Jim Elliff writes on an all-too common practice in churches in recent years: Intentional Doctrinal Imprecision. (I have even witnessed this by professing Reformed pastors--shame on them).
A church's statement of faith used to serve the purpose of stating what a church explicitly believed---now many seem to take pride in the nebulous ambiguity of their "affirmations."
Do we have dissension in the protestant ranks today?
ReplyDeleteIsn't it Jason here who belongs to the Evangelical free church whose statement of faith is certainly one of the vaguer ones around:
http://www.efca.org/about/distinctives/
http://www.efca.org/about/doctrine/
Wasn't it Jason here who was arguing we don't want to be excluding anybody from the church just because they disagree with the details of what we believe? In fact the EFC actually says "Within the Evangelical Free Church, there is allowance for legitimate differences of understanding in some areas of doctrine."
But Alan doesn't like this. Not only do the protestants disagree more than any other group, but they don't agree on what they need to be agreeing on.
So I sense an oncoming schism in Triablogue?
1 Corinthians 11:19 - for there must be factions [αιρεσεις - heresies?] among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized. -ESV
ReplyDeleteorthodox,
ReplyDeleteWishful thinking.
Apparently you missed that I was not arguing against the freedom of unity in differences; quite the opposite: we should not be ambiguous of what those differences are.
Distinct statements of faith do not inevitably lead to disunity in the true Church of Christ.
>we should not be ambiguous of what those
ReplyDelete>differences are.
Ahh, but Jason's evangelical free church explicitely says "Membership requires commitment to sound doctrine as expressed in our Statement of Faith. However, a person is not excluded from membership because he or she does not agree on every fine point of doctrine."
So you've got to agree with our doctrine.... except where you don't.
orthodox,
ReplyDeleteYou need to flip the page over because we are not on the same one. I am now questioning whether you have even read Elliff's article given that you seem to be creating a conflict where there is none.
Elliff writes, "the 'wisdom' of attempting to circle in more people for our churches by unashamedly minimizing, or perhaps nearly eradicating, the restricting influences of doctrine."
Not sure how you are translating that into EFC philosophy of statements of faith. Try another angle.
Don't worry, Alan. Orthodox is incapable of reading anything!
ReplyDeleteThanks for linking to the article, Alan. I agree with it.
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks for making the effort to correct Orthodox. It seems that a lot of people who initially interacted with Orthodox when he came here have seen how unreasonable he is and have decided to stop responding to him. But his behavior deserves rebuke, and it's good to see some other people occasionally saying what needs to be said. Orthodox probably won't learn much from it, but maybe other people will.
For those who don't know, Orthodox originally thought that all of us on staff at Triablogue were Baptists. When I asked him why he reached that conclusion, he said that he concluded that we're all Baptists because he saw that some of the people who post here are Baptists. That's an example of the sort of reasoning he engages in regularly.
When I corrected him, I told him that I attend an Evangelical Free church. Apparently, he then went searching on the web for something to criticize regarding that denomination.
Orthodox often criticizes disagreements among Protestants, but he isn't so critical of disagreements among Eastern Orthodox. See, for example:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/04/in-search-of-true-church.html
I prefer to be known as a Non-Traditional Eastern Orthodox believer upholding the Westminster Confession myself. Naturally, Westminster can be reached by standing in Constantinople--er, sorry, Istanbul--facing East and walking for about 20,000 miles. (Note: may involve some swimming.) Thus, Westminster is really Eastminster...eventually.
ReplyDelete