Quote:
Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah
That is a mischaracterization. I never "insist" on the oneness of the Body. That sounds more like "keeping the oneness of the Body".
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You might be right. I did mostly say that you were trying to morph it in, not insist on it.
But the problem even there is that it is the stringing of metaphor after metaphor together to arrive at a construct that is not stated. In what is effectively a couple of places, the church is referred to as the body of Christ. And there is a lot of potential imagery that could be brought to bear based on that reference. But is the reference intended to suggest every aspect of being a literal body? The term "body" has been used of many corporate, non-single entities going back to before the NT era. In most of those cases, the constructs of organs, appendages, injury, etc., do not have the same meaning as they do for a human or other animal body.
That is not to say that it could not be implied or meaningful. But scripture does not go there. And bringing in the vine and the branches does not get you there. Honestly, in some aspect I'm sure that the body should be one. But is that oneness any different from the "unity of the Spirit"? And by saying that, I am not expanding the unity of the Spirit to be like everything that you could make out of a metaphorical human body. I am limiting the oneness of the body to the context that we are given — the unity of the Spirit. It is the Spirit that unifies. Yet we must endeavor to keep that unity. But it is not specified in terms of doctrines, meeting places, ground, etc., but just the Spirit. The Spirit is our unity. We are to strive to live like we know it is true. But no one can dictate what that "looks like." They can't ordain that it means certain things that scripture does not dictate.
And scripture dictates fairly little. Other than holding on to Christ/God/the Spirit. Even the verses about the vine and the branches say to hold on to the vine. Not to each other. Or that the fingers should hold onto the hand. Or the shoulder to the torso.
No. You didn't insist. But you are seriously not content to leave it as "unity of the Spirit." You seem to need more definition. A better-defined unity. And it all is speculative at best.
Somehow, I think that loving God and your neighbor will result in unity in the Spirit. Not many have actually tried that. Well, some have. And the largest majority of them are not even evangelical. They are Lutheran, Episcopal, and even (gasp) RCC. They live their faith. We so often do not (and I am including myself in that). We talk about how it should be. We argue over how to meet. We argue over doctrines as if they are crucial to salvation. They don't. Oh, they argue over doctrines, but more often they are clear that, right or wrong, the doctrines aren't our salvation. In the mean time, we (including me) are so focused on "getting it right" that we worry more about our doctrinal statement than obedience. To the extent that we aren't really very obedient.
Yeah, some of those old-line groups are not even sure whether all those miraculous things actually happened or are just part of the story. But they believe in the one the story was/is about. And they act like it. I'm not joining them. But I understand them a little more. And I think that we are too often mired in knowledge and think it will save us.
At some level, I believe that there is a recovery in progress. It is the recovery of God's people from the modern era of apologetics, pseudo-scientific method arguments, and head knowledge. I don't propose that the postmodern way is better. But they actually see the problem.
And this kind of discussion sometimes makes me wonder why I bother with the LRC. They are just another (and worse) version of what is wrong with our emphasis. But I always come back to the realization that I too often tend to just exchange one bad version of evangelicalism for another. Evangelicalism is not, per se, bad. But we have many bad versions of it. And one of the worst is the LRC. It is worse because it not only distracts us from the path, it puffs itself up in its certainty that it has found "
THE WAY" and no one else has. That means that it is essentially closed to correction. The rest may not take correction easily, but they are not simply closed.
And for all my talk, I am still in the middle of it all. I think I see something faintly. But I don't know what to do with it and find myself stuck in the very thing that I'm fairly sure needs a serious course correction.
But that course correction is not toward better doctrines or better-defined oneness. Rather it is to a renewed realization of what the gospel is supposed to mean to this life rather than just the next life and the "church life."