Cornelius was "a devout man and one who feared God with all his household, and gave many alms to the Jewish people and prayed to God continually" (Acts 10:2) before God spoke to Cornelius through an angel. It was his deeds that brought him to the attention of God (Acts 10:4). He enjoyed a good reputation among mankind as well (Acts 10:22). Many claim that men are born so depraved that they cannot become religious without the intervention of God. Yet, here is a religious man, who because of his good deeds God takes notice and selects him for a special purpose. Even with his good deeds, he was not saved because he was instructed to send for Peter to learn what God would have him to do.
*Hamilton

Ryan| 8.4.10 @ 2:37PM

Read the verse again. Philip and the Eunuch went into the water, THEN baptized, THEN came up out of the water. The baptism is written as a separate event from the other two.

On Cornelius, could he have done anything good without God first prompting him?

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.5.10 @ 8:32AM

Cornelius was a good man. Read Acts 10:1-6, 22,48. But being a good man was not enough to save him. How important was Baptism??? Even after the Holy Spirit he was instructed (before hand) on what he MUST do. Act 10:6 "He is lodging with Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the sea. He will tell you what you must do."

BackToBasics| 8.4.10 @ 3:24PM

Matthew 12:3-7 and 2 Cor 3:6 are instructive in such matters. Jesus Himself did not ascribe to the letter of the law but to the spirit of the law and yet He was found blameless and without sin. It is interesting that during His sham trial, that not even the pharisees nor the High Priest used Matthew 12: 3-7 against Him. Even they recognized that he could not be blamed for such grace as is referred to here.

I think that God looks at the heart. If someone get sprinkled in Baptism and never comes into greater understanding of it, I do not think the Lord would hold him responsible. The thief on the cross did not get baptized either and according to the Gospels, the 2 theives died after Jesus and after Jesus said, "it is finished" which ushered in the fulfillment and the new testament. So, the thief died under the New testament and yet he was NOT baptized.

I think grace is clearly called for in such matters of interpretation.

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.5.10 @ 8:40AM

Please take a closer look at the scriptures, the thief did not die under the New Testament. Although the Old Law died on the cross (figuratively) the New Testament period did not begin until the first Gospel sermon on the day of Pentecost (the Gospel had never been preached before this time so no one could have had heard it). So technically the thief died under the O.T., but it does not really matter. Jesus had the power on the earth to forgive sins and he did so on many ocassions. Also, we do not know if the thief had been baptised under John the Baptist. Now, however, we are under the new law.

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.4.10 @ 2:52PM

Go to the orginal Greek text of the passage in Acts 10:44 ¶ While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word.
heard -akouō = to understand, perceive the sense of what is said. A baby cannot respond accordingly.
Household, used in related scriptures to this event reverts back to those in the household of Cornelius which heard and understood.

Stuart Koehl| 8.4.10 @ 5:41PM

Ryan and especially Kevin seem to ascribe to the theory I call the 1500-year theological wedgie: that the Holy Spirit departed from the Church after the death of the Apostle John, and was neither seen nor heard again for nigh on 1500 years, when, all of a sudden, He again made his appearance before a group of Reformation divines and revealed all truth to them. In the interim, NOTHING the Church did or said was theologically true or doctrinally sound.

Which is what happens when your only acknowledged source is Scripture divorced from both the history and the Tradition of the Church. Instead of wondering so much about what the Bible says about infant baptism, they should be looking at what the Church actually did. But of course, to do that would reveal a Church that always baptized infants, that considered the Eucharist the very Body and Blood of Christ, that prayed liturgically, that had a highly developed sacramentology, that also had a hierarchical structure of bishops, presbyters and deacons ordained within a line of apostolic succession, that prayed for the repose of the dead (something they got from the Jews), that had a high regard for the Mother of God and asked for her intercession (the earliest written petition to Mary can be found in a Roman catacomb and dates to the second century).

Meanwhile, no matter how hard one looks, one cannot find a trace of the crypto-baptists that are sometimes invoked as both the saving remnant and as a way around the fact that the early Church looks nothing at all like Protestantism.

Which may be why one eminent Protestant, John Henry Newman, turned his back on the whole movement and became a Roman Catholic. The highly regarded Oxford scholar famously noted that "To be immersed in history is the death of Protestantism".

Stuart Koehl| 8.4.10 @ 5:52PM

I should also mention that Kevin makes the error of thinking that hearing refers to the rational faculty of understanding, which would imply that a minimal intellectual capability is required for baptism, and thus also for reception of the Eucharist.

Such intellectualizing is common among Protestants, but this is a form gnosticism in that it does not recognize man as a pyschosomatic entity composed of body, soul and spirit, and that there are other, non-intellectual ways of comprehending the meaning of a holy mystery (which, by its very definition, defies full human understanding.

When Christ says baptism is necessary, He makes no distinction between infants and adults; when he says the Eucharist is necessary for eternal life, he makes no distinction between infants and adults.

Baptism, as understood by the earliest of the Fathers, is nothing less than death to the world and new life in Christ. They put no age limits on it, and did not thing that mental acuity was required. Eucharist, as understood by the earliest of the Fathers, was seen as the Bread of Life and the source of immortality, without which a man has no life in him. Again, no age limits nor requirements for any sort of mental acuity.

In fact, the universal Tradition of the Church, both East and West, from the first century to the present, has encouraged infant baptism, and until the 13th century, both the East and the West practiced infant communion--something we in the Eastern Churches never abandoned.

Infants in the West ceased receiving the Eucharist when the Latin Church withdrew the Chalice from the laity, requiring them to receive the Eucharist only in the form of the Body of Christ. Infants, who could not swallow solid food, were thus accidentally barred from communion.

The first attempts to put a theological veneer on this practice came more than a century later in the argument that one had to be "of the age of reason" in order to mentally apprehend the significance of communion.

The Baptists in the Reformation (who were very much the odd men out even among Protestants) extended this "age of reason" argument to baptism. Other Protestants were content to restrict age of reason to receiving communion, which then took on the form of a rite of passage.

But none of this can be found in the early Church, and as with most Protestant appeals to the usage of the early Church, requires a willful denial or selective reading of the evidence.

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.5.10 @ 7:44AM

I have proven my points from the scriptures. If we can't agree they are the word of God then all of these discussions are moot. Ignore the scriptures, that's what the nation of Israel did. Who keeps bringing up this "early church" garbage? The only rules by which we are to abide are the scriptures. Read the N. T.. Leave your traditions and beliefs out. Do you not read the warnings in the scriptures??? We are told that there would be a falling away from the truth and it was already ocurring in several places. This "history" you quote or believe in was after some of the falling away.You are tainting what is right before your very eyes. Every example of conversion in Acts has some form of:
1.Hearing the word.
2.Believing.
3. Repenting from your sins.
4. Confessing that Jesus is the son of God.
5. Being baptised

i.e. "HOUSEHOLD"
You assume that when "houshold" was used that it automatically included infants even though there are ZERO accounts of "infant conversion" in the New Testament. You put your assumptions before scriptural fact. A modern parallel: I tell you that my household has graduated college with a 3.5+ grade average. You assume incorrectly that everyone in my family is old enough to graduate college until you see a picture of my family which includes my wife, myself and several adult children, but also two, three year-old children. It is impossible for them to have the knowledge, skills, etc. for college. In the same vein, it is impossible for a infant or young child to follow the steps of salvation. Thus the definition of a believing or converted "household" has already been defined by the scriptures.

Ryan| 8.5.10 @ 8:51AM

Kevin,

I think that you're still ignoring the technical definition of "household." Taken literally, it COULD include infants - it's just not something that can be immediately discounted - particularly in light of the matter that circumcision for Jews was done in infancy.

And particularly that, though there are no absolute specific references to infant baptism in scripture, there's nothing to discount it other than what almost amounts to theory.

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.5.10 @ 9:12AM

*
The issue is one of authority. While we recognize that there are many laws in the Bible that are explicitly negative, one may not draw the inference that everything is permitted that is not specifically condemned.

In the table of the Ten Commandments, the Lord said regarding “graven images,” i.e., idol gods, “you shall not bow yourself down to them” (Exodus 20:5). But what if some renegade Hebrew simply “stood” before an idol and prayed? Do you suppose that if he had done such, and made the defense, “He said, ’don’t bow’; he didn’t say, ’don’t stand’”? Do you suppose the Lord would have been impressed with such a depraved defense?

Can reasonable people not mentally anticipate the logical consequence of this type of reasoning? It throws wide open the gates of apostasy. Consider the following questions that surely could be posed by modern innovators.

•Why can’t we pray to Mary and the saints? The Bible doesn’t explicitly condemn it.
•Why can’t we observe communion on Saturday? The Bible doesn’t say not to.
•Why can’t we have Pepsi and pizza for communion? The Bible doesn’t forbid it.
•Why can’t we baptize babies? The New Testament doesn’t censure it.
•Why can’t we smoke marijuana in worship? No text prohibits it.
It has become increasingly apparent that not only do we see a new generation emerging that knows practically nothing about the Scriptures, largely it is a people that cannot reason. Logic, to them, is a like an alien language.
*Jackson

For many, their entire religious emphasis (under a leaky umbrella they call “spiritual”) is one of feelings, self-centeredness, and an appeal to the carnal.

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.5.10 @ 10:20AM

Yes, God forbid that we should be rational, thoughtful, logical beings. Instead we should be flippant, self-centered, will-worshippers, tossed about like waves before the wind. Not condemming anyone here, but the scriptures tell us again and again to trust them and them alone. In "modern-Christianity" everything is correct, nothing is wrong.
Jeremiah 4:
30 An appalling and horrible thing
has happened in the land:
31 the prophets prophesy falsely,
and the priests rule at their (false prophets) direction;
my people love to have it so,
but what will you do when the end comes?

Ryan| 8.5.10 @ 8:48AM

If you've read what I've written particularly on baptism, I've acknowledged that period between the Gospels and the Reformation.

Unfortunately, that was also a period that much of the leadership in the Church had a few other pressing issues - the divinity of Christ, the sometimes ill-advised Crusades, and maintaining their power base politically rather than dealing with theology and scripture. Some questions simply weren't asked in that period regarding those issues as well, because there was so little access to the Bible in any case - no printing press (it's not that they were deliberately withheld, it's that there were so few Bibles that each one was precious).

Tradition - by its very nature - isn't always right.

Stuart Koehl| 8.5.10 @ 11:59AM

Tradition, understood as the action of the Holy Spirit within the Body of Christ, is nothing less than a manifestation of the Word of God. As God is One, so is his Word, and thus all of the various elements of Tradition--Scripture, liturgy, the writings of the Fathers, the Acts of the Councils, the canons, and myriad other things which inform the life of the Church, are entirely consistent with each other and form a seamless whole.

Like many other people, you do not understand the difference between Tradition, the proper usage of a particular Church, mere custom, and the individual actions of ecclesiastical authorities (which may or may not affect Tradition one way or the other).

But, when in doubt, bring up the Crusades! Or the entanglement of the Papacy in the politics of the Italian peninsula.

Also, I note that as a Protestant, all of your arguments are bound up in the ongoing dispute with the Latin Church, the major questions and respective talking points of which are so well known by the protagonists that they hardly bear repeating.

Let me just say that, as an Eastern Christian, I see both you and your Catholic interlocutors as arguing two sides of the same coin. From our perspective, it's not that one side has the right answer to the questions, but that neither of you is actually asking the right questions.

Which is why I suspect that only the perspective of the Eastern Churches will permit an end to the impasse, by shedding light on a dispute which generates far too much smoke and heat.

Stuart Koehl| 8.3.10 @ 2:52PM

While we aren't too clear on the details of the rite of baptism, we are pretty sure that, by the end of the first century, at least, baptism was common for infants of Christian parents and was being encouraged by the bishops. Scriptural inferences about, e.g., Cornelius being baptized with all his household, indicate that men, women, children, and slaves, were all baptized at the same time.

We also know that, by the end of the first century, the rites of initiation were three-fold: first baptism, then chrismation, through anointing and laying on of hands, and finally, reception of the Eucharist, which sealed this, and all other sacraments.

In the second and third centuries, people tended to put off baptism until late in life--often until just before death--in the hope that the remission of sins imparted by rebirth in Christ would provide an easy path to paradise. The Church actively discouraged this, and called for the baptism of infants, as well as condemning multiple baptisms, which is why the Creed of Nicaea-Constantinople says, "I profess one baptism for the remission of sins".

autumn| 6.14.11 @ 2:25PM

you say all true stuff here i agree with you on everything you say joe

?| 11.22.11 @ 2:29PM

ur not A ORTHODOX YOU LIED TO ME UR A ROMAN CATHOLIC

Noah| 8.3.10 @ 10:24AM

What is killing the Episcopal church is what drove me to Rome: the lack of a father for the Christian family on earth. Who but a father ultimately decides how the family should respond to modern forces of evil that deny free will, the sanctity of life, the purpose of marriage, and the universal call to holiness? Not all the gifts of the Enlightenment were good: Marx's deterministic view of history, Comte's positivism, artificial birth control all are the originial temptation to be God when he called us to be his children. The friction in the Catholic Church is the friction in families through all of history: children not willing to accept that father knows best. The challenge of all Christians is to exult in the Cross, which is a folly to the world.

Ryan| 8.3.10 @ 10:28AM

Your position might make sense if there was ever a decent Pope throughout the Reformation. There weren't many.

The early Christian councils are a far better place to look for guidance in some aspects.

Jeremiah| 8.3.10 @ 10:48AM

I beg to differ with you, Ryan. Leo X was, indeed, a silly, frivolous man around whom corruption flourished. His successor, the short-tenured Adrian VI, though an ineffective pope, was a very devout man. Clement VII, however, was both devout, extremely effective and the very sort of reform pope Martin Luther had called for.

Ryan| 8.3.10 @ 11:28AM

I should have expanded my scope; Clement proves part of the point though - would such a Pope have come along were there not a need for Reformation within the Church?

And where does most of the theology come from in early Christianity - Popes or Councils?

Stuart Koehl| 8.3.10 @ 1:06PM

But the emergence of the Church of England had very little to do with the Reformation until the first quarter of the 17th century. At its foundation, and down through the reign of Elizabeth, the CofE was a political creation, and the comprehensiveness of which Anglicans were so fond nothing less than an attempt to impose social, political and spiritual cohesion on an otherwise fractious polity. Because Anglicanism never had any particular raison d'etre other than raison d'etat, it was bound to fall apart once the social and legal disabilities associated with dissenting lost any real bite.

As to where the theology of the early Church comes, the answer is "Tradition". Tradition encompasses all that the Church is and does: Scripture, the Liturgy, the writings of the Fathers, the acts of the Councils and the myriad other vectors by which faith is transmitted from age to age.

Protestants and Orthodox alike are in error to dismiss the importance of the Papacy in the first millennium. Even though the Pope lacked anything by way of "plena potestas", his "auctoritas" was immense, and the term "primus inter pares" meant much more than getting to bang the gavel at ecumenical councils. Rather, it meant that everything the Pope did and said was considered with great seriousness, and any new doctrine or teaching was considered suspect until such time as it received his seal of approval. By the same token, the Popes were very circumspect in their attempts to impose their views on other Churches, and were extremely conservative in their theology: Rome, unlike Alexandria or Antioch, never founded a "school" of theology or exegesis, but was content to hold onto that which was already settled. It took Rome fifty years just to accept the Creed of Constantinople and Cappodocian theology. Rome's innate conservatism was precisely the reason it was seen as the Church That Presides in Love, and why it was given precedence at both the Councils of Constantinople and Chalcedon.

Jeremiah| 8.3.10 @ 1:20PM

Thank you, Ryan - a reasoned and insightful response. I think you are absolutely correct.

Obviously, I believe the Catholic Church is, in essence, the mother ship of Christianity. I know others believe differently and I am not looking for an argument with them. Christ promised that though His Church would be attacked, it would not be toppled, even by the gates of hell. The Church is holy, but administered by people who are subject to the temptations of original sin. The hierarchy had become rife with corruption by the time of the Reformation. It has sometimes seemed to me that God allowed the division to keep His promise - to force the Church to reform. Thus, in my mind, the error in the reformation was not the original dissent, but the failure to return under the reform pope.

It has pleased God to allow these divisions to continue for nearly 500 years, but I don't think the division in Christianity pleases Him. I think He has His plan whereby we will again, "...all be one." Protestants blame the division on the corruption of the Rennaissance Church. Catholics blame the division on the self-will of the dissidents. I think both are right - and when we see the part we each play in these divisions, perhaps it will be time for real unity again.

Thank you again for your excellent reply.

Ryan| 8.3.10 @ 2:13PM

I mostly agree here as well. I've been of the opinion for a long time that, even though I am not Roman Catholic, I have a vested interest in there being a good man as Pope, because he is the representative of Christians to the entire world.

We WILL see a rejoining, of some sort, one day; it may not even be until Christ returns (however that plays out). Christ speaks of returning for His Church, not Churches.

Stuart Koehl| 8.3.10 @ 3:02PM

"Obviously, I believe the Catholic Church is, in essence, the mother ship of Christianity."

The Catholic Church is the Body of Christ, and, as Christ is One, so is the Catholic Church. But the Catholic Church and the Church of Rome are not co-terminous. In fact, the Catholic Church as it is known today is really a communion of twenty-two "particular Churches", of which Rome is only one, the remainder being the "Eastern Catholic Churches".

But the Catholic Church has itself acknowledged the existence of true Churches outside of those in communion with Rome--specifically, the Eastern Orthodox Churches, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, and the Church of the East--all of which have valid sacraments and holy orders, all of which are "Sister Churches" to those in the Catholic communion.

Though the divisions which have kept these apart from each other have endured for 1000, and in some cases, 1500 years, theologians on all sides are almost unanimous in agreeing that there are few substantive differences keeping them apart, the most important of which is the definition and exercise of primacy within the Church. Yet even the primacy is not a theological issue, but rather an ecclesiological one deeply conditioned by social and historical factors, not by matters of faith.

Ryan| 8.3.10 @ 4:45PM

I prefer the "small-c" description of "catholic" as "universal" here...but I'm a Protestant.

One holy, catholic, and apostolic church - all believers, everywhere, at every time. Even those of us who are Protestant.

Anyone who acknowledges Christ as Lord - and as the only hope for our sins - is within that circle.

Stuart Koehl| 8.3.10 @ 5:23PM

"One holy, catholic, and apostolic church - all believers, everywhere, at every time. Even those of us who are Protestant."

Surprisingly, the Catholic Church agrees with you. However, Jesus did not form some amorphous, fissiparous aggregation of individual believers, but an Ekklesia--an Assembly of the People of God, to manifest the Kingdom in this world, which it did through its collective worship. As Christ selected twelve men to be his Disciples, and has these later went out into the world as Apostles to spread the Word to the far corners of the world, so they appointed men to take their place, and they others to take their place, down to the present day. Without the structure of the Church, the sacrament of the Church does not exist, and there is no way to ensure that the faith handed to the Disciples is not passed down from generation to generation "without addition, deletion or change".

Ryan| 8.4.10 @ 8:42AM

I disagree.

I don't think that we need the Church "structure" to pass down sacraments and beliefs. Ethiopia is proof of that - a fairly isolated sect of Christianity for much of history developed there with little contact with the West.

If Christians become isolated, God can still be there among them without buildings, and altars, and vestments, and ceremony. The Church isn't a place, nor a structure. It's the body.

Stuart Koehl| 8.4.10 @ 9:10AM

I happen to know the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the Ge'ez Catholic Church pretty well--we have both in the Washington, DC area. Contrary to your assertion, both have elaborate hierarchies, both follow the traditional Alexandrine rite, both have deep roots to the Coptic Church of Alexandria. They are hardly isolated, the Ethiopians looking to the Coptic Patriarch of Alexandria, Pope Shenouda III, as head of their communion (until 1959, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church was a suffragan province of the Great Church of Alexandria), while the Ge'ez Catholics have ties to the Coptic Catholic Church.

At present, the primate of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is Abune Paulos, Patriarch and Catholicos of Ethiopia, with his cathedral see in Addis Ababa.

The much smaller Ge'ez Catholic Church, one of the so-called "uniate" Churches (the term is, however, considered pejorative) was founded in the 1930s as a missionary movement of the Catholic Church. It employs the same rite, language, and theology as the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, but is in communion with the Church of Rome and the other Churches of the Catholic Communion, including the Coptic Catholic Church of Alexandria. It has approximately 500,000 adherents in six dioceses. The present head is Archbishop Berhaneyesus Demerew Souraphiel of Addis Ababa.

Ryan| 8.4.10 @ 11:44AM

See what happens when I assume stuff? I was thinking that the Ethiopian church had been somewhat isolated throughout the Middle Ages from the West, but the East looks like a different matter. Stupid western civ. Prester John and all that.

My last paragraph I stand by, though. "If Christians become isolated, God can still be there among them without buildings, and altars, and vestments, and ceremony. The Church isn't a place, nor a structure. It's the body. "

Sheesh.

Gesundheit, by the way.

Stuart Koehl| 8.4.10 @ 5:57PM

I agree with you about the superfluousness of buildings, fancy altars, and vestments, but not about the irrelevance of the organizational Church. I will give as an example the Eastern Churches under Soviet domination, who were stripped of buildings, books, schools, and most of their clergy (shot or sent to the GULAG).

Despite this, the Church survived, because enough bishops and priests survived to provide a focus of unity and to provide pastoral and sacramental care, even if this had to be done covertly, in metaphorical catacombs.

But, most of all, the Communists inadvertantly left the Church the one thing it needed, beyond books or buildings, schools, vestments, icons, and plate. It left them the liturgy, which it could not take from them because it was in their heads and their hearts. The liturgy, which is the font and touchstone of all theology, celebrated without books, from the memories of the clergy and the people, not only kept the people rooted in faith, but allowed the transmission of the faith from one generation to the next, so that, when in the fullness of time, the Communists were overthrown, the Church was still there.

Ryan| 8.5.10 @ 8:39AM

I think we may be thinking two different things when we say "organizational church;" I'm more referring to that hierarchical structure with all the trappings.

The Church is simply God's people worshiping together. There IS a more-or-less prescribed hierarchy, but I'm uncertain that there is more prescription than above a local level Biblically.

Stuart Koehl| 8.5.10 @ 2:00PM

Even in the New Testament, there is no "Go It Alone/Do It Yourself" Christianity. Both Paul and Peter are show establishing "ekklesiae", a Greek term meaning "assembly", which was also applied to the Jewish synagogue (another Greek word, meaning assembly).

The Apostles established how the Ekklesia in Jerusalem would be structured. The established the order of deacons (from the Greek diakonia, to serve) to assist in providing services and maintaining order among the faithful. There was a definite hierarchy, with the Twelve at the pinnacle, and three "pillars" standing first among equals within them--Peter, John, and James the Brother of Jesus. The Twelve collectively make decisions, but the opinion of the Pillars carries particular weight. When Saul of Tarsus is converted, it is to the Pillars of the Jerusalem Church that he turns for instruction. When Peter and John leave Jerusalem, James becomes, in effect, the sole Episkopos, or overseer, of that Church. This is another synagogue title, which referred to the man responsible for maintaining order within the assembly--usually the senior elder (presbyteros). Note that in the early Church, the two terms are used interchangeably, the episkopos being the senior presbyteros in the local Church.

When Peter has a vision regarding the waiving of purity laws for gentile converts, he goes to Jerusalem, and there the matter is discussed, with James, as Episkopos, making the final decision.

When Paul has a vision of being sent forth to the Gentiles, it is again the Jerusalem Church, with James as bishop, that ratifies his mission, and at the same time sends out Peter as Apostle to the Jews.

In other words, right from the beginning, in the New Testament, we have descriptions of both hierarchy and primacy within the primitive Church.

Moreover, as new Churches are founded, both Peter and Paul establish similar hierarchies within them. Paul goes so far as to outline, in his Epistles to Timothy and Titus, the duties of a bishop and how to select one. Futhermore, one of Paul's most vexing problems was the refusal of his congregations to follow the authority of the bishops and elders he left behind in his stead. Rather, they broke into factions behind charismatic leaders, and preferred those who demonstrated the gifts of prophesy and tongues over the ministers which Paul had selected as their teachers and shepherds. Again, both hierarchy and primacy, this time on the regional and local levels.

The martyr Ignatios, Bishop of Antioch, who died in the arena no later than 117, knew several of the Apostles including Peter and John, wrote seven extent epistles that give us insights into the life and organization of the Church at the end of the first Christian century.

Ignatios describes the Church as being a Eucharistic society: the life of the Church revolves around the commemoration of Christ's death and resurrection on the Cross through the reception of consecrated Bread and Wine, which are described in such manner as to make plain that they are truly his Body and Blood. The Church is therefore made manifest in the celebration of the Eucharist by the bishop, so that Ignatios can say, "Where the Eucharist is, there is the Catholic Church", and "Where the bishop is, there is the Catholic Church".

Ignatios assumes that there is a sole bishop in each city, chosen from among the presbyters and deacons of that local Church, and ordained by the bishops of neighboring cities. Bishops definitely rank above presbyters, and are responsible not only for the celebration of the Liturgy (presbyters were eventually delegated to do this as the Church expanded beyond a single congregation in each city), the administration of baptism and other sacraments (including the ordination of deacons and presbyters), the resolution of disputes, the teaching of doctrine, and the insurance of its purity.

That this situation had pertained for some time prior to the time Ignatios wrote is clear from the way he assumes what he writes is normative everywhere, and that no controversy developed around his work. Ignatios is describing not merely the Church of his time, but for quite some time earlier, as well.

At the same time, in Rome, Clement, one of the bishops of Rome (Rome, a very large city, apparently had several congregations, each headed by a bishop; though he is often called a "Pope", that's anachronistic: the Churches of Rome only merged into a single entity several decades later), writes on behalf of the Church of Rome to the Church of Corinth (the one that gave Paul so much heartburn), where a dispute had arisen over--what else?--the matter of authority. Seems that the congregation did not like the bishop and presbyters they had, and tossed them out in order to elect new ones. The incumbent ministers wrote to the Church of Rome, because, as a Church founded by St. Paul, they looked to the Church of Rome (considered THE Church of both Peter AND Paul) to be their "Mother Church", the source of pastoral guidance. Clement's First Epistle (which is considered genuine, and was for quite some time part of the canon of Scripture in many local Churches) rebukes the Corinthians for their rebellion and urges them to return to the path of obedience to their rightful bishop and his presbyters.

So here, before the end of the first century, we see at the opposite end of the Empire, both hierarchy and primacy--in this case, the primacy of the Church of Rome over a daughter Church. Note that it is not a juridical primacy, but one of authority: just as a good son listens to his mother not because she has any legal power over him, a good Church listens to her mother out of love and filial piety.

To summarize, even in the New Testament, we see the development of both a formal hierarchy and a sense of primacy, which is amplified and elaborated in the decades after the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. We see primacy exercised on the local level (by the bishop), on the regional level (by major Apostolic Churches like Antioch and Rome) and on the universal level (by the Church of Jerusalem). By the end of the first century, everything is in place, and the fundamental structure of the Church has remained unchanged since then.

There is an old saying in the Orthodox Church that every man condemns himself, but that no man is saved by himself. The Church is more than an amorphous group of believers, it is a physical community, with a structure, a hierarchy, and a set body of teachings which it uses both for spiritual enlightenment and to maintain good order within the congregation. Moreover, all of these communities exist within a communion of other communities that share a unity of faith and love. And the leadership of the community is chosen through a laying on of hands by the leaders of the community, who in turn got it from their predecessors in an unbroken chain going back to the Apostles, which is considered to be the means of ensuring that the Tradition, the Deposit of Faith, is passed on accurately and without error.

Without these, there is no Church, which is why the Catholic Church reserves the name of Church only to those bodies which have (a) maintained an unbroken line of apostolic succession; and (b) has maintained the Tradition in its fullness. It's a pretty exclusive club: aside from the Churches of the Catholic communion (the Church of Rome and the 22 Eastern Catholic Churches), it includes only the Eastern Orthodox Churches, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, and the Church of the East (some would add the Polish National Church and the Old Catholic Church of Utrecht, but these have deviated so much from the Tradition in recent years it is not clear they still qualify).

All other Christian groups--that is to say, all the Protestants--are described not as Churches but as "ecclesial communities", on account of not having maintained apostolic succession and/or having rejected aspects of the Tradition to a greater or lesser extent.

The Orthodox are a little more rigorous, acknowledging that only the Orthodox Churches are in fact true Churches (some extend this to the Oriental Orthodox), that the Catholic Churches might be true Churches, and that the Protestant denomination just ain't. As is sometimes said, "We know where the Church IS, but we cannot say where it is NOT".

David in Miami| 8.3.10 @ 10:28AM

I grew up as an Episcopalian and a Democrat until Ronald Reagan came to lead us. I was an altar boy, participated in Episcopal Young Churchmen and served the church as young men do . The church grew more in tune with social ideas, where ever there was four Episcopalians there's a FIFTH, and left the golden rules and soul saving out of their priorities. I wondered off with out a church for a long time but it was the church, just like the Democrats that left me. My values and beliefs were strongly held after all.
When I first heard some one say " Liberalism is a mental disorder" I thought that was harsh and radical. How ever seeing the damage that liberals have done to my church, colleges, national institutions , freedoms and the transformation of the Democratic Party into the international socialist redistribution of other people's money party , I'm feeling more and more that the author was understating things.

Jeremiah| 8.3.10 @ 10:37AM

The key to this piece - and the problem with so-called mainstream Protestantism lies in Tooley's observation of former Episcopal Bishop James Pike:

"...Pike urged a "theological revolution" to make the Gospel "relevant," which entailed junking "myths" of past centuries, like the Virgin Birth and the Trinity, which were "unintelligible..."

'Mainstream' Protestants simply don't believe in God at all. It's baffling to me why anyone would want to devote their lives to what they believe to be a lie, even if they believe it to be a soothing lie. But there it is. The 'mainstream' does not believe in the virgin birth, the Trinity, the divinity of God or the resurrection. Functionally, they are not Christian at all, but use the vocabulary of Christianity to promote a mushy, mindless sort of pantheism. Bizarre.

On this site we have occasionally bruising battles - arguments conducted with verbal crowbars between Protestant Fundamentalists and Orthodox Catholics. As wrong as I sometimes think my antagonists in those arguments are, I am always mindful that they believe that God is actually...God. I can have a heated argument with them because we start from the same premise. God reigns and His law binds us. Our struggle is over properly understanding what His law is, but we agree implicitly that it is serious and binding. Why would I bother to argue about Christian doctrine with people who are only giving lip service to its primacy?

The 'mainstream' thinks the Blood of Christ has gone anemic. It has not. It is the anemia of their numbers that has deceived them - an anemia arising from their failure to believe in the power of the Blood of Christ.

In our arguments on this site we never have that problem. No matter how heated our arguments JP, Margie, KyMouse and I all agree on the power and vitality of the Blood of Christ

Ryan| 8.3.10 @ 11:31AM

What about me? What about Ryan?

Heh.

Anyway, I heartily agree with you here - particularly the 2nd and 3rd paragraph.

The Gospel is ALWAYS relevant as long as there is sin in the world.

Jeremiah| 8.3.10 @ 1:23PM

Ha ha, Ryan...I thought immediately after I posted this that, hey, I forgot Ryan - and he always adds something important to the conversation. Sorry my brother in Christ (or at least my cousin - we are not separated by much).

Siegfried X| 8.3.10 @ 3:49PM

"It's baffling to me why anyone would want to devote their lives to what they believe to be a lie,"

It is strange, isn't it? They usually say something like "Well, I believe that Jesus was a great teacher". But no one goes to worship services for great human teachers like Plato and Aristotle.

The only truthful answer is that the mainline churches exist to damage the real church, to bleed people and money away from it. False prophets.

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.4.10 @ 10:27AM

Read the New Testament. Any "church" that does the things that you mention above is NOT the true church. Jesus said it best, Luke 6:46 "But why do you call Me 'Lord, Lord,' and not do the things which I say?

Stuart Koehl| 8.3.10 @ 10:38AM

Other than anti-Romanism, just what is it, precisely, that theologically distinguishes "traditional Anglicanism", "continuing Anglicanism" and "Anglo-Catholicism" from the Western strain of Catholicism, and what is it, precisely, that justifies maintaining a division between these Anglican groups and the Church of Rome?

Siegfried X| 8.3.10 @ 4:43PM

Some of the Protestant differences with the Roman Catholic position are:

Use of the bible alone (sola scriptura) vs. the authority of the Roman Catholic Church

Infallibility of the Pope

Devotion / prayer / worship of the Virgin Mary and the Saints

Various non-biblical titles and doctrines about the Virgin Mary

Non-biblical doctrines and rules like purgatory, mortal vs. venial sin, and indulgences

Prayers for the dead
-----------

Some of these are show-stoppers which make a union with the Roman Catholic church permanently impossible. For example many Protestants would choose martyrdom rather than being forced to pray to someone besides God, like Mary or the other saints.

Mandatory clerical celibacy

Stuart Koehl| 8.3.10 @ 5:42PM

"Use of the bible alone (sola scriptura) vs. the authority of the Roman Catholic Church"

I think we have already put to bed the notion that Sola Scriptura has any epistemological legs, but that aside, the Anglicans retained their own magisterial authority, even if they tended to ignore it when it became inconvenient. Also, there is no "authority of the Roman Catholic Church", because the Church of Rome is just one of many Churches within the Catholic communion, all of which are autonomous and follow their own unique Traditions.

"Infallibility of the Pope"

Infallibility remains an issue, but largely a moot one, since it has only been used once, and will never actually be used again. As such, it is very much a red herring--one reason I wouldn't mind seeing it go.

"Devotion / prayer / worship of the Virgin Mary and the Saints"

Aside from the fact that neither Catholics nor Orthodox "worship" Mary or the Saints (rather, we ask for their intercession on our behalf), Anglicans have all these things, and Luther himself was quite devoted to the Mother of God (or the Most Holy Theotokos, as we like to call her).

"Various non-biblical titles and doctrines about the Virgin Mary"

What will you do about all those non-biblical titles for Jesus, one wonders? Not to mention all the non-biblical practices to be found throughout the Protestant continuum?

"Non-biblical doctrines and rules like purgatory, mortal vs. venial sin, and indulgences"

Would one be surprised to learn that such doctrines are perfectly legitimate developments of the Western Church, but that those who belong to the Eastern Catholic Churches are under no obligation to believe in purgatory, or to use categories such as venial and mortal sins (in practice, Protestants have their own way of classifying such things), and that indulgences are not practiced in the Eastern Catholic Churches?

That said, the Eastern Orthodox Churches have devotion to the Theotokos that puts Latin mariology in the shade (ever been to an Akathistos service, or been present for the Feast of the Dormtion of Mary?)--and the Latins got most of this from us.

Prayers for the dead, likewise, can be found in the earliest stratum of Christian worship, and form an integral part of Eastern Orthodox spirituality as well. We may not have codified everything the way the Latins have, but our beliefs are effectively identical, and though the Orthodox Church has evolved over the centuries, the fundamentals of its beliefs and worship have not changed.

On mandatory clerical celibacy, I note with interest that there are more than 100 married Latin priests in the U.S. alone, and this number may grow significantly thanks to the creation of Anglican Use Ordinariates through which married Anglican priests can be ordained in the Latin Church.

The Eastern Catholic Churches follow the same discipline as the Eastern Orthodox Churches; i.e., there are both married (secular) and celibate (monastic) presbyters. Married men may be ordained, but ordained men may not marry (or remarry). Such has been the Tradition of the Church since its inception.

All told, your list shows a serious ignorance of Catholic doctrine and praxis. Only one item is substantive--the matter of papal primacy. Most of the rest is either a mistatement of the Catholic position or an endorsement of Protestant practices that cannot trace their origins back past the 16th century. Add to that, most of them are pretty trivial, and do not involve fundamental matters of faith.

Finally, I suggest you read what I wrote: I was speaking specifically of the "traditional Anglican", "continuing Anglican" and "Anglo-Catholic" movements within the Anglican communion, all of whom engage in most of these dreaded "Popish" practices.

I still want to know the substantive theological reasons, given the affinity of worship and spirituality shared by these high church Anglicans and the Roman Catholics, that they refuse to take the logical step and become Roman Catholics--which they are in all but name (most are more Catholic than the majority of Roman Catholics). They have far more in common with Roman Catholics than they do with Evangelicals, and many Anglicans have no problem joining the Western Rite Vicariate of the Antiochian Orthodox Church (which is Roman Catholicism without the Pope), so I can only ascribe it to a reflexive and visceral anti-Catholicism.

John Pack Lambert| 8.6.10 @ 10:41PM

Equally interesting is why the groups that call for overthrowing the hierarchy and claim to be ordaining "women priests" still try to claim being Roman Catholics.

Your whole argument ignores the existence of the Old Catholics.

What ever the doctrine of Papal infalibility is, it is objected to by Old Catholics and not acceptable to continuing Anglicans. This is not "anti-Catholic bias" but a different interpretation.

Another issue that seperates all Anglicans from the Catholic Church is married clergy. True, there are various types of married clergy in the Catholic Church, but very few if any acceptances of married bishops. Anglicans have had married bishops from Crammer on down. Married clergy may not be an insurmountable barrier, but it would be difficult.

Post Vatican-II the differences of conservative Anglicans and Roman Catholics have been a lot less, with vernacular service no longer one of them.

Considering how many Anglicans, from Cardinal Newman to Elizabeth Ann Seton to many who have commented her, have become Roman Catholics, it is clear that the seperation is not that great. The allowance of ordained Episcopalians to beome Catholic priests and still be married, and the post-Vatican II married Diaconate also mean that the differences are lower than they were in 1960, but as both my named Anglican converts come from the 19th-century it is clear that the flow of Anglicans to Catholicism has a long history.

Jeremiah| 8.3.10 @ 6:02PM

Reasonably good list, Siegfried, but a couple of quick points of clarification.

Though some Catholics abuse it and don't understand it, the Church brroks worship of none but God alone. Worship of anyone else is forbidden. Catholics should properly venerate the saints, but our prayers to them are merely asking them to pray for us. We regard the communion of the saints as extending to all who are in God's presence and so it is good to ask a saint to pray for us as it is to ask any other friend. I certainly do not attribute bad faith to you in writing that we 'worship' Mary. I have corrected enough Catholics on the matter to know that it is perfectly reasonable that you might mistakenly think that is the Church's actual position.

As for the infallibility of the pope, the doctrine is not at all what most people (including Catholics) think it is. A pope may sin often (and many have, he may write terrible theology (and many have).

I used to ask classes that I taught this question: If the pope were infallible in mathematics and were presented 100 mathematical questions, how many would he be guaranteed to get right?

I don't think anyone ever gave me the right answer, which is zero. Most said 100. But as I would explain, what the pope would be guaranteed under the circumstances is that he would get no questions wrong, not that he would get any right. He might just have to be silent.

Infallibility only applies when the pope is speaking on a matter of faith and morals binding on the whole church - and when he specifically proclaims that he is speaking from the throne of Peter - that is definitively defining doctrine. The doctrine of infallibility maintains that the pope will be prevented from propounding error under these specific circumstances.

I would usually follow that up by noting that popes rarely use that gift - and almost always only to settle disputes that have arisen. Let us say we all were very primitive in matters of mathematics. For ages, the Church has assumed that 2 + 2 = 4. But along comes one who teaches that, to the contrary, 2 = 2 = 22. For a time, controversy rages within the Church. Finally the pope exercises his infallible authority and declares it to equal 4. It does not do so because he said so; rather, he was prevented from propounding error.

Catholics get this wrong all the time. Many say we are "obliged to believe" what is taught infallibly. The correct formulation is that we are priveleged to know with certainty - on those very few matters the popes have spoken infallibly on.

Then a minor quibble. Though Catholics believe that Scripture and the Magisterium are twin pillars of our faith (and never incontradiction of each other) there is a Biblical basis for both purgatory and for mortal vs. venial sin.

I won't go into purgatory right now - too long, but in 1 John 5:17 it says "All unrighteousness is sin: but there is a sin not unto death." (KJV) or "All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that is not deadly." (NAM) If there is sin that is not deadly, as both the King James and the Catholic Bible, attest, then the existence of mortal (deadly) and venial (non-deadly) sin should not be a matter of controversy between us.

Stuart Koehl| 8.3.10 @ 6:17PM

"I used to ask classes that I taught this question: If the pope were infallible in mathematics and were presented 100 mathematical questions, how many would he be guaranteed to get right?

Alas, the historian in me must point out that even as you defined it, the doctrine had no factual legs, since not one, but several Popes were condemned for heresy (Liberius, Vigilius and Honorius), and the condemnation of the latter was entered into a Synodikon (Symbol of Faith) which every new Pope read and affirmed upon his election for something like six hundred years. This was pointed out by the infalliblist minority at Vatican I, but since that game was rigged from the beginning, they did not get a fair hearing. None of the Catholic apologetics for Honorius that I have seen or heard have ever successfully refuted the overwhelming historical evidence of papal error in doctrine.

Jeremiah| 8.3.10 @ 7:34PM

I covered that, Stuart, though I know it is a fine point that many don't catch right off. In the same post you quote I wrote that many popes have written very bad theology. Perhaps my example didn't emphasize the distinction clearly enough.

Here is another example (though imperfect, also as I will explain). Imagine a judge. When he is not sitting on the bench he may propound all sorts of nonsense and it has no binding effect. When he is on the bench, acting at trial, he is called to follow the law and his rulings have the force of law. (This example fails in today's climate because so many judges ignore their duty to follow the law and, even the best are prone to error - but his decisions only have force when he is on the bench - not when he is sitting in his living room).

Infallibility only applies when the pope openly proclaims it (by using the word or instructing that a particular teaching is to be received as "defined" doctrine) and when it concerns a matter of faith and morals for the whole church.

Thus, a sitting pope, in his private musings and writings could indeed be guilty of much error, even heresy, and it has nothing to do with the actual doctrine of infallibility.

In truth, knowing as I do the very dicey history of some popes, I considered it a sign of authenticity of the Catholic Church that even the most venal popes did not attempt to contradict defined doctrine nor to loosely play with it. Even they trembled rather than declare some of the nonsense some of them wrote as binding on the whole Church. It surprised me, familiar as I am with the corruptibility of human institutions - but is consonant with the fact that Christ protects His Church, not man.

Stuart Koehl| 8.3.10 @ 9:45PM

I am very familiar with the doctrine of Papal infallibility as expressed in the decree Pastor aeternus of the First Vatican Council. I am also very familiar with the development of the doctrine of papal infallibility, which was unknown prior to the thirteenth century, and then in a very different from than that which it eventually took.

We can leave aside early attempts at papal aggrandizement, such as the Papal Decretals of Gregory VII Hildebrand or Unam Sanctam of Boniface VIII, because (a) neither made any appeal to Papal infallibility and (b) both were rejected by the bulk of the Latin Church at the time. Both Gregory and Boniface might have thought they were infallible, but nobody else did.

The first real attempt to propose a doctrine of papal infallibility arose from the Franciscan spiritualist controversies: the Franciscans, having won precarious papal approval for their movement, wanted to ensure that it was not overturned by subsequent pontiffs, so they proposed that no Pope could overturn any bull, decree or encyclical issued by a predecessor, thus making all papal pronouncements binding and irreversible. Naturally, no Pope in his right mind would countenance such an imposition, and it was quickly rejected and forgotten.

In fact, the whole idea of papal infallibility is forgotten until the second half of the 19th century, in response to the rising tide of nationalism in Europe, and particularly in Italy, which was rapidly eroding the Papacy's secular authority. Infallibility was seen by a number of Latin clerics as a way of elevating papal authority beyond the reach of the secular powers, ensuring the continued relevance of the Holy See against the power of the rising nation-state system.

At the First Vatican Council, at least three factions were in play--the Ultramontanes, who sought a "maximalist" interpretation of infallibility; the moderate infalliblists; and the anti-infalliblists (the last two could be further divided into Western and Eastern bishops.

From the start, the ultramontanes attempted to control the agenda. Delegates were not permitted to introduce their own motions, nor were they free to make spontaneous interventions. In fact, the atmosphere at the council was highly regulated and not conducive to free and open discourse, leading a number of the delegates to question its legitimacy.

As the handwriting appeared on the wall, an increasing number of delegates returned home prior to the final vote on Pastor aeternus; it is not even clear if a functional quorum existed.

After the Decree was passed, Pius IX insisted all the bishops sign a profession of faith supporting Pastor aeternus. Most did, but quite a few managed to absent themselves, and a number managed to avoid signing for the rest of their lives.

One who did sign, eventually, was the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch Grigorios I Yousef. He attempted to leave without signing, but, having been one of the major dissenters at the council, insisting that infallibility would undermine the traditional authority of the other patriarchs, Pius IX had the Papal guard bring him back. And in an audience with the Pope, Grigorios was not only forced to sign, but also forced to kneel before Pius, who put his red buskined foot on the Patriarch's neck, and reproved him with a condescending, "Testa duro!"

The Melkites have not forgotten, and, as the Zoghby Declaration demonstrates, they still vote "Non placet".

Now, what precisely does Pastor aeternus say?

1. That under a particularly narrow set of circumstances, the Pope can declare a particular teaching or doctrine to be indefectible and binding upon the faithful;

2. That in order to make such a decree "ex Cathedra", he must announce that he is doing so; and

3. That such a declaration must be consistent with the prior teachings and mind of the Church.

The Fathers would never accept such an a priori declaration of truth. To say that if the pope meets certain prior conditions what follows must then be binding on the faithful contradicts the entire principle of reception by which the Church had lived for the prior 1800 years. More importantly, by claiming that the Pope had "immediate, ordinary and universal jurisdiction" throughout the entire Church, it eviscerated the notion of regional primacy (as held, e.g., by the Eastern Catholic patriarchs) and drove a much more serious wedge between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

Beyond that, in 1875, the Pope, in response to attempts by the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to bypass the German bishops and deal directly with the Pope on all matters pertaining to the Catholic Church (the details of the Kulturkampf are too complex to discuss here), the Pope issued two letters in which he "clarified" how Pastor aeternus would be implemented.

First, he stated that it in no way interfered with or circumvented the traditional power and prerogatives of the diocesan bishops. Second, he said that before any ex Cathedra statement could be issued, he would determine the mind of the Church by polling the bishops and seeking their moral unanimity.

This is just what Pope Pius XII did when he declared the "dogma" of the Assumption of Mary in 1954--the one and only time an ex Cathedra statement has been made under the conditions of Pastor aeternus.

Those clarifications are the reason no further ex Cathedra declarations have been forthcoming (despite the exhortations of those who see it as a magic wand--or maybe an atomic bomb--for wiping out dissent in the Church). The ecclesiology of communion elevated by Vatican II in Lumen Gentium and Orientalium Ecclesiarum did two things: it elevated the Eastern Catholic Churches from mere "rites" of the Roman Catholic Church to true "ecclesiae sui juris", equal in grace and dignity to each other and to the Church of Rome. Second, it declared that true Churches existed outside the Catholic communion--in particular the Orthodox Churches.

Thus, to issue another ex Cathedra decree, the Pope would have to poll not only the bishops of the Latin Church, but also those of the Eastern Catholic and the Orthodox Churches--and the assent of the latter will never be forthcoming. So the infallible decree is very much like a nuclear weapon--it's only effective if you DON'T use it. it would not surprise me if, over the next decade or so, papal infallibility is "clarified" out of existence, even if not formally repudiated (as, e.g., Pius XII did with the doctrine of the temporal supremacy of the Pope--the power to make or depose secular rulers--back in 1958).

Much more difficult is the matter of universal ordinary jurisdiction, which treads much too blatantly upon the autonomy of the Eastern Churches, both Orthodox and Catholic. Here I have been told by very sympathetic Orthodox theologians and hierarchs that, despite the Orthodox distaste for such things, they would have to insist upon a clear-cut juridical definition of the conditions under which the Pope could intervene in the internal affairs of another Church.

All of this may already be moot. I call your attention to the Ravenna Statement of the Joint Orthodox-Catholic International Theological Commission, which examined the nature of primacy in the Church from the first millennium to the present day. In Sections 35-39, it speaks of ecumenical councils as being the principal means by which disputes within the Church were resolved, on the use of reception to determine whether a particular council was truly ecumenical and binding (vs. meeting a set of juridical conditions), and that the participation or acceptance of all Churches is needed for a Council to be ecumenical. Finally, it notes that, despite the inability of the Churches to meet universally, both East and West continued to hold general synods, which the Western Church called ecumenical. The gist is clear: only the first seven councils are truly ecumenical and universally binding; all other councils are local and remain local until received by the rest of the Churches. Put simply, every so-called ecumenical council since Second Nicaea is simply a general council of the Church in the West, and is binding on nobody else.

That should be interesting, given that the Holy See has endorsed the Ravenna Statement. I cannot believe as careful a theologian as Benedict XVI does not understand the import of what he wrote. After all, this is the man who said, first in a speech at Graz in 1976, then in his 1985 book "Introduction to Catholic Theology":

"All that the Catholic Church can demand of the Orthodox [regarding the primacy] is that which was believed and lived by the undivided Church of the first millennium".

Regarding your assertion that no Pope has ever issued a decree that was theologically in error, I beg to differ. Honorius in particular endorsed the monothelite heresy, and was anathematized by the Third Council of Constantinople in 680 (the Sixth Ecumenical Council):

"And with these we define that there shall be expelled from the holy Church of God and anathematized Honorius who was sometime Pope of Old Rome, because of what we found written by him to Sergeius [Patriarch of Constantinople], that in all respects he followed his view, and confirmed his impious doctrines" (13th Session).

In other words, Honorius not only privately endorsed the monothelite heresy, he wrote formally as Pope of Old Rome to the Patriarch of New Rome endorsing that belief. To say that no "dogmatic" document went out under his name is casuistry and anachronistically applies to the 7th century Church processes which did not emerge until the second millennium.

But just to drive the nails home harder, the 16th Session of the Council declared, "To Theodore of Pheran, the heretic, anathema! To Sergeius the heretic, anathema! To Cyrus, the heretic, anathema! To Honorius the heretic, anathema! To Pyrrhus the heretic, anathema!"

These anathemas were ratified by Pope Leo II, and every Pope from then until well into the eleventh century had to read and confirm that anathema.

The notion that the personal charism of the Pope of Rome protects the Catholic Church from error has no foundation.

The Church is infallible as a sacrament of the Kingdom of God. But no man is infallible, no matter what his rank, his dignity or his position. The Pope is infallible when he speaks the truth, and one cannot determine whether he speaks the truth until we have heard what he has to say and tested it against the spirits. If what he has spoken is received by the Body of Christ, it is infallible, but not before.

Besides, if the Pope truly were infallible, this would be self-evident, and there would be no reason to say so. It is precisely because he is not that the claim had to be made.

But the Petrine Ministry exists to serve the Church, and not the Church to exalt the Petrine Ministry. The heir of Peter is to strengthen the brethren in unity and faith, and to do that the way in which the ministry has been defined and exercised has changed many times in history. Whenever it becomes an impediment to unity, rather than a bulwark of unity, it is the papacy that must change, and thus we come to Pope John Paul II's plea, in his Encyclical Ut Unum Sint, that the whole body of Christ work with him to find a new modality of defining and exercising the primacy which will be acceptable to all.

I find it one of the most disappointing developments of the post-conciliar era that the Orthodox Churches, having finally attained what they claimed they wanted all along--that Papal prerogatives be placed upon the table without preconditions--balk at taking up the challenge, but instead put forward an increasingly weak series of objections grounded in secondary and tertiary matters.

Jeremiah| 8.3.10 @ 11:49PM

Stuart, I regret that I so obviously hit a nerve with you. This is a secular site that graciously takes Christianity seriously and allows others who do the same to engage in comments and debate. I was not intending to discuss the debates and controversy surrounding the propagation of the doctrine of infallibility, nor do I intend to go into a detailed discussion of other historical issues here. I just don't think it is the place.

Rather, I see this as a place where we can forge some ecumenical Christian ties and foster some understanding. I doubt I am going to persuade, say, Ryan, to become a Catholic nor that he is going to persuade me to be a Protestant. Actually, I don't think either of us is particularly concerned about that. But it is helpful to know what he actually believes rather than what some anti-Christian bigot caricatures his beliefs as. Similarly, I think it is helpful for him to know what Catholics actually teach rather than what some anti-Catholic smear says.

Do you not detect a growing regard on these boards among Christians of all stripes for the authentic Christianity we share in our divided traditions? In these times when dark forces are growing increasingly hostile to ANY Christians who actually believe God is God, I can think of few things as important as the common cause I believe we must champion together.

You are obviously learned. Perhaps we have crossed swords in some other, more traditional Catholic or intellectual journals. Could we agree to confine our disputes over more arcane points to those venues and respect this site for the more straightforward role it is playing?

I was speaking to a priest I both consult and advise on some matters. He is considered one of the most promising upcoming theologians and philosophers in the world today. He was bemoaning to me that his style is so much less accessible than mine. I chuckled and noted we each have our gifts - and that his is the food that people like me must digest in order to write frothier pieces that boil it down. But I could not do what he does, writing incredibly dense, meticulously researched and reasoned pieces on very specific aspects of the faith. Without his charism (and others like it) I would be sterile. Without mine (and others like it) he would be preaching to a very narrow audience, indeed.

So with respect to your obvious erudition, let us please value this site for what it is and not chase people away with arcane arguments better confined to specialty journals. I have come to love this site for its candid, often heated, but heartfelt debates - and for the warm glow of understanding and mutual respect that is growing visibly. I jokingly referred to Ryan earlier as my cousin in Christ, but I wasn't actually joking. How we are growing together here - and I have to believe our Lord is pleased that so many of us are seeing Christ in our neighbor - including those neighbors with whom we have some substantial disagreements.

Ryan| 8.4.10 @ 8:53AM

But...but...I LIKE these occasionally long reads here.

Actually, I think this isn't a bad place to engage, as it's not confined to a religious forum, and there's a little more ecumenical presence.

Besides, punching trolls can be fun. Occasionally.

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.4.10 @ 10:43AM

Once again I might plead for you to read the New Testament. There is no position of Pope mentioned in the N.T.. No one person is infallable. Romans 3:23 "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," pas = individually a) each, every, any, all, the whole, everyone, all things, everything.

Was Peter Pope?*
The biblical description of the apostle Peter, as compared to that of the Roman pontiff, is like contrasting daylight with darkness. Consider the following factors:

(1) The Roman Church considers the state of celibacy to be a holier status than that of matrimony; hence, the pope cannot be married. Clearly, though, Peter was a married man.

Matthew records an instance where the Lord healed the apostle’s mother-in-law (8:14). And in a defense of his apostleship, Paul once said that he had as much right to have a wife as Cephas (Peter) did (1 Corinthians 9:5).

Additionally, Peter was an elder (1 Peter 5:1), which means that he was also a husband (1 Timothy 3:2).

(2) A survey of the news coverage of the pope’s activities revealed how very desirous he is of human adulation. People bow before him, he extends his hand for kisses, etc.

By way of vivid contrast, when the centurion, Cornelius, fell at Peter’s feet to worship, the apostle rebuked him thusly: “Stand up; I myself also am a man” (Acts 10:26). Not only was Peter not given to inordinate adoration, when he sinned by hypocritically refusing to fellowship Gentiles, he was openly rebuked to his face by Paul (Galatians 2:11ff).

(3) There is a great deal of information about the travels of Peter as his apostolic activity took him from place to place. And yet, there is not one line in the New Testament which suggests that he was ever in the city of Rome, much less exercising the authority of the church in that community.

Consider this: when Paul penned his epistle to the saints in the city of Rome (ca. A.D. 56—perhaps more than a score of years after the church was established there), though he sent personal greetings to and mentioned more than twenty people (Romans 16), he never once referred to the “Holy Father,” who was supposedly occupying the papal chair in that city. A strange circumstance indeed if the claims of Catholicism are true.

Moreover, toward the end of his ministry, Paul spent two years under house arrest in Rome. How odd that the divine record (Acts 28) makes no mention of any association with the “pope.” This is especially significant in light of the fact that inspiration mentions a brief, fifteen-day trip that Paul made to Jerusalem during which time he saw Peter (Galatians 1:18). And yet, two years in the same city with the “pontiff” and not a word about it!

(4) About twenty years after the establishment of the church, a controversy arose regarding circumcision. Would Gentiles be obligated to receive this ordinance in conjunction with their acceptance of Christianity?

A council was convened in Jerusalem to discuss the matter. Had Peter been pope, surely he would have presided over this affair; but he did not. James was the leading figure; Peter was merely a testifying witness (Acts 15).

There is simply no evidence at all that Peter was ever recognized as a pope. As a matter of fact, the term “pope” is not even in the New Testament!
* Jackson

A local congregation is to have its own elders (bishops, shepherd) and deacons.

Stuart Koehl| 8.4.10 @ 5:59PM

Not quite as good as Jack Chick, Kevin.

Siegfried X| 8.4.10 @ 8:51AM

The reality is that some Christians _DO_ worship Mary. Just like some Orthodox Christians _DO_ worship their icons, even though the official church line is that they are just art work. What do you call it when a dying Christian says nothing but Hail Mary prayers?

We have the privilege of praying directly to God, so praying to anyone else, a human being, is automatically sinful. It's blasphemous and insulting to God. How does a Catholic decide when praying to God and Jesus isn't enough, so he has to pray to Mary and the saints instead?

According to the Bible, Mary is just another Christian mother. There is no reason to pray for her or pay attention to her at all. The bible doesn't. Jesus was once told that his mother and family was waiting for him, and he said that the crowds were his mother and family. That's what Martin Luther thought too, which is what his church teaches and practices now. I know that as someone born and raised Lutheran.

Rather all the Mariology was added by some early churches to lure pagans into the Christian churches, by using Mary as their pagan goddess, and giving her the same titles. The same thing was done with the saints, that pagan gods were equated with Christian saints so that pagan converts to Christianity didn't have to give anything up. This is well documented in history books. Also, some of the early Catholic churches like the Nestorians rebelled at the Mary worship, and wouldn't use Theotokos.

Any prayers to Mary or the saints are an absolute reason not to join a Catholic church by Protestants. As I said before, many would rather be martyed than pray to Mary or the saints, anyone but God.

Siegfried X| 8.4.10 @ 9:11AM

If Christians say that they are not worshipping Mary and the saints, then I believe they are saying the truth, and that is really what THEY believe.

But to a lot of us, including me, praying to any human being _IS_ worshipping them. Just like New Testament Christians saw it, choosing martyrdom rather than praying to the Roman Emperor. Any Christian who bow or curtseys to a religious figure _IS_ worshipping them. Inventing non-biblical titles like Star of the Sea is worshipping that person.

If a law were passed that we had to bow and pray to the President of the United States, as "God's Secular Ruler" and "God's Champion of Freedom", would you be ok with that as long as we were told that we weren't worshipping him but were just asking him to intercede with God?

Jeremiah| 8.4.10 @ 10:36AM

Stuart. I was not trying to persuade you to agree with the practice, just explaining what the practice properly is. Please be careful, because if you ever ask friends to pray for you, your comments here condemn yourself.

Now to say the Bible treats Mary as a nonentity simply isn't true. Gabriel's first words to her are, "Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.." (KJV)

Then there is the Magnificat. Speaking under the inspiration fo the Holy Spirit Mary says, "My soul doth magnify the Lord....henceforth all generations shall call me blessed..." Luke 1:46-55 . Ah, but the Bible and the Holy Spirit must have been wrong about this, eh, for there is a whole generation of Christians who say there is 'no reason to pay attention to her at all.'

At the manifestation at Cana, when Mary tells Jesus they need wine, he responds, "Woman, why does that concern me. My hour is not yet come." Mary does not even respond to him, just turns to the servants and tells them to do what her son says. How astonishing...when Jesus says His hour has not yet come and His mother tells Him it has, it has. He gets up and gets to it. And you are going to tell me Jesus treated his mother with contempt and indifference, Siegfried?

Mary and John at the foot of the cross. Jesus looks at them and tells John to treat Mary as his own mother now and Mary to treat John as her own son now.

Siegfried, I hope you will ponder this very carefully. It takes an extremely selective, almost blind reading, to maintain that the Bible treats Mary as just another woman. I believe our Lord is offended by many things in us, but that nothing so offends Him as the general contempt and indifference with which so many who call themselves Christians, treat His Mother.

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.4.10 @ 11:35AM

*“Why do some religions place such great attention upon Mary, the mother of Jesus? Is this justified?”

Mary was a Hebrew maiden who was chosen to be the mother of Jesus Christ. Her miraculous conception of the Savior was prophesied in the Old Testament (Isaiah 7:14; cf. Matthew 1:22-23).

Mary certainly was worthy of honor as a godly Jewish woman (see Matthew 1:16ff; Luke 1:27ff; John 19:25ff), but the cult-like superstition that has evolved regarding her across the centuries, promoted principally by the Roman Catholic Church, is entirely foreign to the Scriptures. Several false doctrines related to Mary are a part of Catholic dogma.

1.Catholicism alleges that Mary remained a virgin perpetually. She did not (Matthew 1:25; 12:46; 13:55-56; John 2:12). The notion that “virginity” is somehow a holier state than a godly marriage reflects a misguided perception that is contrary to the explicit testimony of the New Testament (1 Timothy 4:1ff; Hebrews 13:4).
2.Catholics maintain that Mary was conceived “immaculately,” i.e., free from “original sin,” and that she remained sinless forever. The dogma is not true. First, no one is born with “original sin” (Ezekiel 18:20). Second, Mary confessed her need of a Savior (Luke 1:47), thus acknowledging her sinfulness.
3.Catholicism alleges that when Mary died, her body experienced no corruption; rather, three days following her demise, she was taken bodily into heaven, there to be crowned “Queen of Heaven.” Though Catholic writers concede that this teaching “cannot be proved from the Bible,” it became official dogma (that Catholics must believe) on November 1, 1950 — far too late to be apostolic in origin.
4.Catholic doctrine teaches that Mary is a “Mediatrix,” between
Christians and Christ, and that she is the “dispenser of graces” by the power of the Holy Spirit — based upon the merits of her crucified Son. No such position is sanctioned in the New Testament. Christ is the “one mediator” between God and man (1 Timothy 2:5).
5.The Roman Church also advocates the notion that Mary is a “co-redeemer” with Christ. Such an assertion is blasphemous. Jesus is the exclusive way to the Father (John 14:6; cf. Acts 4:11-12).
It is a tragedy of no small magnitude that the clergy of the Catholic religion has so corrupted the original teaching of the New Testament. Alas, such apostasy was foretold vividly in scripture (2 Thessalonians 2:1ff; 1 Timothy 4:1ff; 2 Timothy 4:1ff).

*Jackson

Ryan| 8.4.10 @ 11:39AM

I don't go as far as Siegfried in my objection to Marianism, I just see it as impractical.

Yes, Mary was highly favored - she was truly blessed; but the Bible isn't about Mary. It's about Christ's redemptive work on the Cross. It's about Christ's answer for my sin.

The other side is that Christ commands us to pray "Our Father.." I get the matter that Catholics believe that we can ask deceased Saints to pray for us as fellow believers; it's just that it appears to non-Catholic eyes that the expectation is for those Saints - not God - to answer our prayer. It just...complicates things.

Siegfried X| 8.4.10 @ 1:35PM

"Blessed" just means that she was lucky. A mother was needed and Mary was fortunate to be the chosen one. It doesn't mean that she is better than anyone or did anything to deserve it.

If a ship sank and I were the sole survivor, then some fellow Christians would say that I was "lucky" or "blessed" and that I was "highly favored" because at that moment the Lord was with me. That would be true, but it wouldn't mean that I was better than anyone else or that I was a saint. It would just mean that God decided to shine wholly undeserved mercy on me.

So Mary didn't do anything to deserve being the mother of Jesus. I do give her credit for her own accomplishments, being a Christian mother, and being a faithful disciple to Jesus in various situations. So I view Mary as being as worthy as other Christian mothers, and as worthy as the other (female) disciples who were loyal to Jesus in the same dangerous situations. However, none of that comes anywhere near what the Catholic churches have made Mary out to be.

These are the verses which I was referring to:
31 Then His mother and His brothers came, and standing outside, they sent word to Him and called Him.
32 A crowd was sitting around Him and told Him, "Look, Your mother, Your brothers, and Your sisters are outside asking for You."
33 He replied to them, "Who are My mother and My brothers?"
34 And looking about at those who were sitting in a circle around Him, He said, "Here are My mother and My brothers!
35 Whoever does the will of God is My brother and sister and mother."
(Mark 3:31-35)

Siegfried X| 8.4.10 @ 1:42PM

The above is an example of why sola scriptura is so important, because the Catholic churches have totally distorted and ignored the words of Jesus. In those verses Jesus specifically tells us not to venerate his family, including his mother. Yet the Catholic churches do it any way, even using terms like "the Queen of Heaven" which God condemned to Jeremiah in the Old Testament.

And Jesus saying that he had brothers proves that Mary wasn't a virgin her entire life, and yet the Catholic churches ignore that too.

Stuart Koehl| 8.4.10 @ 5:59PM

You meant Sigfried. I'm on your side.

Petronius| 8.3.10 @ 10:45AM

There's a line spoken by Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons in the course of defending his faith. (if memory serves)
"It matters not that I believe it, but that I Believe It."
I take that to mean that if one does not choose acceptance of that faith on one's own as laid down, what value is in that belief? This was never on the minds of either the reformers or the inquisitors in the 16th century when HRM, Henry, the VIII of that name sent More and Fisher to the block and founded the C of E with the hapless Cranmer as his lackey of the See of Canterbury. (Later, he was burned by Queen Mary).
With more havoc to come during the 30 Years War and English Civil Warre, the fallout from both has been the discovery by ordinary people that churches have doors. Where once they were captives kept on short leashes by the civil authority of the clergy, they now had to engage faith.
So today we don't get tagged as in the past. But we are "It". We make our churches what they are.
And most of us want a church community that accepts us on our own terms. Can anybody call that a church? It is a litter box decorated with crosses and statuary. Thomas More speaks again:
"If one wishes to meet one's brother in Christ, in Cheapside Senor, he needs but to open a window and empty a chamberpot."
There are a few truly Holy people out there who are His embodiment to all others. Unlike our clerics, they only have one face. And I submit that not even the Holy See can deign to tell those few that they qualify.

JimP| 8.3.10 @ 10:54AM

Count me as one of the former Episcopalians. And, it is for all the reasons outlined in this column. Yes, I am an apostate and proud of it. This column reminds me of the line, written by I think Wm. Murchison, that sums up the Episcopal Church nicely. It goes as follows: "Are there Episcopalians in fox holes?" which for those unaware is a paraphrase of the old saying, "There are no atheists in fox holes.".

OldSeabee| 8.3.10 @ 11:08AM

To Miss Alabama, and others like her:
I tried to read a Bishop Spong book. It was so full of inane nonsense. The current state of ECUSA is due to liberal rot which needs to be excised. Jesus Christ MUST be the central focus of all christians, not some goofball's mental ponderings. The Bible is for all of us to read, mark and inwardly digest; we are each given the opportunity to communicate with God through it.
The leaders of ECUSA need to reread the Articles of Faith in the back of the Book of Common Prayer; they might be dismayed to see how far afield they have drifted.

Stuart Koehl| 8.3.10 @ 1:08PM

It's hard to ignore Spong's condescension and even outright racism when it comes to his African Christian brothers and sisters, whom he has accused of having a very naive and simplistic faith, ignorant of developments in the "civilized" world.

David| 8.3.10 @ 11:11AM

If you aren't grounded in the Truth, you will believe in anything.

Sheila| 8.3.10 @ 11:19AM

My husband, children, and I left a purportedly conservative, evangelical, breakaway Episcopal congregation a few years ago after many years of membership. While the initial reason for the congregation moving to a spiritually-led African diocese was the national church's endorsement of homosexual clergy, this must have resulted in quite a bit of blowback and/or accusations of "hatred" for the Priest. He quickly emended his sermons to constantly and vapidly preach about "God is love," that one-dimensional popular fallacy that affirms and accepts any and every behavior or belief. Soon, the increasing number of black congregants led to sermons on politics and social justice as gospel. Add to this a bit of nepotism, and we just couldn't take any more. Since we value biblical Truth over lovely liturgy and traditions, we did not go the Roman Catholic route (my husband's childhood religious tradition). After months of searching and visiting different churches, we recently found a non-denominational church where we are being fed the Word, pure and unadulterated, by theologically astute and spiritually humble men. Yes, the music sometimes leaves something to be desired; the building is much smaller and plainer; the lack of Communion and liturgy took a bit of adjusting to. Yet we willingly rise earlier and drive further every Sunday morning for the spiritual nourishment we had been starving for. Pastors who put the Truth above fellowship and ecumenism; people who are searching for God and not personal affirmation - these things are so rare as to beyond price (not to mention denomination).

Stuart Koehl| 8.3.10 @ 1:09PM

"Since we value biblical Truth over lovely liturgy and traditions, we did not go the Roman Catholic route (my husband's childhood religious tradition). "

Care to explain this little bit of unsubstantiated bigotry?

Ryan| 8.3.10 @ 2:15PM

"Bigotry" is an overstatement.

As a Protestant, Biblical mandates take precedence - rather than equality with - tradition and liturgy. It's that simple.

Stuart Koehl| 8.3.10 @ 4:06PM

As an Orthodox Christian, I would say that Scripture is an integral element of Holy Tradition, and cannot be removed from the matrix of Tradition without doing harm both to itself and to the Tradition as a whole. Just as the Ethiopian Eunuch asked how he would be able to understand Scripture without someone explaining it to him, just as Paul exhorted his Churches to follow that which was handed down (paradosein, Lat. traditio) both by word of mouth and by his epistles, so it is impossible to properly understand Scripture outside the Tradition of the Church.

The Tradition, you see, predates Scripture. Before the first Gospel or Epistle was put on papyrus, the Church was there, and guided by the Holy Spirit, the Church lived according to a rule of faith that was embedded in its liturgy, its rule of prayer. Hence the old aphorism, "lex orandi, lex credendi"--the rule of prayer is the rule of faith.

It was through this rule of faith that the Church first determined which books would comprise the canon of Holy Scripture. For the earliest Christians, Scripture was the Old Testament (and specifically in its Septuagint Greek translation), a position it defended against Marcion, who would did not believe the God of the Old Testament could be the Father of the New. It then proceeded, step by step, to determine which books pertaining to the life of Jesus and the teaching of the Apostles should be read aloud in church services--the mark of canonicity. And to do that, it applied two rules: is the book of apostolic origin; and is it consistent with the Church's rule of faith. Only those that met both criteria were admitted to the canon over a period of several centuries. Contrary to popular belief, there was never a formal definition of the canon, nor was the canon ever formally closed. Instead, a consensus emerged, and even to this day, there are minor differences in the canon used by the Latin Church, the Byzantine-Orthodox Churches and the Syriac Churches (the truncated canon used by the Protestants is purely a product of Martin Luther, sorry). As St. John of Damascus said, "We are not people of the Book, but children of the living God".

The Church made the Bible, and the Bible and the Bible is integral to the Church. It is not a matter of Scripture Alone (or even Scripture over Tradition), nor a matter of Scripture AND Tradition (as the Latin Church responded to the Reformation), but Scripture WITHIN Tradition, as the Fathers and the Churches of the East have maintained from the beginning.

Now, to say that "Biblical truth" is over "lovely liturgy and traditions" really begs a question: what is Biblical truth, and how can it be disentangled from Tradition or "traditions"? Because no book interprets itself--no matter how hard they try, Protestant exegetes run into this epistemological conundrum: the book does not read itself, but rather is read by a person formed from a particular culture, time, place and personal experiences. Protestants typically rely on their pastors to interpret Scripture for them, whether they admit this or not, and each pastor brings to his exegesis his own personal formation--the Divinity School he attended, the denomination in which he grew up, the place where he lived, and so on.

So, for Protestants, it is not possible to place Scripture over or even outside of Tradition--what they end up with is a myriad of personal traditions, as opposed to the continuity of the Great Tradition, which has been passed down unbroken from age to age.

Ryan| 8.3.10 @ 4:56PM

Here's the problem - tradition HAS changed, particularly within the first few centuries after Christ. History is a cloud at that point, and most epistles were written to correct issues going on at the time.

OT predates tradition. That much we can probably agree on.

I would say that the argument for us is that there needs to be a standard to gauge traditions and everything else by, and that is what scripture serves as, because it was those who knew Jesus directly putting down the whats and wherefores.

Stuart Koehl| 8.3.10 @ 5:53PM

Tradition always changes, because it is a living and dynamic force within the Church, the exercise of the Gift of the Holy Spirit. When Tradition becomes static, the Holy Spirit has fled, and the Church begins to die.

Now, your history of Scripture is basically wrong. The Epistles turn out to be the oldest extant Christian writings, some dating to the early 50s BC, and the last no later than the early 2nd century. Within them, they contain significant elements of the oral tradition that guided the Church before anything was put on paper (e.g., 1 Cor 15 is probably the very symbol of faith that Paul received when he was catechized by Peter, James and John in Jerusalem). The Gospels in their final form probably date from the middle 60s for Mark to the early 90s for John--but there is ample evidence that they captured much earlier material, both oral and written.

So, we know about Scripture, and the Church knew what it was doing when it allowed some books into the canon while omitting others.

On the Old Testament, it was part of the Tradition from the beginning. Christ invokes Scripture; the Apostles invoke Scripture--and in every case, it's the Old Testament (and 90% of the time its the Greek LXX version!). But Jesus, the Apostles and the early Church all interpreted the Old Testament in a particular manner, a very uniform manner, that differed from the interpretations of the Jews. That is, the Old Testament is seen as a typos of the New Covenant--everything in the Old Testament points to the Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection of the Son of God. This is not an interpretation that is obvious from the text, but only emerges in the light of Christian self-awareness. And this way of interpreting the Old Testament was something the Church taught and passed on from one generation to the next. And what is "something that is passed on"? The Latin word is "traditio" (the Greek is paradosis, but that doesn't make the point as well). So, the Old Testament was incorporated into the Tradition of the Church from its inception, and the Tradition, being that which Christ taught his followers, therefore encompasses and molds Scripture and its interpretation.

Ryan| 8.4.10 @ 9:05AM

Here's the problem though - if tradition changes, why shouldn't scripture?

I think that calling some practices in first century Christianity "tradition" may be an overstatement. "Practices" may be more accurate. "Tradition" implies a longer period of time, I think.

Christianity had several competing practices that were being ironed out - and which was what Paul, in particular, was warning against. Gnosticism, hedonism, laziness due to the supposed imminent coming of Christ, were all competing with genuine Christian practices at the time, and had they won out, would have found their way into "tradition."

Paul - and other apostles and disciples - were setting a standard with scripture because of all the competing practices/forming traditions.

On the Old Testament, Christ and the Apostles weren't creating something new - they were revealing what was there the whole time, just unrevealed to many except a few OT prophets (who were thus misunderstood). Calling what they were doing "tradition" I think also overstates the matter, and attempts to find a way to give tradition an authority that it shouldn't have.

Stuart Koehl| 8.4.10 @ 9:30AM

"Here's the problem though - if tradition changes, why shouldn't scripture?"

Undoubtedly, when there is no controlling authority or Tradition, then the canon can be infinitely malleable. Luther, for instance, in rejecting the authority of the Church of Rome, remade the canon according to his own liking by relying on the Hebrew Masoretic Old Testament, instead of the Septuagint Greek text, which had been normative since the time of the Apostles (90% of all Old Testament quotations in the New Testament come from the LXX).

But the glorious thing about the Tradition is the manner in which faith is internalized. Having been accepted by all for so long, the canon has become integrated into the Tradition, and changing it would require a similar reception of the new canon. For that to happen--and it is not impossible, merely highly unlikely--there would have to be an irresistable, overriding reason that could garner a degree of moral unanimity.

Consider how long it took for the canon to stabilize. In the beginning, each local Church had its own collection of sacred books. Almost all agreed on the LXX Old Testament, but of the New Testament there was wide variation. Outside of Syria, everybody pretty much accepted the four canonical Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles by the end of the first century. Judging by the writings of the Fathers, the core Pauline Epistles were accepted more or less at the same time. Some of the universal Epistles and the Apocalypse of St. John took a while longer.

In addition, local Churches sometimes included in their canon such works as the Apostolic Didache, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the First Epistle of Clement, but through the organic process of sifting the books through the dual criteria of apostolicity and fidelity to the rule of faith, these gradually dropped out.

Even today, there remain variations. The Syrians, for instance, used Tatian's Diatessaron, a reconciliation of the four Gospels, until the fourth century, when the four individual Gospels were incorporated into the Peshitta New Testament, which at first omitted 2 Peter, 2 & 3 John, Jude and the Apocalypse (but included them a century later). The Byzantine canon differs in detail from the Western canon. All these variations exist because there was no single juridical authority defining what was and was not in the Bible--it happened from the bottom up, contrary to popular conspiracy theories.

We know quite a lot about gnostic beliefs and practices, thanks to the ante-Nicene Fathers like Irenaeus, who wrote against them, and by the discovery of many gnostic texts, such as the Nag Hammadi library, which confirmed the accuracy of what Irenaeus and his colleagues wrote. We also know far more than you let on about early (orthodox) Christian practices, and your statement that gnostic beliefs and practices made their way into the Tradition of the Church is unfounded.

As to whether Christ and the Apostles were merely expounding on something present the whole time, if that had been so, they would not have been controversial and come to such sticky ends. "Behold, I show you a new thing"--seems pretty clear. As Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann wrote, Christianity was not a religion per se, but a new way of life, a new mode of being more fully human. This was new and heady stuff. For their validation, the early Christians looked to Jewish Scripture, and in their interpretation of Scripture as a typos of the coming of Christ, they were doing something very new and very radical. And in order to ensure the survival of the movement, this teaching was entrusted to particular men--first the Apostles, then the Episkopoi they appointed by the laying on of hands--who had the responsibility to pass it down t the next generation. The passing down is the Tradition, and it went on for centuries before there was any agreement on what constituted Scripture.

Ryan| 8.4.10 @ 11:34AM

Quick correction/clarification: "and your statement that gnostic beliefs and practices made their way into the Tradition of the Church is unfounded."

I was stating that there were gnostic practices that were competing with other Christian practices, and those gnostic practices DID'T make it in because Paul and other apostles clarified issues by writing them down.

What I was getting at was that Christ was REVEALING something that was new, but it was TRUE - as Biblical truth does not change - throughout the whole Old Testament. As He showed on the road to Emmaus, everything written down in the OT through the law and the prophets pointed to Himself the whole time.

Not sure if we disagree on the next point I'm about to make - Scripture was Scripture the entire time. A declaration of man, or groups of men, did not make it so. It was scripture when it was either oral (Jewish oral tradition is practically setting it in stone, the way they memorized everything) or written down. It didn't eventually become truth, become Scripture.

I think, though, there's more of a heart to the matter about determining authority here. It's whether or not I have to go through all these ceremonies and physical activities, through the sacraments and such to receive God's grace. From what I see in scripture - "one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus" - it doesn't seem that way. I think that's the core of mine - and many Protestants who think about it - objection.

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.4.10 @ 11:02AM

Jesus wants (actually commands) his followers to follow the Gospel. Tradition is used incorrectly in several versions of the New Testament...but you can understand through other plainer scriptures.
Here is what Jesus commanded of "tradition" (in fact he gave it zero value)
Mat 15:2 "Why do Your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands when they eat bread."
Mat 15:3 He answered and said to them, "Why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition?
Mar 7:9 He said to them, "All too well you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition.
Mar 7:13 "making the word of God of no effect through your tradition which you have handed down. And many such things you do."
Col 2:8 Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.

Stuart Koehl| 8.4.10 @ 3:27PM

Kevin,

Do you speak Greek, by any chance? If not, how dare you say that the word "tradition" is used incorrectly in several versions of the New Testament? If you can't read it in the original for yourself, aren't you depending on some human authority to provide you with a translation, and some other authority to tell you that translation is correct? So, aren't you then interpreting Scripture within a tradition--except yours is a very narrow and innovative one?

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.5.10 @ 11:12AM

I note, dear commentator, that you are heavy on opinion, sarcastic and derogatory remarks and light on scripture and logic. I notice that you speak English. Did you learn it yourself or were you taught?
Scripture within a tradition? Now that's a hoot!

Stuart Koehl| 8.5.10 @ 12:06PM

And you, Kevin, my Appalachian brother, are heavy on ignorant and bigoted polemics, short on mastery of facts, devoid of logic and locked into your prejudices.

And you never answered my question: when you read Scripture, do you do so in Koine Greek? If not, what translation do you use? How do you know if the translator is accurate? When you read Scripture in English, do you read commentaries? Did you go to Bible School as a child? Did you have a teacher? How do you know what your teacher taught you was correct? Did you teacher have a teacher? How did he know what he was taught is correct?

In short, you interpret Scripture within the tradition of your denomination. Books don't read themselves, nor did the Apostles and Evangelists provide commentaries and footnotes to their manuscripts.

Blithering idiots!

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.5.10 @ 1:51PM

Of course I use Koine Greek and many other resources. I firmly believe in searching to see if what I have been taught is correct. It is my duty as a Christian. Act 17:11 These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.
Do you think that I take and swallow everything just because someone speaks it? That's what gets (got) people in trouble.
“God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson.

But to use your logic dear friend, I must be wasting my time validating something that is merely God's hogwash.
I'm sorry that I do not hold to your version of a helpless and bigoted God with weak and helpless apostles.
We are commanded to teach with love. Nothing personal meant, but some writers seem to verbally spit in the face of those deemed beneath them. If I were a neutral reader I would definitely shy away from a person expressing condescension
and vitriol.

Stuart Koehl| 8.5.10 @ 5:16PM

"Of course I use Koine Greek and many other resources."

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

Sheila| 8.3.10 @ 2:40PM

No bigotry intended, I was referring to our experience with Episcopal services ; sorry my comment was unclear. Perhaps adding "As protestants" at the beginning of that phrase would have been more precise. Additionally, please see Ryan's comment below. I have no direct experience with the Roman Catholic church.

Regarding your earlier query re substantive differences between traditional Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism, may I recommend a short book, "Our Anglican Heritage," by Bishop John W. Howe, 1977 by David C. Cook publishing company (I've heard it's out of print/hard to get). While I increasingly question the structure of any denomination, I found this history of the Anglican faith and doctrine informative and inspiring. While I reject the ECUSA, I cannot reject the tenets of the traditional Anglican faith.

Stuart Koehl| 8.3.10 @ 4:14PM

This points to one of the irreconcilable differences of Anglicanism: on the one hand, Anglicanism sees itself as Protestant--the Queen herself swears to uphold the Protestant Faith in her coronation oath. On the other hand, Anglicans have pretensions to catholicity--in particular, that they in fact represent the continuation of the true Catholic Tradition in the West. Of course, this latter claim is easily disproven, but how can you maintain a "communion" that encompasses both low church Evangelicals and high church Anglo-Catholics, to say nothing of post-Christian apostates? And the answer is, you can't, unless you view Anglicanism entirely as a cultural disposition.

So, for those who call themselves Anglicans or Episcopalians who are of an Evangelical bent, the only intellectually and spiritually coherent answer is to become full-fledged Evangelicals.

And for those of an Anglo-Catholic bent, the only intellectually and spiritually coherent answer is to become part of the Church of Rome.

There really isn't any middle ground, and as all of the substantive issues of the Reformation that actually involved the Church of England have pretty much been resolved, I still wonder what, other than a reflexive loathing of "Popery" keeps the high churchers from doing just that.

John Pack Lambert| 8.6.10 @ 11:05PM

Bigotry is a stong word. The biblical infalibility versus traditions is at least how many Protestants see such things.

This may be ignorance, but it is not bigotry.

I also disliked the railing against the rising number of African-American congregants. I wonder if it really was just a dislike of associating with people of a different race.

ABNCP| 8.3.10 @ 11:22AM

The ECUSA

ABNCP| 8.3.10 @ 11:38AM

The ECUSA is going to become as unimportant as a religion in this country as the Church of England has become in England. My wife and I were marrried in a beautiful and ancient (built in 1100)
church in my wifes hometown, Northampton England in 1960. At that time this church was a vibrant and well attended church. It was the church for the Northampton Regiment of the British Army. Every Sunday the Regiment came marching down the street to attend services. The church was full of members at every service. Last March my wife and I were in Northhampton and went back to visit the church. There were were only about 50 people at the service and they were all over 60 years old. The Church of England has become a joke to most of the people in that country and with what the ECUSA is doing they will do the same in this country.

Stuart Koehl| 8.4.10 @ 6:01PM

"The ECUSA is going to become as unimportant as a religion in this country as the Church of England has become in England."

No need to use the future tense, here. Present perfect would suffice.

Citizen Jerry| 8.3.10 @ 11:38AM

I, too, was a cradle Episcopalian. It was hard to leave, but the denomination is now wholly apostate. Heretics even worse than James Pike, like John Spong, are no longer rebuked, but celebrated. The church is no longer a sharp rebuke to secular society, but only a feeble echo.

Outside of God’s grace, there is no specific solution for this once noble church. But there may come a time when orthodox Episcopalians will, like Lot in Sodom, have to leave for their soul’s sake.

Le Cracquere| 8.3.10 @ 11:45AM

It seems misleading to keep focussing on the 1960s as the real point of decline for the Episcopal church and mainline Protestantism. Certainly, it's when all the metaphysical checks came due and the contradictions started to create visible fractures, but the real change was earlier--long before Bishop Pike, the mainline churches had hitched their wagons to worldly institutions and priorities that rendered the church only as strong and enduring as the latter two. (Someone stop me before I mix another metaphor!)

Puple Lips| 8.3.10 @ 11:56AM

"It seems misleading to keep focussing on the 1960s as the real point of decline for the Episcopal church and mainline Protestantism."

How about the 1930 Anglican Lambreth Conference, which removed artificial birth control from thier list of sins?

Le Cracquere| 8.3.10 @ 12:36PM

Meh. Regardless of how many larvae they spawned or failed to spawn, I'd say that even before WWI Episcopalianism carried the seeds of the 21st-century church within itself. Perhaps a better changing point is the "Gilded Age," when the pillars of genteel 20th-century American society were largely erected, and Episcopalianism--ever so gradually--began to pride itself on its respectability as much as orthodoxy?

Ryan| 8.3.10 @ 2:17PM

Actually, the fights over conservativism and Biblical relevance began around that time. It was when modern evangelicalism was born, and where there began serious discussions as to what the old-line denominations would become.

Andrew B| 8.3.10 @ 12:23PM

Unlike some above who say they left the Episcopal Church, I always prefer to say that the church left me. I stayed right where I was, believing in the Word of God, while the clergy wandered off into what might be termed "atheists who still enjoy Coffee Hour."

One correction for the author, however. By the time the Episcopal Church (Anglican Church, properly) landed in America, Catholic Mass had been said in Florida for three-quarters of a century. Episcopalianism was thus the second denomination in America.

John Pack Lambert| 8.6.10 @ 11:23PM

Actually there had for a time been a Jesuit mission in Virginia, and one of Powhattan's relatives may have been educated by the Jesuits in Spain.

The French had also made an abortive attempt to settle South Carolina. Father Marcos Da Niza, a Catholic priest, came into what is now New Mexico in 1539 and Juan de Ornate started a mission there in 1598.

If we want to go to including everything currently under US jurisdiction we can talk of Puerto Rico. However, if we limit it to the US at founding we find Catholics were in both Georgia and Virginia earlier than the Anglicans ever came to this country.

This does not change the fact that the Anglicans were the largest religion in the US at the time of its founding.

Actually, probably more relevant is that they were the established religion in Virginia, Connecticut and other states. It was not until the 1820s that Connecticut became the last state to end having an established religion. I am fairly certain that the Episcopal Church has the distiction of being the only Church to have been officially established by a state.

Thus in some way the reasons why it gets so much attention despite being an empty shell are the same as for the Church of England in that country.

Artesian Jacket| 8.3.10 @ 12:35PM

My family left the PCUSA (Presbyterian Church USA) because of the same issues now afflicting the Episcopal Church. Quite simply, these people have no standards or beliefs other than politically correct rubbish. We belong to the PCA (Presbyterian Church in America) which adheres to the reformed faith as expressed in the Westminister Standards. I pray for those left in the Episcopal Church to have the courage to follow their convictions and leave that it. Being Roman Catholic is much preferable.

David| 8.3.10 @ 1:50PM

What this message proves is the inevitable confusion that comes when you turn from truth unto another gospel. In other words, you love the darkness (Jn 3:19-21) and you love the world (1 Jn 2:15-17). Satan has his workers and they are busy perverting the gospel in the great religiosity of man. Turn your eyes off of self and place them fully upon God (meekness) and seek God in lowliness of heart (Mt 11:29) and ye shall find Him. The prideful shall never "know" God (Jn 17:3).

Roughcoat| 8.3.10 @ 2:02PM

". . . but overall [scripture] is not that difficult to understand the basic tenets ..."

Speak for yourself, sparky. I find a great deal of scripture immensely difficult to understand. Often it is confusing, contradictory, incomprehensible, or strange. Sometimes it is simply beyond my ken. Have you read Job lately? I don't think we were meant to fully understand scripture. I think we were meant to think about it.

Thomas Aquinas| 8.3.10 @ 2:24PM

"Bash the babies brains against the rocks. . ."

Sounds like a Planned Parenthood ad.

prehist51| 8.3.10 @ 2:27PM

What has happened in the Episcopalian Church is the same thing that has happened in many denominations. God and His word, the Bible, has been discarded and replaced by social justice. Once you stop teaching the Bible and putting God at the head of your worship you are no longer a church and God's spirit is removed and your church/denomination becomes irrelevant.

ton o| 8.3.10 @ 2:31PM

There are few things more richly ironic in the South these days than the descendents of wealthy planters and slave-holders bowing in ecclesial obedience to African Bishops. One hopes, when the legal appeals have all expired and the beautiful buildings seized by the heretics and neologists in ECUSA, that these disaffected Southerners will choose Truth over aesthetics, Tradition over the NY Times, and the rock of Peter over the shifting sands of protestantism.

Verbum Caro Factum Est

Stuart Koehl| 8.3.10 @ 6:53PM

Most of those African bishops are the descendants of slave-owning (and trading) African tribal kings and chieftains. Slavery was a universal part of the human condition, but it was Christianity--Anglo-Saxon Christianity at that--which ended it (except, of course, in those places where Sharia holds reign--mainly in Arabia and . . . Africa).

JimP| 8.3.10 @ 8:23PM

Let's also hope that the ALL self righteous hypocritical Northerners will confess to their collective inherited sins of engaging in the slave trade and/or tolerating it while making the equivalent of billions doing so (and sharing NONE with the slaves after freedom), and for doing it up until the beginning of the War of Northern Agression (for which they should also confess their sin) in violation of the law passed by Congress banning the African slave trade in 1809. Let's hope too they confess for putting the poor African slaves through the 'middle passage', as well as for making the equivalent of billions from slave produced Southern textiles and again sharing NONE. Lest we forget they hypocritcally thumped their chests as abolitionists while passing their own 'Black Codes" (Yankee Jim Crow) laws. Here in Dixie we have a saying: "It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a Yankee to get into Heaven." Amen.

Margie| 8.4.10 @ 11:59AM

Greetings JimP.,

The only inherited sin we all have, whether we're northerners OR southerners is the Sin inherited from Adam.

"For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." 1 Cor. 15:22.

JimP| 8.4.10 @ 1:22PM

Hello Margie:

I know that. I was being sarcastic in reference to 'ton o's comment about irony and Southerners and slavery. My reason being that it is common for many Northerners to still condemn Southerners for what they see as our irredeemable sin of slavery. I was pointing out just SOME of the skeletons in the Yankees' closet that they do not like to mention while they hypocritically point to the 'sins' of the South. I was reminding them of THEIR irredeemable sins which are just as multitudinous.

"You hypocrites. First remove the beam from your own eye. Then you will see clearly enough to remove the speck from your brother's."
Matthew 7:5

Siegfried X| 8.3.10 @ 3:42PM

Each of the Protestant denominations is divided into two groups. One of them is atheistic and political, caring only about the "social gospel" = "social justice", the environment, etc. So they are basically wings of the Democratic Party. Their whole purpose is to intercept money from the real churches and use it for Democratic politics instead.

Siegfried X| 8.3.10 @ 3:43PM

I forgot to say that these godless churches are usually called "mainline" or "mainstream".

Margie| 8.3.10 @ 3:49PM

There is no King but Jesus.

"All that the Father gives Me will come to Me; and him who comes to Me I will not cast out." Jn. 6:37.

"Jesus said to him, "I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father, but by Me. Jn. 14:6.

"For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the Name of the only Son of God." Jn. 3:16-18.

"..because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For man believes with his heart and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved." Rms. 10:9&10;.

What's easy to understand is the above from the New Testament. What's confusing and hard to understand is the pontificating and rationalizing by men.

Jesus loves us. He makes it easy to come to Him. How much clearer can He be in His words, above? If anyone needs Him, He is available. He already knows what's in our hearts even before we ask in prayer. How amazing is that?

"Even before a word is on my tongue, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether." Ps. 139:4.

ftm| 8.3.10 @ 5:53PM

Look, once again this is easy. If you attend a church anfd the church doctrine is or has changed from one of Biblical authority to one of liberal authority then you have one of two options. First and simplest, leave the church. Leaving the church does nothing in the long run except surrender another church to the liberals vis-a-vis the enemy.

The other thing that you can do is to continue to attend the church and every time that the offering plate comes around, don't put anything in the plate. Talk to folks that share your attitude and promote the idea of what I like to call, "Starving the Beast." Let it be known that when the church returns to a doctrine of Biblical authority then you will contribute to the financial maintenance of the church and not until.

I attend a very liberal Disciples of Christ church. I was born and raised up in this church and I flat out refuse to surrender this church. I also am an arm-chair hacker and a monkey-wrencher from way back. Monkey wrenching offers a unique, productive and non-violent solution to the problem. The church's liberal doctrine has of late become almost a milignancy. Social, political and enviro-mental advocacy has all but replaced the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I sat in Sunday School and said not one more dime until Biblical Authority is restored. Apparently the idea is quite popular because the church is having trouble paying the minister, paying utility bills and meeting mortgage obligations and the like. Mores the pity.

I told the minister, "Look pal, you're an employee of the church. Like employees everywhere if you don't toe the line you get replaced." I don't think that the guy has ever in his life been addressed in such a fashion. I thought that the guy was going to cloud up and cry.

You have it within your power to alter this crisis in your church. Churches operate off of money. No money, no church. Attend the church of your choice. If the doctrine suits you then fine. If not make your complaint known and take action to correct the situation. Anybody can quit. Run the liberals out of your church. Insist on Biblical authority and accept no other. Study (the Bible) to show yourself an approved workman. Refute heresy when you see it. Fix it.

I read Alinsky's, "Rules for Radicals." This is a page out of their own book. Use their book on them for a change.

JimP| 8.3.10 @ 8:08PM

If this is the course you choose Brother, more power to you. Those of us who have left chose to starve the beast. Starving is the fastest and surest way to stop this kind of evil. It's not surrendering. As the Anglican parishes springing up prove. Parishoners can always re-establish their church once they leave or once the beast is dead.

FTM| 8.3.10 @ 11:47PM

Hi JimP,

I don't know how your church is structured or financed. The church that I attend is totally self contained with no external means of support. The "Starving the Beast" approach works well in my church in the the effects are immediate and apparent.

John Pack Lambert| 8.6.10 @ 11:29PM

Are you a listener to Glenn Beck, or jsut on the same wave-length?

I still think his "flee social justice" comment was said in a way that lacked any sense of diplomacy, but I think at heart he was right in his warning.

Betsy| 8.3.10 @ 6:54PM

FTM, I like the way you think. FWIW, in the Episcopal Church, there's already a difference in how things are financially supported beyond parish level. There's the diocesan "assessment", which is to support the workings in the local diocese, but after that is a national "asking", which is up to the will of the individual parishes as to whether or not, or how much, to contribute. By staying as an active member, and doing as you do, you CAN make a difference in the right direction. To paraphrase Tolstoy, all you need for evil to triumph is for a few good men to do nothing. My advice is the same as yours. If you value what is right in your spiritual heritage and want to turn the tide against what is wrong, stay in the pews, stay active in mission, and don't retreat.

Betsy | 8.3.10 @ 7:05PM

Maybe that was Burke?

FTM| 8.3.10 @ 11:57PM

The most important thing and the most difficult thing to do is to confront the evil when it presents itself.

The pastor at our church actually had the gall to bring up the subject of ordaining gay ministers after the congregation had already overwhelmingly voted against the idea. I asked the guy in sunday school after he's brought up the subject again under the guise of "keeping an open dialog" what part of no didn't he understand? Then I asked him if "hell no" were more understandable.

Me and this "minister" have had more than one head on collision over more than one topic. He's yet to get on the scoreboard. I've read the Bible through several times in several different translations. he has yet to read the Bible through once by his own admission. Whenever he comes off with some of his, "No Hell, No Judgement, Jesus is only one of many paths to heaven" I hit him right between the eyes, publically with scripture.

You'll notice that the liberal attack on a church begins with asserting the errancy of scripture. Once the liberal has established the scripture as a series of mistranslations, fragments and fairy stories then religion can become whatever you want it to be. The first thing that you have to do in way of a counterattack is to establish the authority of scripture.

Proud Southern Baptist| 8.4.10 @ 12:04AM

There are certainly a lot of confused folks posting on this site. Just glancing over some of the unkind comments made about fellow Christians, I don't see much written about having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I do not need a go-between to speak to God for me nor to interpret His Word. I have my Bible, I know it's God's Word and I do not need the added word of men to tell me how to live. Christ Rules; not man. Like so many things man complicates EVERYTHING.

Stuart Koehl| 8.4.10 @ 9:36AM

I'm sure as a good Baptist you went to Bible School, where you had a teacher who told you what the Bible stories meant. I'm sure she had a teacher in her turn, who had a teacher in his, and so on and so on back to the foundation of your denomination. So, you do have your Bible, and you can read it, but whether you admit it or not, you read it in a tradition which shapes your understanding of it, which in turn shapes your behavior. The Bible never explains itself, but is always interpreted by men. The main point is, where do these men get their interpretation, and how do you know it is correct?

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.4.10 @ 11:22AM

Then let me kindly ask, are you a Christian or a Baptist? Division on this not tolerated in the N.T.:
1 Cor. 3:3 for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men? 4 For when one says, "I am of Paul," and another, "I am of Apollos," are you not carnal?
I am a Methodist Chrisitian, I am a Baptist Christian. How can they, believing in different things, be the same?

4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.
Phl 1:27 Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel;

Stuart Koehl| 8.4.10 @ 3:29PM

I am a Christian, though I am pretty sure you wouldn't consider me one--though my Church is doing much what it always has done for the past 1800 years. Where was your church 1800 years ago?

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.5.10 @ 11:16AM

I was unaware that you, like Christ, had also died for your church.(humor intended.)
1800 years ago the Church that Christ had died for was almost 200 years old.

Stuart Koehl| 8.5.10 @ 12:11PM

In my baptism, I descended into death with Christ, and I arose with him born anew. With my chrismation, I was sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit. In receiving the Eucharist, I ate the Flesh and drank the Blood of the Son of Man, that I might have life eternal, and, as St. Peter wrote, "become a partaker of the divine nature", ultimately to become by adoption what Christ is by nature.

I use the figure 1800 years because the end of the first century is about as far back as reliable records go. Unlike many denominations, my Church has no need to make up its history, or pretend to be what it is not.

Michael| 8.4.10 @ 6:45AM

......Christianity disconnected from Peter eventually goes goofy......

Stuart Koehl| 8.4.10 @ 9:37AM

And all bishops share in the ministry of Peter.

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.4.10 @ 11:24AM

Scriptures?

Christianity disconnected from the Bible goes goofy!

Stuart Koehl| 8.4.10 @ 3:32PM

And the Bible disconnected from the Church likewise produces truly awe-inspiring goofiness. As Gospel notes, even Satan can quote Scripture.

Also, you seem unfamiliar with the notion that there is more than one canon of Scripture, and the one you use has no Scriptural foundation.

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.5.10 @ 11:18AM

And you know this because...?
Somone told you it wasn't?

Stuart Koehl| 8.5.10 @ 12:12PM

Because I did the research, something you have done.

Kevin in Appalachia| 8.5.10 @ 2:21PM

I'm glad that you know so much about me and my Chrisitainty of 40 years :)
Darn, why didn't I think of doing research!!!
I could have had a V-8!!!

Stuart Koehl| 8.5.10 @ 5:18PM

Put some vodka in that V-8. It will improve your cogitation.

Ryan| 8.4.10 @ 11:08AM

Of course, Christianity connected to him hasn't been all rosy, either...

Oscar| 8.4.10 @ 10:27AM

So, can we all agree that Protestantism is bogus?

Akaky| 8.4.10 @ 12:51PM

Getting into an intramural squabble amongst Christians is almost always a dumb thing to do, and as a skeptic I don't really have any skin in this particular game, but has anyone considered that belonging to a Christian church that does not believe in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth is largely an exercise in theological pointlessness? What binds the believing Christian, whether they are Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Southern Baptist, or Pentecostal, is the belief that the Nazarene is divine and that He came into this world to save humanity from its sins. It seems to me that Christians can (and will) debate furiously the finer points of theology until they are blue in the face, but if your church does not believe in Jesus's divinity, then your church is wasting your time, unless you enjoy doing that sort of thing.

Ryan| 8.4.10 @ 1:58PM

It's precisely what I don't understand. Why waste a perfectly good Sunday morning if none of it matters?

Stuart Koehl| 8.4.10 @ 3:33PM

Some people join the PTA, others join neighborhood associations or condominium boards, yet others join yacht clubs and a few decided to become big wheels in their local church. All suffer from the same malady--the desire to become big fish in very small ponds.

KyMouse| 8.4.10 @ 9:47PM

Akaky, much of the problem stems from the debate over whether the Catholic Church dispenses God's grace through its sacraments, and whether good works are necessary for the forgiveness of sins -- or whether (as Protestants claim from the Bible) any sinner may boldly approach God through faith in Jesus, and trust in Him to forgive all of their sins through His one-time-only sacrifice on the cross. Those are not "finer points" -- they are basic and crucial ones, and there are others.

Akaky| 8.5.10 @ 10:48AM

Ky, I see what you're saying, but you'll forgive me if I say that no, those are not basic and crucial points. What you believe, and what deeply devout Catholics like my mother believe, is that Jesus came into the world to save humanity from its sins, that Jesus is, in the words of the Nicene Creed, "God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, begotten, not made, one in being with the Father, through whom all things were made." That is the central core of the Christian message; if you believe this, then you are a Christian. If you do not, as the Episcopal Church in America clearly does not, then you are not a Christian, despite your protestations to the contrary. And if you do not believe that Jesus is the Christ, then what is the point of anyone going to such a church?

Stuart Koehl| 8.5.10 @ 12:16PM

Akaky has an excellent point. The Gospel (Evangelion) is, technically a Royal Proclamation of Good News (earthly kings used the term in reference to things like royal marriages, births, victories and so forth), so it is, technically, a Royal Proclamation by the heavenly King.

So what is that proclamation? The Paschal Troparion sung by the Orthodox Churches at Easter sums it up most succinctly:

"Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and to those in the tombs, bestowing life".

That is the essence of the Christian kerygma. Everything else is chrome.

John Pack Lambert| 8.6.10 @ 11:46PM

There is always the option of Unitraians, you stop even calling yourselves Christians.

What is really odd is those who try to be a Christian and a Buddhist, a Christian and a Druid and so on.

However, considering some of the actions of Jesuit priests and various orders of nuns, including one that operates a school in metro-Detroit that I have heard accused by an employee at that school of being a bunch of Sun worshippers, I would say that Catholicism is not immune to some of these issues.

Also with the hateful vile I have seen thrown against both Opus Dei and the Legionars of Christ as "cults" by other Catholics, it seems Catholicism has its own issues.

Then there is the whole phenomenom of Charismatic Catholicism, largely in Latin America.

I also have to say that Francis Cardinal George, Archbishop Vigueron, Robert George and several others who have spent large amounts of energy seeking to build alliances between Catholics and like-minded people of other faiths on political issues would not like the tone of some of the comments on here.

Of course, Mormons overcome the problem of rejecting the Catholic Church by accepting that there was an apostacy, the true Church was lost, and the priesthood was restored by Peter, James and John returning and giving it to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery.

We also boldly declare a prophet today, even Thomas S. Monson. The heavens are not closed. God knows we need his guidance as much as did the people in the time of either Moses or Elijah, and so he has called a prophet who recieves his word and guides his Church.

Jesus Christ did not just live 2000 years ago, he lives today and guides his Church.

That said I think that the problem with the Episcopal Church is that if they do not teach any strong doctrine, if they just offer what is popular in the eyes of the world, than why get up on Sunday and go to meetings, why join the Church at all, when you can get the same thing and maybe more from Druidism, Wiccanism, atheism, agnosticism or just plain secularism?

Jeremiah| 8.4.10 @ 1:09PM

Akaky, you are one profoundly wise skeptic. You have perfectly explained why the Protestant 'mainstream' has become a Christian dead zone.

John Pack Lambert| 8.6.10 @ 10:08PM

As a Mormon the only former Episcopalian I can recall knowing off the top of my head is a man of Choctaw freedman descent who became a Mormon in 1978. His birth certificate says he is blak, but he carries it with him to prove such to anyone who is incredulous when he makes a claim as to what his race is.

If I thought long enough I maybe could think of a present or past Episcopalian I hae known. It seems like I must have met some as a missionary in Las Vegas, but can not really recall any.

I also differ with both the inerrantists and the literalists. The Book of Mormon not only teaches that the Bible text has been corrupted, but it admits the mistakes of men exist in it.

However, inerrency and literalism are two issues. Inerrency says there are no mistakes in the Bible. Even this can be interpreted multiple ways. Literalism says that what the Bible says is actually so. I have heard arguments that Hosea did not marry Gomer, but that the whole story is meant as an allegory of the apostasy of Israel and God's dealings with it while not actually reporting historical events.

My experience is that no one takes all the Bible fully literally. Most accept that Jesus' parables are not neccesarily reports of actual events. On another front, even the makers of the literal-rapture movie "Left Behind" take a mention of a week to be seven years. Thus, while they assume that the Book of Revelation is to be interpreted literally, they will take passages from Daniel to be figurative.

That said, I actually find it amazing that after Bishop Spong there are so many Episcopalians.

John Pack Lambert| 8.6.10 @ 10:18PM

Paul said there is one faith, one Lord, one Baptism. God is not the author of confusion.

Some would say I just say that because I am a Mormon and those are central realizations that led Joseph Smith to pray to God, resulting in his visition by God the Father and the Son, in his translation of the Book of Mormon and in the restoration of the Priesthood and the establishment of the Church. However, I also say it because it is true.

That said, the Evangelization of Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland has been largely a Baptist endevor. I think it is Mizoram State in India that with 85% of its population as Baptists is the most baptist place in the world.

On the other hand there is the continued practice of Vodoo in theoretically Catholic Haiti. I have much respect for the Catholics, look to Francis Cardinal George and Pope Benedict XVI as some of the greatest voices of good in the current world, but their allowance of Pagan beliefs in practices in some parts of the Church can not be denied.

okiebeliever| 8.17.10 @ 11:53AM

There is all the support we could ever need for a biblical worldview. Spong is headed in the wrong direction. He's an old man who is facing his own mortality and taking all kinds of people with him.

It was Spong who said that no biblical scholar thinks that John wrote the 4th gospel, that John's Gospel does not contain a single word spoken by Jesus, that the Gospels present a Jesus who is narrow minded and vindictive, that no reputable scholar accepts the virgin birth, that the miracles of Jesus were myths, that the Bible is full of errors and contradictions, that Paul was a self loathing gay man, and that anyone who holds that Scripture is inerrant is ignorant and culturally backward.

We live in an age of all kinds of professors gone wild and Spong is one of them. They are on TV and radio and spew their views on large groups of people who like to hear them talk, but have no idea that they are talking nonsense. Why? Because they don't know the truth.

Mike Hamilton| 9.15.10 @ 6:38PM

One small point, the first church established in America was Catholic in St. Augustine Florida unless you think only English colonies count as America.

Mike Hamilton| 9.16.10 @ 9:30AM

I wonder if the Episcopal Church has considered the moral implications of their dispute over the church property with the break away congregations. Historically the Protestant reformation was more about seizing the property of the Church than about religion. The great majority of the people resisted the new Protestant Church of England but the Abbeys, Monasteries,Convents and Churches were seized and the land distributed to the politically powerful making them very rich. The Church was never compensated nor did it demand compensation since all the property was paid for by the people in the congregations. Now we have the Episcopal church denying the congregations ownership of property that the congregations built with their own money. Legally the Episcopal church is in the right but morally stealing property from those who paid for it. What are they going to do with the churches? Sell them and enrich themselves? They certainly can't use them nor even maintain them. Again, they show themselves to be far removed from Christ's teachings. How shameful, no wonder people are leaving but in these modern times it's only about what you can get away with not what is right.