Book Review: Journeys of Faith: Evangelicalism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Anglicanism

1024 Project ^ | 10/22/2013 | Mark Musser

[Olympiad Fisherman]

Too many evangelicals are today looking for a deeper religious experience rather than submit their lives to the biblical authority of God's gracious revelation. Religious existentialism is therefore leading some evangelicals away from their shallow Protestant churches into the spiritual murkiness of medieval traditionalism, ritualism and liturgy at the expense of biblical truth ...

[Claud]

They wanted to gather into the flock pagans who had grown up in idolatry and who would therefore have a very difficult time appreciating the nakedness of faith that the New Testament strongly emphasizes.

That's an interesting perspective right there.

The Apostles didn't carry over any of the liturgical ethos they had drunk up like mother's milk from Judaism? The Jewish liturgical year? The readings, the rituals, the cycles of prayer, the sacramentals, the symbols, the hymnody, the liturgical language, the set formulas for recitation?

That was all pagan-inspired, was it?

[onedoug]

Well met.

[Claud]

I realize that the author is narrowing his criticism of pagan influence to iconography, and not liturgy in general.

But there are inklings that the Judaism of the New Testament period was not as anti-iconography as some would have us believe:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dura-Europos_synagogue

[Tasia]

You got that exactly right!

[Uri’el-2012]

With regard to the importance of biblical authority, Orthodox and Catholic Christians do not seem to understand very well that at the close of the first century, when the apostle John wrote the book of Revelation to the spiritual hub of Christianity centered in Ephesus, five out of the seven churches were not doing very well. Only one, the church of Philadelphia, was truly pleasing to the Lord. In other words, the church was already corrupted by the close of the first century.

There seems to be a mis-understanding of the seven churches
in Revelation. Many see it as a chronological metaphor.

I believe the wheels came off in Nicea in 325 CE.

shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach

[Uri’el-2012]

They wanted to gather into the flock pagans who had grown up in idolatry and who would therefore have a very difficult time appreciating the nakedness of faith that the New Testament strongly emphasizes.

This impugns the sovereignty of YHvH.

shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach

[Olympiad Fisherman]

Yes, the New Testament church was surprisingly very ritual free with only baptism and communion. The book of Hebrews especially has much to say about rituals in the Old Testament, and what their purpose was.

[Olympiad Fisherman]

Very interesting! Thanks for sending me the link on that synagogue!

[Olympiad Fisherman]

Possibly, but those churches were real churches who existed in the 1st century. Rather than chronology, those churches are most likely historical types of churches that will exist up until the Lord returns.