Subject: When did the catholic church go wrong? |
Bible Note: Ed; I would argue that the church's authority has diminished in direct proportion to the level it has discounted the Word of God to be an infallible authority of faith and practice. That did not start with the Reformation but rather much later, starting from the so-called "Age of Reason" of the 1700s. This period of rationalism profoundly influenced the thinking of many ministers, who in turn began to deny the truth of the Scriptures. If we say that Jesus didn't really rise from the dead but we can all be good Christians anyway, everything starts to unravel. There are a great number of books tracing the history of the church's decline of influence in the world at large. Some excellent books on the subject are _The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind_ by Mark Noll and _No Place for Truth_ by David Wells. Both trace the lack of influence that the church has to a gradual conformity to the world and the rising influence of pietism, which divorces faith from our God-given minds. In short, we have few thinking Christians in the world today. One only has to look through the posts on here to see that there is not only a non-intellectualism in Christianity today, but also a pervasive ANTI-intellectualism, as if thinking too hard about the things of God is "quenching the Spirit," somehow. I am also in the middle of an excellent book entitled _Evangelicalism Divided_ by Iain Murray, which paints a very bleak picture of how the evangelical church in the last half-century has sold its soul in order to gain more respectability in the world. It is very well-documented and points out how in Britain and in the United States a great number of denoninations, groups, and ministries traditionally aligned with evangelicalism have basically taken an attitude of "please, world, we really want you to like us, so we will do whatever it takes for you to not hate us so much." Of course, this ignores the words of our Lord completely: "If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you." --John 15:18-19 If we are following Christ, the world will hate us. That is because everyone who has not been called out of the world by Christ hates Him and His church. That is why those who make petty excuses about Bible translations (other than cult mis-translations they all say pretty much the same thing) and other "side issues" rather than confronting the issue of their sinfulness. As someone who has worked on and off in countercult evangelism for more than a decade, what the cults that you mentioned offer is structure, so much so that no one needs to be a thinker; others will be happy to do it for them. They offer an avenue for people to pridefully work for their own justification, letting them be misguided in their pursuit of righteousness through works. The other side of the coin, of course, has been a near-complete abdication on the part of evangelical churches to train their members in theology for their sanctification, in addition to casting aside their biblical duty to be discerning and disciplining. A healthy church is one where the whole counsel of God is preached faithfully and consistently (that is BOTH Testaments in the context of redemptive history, centered on God and Christ, not man), where baptism and the Lord's supper are celebrated, and where biblical church discipline is present. The unhealthy churches we have in our midst are those that fall short of these trhee charateristics consistently, and people abandon unhealthy churches for cults all the time. You have no idea how many Mormon missionaries I have talked to that grew up Southern Baptists. We simply HAVE to return to teaching and training our fellow believers in the truths of God, giving them meat, and engaging them in having Christ's attitude toward ministry: "Jesus *said to them, 'My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work.'" --John 4:34 --Joe! |