First of all, I won’t take offense from an idol worshiping pagan!Prologue: I intended this to be brief but by the time I got done, I realize it got much longer. I do not mean any offense to historian or anyone else. I may edit it a few times for clarity or in the interest of charity after posting. Espeically since once it scrolls off my small screen, I can't remember what I typed You have been warned.
Yes, Pastor Jim’s!Even though I THINK I understand your sentiment, I think it is somewhat anachronistic. I am not sure it's as cut and dry as that.
The entire old testament is the story of God and His people, even though his people weren't always doing what he wanted, they were still his people.
When Christ walked the earth, he did so as a Jew. Even at his time, there was not one Jewish monolithic expression. There were Zealots, Essenes, Pharisees, Saduccees, etc. I would say they were still his people.
After Ascension and Pentecost, there weren't suddenly Jews and Christians either. The first Christians would have considered themselves Jews. They were just Jews that believed the prophecies of the Messiah had been fulfilled. So, I would say we can lump in the first Christians with the Jews above. That is almost certainly the view of the civil authority at the time. Roman authorities made no distinction between Jews and Christians. Christians were just another Jewish sect.
As scripture says, there must be schisms and it will always be so. I speak as an Orthodox Christian but believe I can lump in Roman Catholic belief here also. There are too many Orthodox and Latins that get hung up on being the one Church. Now I certainly believe there is one True Church, but there was no time in the history of the Church were there was only one Church. From the beginning, there were various groups of Christians. Over time, a consensus develops on what the teaching of the One True Church is and that continues to this day. Latins and Orthodox both would hold that was happening before Paul ever penned his Thessalonian letters and it was this coalescence that gave the Sola Scriptura variety Christians their Bible,
Could have fooled mebut I do not write this in the spirit of a polemic.
YesSo how do we, today, try to understand where we are now? I hold the position that there are heresies and there are heretics and that there is a difference. Again I am going to overgeneralize some for the sake of "brevity"
First rule. God is the judge of the individual person, not any of us.
Heresy means simply choice. Schism means division. In common terms a heresy is a wrong belief. A heretic is one who CHOOSES to believe wrongly
So to lay the groundwork, I would say when you say people, I would say that means a group, a Qahal, an Ecclesia that holds the correct dogmas.
I don’t know. If you believe a heresy, that tends to make you a heretic. If you know the truth and refuse to live by it, you are. A heretic.However there can be individuals within that group that don't adhere to the dogmas proclaimed by that group. This is one traditional understanding of the parables of the wheat and tares for example, where the Church is made up of wheat (sheep) and tares(goats). However these tares don't schism, they just mostly keep to themselves etc.
Now anyone can believe a heresy. That alone however does not make them a heretic. There must be a conscious choice to believe something contrary to a known teaching of the Church. If this person, once made aware of the error, unites themselves to the Church, they were never a heretic.
Now if a person remains obstinate in their teaching, they are excommunicated or placed outside the visible Church.
If that person than chooses not only to believe the heresy but starts a new community that teaches the heresy then we have schism. Those would be the ones that are actively leading others away from the Church.
So if I, as an Orthodox Christian, and meaning no offense while still being true to my beliefs, had to say anything about Christianity today, I would say the Roman Catholic church is schismatic and heretical in its teaching. I would say Protestant churches are Heterodox. When it comes to the people in those churches, I would say most are neither schismatic or heretical because they have never made a deliberate choice in either division or heresy.
So to come full circle, I hold the leadership responsible, who should know better, for leading their flock away from Him, not the flock. Those who are teaching heresy and lead others into error will be held accountable. The folks in the pews, after several centuries of developing their own traditions, are mostly ignorant of Church History through no fault of their own. So when I discuss these things here with y'all, I don't consider you heretics or schismatics. I just consider you ignorant . I would expect you view me similarly or worse which I am fine with too. Everything I say could be wrong, its up to you to fact check me
After all that is how the one True Church has ironed out dogma and doctrine from the beginning. Disagreements arise, they are discussed, and, if necessary, right teachings are affirmed wrong teachings are declared.
I agree. I know that Lutherans hold the true faith and all y’all are heretics, but…
However, I think of this in terms of Lewis and Mere Christianity. What is true and right is the center of church. There may be some areas where we disagree (true presence in the bread and wine, the efficacy of baptism, etc.), but in the center are the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed, which order the church in a true and right direction.
I would add to that the inerrancy of scripture is now a fourth thing that has emerged in the 20th century (as it was assumed before then). This fourth measure eliminates most of my above mentioned denominations as they have no solid resting place on which to place their faith. I’m hopeful that our RC friends will come around to the primacy of scripture, but the Council of Trent foreclosed that pretty well (schismatics that they are!).
As for the people, there is a willing ignorance (especially now in America of all places) for those in those faiths. There are some things that I wish we had that the RCC has (an actual community of faithful people who are bound to each other), but there isn’t as high of a switching cost as we used to have. It isn’t like leaving the Amish or Hutterite communities.
Just some random thoughts I had to pull my iPad out for to respond.