Posted on 03/11/2010 8:46:21 AM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
1. We must value the spiritual contributions of different men and different periods of time within church history, but never idolize them.
2. We must be willing to look at both the good as well as the faults of our spiritual and theological heroes.
3. We must seek to guard ourselves from the error of a party-spirit as well as from making a virtual pope out of Calvin or Luther – something which, by the way, the apostle Paul explicitly told us not to do (1 Corinthians 1:10-13; 3:1-6; 4:1).
4. When we fail to realize the faults of our spiritual/theological heroes, or when we are guilty of idolizing the past, we end up:
A. Making man the measure or standard of righteousness, instead of the Lord Jesus Christ.
B. We fail to see the progression of church history and end up chained to the past – not recognizing that each period of history has its own unique contribution and blessing (including ours in the twenty-first century).
C. Romanticizing the past ("the good-old days"). We end up viewing history from a romanticized perspective, rather than from reality, which includes both great achievements as well as great down-falls. If even the Bible records the failures and sins of the greatest saints (e.g., David, Peter, et al.), why should we then ignore the faults of lesser saints throughout church history (e.g., Calvin, Luther, et al.)? Perhaps one of the major reasons why God allowed the failures of various biblical characters to be recorded, is so that we would not idolize such persons nor form theological parties around them.
(Excerpt) Read more at gracegems.org ...
The Trinity was there the whole time.
No resemblance?As I see it, neither does Judaism bear much resemblance to the Temple-worshiping Jews of the first century.
and those that disagreed were apostates and heretics and subsequently killed ....
I don't remember a lot of heretic killing by the Church until after the Roman emperor Constantine supposedly became a Christian. IIRC, I think that it was Christians being killed as apostates and heretics by both Jews and Romans. In the first century AD, it was a lot easier not to be a Christian than to be one.
I'm happy for ya.
BTW, I'm a Messianic Jew ....crazy, huh?
I may misspell this, but "Baruch havah b'Shem Adonai!"
I am glad that you are happy for me. I wish you the same happiness!
I'm really glad that you're glad that I'm happy for ya. :-)
After the death of the apostles (about 60 CE to 80 CE) it was about 250 years before Christianity became legal (about 313 CE). That is longer than the existence of the USA. So, pray tell how did these Christians exercise any legal authority to kill “Apostates” when it was illegal for anyone to be Christian. Disabuse yourself of these fictional nonsensical ideas and read history written by objective sources. The early church fathers wrote histories most of which are accepted by secular sources.
Pretty close. It’s more like “B’ruchim habaim b’shem Adonai” Blessed are you who comes in the name of the Lord.
“The analogy would be that a group of GM employees left, built their own factory, and began making cars. At the same time, they hired a bunch of ex-Ford and Chrysler employees to learn their way of making cars.”
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So you’re saying that we’re Saturns? :)
WELL PUT.
THX.
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