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Originally Posted by OBW
The question is phrased based on a presumption that any kind of notation concerning the make-up, location, thoughts on particular doctrines, etc., is a spiritual anomaly that must be avoided at all costs.
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So, in your opinion, are denominations the spiritual norm, and if so should they be encouraged and spread even more?
Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
Further, the analogy of the wife taking her husband's name is something added to the discussion by Witness Lee, not by the Bible.
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The quotation under this thread comes from Spurgeon's Sermon (1889). It is Spurgeon's analogy for a sermon called “The Marriage of the Lamb”. The analogy well suits the topic (in my opinion).
Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
But first, the various churches of Christianity all claim Christ above all other issues. With some exceptions, non of these groups stands at odds with the others in such a way that they declare the others to be illegitimate. You might find some wording of recent years concerning the RCC's view of other Christian groups, but you will find that even there, they are not so much at odds that they deny the status of any group as an assembly of Christians, which is all that a church is. At the level of universal church, I am not sure who excludes any true Christians from that. (But I do note that a recent analogy presented here concerning the "right" boat in the ocean would seem to imply that they dismiss all who are not part of their assembly.) While you may consider some of this to be opinion, I believe that it undermines the claim by the non-scriptural source that there is such a husband's name metaphor that applies to the landscape of Christians.
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In Spurgeon's quotation, there is no mention of a group that declares the others to be illegitimate. That is not his argument.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
I do not agree with such a statement. Further, I look to the reality of activities and fellowship that occur between groups of different denominations, even including across the RCC–Protestant "divide" and find that the boogeyman of denominationalism does not exist in the way that the proclaimer of that boogeyman has declared it to be.
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Maybe you see better than Spurgeon.
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Originally Posted by OBW
As a result of my assessment of the whole "denominational" debate, I am convinced that the problem is that there has been created the appearance of a problem that does not match with actual observations. Further, that the problem that is declared to exist is found in stories about women calling themselves by someone other than their husband's name, but not found as something substantial in the Bible as a definitional problem.
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Maybe you see better than Spurgeon.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
Rather, the claim of such a problem is a declaration that God has not been in control of the church for some 18+ centuries and only with the addition of yet another denomination can the scourge of division in the body be solved.
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God has been in control when Adam fell and yet this cannot negate that Adam fell.