Jerry Johnson argues that orthodox Trinitarianism leads to a right worldview, whereas anti-Trinitarian heresies end up generating profoundly wrong worldviews.
Advertisements
The One and the Many
13
Jul
DC Al Fine
July 13, 2013 at 7:07 am
Soft theology leads to heresy and apostasy, regardless of tradition.
Look at Catholicism; on one hand you have a minority of well catechized, orthodox believers, and on the other you have a bunch semi-literate heretics who are rapidly falling away from the faith. Teaching believers about theology, especially more complex concepts like the trinity helps inoculate against other worldviews. It’s unfortunate that evangelicals eschew this almost entirely.
Will S.
July 13, 2013 at 10:24 am
Well said, DCAF; agree completely.
Everyone, in all Christian traditions, should make use of catechisms, confessions and creeds as teaching tools. Alas, as you point out, this is unevenly applied in Catholicism (e.g. are Brazilians, with their bacchanal every spring called Carnaval, properly catechized? One wonders. No, one knows, likely not.) And because many evangelical churches eschew creeds (though often having a ‘Statement of Faith’ on their websites, which, if not a creed, is what? But then why not make it official, and recite it weekly, use as a teaching guide, with Scriptural cross-references, etc.? Like us Reformed. š ), and tend to lack any kinds of official confessions and catechisms, they are ungrounded, unrooted.
DC Al Fine
July 13, 2013 at 4:30 pm
Unrooted is a perfect term to describe young evangelicals. It explains their drift on issues like hell, and buggery.
I won’t get into whether these churchians are actually Christians or not, but if they are, they have no solid ground to stand on. Thus, when the Church is challenged like it is in the West today, they fall in line with the world.
Will S.
July 13, 2013 at 7:56 pm
Agreed re: drift; if you don’t clearly teach congregants what your church believes and why, and if you seek to find a lowest common denominator so that you can be close to all the other evangelical denominations (as is usually the case; they downplay distinctives and differences these days, and only focus on commonalities), then don’t be surprised to find heresy taking root.
I too don’t want to generalize as to whether many or most or few churchian types remain truly Christian, though I incline increasingly towards not (as I tend to view most liberal mainline types), but indeed, they’re very weak in the faith, if indeed still faithful, due to their wishy-washiness. Hence how easily they indeed fall in line with the world, esp. as regards the place of men and women in the church and in society.
Peter Blood
July 13, 2013 at 10:44 pm
The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind. Mark Noll, in the early 90s, and still true today.
Will S.
July 14, 2013 at 2:56 am
Indeed.