fundamentalism by blunt instrument
A response to Kent Brandenburg’s post, “Why is the idea of the universal church dangerous?” Kent was responding to my question quoted below.
A few weeks ago now, I was asked, "Why is the idea of local church only so important? Or, to put it another way, why is the idea of the universal church dangerous?" This post will answer that question.
ONE, the universal church as a teaching or belief eisegetes scripture or distorts the plain meaning of the text.
I think we can safely say that one of the marks of Landmarkism is the “local-only” view of the church. When we say that we are NOT saying that everyone who holds this view is a Landmarker, but those who hold to Landmark views would hold to a local-only view.
Would that be stating things correctly? Duncan’s article and Dr. Moritz’ article seem to bear this out.
I’d like to think about the historical record a bit more in this post.
Number One Son has posted some notes on a connection between Landmarkism and the Local Church Only view.
I don’t think he is saying that the local only view is exclusive to Landmarkism, but that there is at least a connection.
Anyway, for those interested, thought you might like to see it.
In my earlier post I defended the notion of calling the body of Christ “the universal Church.” My point was based on the idea that the meaning of ekklesia, the Greek word for church, was advanced beyond its original simple meaning of ‘assembly’ (from secular Greek usage) to refer to any body of believers in the Lord Jesus Christ whether they were in assembly at any given point in time or not.
From Eph 1.22-23, 1 Cor 12.13, and Heb 12.23, the data points to something more than a local body. I recognize that some will try to work these passages into a local-only view. I don’t agree with their conclusions but appreciate the valiant effort.
Today I want to contrast the two ideas and address a few other passages that require an additional term in the concept of the church as the body of Christ.
I’ve been doing a little study on the term ekklesia recently. That’s the Greek term translated ‘church’ in the New Testament (at least most of the time). The word is important to Baptists because of the prominence of eccliesiology (the doctrine of the church) to the Baptist distinctives.
The latest audio from the GBCvic
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