No source given?
Is this a vanity?
Interesting.
I’m curious if this “back to the original” idea includes going all the way back. In other words, reading the books of the Bible in their original language.
Otherwise, I don’t see how one can claim or believe to be any more original than any other Christian sect because you have to rely on the good intentions, and ability, of a translator. Doubly so if you believe, as the author asserts, that the Bible is the sole authority.
Thanks for posting.
I am in the middle of doing research for my new book and, along with Dean Arthur Stanley, I would like to know just how in the heck “Christianity” in the New Testament became the monstrosity known as today’s “Christianity.”
Is that all the Apostles did?
Sorry, this is just another example of reinventing the wheel. It is, in a sense, the opposite side of the problem of another exemplar of visible Christianity, one not to be mentioned for fear of inciting emotionally based outrage.
Christians who lived before us were neither stupid nor ignorant, at least no more so than we. Neither were they more or less corrupt than we. They, like we, had their flaws and operated under the influence of the fads, trends, and delusions of their age. There is nothing at all new under the sun.
To restore the church is to say that it lies in ruins. It does not. It cannot. That is the promise. (Matthew 16:18) The chief problem of the church is that it is entirely populated with sinners, all of whom have fallen short of the glory of God and continue to do so. In other words, there is corruption in the church. There always has been and there always will be. Some of the corruption is very visible: the fracturing of the church into denominations. Some of the corruption is less visible: the failure of so many in their various groups or denominations to live up to whatever good their respective group managed either to preserve or repristinate. Some of the corruption is known only to God: the actual state of any individual’s heart and soul.
The duty of the church is to confess clearly in its teaching and worship the one, true, Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and all that He has revealed to mankind about itself, the dangerous problem that threatens it, and the solution He has put forth to solve that problem. The church, which is only the sum total of all those whom God knows to be His own, has the task, as does any individual, of examining itself in the light of God’s truth, the truth that shines brightly and directly from God’s own revealed will, the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments and is reflected indirectly through the words and actions of the church through its long and complicated history. In examining itself, the church will always find itself wanting, always find itself in need of a merciful, long-suffering God of grace, the very God who most clearly revealed Himself in the person of the crucified Jesus Christ.
That denomination or faction that fails either to examine itself, repent, and earnestly seek to reestablish what is wanting - and something always will be - or that claims to have restored everything as all those before failed to do is the denomination or faction to be avoided. In either case, glory is given to man, whether knowingly or not.
In the faithful, struggling church all glory is God’s and His alone, just as it is in the faithful, struggling, individual disciple of Christ.
I disagree with this, but overall a good article.
I believe once a hierarchy began to emerge it was inevitable there would be a desire to merge with the state. It seems pretty common that the people at the top, or near the top, of a hierarchy are motivated by power and control. Also, the possibility that the persecutions would be ended had to be attractive.