Entries Tagged 'Church History' ↓

Dipping again into my Church History notes, I come to a section headed “History of Neo-Evangelicalism & the Ecumenical Movement”

The section starts with this:

Satan’s method is to counterfeit the truth, not contend with it. Therefore he produces deceptive bodies.

1. Neo-Orthodoxy – deception in theology in the 1920s
2. Neo-Evangelicalism – deception in practice in the 1950s

~~~

It is interesting to consider these two notes that go with the quotation/note I made under the title to the lecture. Liberalism/Modernism was, if I may call it, honest unbelief. While it propagated many lies, it propagated honest lies. Out and out lies. Bald-faced lies. In my next note in the church history series, I’ll cover it more specifically.

But liberalism (now sometimes called ‘classic liberalism’) became much less of a thread to Bible-believing Christianity than these two subsequent challenges. These two were greater deceptions.

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Here are two quotes from my 1980 Church History class. The section I am dealing with in recent posts are basically preliminary to a discussion of new evangelicalism vs. fundamentalism. Here are the quotes:

A schismatic spirit is one that insists upon total agreement on non-essentials as well as on the essentials.

and

Fundamentalist creeds do not include denominational distinctives.

Is there any correlation between these two ideas?

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My next set of Church History notes is entitled ‘Denominations go bad when these appear’. I have in brackets [or people, or whatever] beside the title.

This list is a series of observations concerning marks of deterioration to the point of virtual death in denominations. As we look back through church history, the landscape is littered with failed churches and movements that often started well. One could say the grand-daddy of them all is the Catholic church. What could have started better? What could have failed so miserably? Likewise, the churches of the reformation have evidenced decline unto death [in their original forms], spawning reform movements of their own. The Anabaptist and independent traditions also have their share of decline and failure… an all too familiar theme. The Church is not so superior to Old Testament Israel, though with much better advantages.

Denominations, then, go bad when these appear…

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More notes from my 1980 Church History class with Dr Panosian. This one is a series of steps a nation or a denomination might take in devolving downward. It sounds a lot like the Judges cycle, but it is more complicated than what you usually hear on that one.

The cycle begins with Bondage, which is broken by Spiritual Faith…

The whole list follows below:

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In light of my post ‘the vocabulary of compromise’, it was interesting to see one of the words show up on a fundamentalist blog recently.

This is the post, the word shows up in the comments. I will tell you which word it is after the ‘more’ tag … can you pick it up before you look?

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Speaking of my education, I have long thought it might be interesting to reproduce some of my notes from Church History class while in seminary. The area of interest is my notes on fundamentalism and the new evangelical compromise. My professor for this class was Dr. Panosian, but my notes should be no reflection on him! Some of them are direct quotations, but I take full responsibility for any errors.

Dr. P was famous for lists. The first lecture notes I’ll blog for you is called ‘The Vocabulary of Compromise/Infidelity’. You’ll no doubt recognize some of these terms. My sub-header says “words that must be clearly defined for our own use”.

Here we go:

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