Mere Christianity or Degraded Christianity?

[aron]

Originally Posted by Evangelical

Everything is subjective. The Bible is a written record of the author's subjective realities.

All true, and all good points. But you miss something: Jesus' subjective realities, plainly pointed out in the NT by the apostles, are our focus. Not our own experiences and sensations. The first is trustworthy as a stand-in for objective reality, to the believer. The second should not be. My comment has been that the error of Protestantism is to lean upon subjectivism, and be led astray. Not always; not everywhere. But it is a danger. Then the rejection of one's neighbour as the "other" - in the LC, called "fallen Christianity" - in turn leads to isolation, derangement, and perversion. And the last state becomes worse than the first.

By contrast, look at the subjective experiences of Jesus.

~Zeal of Thy (the Father's) house has eaten Me (the Son) up.

~You (the Father) will not let My flesh (Jesus) see corruption.

~My God my God, why have You (the Father) abandoned Me (the Son)?

Our subjective response rests solely on the response of Jesus, and the Father's response (delight, rescue from death, exaltation). We love because He first loved us. We see His atoning blood and we repent. We see His obedience and we hear His voice saying, "Follow Me".

The danger is instead following a subjectivism unhinged, where the supposed "leading" and the so-called "flow", based on one person's impressions, determine our current experience, even objective reality itself. Then, for example, the so-called "oracle of God" downplays scripture en masse as "fallen" and "natural". Dong Yu Lan teaches the same thing in Brasil: that Paul is "judicial" and is less than John, who is "organic". This kind of rampant subjectivism I find to be odious. The crowd jumps up and down and shouts repetetively, then they can be led anywhere. Even away from the Bible, and from the safety of 2,000 years of Bible reception.

That's why I showed Peter in Acts 2 and Paul in Acts 13 using the same source. They used what was already established as fact by the Jewish society, that David was an oracle of God, and the apostles then used it to point to Christ.

Paul said to Timothy, "I remember your tears". (2 Tim 1:4). But it is Jesus' tears that save us, not our own. That's all I'm trying to say. The danger of Protestantism is that we focus on our own tears, our own joys, and we miss His.