Quote:
Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah
I don't think the situation has changed. Today there are many different meetings of Christians, many different denominations, but all of them feel that the book of Corinthians was written to them.
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My experience is that, for the most part, the denominations, while disagreeing about certain doctrines, do not have the acrimony or rancor that the "single" church in Corinth displayed. We are allowing an overlay that insists that differences of opinion cannot exist and still have relative harmony.
There are surely times when there are "blow-ups." Such as when a particular church splits. That is seldom a cordial parting of the ways. But I have even seen where a couple was asked to leave because the wife was causing problems with other women over her dislike of the way the women's ministry was being run. They were not excommunicated. They were not barred from being there at various times. My wife I and I saw the man just the other day in a restaurant. But there was a disharmony that was a problem for the church yet way short of being worthy of excommunication. They simply began to attend another church where they were able to meet without problem.
The problem that I am seeing more and more with the LRC, and with many of us who came out of it, is that we have learned to focus on the negative with respect to others and make it seem so large that it dwarfs everything else. And for those of us who have left, we look back at the LRC and fault them for all kinds of things related to their efforts to make their internal stances absolutely uniform. While I think they take it way too far (more like way, way, way too far), if the have no stance on anything, then there will be chaos. While I do not know enough about various groups to find two that are almost entirely the same except for one specific doctrinal difference, I will oversimplify for an example.
Imagine an assembly that had many who believed in Calvin's interpretations related to security in salvation, but also many who believed in the teachings of Arminius who interpreted that there was the ability to lose salvation. Seems unlikely. But in a more rural area where there are often only a couple of churches, and one of them is RCC, you could get there if a lot of people moved into the area for retirement and started attending the one non-RCC church. The leadership turns out to be primarily Calvinist, but not entirely. And some who teach, such as in Sunday School, are Arminian. Now we have a problem. The church has conflicting teachings. Neither believes that the other is non-Christian. But it starts to be a problem. Is the answer to vote on which to follow and insist that those who think otherwise simple be silent? At least on that matter? It could work in an environment where those of one belief were few in number.
But what about a growing assembly with a reasonable split in those who follow the two different beliefs? Would separate assemblies so that the environment of teaching is not suffering from various levels of acrimony not be better? Neither is suggesting that the other is not Christian or unsaved. They just seek to meet without the overlay of strife within the assembly related to this issue.
Would you insist that they just get over it and agree? Or that they just get over it and accept that they have divergence in teaching on a subject? As a practical matter, is forcing a single assembly with internal strife a bigger problem with unity than separating the assemblies and allowing them to exist together in a harmony not otherwise attainable? I note that it would be very satisfying for it to work within a single assembly. But if you already have sufficient mass to have more than one assembly, does that not better achieve unity than forcing one assembly that is not in unity?
And before you answer, do not start with the assumption that there should simply be one assembly because that is an overlay created by Lee. Paul's letters clearly reference multiple assemblies within a single place, so that is already a phenomenon that existed without negative comment. Even in Corinth, the problem wasn't that some liked a certain teacher more than others while others like a different teacher better. It was that they were fighting over it. It is tiresome to constantly read references to denominations as if they are as bad as or worse than those factions in Corinth. My observations are that they are not like the factions in Corinth. It is true that they follow certain ways, or doctrines. And that some of them even name their originator (like Luther). But while they do not agree with everything that others teach or believe, they are not generally in a state of agrimony with any of them.