Local Church Discussions - View Single Post - The Bible record describes God leading people into and out of things

Evangelical · 01-11-2017, 02:20 PM

The Orthodox and Catholic claim they are the genuine church just because they can tell a story about how they are related to the first apostles and point to their history.
This attitude is very similar to the Pharisees who said "Abraham is our Father" to which Jesus replied "And do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father,' for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham." (Matt 3:9) . This is like these churches when they say "the apostle Peter, or the apostles was our founder".

Contrary to what Orthodox and Catholics claim with them pointing to bespoke out of context examples in many cases, the ancient writings of the fathers etc are in a number of ways quite diverse and do not present a unified and uniform set of doctrines that we can point to and say "yep, that's the truth, 100%".

The Protestant theologians have studied the early writings as intensively as any Catholic or Orthodox and have not reached any uniform conclusions. This is particularly true on the matter of transubstantiation or the "real presence" - there are even wide differences between protestant denominations.

Historically, there was diverse opinion in the early church as reflected by early church writings. There was no uniformly held view of transubstantiation until it was made an enforceable doctrine in the middle ages. Then the Catholic and Orthodox claim "it has always been so".

The local churches are more broad in the sense that a person only needs to be a believer in Christ to receive communion. We do not exclude anyone from taking communion who has not been baptized in the local church. We do not exclude anyone from taking communion based upon their doctrinal opinion concerning the nature of the bread and wine.

If you meet with the EO, they probably treat you as an outsider "yet to be converted", which means yet to be baptized to become a full communicate member of their church. They take these things very seriously, and believe you and I follow a different Jesus, a different faith. So it is not really fellowship between brethren.

01-11-2017, 02:20 PM	#52
Evangelical Member Join Date: Aug 2016 Posts: 3,965	Re: The Bible record describes God leading people into and out of things The Orthodox and Catholic claim they are the genuine church just because they can tell a story about how they are related to the first apostles and point to their history. This attitude is very similar to the Pharisees who said "Abraham is our Father" to which Jesus replied "And do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father,' for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham." (Matt 3:9) . This is like these churches when they say "the apostle Peter, or the apostles was our founder". Contrary to what Orthodox and Catholics claim with them pointing to bespoke out of context examples in many cases, the ancient writings of the fathers etc are in a number of ways quite diverse and do not present a unified and uniform set of doctrines that we can point to and say "yep, that's the truth, 100%". The Protestant theologians have studied the early writings as intensively as any Catholic or Orthodox and have not reached any uniform conclusions. This is particularly true on the matter of transubstantiation or the "real presence" - there are even wide differences between protestant denominations. Historically, there was diverse opinion in the early church as reflected by early church writings. There was no uniformly held view of transubstantiation until it was made an enforceable doctrine in the middle ages. Then the Catholic and Orthodox claim "it has always been so". The local churches are more broad in the sense that a person only needs to be a believer in Christ to receive communion. We do not exclude anyone from taking communion who has not been baptized in the local church. We do not exclude anyone from taking communion based upon their doctrinal opinion concerning the nature of the bread and wine. If you meet with the EO, they probably treat you as an outsider "yet to be converted", which means yet to be baptized to become a full communicate member of their church. They take these things very seriously, and believe you and I follow a different Jesus, a different faith. So it is not really fellowship between brethren.