Trying to find the right church

[Cassia]

Right. In the end we need to make some attempt to assess truth claims.

You have to start with asking how you decide. You've got four major options:

* traditional interpretations going back to the early church
* interpretations guided by various Protestant traditions, starting with 16th Cent confessions
* interpretations guided by recent scholarship based at least in part on Enlightenment principles
* interpretations based on your pastor's ideas

There are also differences in how much variation is allowed. I prefer denominations that allow several of those approaches (preferably the middle two).

The enlightenment principles of the 1800's Europe seem to range into philosophy more than anything. That doesn't seem to be the source of those who left the church of England to begin in the Americas. Where would you place that?

 

[tango]

But you must know that the moment anybody proclaims that they know that this or that teaching is wrong they set themselves up as rejecting untruth and lies because they know or at least have a feeling for what is true and good. Even if a person does not claim that their denomination, church, meeting or whatever is right and teaches the truth they nevertheless make an implied claim to knowing the difference for themselves. There's no escaping this tendency to make judgements so one might as well make judgements that one is prepared to live with and not change from year to year or month to month.

Your first two sentences don't necessarily follow from each other.

If I believe that Pastor Joe Blow is teaching untruth then it doesn't follow that I make any claim, actual or implied, that the church I attend is right and truthful in every regard. All it means is that I regard my church as being sufficiently close to the truth to be acceptable to me. Essentially what that means is that I think the church is right (or acceptably close) on the things that are important while not necessarily taking a stance on the things that are less important.

I believe that an important part of the process is coming to a decision regarding what is critical, what is important and what is unimportant. For example, my church is a much older congregation than I would choose but that's not an important element so I can live with it. There are a few things in the traditional of the denomination that I'm not entirely in agreement with but it's not critical to follow every part of that. The parts that are critical, which essentially boil down to the nature of God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, are areas where we agree so we're good there.

Most of the teachers I personally reject as being false teachers are those who I believe deviate from the critical areas of the faith, by either diluting the significance of Jesus Christ, by presenting a god I don't recognise or similar.

 

[hedrick]

The enlightenment principles of the 1800's Europe seem to range into philosophy more than anything. That doesn't seem to be the source of those who left the church of England to begin in the Americas. Where would you place that?

I agree. The Puritans were pretty much classical Reformed.

I see two major results of the Enlightenment.

The more radical results moved in the direction of deism and "free thinking." You can see this in England at the time of early America. There was some influence in Boston, but not very widespread in the US I don't think.

The second result showed in critical scholarship applied to both the Bible and theology. I think of that as more associated with Germany than England in the early days, though that's surely oversimplification. To my knowledge it showed in the US mostly in the 19th and 20th Cent.

Both are actually viable choices today. The first turned into Unitarian Universalism and fairly small radical groups within the mainline denominations. The second is what I was really thinking of. It's visible in most European churches, the Anglicans, and mainline Protestantism in the US. Also the more liberal end of US evangelicalism.

 

[Cassia]

Right. In the end we need to make some attempt to assess truth claims.

You have to start with asking how you decide. You've got four major options:

* traditional interpretations going back to the early church
* interpretations guided by various Protestant traditions, starting with 16th Cent confessions
* interpretations guided by recent scholarship based at least in part on Enlightenment principles
* interpretations based on your pastor's ideas

There are also differences in how much variation is allowed. I prefer denominations that allow several of those approaches (preferably the middle two).

The enlightenment principles of the 1800's Europe seem to range into philosophy more than anything. That doesn't seem to be the source of those who left the church of England to begin in the Americas. Where would you place that?

I agree. The Puritans were pretty much classical Reformed.

I see two major results of the Enlightenment.

The more radical results moved in the direction of deism and "free thinking." You can see this in England at the time of early America. There was some influence in Boston, but not very widespread in the US I don't think.

The second result showed in critical scholarship applied to both the Bible and theology. I think of that as more associated with Germany than England in the early days, though that's surely oversimplification. To my knowledge it showed in the US mostly in the 19th and 20th Cent.

Both are actually viable choices today. The first turned into Unitarian Universalism and fairly small radical groups within the mainline denominations. The second is what I was really thinking of. It's visible in most European churches, the Anglicans, and mainline Protestantism in the US. Also the more liberal end of US evangelicalism.

That would make classical Reformed interpretation the 5th major option. Funny how people forget that option usually by pleading the 5th ~ refusing to because circumstantial evidence may convict them :-0 ^_^

 

[Cassia]

That would make classical Reformed interpretation the 5th major option. Funny how people forget that option usually by pleading the 5th ~ refusing to because circumstantial evidence may convict them :-0 ^_^

The difference would be placed at the sacraments I suspect because I have never seen the connection to what modern reformed and those w/o the sacraments teach.

Early Protestants believed the true church to exist in those places, but only in those places, in which they found the gospel preached and the sacraments rightly administered. This was not only the case with the Reformed, but also with Lutherans and Anglicans, as the Augsburg Confession (1530) and Thirty-Nine Articles (1571) show respectively:
https://deovivendiperchristum.wordp...-confessions-on-the-marks-of-the-true-church/

 

[JSales]

OP Bro, if you don't think you're in the right church then probably you ain't so think of it as an adventure on the hunt for the ark or something.

 

[MoreCoffee]

OP Bro, if you don't think you're in the right church then probably you ain't so think of it as an adventure on the hunt for the ark or something.

Indiana Jones and the Holy church?