No, keep the Gospels and
the true Traditions of the church (that date from the beginning) and clean off the cobwebs of the centuries.
Not exact matches
True, there are themes that will be familiar to anyone who has followed the work
of Ratzinger - Benedict over the years, and, as one would expect from a pope, the document draws deeply from Scripture and the
Church's
tradition.
And Roy Peachey's brilliant description
of the emergence
of the novel from the British
tradition of Christian «protest», and
of the related de-Catholicisation
of the English school curriculum, sets the scene for the
Church to reclaim this
tradition in the name
of true humanism.
In his thinking, therefore, there was no break in the continuity
of the social group; the
church was God's
true people, inheriting the promises and carrying on the great
tradition of Israel.
Upon the basis
of Paul's teaching, taken alone, Christianity might possibly have foundered a century later in the rising sea
of Gnosticism; possessing Mark's compilation
of the historic
traditions, later amplified by the other evangelists, the
church held
true to its course, steering with firm, unslackened grip upon the historic origins
of its faith.
The factors
of chief importance in the development
of this theology were: (a) the Old Testament — and Judaism --(b) the
tradition of religious thought in the Hellenistic world, (c) the earliest Christian experience
of Christ and conviction about his person, mission, and nature — this soon became the
tradition of the faith or the «
true doctrine» — and (d) the living, continuous, ongoing experience
of Christ — only in theory to be distinguished from the preceding — in worship, in preaching, in teaching, in open proclamation and confession, as the manifestation
of the present Spiritual Christ within his
church.
Among the criteria that scholars use, one
of the most problematic is, paradoxically, also one
of the best» the principle
of embarrassment, which claims that those
traditions about Jesus that would have been most embarrassing to the early
Church have the greatest possibility
of being
true.
In the East, in the Byzantine realms, where the power and
tradition of the Roman state survived in a continuous succession from the C ~ sars, the
Church,
true to the traditional position
of the official religion
of the Empire, was kept subordinate and ancillary to the state.
It raises a question that all thoughtful Christians must at some point address: How do we identify the
true tradition of Christian teaching throughout history, and what part does the
Church play in that
tradition?
To warrant this radical revision — one might almost say reversal —
of the Catholic
tradition, Father Concetti and others explain that the
Church from biblical times until our own day has failed to perceive the
true significance
of the image
of God in man, which implies that even the terrestrial life
of each individual person is sacred and inviolable.
The movements Howell mentioned were all led by powerful personalities, but they also dealt with basic issues
of Baptist identity and Christian faith: namely, the balance
of Scripture and
tradition as norms
of belief and practice (Campbellism); the nature
of the
true church and its identity markers (Landmarkism); and the reality
of divine grace in the plan
of salvation (hyper «Calvinism).
However, if
churches want to show a
true commitment to diversity, we will need to do more than just welcome a range
of people; we must welcome a range
of church traditions that reflect those people.
True to the
tradition of the Antiochene
Church, he was an enthusiast for missionary work.
This reality makes us aware that every narrow definition
of Christian doctrinal certainty will finally have to be abandoned; every claim by any branch
of the Christian
church to be the
true church or the only
church will ultimately have to be sacrificed; every doctrine
of infallibility — whether
of the papacy, or
of the Scriptures, or
of any sacred
tradition, or
of any individual experience — will inevitably have to be forgotten.
But certainly Jesus must have used it, since in Palestinian Aramaic nothing else would be possible; and it is obviously
true that the increasingly Hellcnistic
tradition of the
Church loses its feeling against the direct mention
of God, witness the widespread «Kingdom
of God» which would never he found in Aramaic.
Now one might expect that this pattern
of interpretation would have been retained by Paul, if historical — that is, if set forth by Jesus himself or found in the earliest
tradition of his sayings or expounded in the early
church — or one might even think it possible that Mark derived from Paul some hint
of this system
of exegesis
of the Old Testament and
of interpretation
of the career
of Jesus as a heavenly being appearing upon earth prior to his exaltation and his dying (as a heavenly being) upon the cross, though unrecognized in his
true nature until the Resurrection.
It is
true that Dostoevsky personally assented — despite occasional episodes
of doubt — to the creeds
of the ancient
church, and that he believed deeply in the mystical and sacramental
traditions of the Orthodox
church, and that in general his vision
of things was shaped by traditional Christian understandings
of sin and redemption.
The REAL
Church is the heart
of man, receiving our LORD's HOLY SPIRIT,
true acceptance
of GOD's saving GRACE would mean turning away from false teachings, man's doctrines and
traditions.
The Bible is unique above all the
tradition, and decrees
of the
Church and it is absolutely and literally
true, because it is divinely inspired knowledge
of the word
of God which alone was necessary to salvation and not to know scripture is not to know Christ.
Heavily influenced by the Enlightenment and the philosophical
tradition of Logical Positivism (the idea that if something is not able to be judged
true or false, then we are rationally compelled to ignore it as irrelevant), much
of the modern
Church has bought into the belief that the truth
of Christianity should be treated like any other set
of factual claims, and that people
of faith can somehow rationally observe ultimate truth with a level
of personal detachment and objectivity.
I feel the pressure
of my denomination to have a growing
church and the pressure
of tradition to preach the
true faith; but if I preach the truth and minister to my people, my
church might not grow.
That's as
true for Catholicism's
tradition of metaphysical reflection and age - old stewardship
of perennial philosophy as it is for the Christocentric core
of the
Church's proclamation.
The whole world may come to participate more or less imperfectly in the universal mission
of Christ and the
Church: the Eastern Orthodox
churches, Protestant ecclesial communities, the Jewish people, Islamic monotheism, the great world religious
traditions that are not always explicitly monotheistic, and even secularists through the workings
of the moral conscience by which human beings are led to seek the
true and the good.
I do not find this so strongly in other process thinkers, and insofar as Muray will not be more specific than that the criterion for reconstituting a
tradition is «whatever contributes to the enhancement
of relationality and creativity that are
true of the fundamental character
of reality itself» (93), I do not think he will much like the basis
of Hauerwas» critique, namely the stories
of the history
of Israel and Jesus as they continue to be remembered and enacted in the Christian
church.
What Machen described in the 1920s as the abyss between belief and unbelief has become even more pronounced» a
true bottomless pit» in the intervening decades, while the gulf separating the
Church of Rome from the
traditions of the Reformation, while still formidable, is less a barrier today than it was when Billy Graham preached for a Polish pope.
11), free from pride and covetousness, discreet, responsible, trained in and loyal to the apostolic
tradition, competent to teach,
true officiants
of the
church's worship.