My experience with a PCA church has been positive in this regard. It felt as if the more you became involved, from membership, to serving, to holding an office, the more was expected doctrinally. As a member, are you a Christian? Are you baptized? In service, can you pass a background check? In the office of deacon, will you uphold the WCF? Tell us about your marriage? As a deacon, we were not required, to list what our good faith subscriptions were. As a teaching elder, there would obviously be a higher standard for confessional integrity and maturity.
What I appreciated about our pastor then, was that while his teaching was not doctrinally heavy handed, when you got to know him, there was solid structure there. Real backbone and conceptual sinew.
salvation by faith + works is a bit of a misleading way to look at the salvation by faith doctrine.
The point is, if were are saved through our faith, the way in which we know that we are saved is via things we do that people who are saved do in their day to day lives. For example, if a person who was formerly a thief was saved, then it would be expected that person would no longer engage in that type of profession. The individudal would instead do other things in their daily lives that are indicative of someone who now follows JesusâŚso one would not see ongoing theft, however, we would expect to see the fruits of the spirit on a regular basis in that person and these would normally be manifest in physical activities (ie works).
So we are not saved by our worksâŚabsolutely I agree with you on this point.
Matthew 7: 16By their fruit you will recognize them. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20So then, by their fruit you will recognize them.
would you not agree that the context is an important consideration in any language when attempting to ensure meaning? So when taking doctrine from the bible, passages of scripture we use should contain meanings based on context.
But the sermon on the mount was preached to a wider audience than Jesusâs committed diciples, was it not? And from what we know from the gospels, Jesus shook his head that even his âinner 12â certainly did not always get their doctrine correct.
He didnât set aside his divinity, just the prerogative of divinity. We refer to this as the self-emptying of Christ. We call Philippians 2:6-11 the Kenotic Hymn.
You canât set aside your divinity and still be God.
The word creed comes from the Latin Credo which means âI believe.â So yes, the focus of creeds is beliefs!
And why conflate the New Testament with the Sermon on the Mount? There are plenty of places where faith and belief are commended in both the OT and the NT.
Abraham was commended for believing God.
The woman at the well said to Jesus, "Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, he who is coming into the world.â
When Jesus healed the blind man, he was kicked out of the synagogue. Jesus later sought out the man asked him: âDo you believe in the Son of Man?â The man answered: âWho is he, sir, that I may believe in him?â Jesus told him that is was He. The man then said: "I do believe, Lord,â and he worshiped Jesus .
Passages like this abound.
This naive meme tries to make it seem like the Gospel was originally all about doing the right thing and then decayed into a system of beliefs. But beliefs and right actions are not mutually exclusive.
Karl Giberson points out that aversion to the creeds stems from anti-Catholicism. (Even though the creeds arenât specifically Catholic.)
Do you have to believe anything to be baptized? In my church you have to accept the Apostlesâ Creed --the adult believer or in the case of an infant, the childâs sponsor and godparents
I like what the Episcopal Church web site says about the creeds:
While we will always have questions about God, the Church, and our own faith, we have two foundational creeds that we use during worship: the Apostlesâ Creed used at baptism and daily worship, and the Nicene Creed used at communion.
I wrote that on a whim without having much to go on. But I wanted to reply with something more informed and found it fascinating that there are, according to Keener, more than 36 discrete views on the sermon!
Keener also pretty well gets at the problem with the meme:
âSome interpreters have sought to preserve the sermonâs ethics, which they regard as central, while rejecting its claims for Jesusâ identity (Klausner 1979b: 414). But a central point of the sermon is Jesusâ unique authority as the supreme expositor of the lawâs message, a new Moses (cf. Davies 1966b: 14-93). Both Jesusâ climactic claim to unique authority by which he concludes the sermon (7:21-27) and the crowdâs response (7:28-29) demonstrate that Matthewâs discourse sections, like his narratives, stress Christology as well as ethics (see Guelich 1982); indeed, the ethics flow from the former, dependent on Jesusâ authority. These teachings do not represent an ethical outline for humanity or nation-states, but for Jesusâ disciples alone, for citizens of the future kingdom (cf. France 1985: 106).â
Maybe the faith + works includes an attempt to confront the problem of unborn (or dead) faith. There are too many thinking they will be forgiven and saved because they are called Christians and are members of a church.
Many understand the need to be forgiven. I once visited a big hindu festival where millions were gathered by a river (Krishna if I remember correctly) because they hoped that their sins would be forgiven when they washed themselves in the river during the festivals. Those being officially members of a church can ask for forgiveness even if they would not have living faith. They ask, assume they were forgiven and continue their life as before - nothing changes in their life.
Faith + work approach is problematic because it gives the false impression that good acts can save you. A little bit of faith in God and some good acts and you have earned a place in heaven. I think this kind of false impressions are even more dangerous than the impression that you just have to say the correct words and believe you were forgiven to be saved.
Here I must implore you to think critically about that statement. I know that we have been living in the box of traditional dogmas and believe in them without question. But question we must ask because we canât just ask people to believe anymore without proof or support. I know that your statement is the familiar statement and has been embraced by those who believe that Jesus is fully God and fully man. Now, I am not saying that this position is wrong, but we canât just ignore many other nuggets in biblical text that is hard to explain with this position and just brush it aside.
so letâs take an example from your statement :
I might ask you a question : âwhy not?â Do we know for certain about God or that the bible do say something about that or is it just the argument we heard and assume it as true? This is exactly the reason why I want to question traditional dogmas because when I read the Bible, there are certain passages that run counter against the argument of âJesus is fully God and fully manâ.
As a matter of fact, âJesus is fully God and fully manâ is problematic from many angles.
My reformed friend told me that Jesus is eternally fully God and fully man since God is immutable. Now that is new.
Some says that when Christ was on earth, He took on humanity as additional nature thus have dual nature since incarnation. Well, I guess Jesus changed from one nature to dual nature. Now that is hard to explain. If Jesus is God, then He did change if this happens.
Some says that when Christ said that He did not know His return in the coming age, He was talking thru His human nature. Then this open the door for interpretation of how much of Jesusâ saying is from His human nature and how much from His divine nature. The pandora box that no one dare to touch.
passage like Phil 2:6-11 become problematic and need to be explain away.
-John 17:5
And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.
(This verse is also problematic as Jesus was referring to the glory that He had previously with the Father)
Sermon on the mount was a sermon. The what to do and how to do is the examples given as in a sermon and that is how the sermon on the mount should be treated.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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Itâs very simple. Never having existed before 4 BCE as a person, never mind a Person, He acquired a fully divine nature - perfect moral compass - at conception with a fully natural one.
The church with the most amount of âwiggle-roomâ is the Unitarian-Universalist church. They include people from atheism, agnosticism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and other faiths. There are no creeds, doctrines, sacraments, or anything of that nature. There is no Trinity. They donât baptize; instead they have dedications.
I think the church with the least amount of freedom to ask questions is the LDS (Mormon) church. Iâve read a lot of their stories. They seem to regulate every aspect of a memberâs life. And if you try to leave, getting removed from membership rolls is difficult.
