Today's prophetic jewel comes from Katay in Theology Through History, talking about the hardening of protestant scholasticism (I can't spell) in the 17th century, and the rise of pluralism. Katay talked about what makes Roman Catholicism attractive for evangelicals is that we above all protestants like our guru's, and the "Romans" have the guru of all guru's, the vicar of Christ, and from him ex cathedra the ultimate source of biblical authority, whilst for protestants, it is just us, our conscience and our bibles (plus a few external, social influences). To be a protestant is to be very lonely. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God.Katay also talked about the three stages of leadership that we see in the New Testament that we see in the bible; first Jesus and his authoritative teaching, actions, and achievement, secondly the apostles and their authoritative announcement of Jesus, and thirdly the the apostles good deposit, and the "apostolic descendants", which continues down till today (and where we no longer have apostles to tell us what's what). In in response to a question about the ill's of pluralism and lack of authority, Katay said, and I quote:
"Our problem isn't so much denominationalsim, our problem is a lack of apostolic authority."
Comments? Thoughts?
7 comments:
Yeah Moff, I've been thinking about this a bit while I've been looking at the Reformation, and I think that it can be frustrating having no definitive statement on specifically contemporary issues. All the evangelical councils seem to come to very wishy washy conclusions. The great advantage however is that we don't have the problem of having to defend everything the pontiff says - especially when it's a bit fishy.
Catholics on Campus would have a field day with that. They seem to have evangelicals in their crosshairs as their evangelism targets, and they would immediately say that they still have the apostolic line of Peter, and tell us to come back.
I think Katay's right - we are like a sheep without a shepherd in someways. But why is that, when we have a Shepherd? My theory is that we're a little too scholastic in our approach to God, coming at him from the point of view of a researcher rather than a relater. And what's more, we all know this, and are taught in our evangelical churches, right alongside the importance of studying the Word, the relational nature of God and His creation. And yet we (or just I?) seem to lack the link between head and heart that speaks to us of what we have been made. We who are saved and evangelical are not stranded with a book in leaderless clusters. We have the Holy Spirit living in us. And I think that what we lack, and should therefore be asking God for as much as we ask for anything else, is an understanding of how that can affect our lives, and how we can yield to Him fully. We need to know this and to teach it to our children as soon as they know the Lord. It shouldn't be an appendage to our faith that you learn when you're of age, it is the guarantee of our inheritance and it should never be left out. And my main point is that with this happening, we would no longer be leaderless, because we'd be aware and open to the leading of the Spirit, individually and corporately. Do you need to be a missionary or a vocational minister before you can know the guidance of God? Heck no. The Holy Spirit is not the "Counsellor of the More Holy", but the "Counsellor".
We lack apostolic authority because of the Reformation, but we should by no means let that fool us into thinking, as the Jews did in Jesus' day, that we have no Leader.
I think you're right in the assessing the real targets of Catholics on Campus - otherwise known as Evangelizing Protestants On Campus. How else would go to a series of talks on "Jesus and Justification"?
Their membership seems largely to be ex-EUers.(Their posters are everywhere too - but their Chaplain does it all himself!)
Protestants On Campus sure seem to be the targets of the Catholic, but they dont seem to be very successful. From what I could tell, the 25 other people at the Sola Scriptura talk I attended were all Catholics - the chaplain was basically preaching to the converted. No one at the door really welcomed me or anything or asked why I'd come along - although I did sidle up to a Catholic mate of mine once I got inside.
And he was really ripping in - I suppose that's integrity - but the crowd were all laughing along. My friend's quite a liberal Catholic and he was quite embarrased afterwards.
I think a few reformers would be upset at the claim that the Protestant churches lack apostolic authority as a result of the Reformation - their aim was to return to the teaching of the apostles.
By the way, I belong to a Protestant tradition that is in essence quite anti-guru - except for Jesus and the apostoles. The danger of that is too easily dismissing church history.
Yeah I know what I mean. The only time I've read through the early church fathers was in "Resurrection of the Son of God", one of the chapters examines what the fathers wrote on resurrection. It was emtirely foriegn, but exciting to read guys like origen, tertullian, justin martyr et. al.
i have a question for all ya, is jebus a guy or a god???
yes, Jesus is fully God and fully human.
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