Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
In this short segment that is probably about 3/5 through the article, there is much said that I can agree with. Yet from the very beginning, he simply dismisses the "traditional church" as not following this pattern.
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It's a bit confusing because he starts out a) refuting notions of the traditional church. Then follows b) a long section, a letter actually addressed to him, upholding traditions of authority in the traditional church, which he then concludes by c) rejecting in some detail.
Problem is you don't see the transition from section a) to section b), so you think that he is doing an about face, when actually he is quoting the alternative to his own view in some detail.
I find it very hard to consider WN's own writings on authority, simply because he apparently discovered them only after he founded his indigenous church, and needed to prop himself up. They're entirely too self-serving to be taken on face value. If WN had truly come to the realization that rejecting authority was such an evil sin, then he should have promptly recanted his Little Flock position and gone back to join the already established Protestants (who, btw, had themselves quit the RCC, who'd in turn rejected the Eastern church authority).
But instead it's the usual subjectivism: when I do it, then it's God's deputy authority, and when you do it, then it's rebellion.