Irenaeus said, "the authority of the church rests on three things. It rest on the Canon of the Bible. Secondly it rests on the Apostolic Creed. And thirdly, it rests on the episcopate." I love the structure of this lecture. I won't lie. I skipped ahead to lesson 7 as well. Both are very good lectures with a lot of information, one could organize into flow charts and graphs--exciting.
For our purposes and similar education, it may be important to point out a few things. I believe what were eventually called Church Fathers and Bishops (geographic Pastors who graduated to a bigger sphere) are actually equivalent to what we refer to in our church as "Apostles of the Church". We do believe that though the Apostles of Christ have all passed away, Apostles of the Church are still given as gifts from God to the churches in different geographic areas. So when we hear bishop or church father, we ought to think "apostle of the church".
Also David Calhoun mentions in either lecture 6 or 7 that we ought give grace to some of the church fathers who sometimes seem to teach heresy since orthodoxy wasn't established yet. I want to caution here. God's word cautions teachers of His word, again and again to be careful what they teach. Because a teacher is judged by what he teaches. Some of the these church fathers are so in error that I would not recommend a Christian read their writings. Origin for instance is not a guy I particularly like--though he was a very intelligent scholar and wrote and worked on many biblical translations.
Q1: Can a true Apostle of the Church (given by God for the equipping of the Church) be also a Heretic, or are some of these heretical church leaders actually a judgement or powerful delusion of God?
Q2: Tertullian led the church faithfully for a while. His judgement on culture and heresy seemed in the beginning to be spot on. But eventually he fell into the sad heresy of Montanism. Does his later fall negate his earlier judgments?
Q3: What would your reaction be if Brent, one Sunday morning, instituted a creed he and the elders wrote?
No comments:
Post a Comment