History of the Church
Mar 3, 2017 15:53:09 GMT -6
Post by Todd on Mar 3, 2017 15:53:09 GMT -6
History demonstrates repeatedly that all things either die suddenly or grow corrupt and die slowly. This has been true of every empire, kingdom, company, and institution. Those entities still alive today are in one stage or another of decline. This is nothing less than the work of Murphy’s Law (the second law of thermodynamics on the social level).
Even the Church had the elements of decline stamped on its physical manifestation from the days of the Apostles. These were visible in the Judaizers at Galatia, the party divisions in Corinth, the growing doubts of the Jewish Christians addressed in Hebrews, and the proto-Gnosticism obliquely visible in Colossians and 1st John. Troubles did not cease, but they changed the complexion of the Church until the rise of that political Christianity known as the Papacy.
The Catholic Church first erected a rational, theological edifice (not unlike that erected by the Pharisees in the time before Jesus) intended to define (and enforce) “orthodoxy.” But Catholicism degenerated to almost pure political intrigues and, although officially “Christian,” was in many respects far removed from the New Testament teachings of Jesus and his Apostles.
Protestantism recaptured much (but by no means all) of primitive Christianity, keeping only such Catholic theological accretions as served its purposes. But today the Democratic tendency has perverted the Church in ways that could never have happened in Catholicism. At least the Catholic Church kept its eye trained on the eternal, the changeless, the moral, and that which, like God, “changes not.” Modern Protestantism has abandoned pure Biblical teaching and its focus on God's timeless expectations in favor of the purely temporal tastes of the masses, whether feminist, homosexual, financial, or aesthetic. Pure worship is gone; scholarship is gone; praise is trite; Christianity has been reduced to a social club, and the church service in a large number of churches is nothing more than day-care for adults. The vast numbers of Christians, old and young alike, have been so dumbed-down they are unable either to understand or to see the relevance of sermons given over 100 years ago by Protestants who were focused on the eternal.
Is it not time we do something (perhaps drastic) to reclaim Christianity in its simple purity? -Todd
Even the Church had the elements of decline stamped on its physical manifestation from the days of the Apostles. These were visible in the Judaizers at Galatia, the party divisions in Corinth, the growing doubts of the Jewish Christians addressed in Hebrews, and the proto-Gnosticism obliquely visible in Colossians and 1st John. Troubles did not cease, but they changed the complexion of the Church until the rise of that political Christianity known as the Papacy.
The Catholic Church first erected a rational, theological edifice (not unlike that erected by the Pharisees in the time before Jesus) intended to define (and enforce) “orthodoxy.” But Catholicism degenerated to almost pure political intrigues and, although officially “Christian,” was in many respects far removed from the New Testament teachings of Jesus and his Apostles.
Protestantism recaptured much (but by no means all) of primitive Christianity, keeping only such Catholic theological accretions as served its purposes. But today the Democratic tendency has perverted the Church in ways that could never have happened in Catholicism. At least the Catholic Church kept its eye trained on the eternal, the changeless, the moral, and that which, like God, “changes not.” Modern Protestantism has abandoned pure Biblical teaching and its focus on God's timeless expectations in favor of the purely temporal tastes of the masses, whether feminist, homosexual, financial, or aesthetic. Pure worship is gone; scholarship is gone; praise is trite; Christianity has been reduced to a social club, and the church service in a large number of churches is nothing more than day-care for adults. The vast numbers of Christians, old and young alike, have been so dumbed-down they are unable either to understand or to see the relevance of sermons given over 100 years ago by Protestants who were focused on the eternal.
Is it not time we do something (perhaps drastic) to reclaim Christianity in its simple purity? -Todd