More thoughts on church
maybe i'm just being hard to please.
first off, turns out i totally misdiagnosed christ community church (where i went three weeks ago). in reality, the leadership is a good bit reformeder than me (which, granted, isn't saying that much). and, as if to drive the point home, today's sermon was a nice yay-luther-boo-catholics session on justification by faith. sigh.
(ok, i should be fair. it wasn't exactly "boo catholics"--certainly much, much more charitable than some i've heard. the pastor didn't question their salvation or nonsense like that. he mentioned that he had a smart catholic friend read over the sermon before he gave it, which was definitely a good move. he was really trying hard to play fair, and he deserves credit for it.
but when he tried to make clear contrasts between protestant and catholic doctrine, i think he maybe tried too hard--because his catholic version sounded so obviously more correct! more biblical. honestly, a lot of what protestants say about justification make god sound just silly and arbitrary. he also (like most everyone on this topic) slippery-sloped wantonly--you know, "doctrine X can lead to error Y; (therefore X is false)". i got news: the truth is always on a razor's edge in a sea of error. if i may mix weird metaphors.
it is true, by the way, that catholics say some stuff about "merits" that sounds pretty weird to me. but i suspect i may just be misunderstanding some medievalese, because the conclusions they draw from the logic of merits sound perfectly sensible ("Man's merit...is due to God", Catechism par. 2008).)
but i digress. point is, i seem to find myself somehow landed with a mess of views (how did this happen? i always thought i was mister know-nothing ecumenical!) that are gonna knock any church i set foot into out of the running. between views and church, which shall give way? the views, of course. how they give way remains to be seen.
first off, turns out i totally misdiagnosed christ community church (where i went three weeks ago). in reality, the leadership is a good bit reformeder than me (which, granted, isn't saying that much). and, as if to drive the point home, today's sermon was a nice yay-luther-boo-catholics session on justification by faith. sigh.
(ok, i should be fair. it wasn't exactly "boo catholics"--certainly much, much more charitable than some i've heard. the pastor didn't question their salvation or nonsense like that. he mentioned that he had a smart catholic friend read over the sermon before he gave it, which was definitely a good move. he was really trying hard to play fair, and he deserves credit for it.
but when he tried to make clear contrasts between protestant and catholic doctrine, i think he maybe tried too hard--because his catholic version sounded so obviously more correct! more biblical. honestly, a lot of what protestants say about justification make god sound just silly and arbitrary. he also (like most everyone on this topic) slippery-sloped wantonly--you know, "doctrine X can lead to error Y; (therefore X is false)". i got news: the truth is always on a razor's edge in a sea of error. if i may mix weird metaphors.
it is true, by the way, that catholics say some stuff about "merits" that sounds pretty weird to me. but i suspect i may just be misunderstanding some medievalese, because the conclusions they draw from the logic of merits sound perfectly sensible ("Man's merit...is due to God", Catechism par. 2008).)
but i digress. point is, i seem to find myself somehow landed with a mess of views (how did this happen? i always thought i was mister know-nothing ecumenical!) that are gonna knock any church i set foot into out of the running. between views and church, which shall give way? the views, of course. how they give way remains to be seen.
Posted by Jeff on Sunday, October 08, 2006
1 Comments:
One of my Catholic friends says that if Luther had read Aquinas instead of Augustine, there would have been no reformation. While I'm not sure I'd go that far, it's fun to think about. =)
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