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Originally Posted by OBW
It may be that letting the trained theologians who rely on a long tradition of teaching and understanding be the ones who spend more time (than we want to wait) just considering a question that might move some aspect of practice from its mooring to a different place rather than someone excitedly declaring something different and a bunch of people being caught-up in the new and starting a new group.
I know that it was all new in the 1st century AD. Now the only thing that is truly new is not what is true, but the realization that it is true. What is new is that someone moves from disbelief to belief. Other than that, it really is sound and old.
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The trained theologians are learning, right in front of us. They are studying, making points, opening their ideas to critique. They are learning from each other; it’s so gratifying for me, to see one scholar admit to learning from another. Look at any good paper, and it has dozens of citations. The better books have hundreds. There’s a large quantity of wisdom collected there, which usually is associated with institutions, but which spills over the institutional walls. Catholics learn from Orthodox scholars, Anglican from Baptist. It is true community, and it is exciting to read and take part in, as a layperson, from a distance. "The unfolding of your word brings light/it brings understanding to the simple." To be in a place where the word is unfolding among the collective is precious, indeed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
It Of course working within your Christian community only works if those communities are prepared to be a sounding board and to actually engage in questions rather than just dispense answers. Otherwise they just become enclosed within their own dogma. Much like the LCM, even if less dogmatically so.
I have many questions. I do see things. (Obviously I had to if I was ever going to move beyond what Lee and the LCM gave me.) Some that would be problematic if my assembly of choice is too set in its ways to at least engage in the question and some dialog. And my questions would get me booted out of the LCM. But I am satisfied with my assembly even if the answers to my questions don't go where I think they could/should. And I am willing to be shown the error in where I think it might go (or at least think I am).
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Again, the Christian community isn't limited to your local assembly. What I find is that I can access the resources of the larger Christian community, and bring them to my local congregation. If the point is well made, elsewhere, I should be able to make it locally, in a manner that my neighbor can apprehend. And if the point is made sufficiently, to me, then I should be able to make it sufficiently, to my neighbor.
And that which I find that I can't make sufficiently to the satisfaction of my neighbor I keep to myself, at least for now, until I figure out how to present it in a mutually beneficial way. "That which you have seen today; don't share it with anyone until the Son of Man is risen from the dead." Sometimes the Lord wants to share something with you, for your living, not for you to make a proclamation to tickle the ears of others. See Matt 17:9