ClarkeComments.com

Hello all:

Allister McGrath claims that the central idea around the Reformation was that each man is entitled to read and interpret scripture for himself. This idea then explains the myraid of denominations that have formed over the last five hundred or so years since Luther nailed his theses to the door of his local parish.

This idea of each man interpreting scripture for himself was vigerously oppossed by the Roman Catholic Church, which claimed (as still does claim) that only the Magisterium of the Church, entrusted to Supreme Pontiff and his bishops, had the right to interpret Scripture.

Of course, this caused a major problem.

The Church of Christ, whether it will admit it or not, claims to have a magisterium on scripture. Only the church, through its bishops (journals, college presidents, prominent ministers), has the right to interpret scripture. Anyone who comes to a different understanding of scripture than the one advanced by the magisterium is in error, either intentionally or negligently.

This causes a major problem.

This is especially a huge problem when you determine that something in the magisterium is wrong. If one teaching is incorrect, what keeps all the others from being so? My good friend Mark has stated to me several times that everything that our fellowship has stood for has been debunked. While I don’t know that everything has been, I must state that I believe enough of it has that the magisterium has collapsed in the eyes of thosands of members of Churches of Christ, including myself.

And this causes a major problem.

What do you do when everything that you accepted as concrete suddenly vanishes before you?

For some, it means dumping Christianity altogether.

For others, it means joining another denomination; many are fleeing to The Anglican Communion faster than you can blink an eye.

For still others, it means looking around and trying to salvage what you can, and to attempt to find as much truth as you can. This is where I have been, and it is a scary ride. I have searched scripture, tradition, and history… a very “non sola scriptura” mix. Some of my thoughts and musings have been far from Orthodox from a reformed point of view. For now, though, I think I might finally be back in a normal spot. We’ll see.

In my next post we’ll look at the Magisterium in more detail.

-Clarke

Hello all:

I just recently returned from a ten day trip to Missouri. What a trip. I celebrated my Grandmother’s 90th birthday, met an aunt and uncle and a bunch of cousins (from all parts of the family) for the first time, and met all three of my siblings for the first time (I’m adopted).

I also worshipped with a very conservative Church of Christ with my Grandmother, while one of my cousins told me all about how the church down the road where my Aunt and Uncle attend just isn’t “quite right” because they have a praise team. What fun.

Through it all, God showed me every day, several times a day, how I have it good and how my life could be much worse. Praise God for his grace!

On another note, it has been bothering me for quite some time how I am not blogging very often anymore. I am working on developing a series or two to attempt to fix that problem.

There are two main reasons I am not blogging as much: I have things to write about, but I don’t write them down fast enough and then I forgget them, and some of the subjects I want to write about aren’t related to the Restoration Movement.

There are many topics that I want to explore with writing that really don’t have anything to do with our movement. Many of them are spurred on by my orientation as a restorationist, but otherwise, there is little to no connect. In many ways, I’m not sure that I want to blog about those topics here because I have dedicated this blog to examining Churches of Christ and the Restoration Movement at large, but also because I am not sure that all of my audience, both real and potential, would appreciate these other topics nearly as much as they do this one.

So… I am contemplating erecting a second blog….or maybe even keeping this blog up in archive form, but no longer posting to it and instead turning to a second blog to persue my other writing interests. I’d love to hear your opinion on what I should do.

-Clarke