[aron]

Originally Posted by InChristAlone

We pray in the presence of icons but we do not pray to the images. Icons are just images of the Lord and His faithful saints who pray for us and with us in His Church. Besides, icons remind us of heavenly realms and work as a trigger for prayer that helps to focus our attention.

I grew up in Puritanism, today called Fundamentalist Protestant Evangelicalism, in which icons and outward religious trappings were avoided like the plague. I'd get a nervous rash in the presence of liturgical things like icons, incense, vestments; my strong conditioning would make me uncomfortable. (Some might say that this reaction speaks to separation from the Father of Lights, but I'll leave that alone, because it's not my point). But in spite of strict training to avoid liturgical devices and flourishes, like those found in Anglican, RCC, and EO, over years as a "seeking one" I came to believe that the repository of faith, wisdom, experience in the EO is unparalleled. See ICA's comments, below.

Originally Posted by InChristAlone

I know it's a different topic but what I like about Orthodoxy is that since “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and forever”, the Church has no need to conform to the newest fads, philosophies, and doctrines. In Orthodoxy, the criterion of truth is not my bishop's, or my pastor's, or my personal understanding of the Bible, but the consensus of the Church Fathers. The Church Fathers don't have to all agree on every detail. Orthodox doctrine is determined by the consensus of the Holy Fathers - those points on which they do agree. As St. Vincent of Lerins says in his Commonitoria (434 AD), “ we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all.”

It isn't a different topic, because this thread is on what to throw out, in a post-LC Christian life. In the various ruptures, most notably the Great Schism of 1054 and the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, a connection to the past fell away; in fact, so much was lost that we didn't know what had been lost! Subsequently, a minister like WN or WL could rise up, elevate themselves, and unfettered by external restraints could impose their logical trains of thought upon the flock. And because WN & WL weren't purely logical, but like us were sometimes driven by hidden passions, and because the consensus of the past no longer was there, when they inevitably went into a ditch, the whole group followed them.

This type of unbalanced reliance upon a single "seer of the divine revelation", and one so recently arrived at the present truth, and thus so divorced from the wisdom of the Ancient Fathers, is a recipe for ruin. WN was a brother, and maybe a better Christian than I, but to tie the Church to one man's inspiration and/or logic alone isn't going to work. Likewise, WL and the Blendeds claimed to be "closely following the apostles" but how could they, being separated from the past and oblivious to the vast gulf?

Originally Posted by InChristAlone

The LC's exclusivism and constant criticism of Christianity made me leave the LRC. It was not even constructive criticism. ... I find it very sectarian to make such a division between “Us” and “Them”.

One of WL's last public spoken messages (Feb '97) included a repentance for errors in the matter of receiving others. Yet in WN's first "Lord's table" meeting in mainland China, gathered apart from external oversight and celebrating the Lord's death and resurrection in simple faith, they claimed the presence of the Lord, and I don't doubt it. But what happened between that celebration and WL's repentance 75 years later? I've tried to address this question, not to solve the puzzle so much as to satisfy my curiosity: how could something so simple eventually go so wrong?

My best answer is that in being divorced from the safeguard of ancient witness, they were left the bare text of translated scripture and their thoughts and imaginations, and thus were blind to their own introduction of human culture in its interpretation. WN supposedly had read all the early commentaries available, but again, this was largely within the Reformation/Protestant canon, at least twice removed from the early saints and their collected wisdom. But we shouldn't hold it against him and his Little Flock efforts, because they did what they could. Would I have done better? I doubt it.

But I do reject the idea of having somehow arrived at the 'Conclusion of the New Testament' (see, e.g. http://www.christianbook.com/the-con...5720/pd/335720 ) when the initial Christian discussion(s) were effectively ignored as if non-existent, or passe. Today we've hardly begun to explore the New Testament! I mean, why is the church's testimony so weak, and circumscribed? Because we're ignorant. Why do our individual lives lack the power of testimony? Because we're ignorant. Nothing wrong with being ignorant - the problem is being ignorant while thinking that you've attained wisdom. Then, "your blindness remains".