BIBLE TOPICS
"Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path". Ps 119:105
Subjects
ONE BIBLE, MANY CHURCHES:
WHY?
| A changing church |
| Another Gospel |
| Greek Philosophy |
| Vain Deceit |
| Plato |
| Has the church gone wrong? |
| The first lie |
| Christian life in the first century |
| Decline and reformation |
| The narrow way |
| What is Truth? |
DECLINE AND 'REFORMATION'
As the Church ascended the heights of secular splendour and material wealth, it sank to the lowest depths of corruption and spiritual squalor. The eventual reaction was inevitable. The blasphemies of the Pope's emissary Tetzel, selling instant salvation to pay for St. Peter's ('at the very instant the money rattles at the bottom of the chest, the soul escapes from Purgatory and flies liberated to heaven') were opposed by an obscure monk, Martin Luther. Luther himself was essentially a churchman, concerned to reform the church of its worst abuses from within. A reluctant revolutionary, his hand was forced by circumstances, and the Reformed Churches continued to retain many of the characteristic attitudes and doctrines of the Catholic Church. In contrast, the Anabaptists consciously endeavoured to return to the teaching and practice of the first century. They revived the primitive practice of adult baptism; they were opposed to the use of force in all circumstances; they drew a distinction between the church, which was the community of the redeemed, and the state, which existed for the punishment of sinners:
'They were not attempting reform of the medieval church. They were determined instead to restore the institutions and spirit of the primitive church in their utter confidence that they were living at the end of all ages' (Article: Anabaptists, Encyc. Brit.)
With the removal of the despotic power of the Catholic Church and the widespread distribution of the Bible in printed form, the centuries since the Reformation have seen the complete fragmentation of Christendom and the emergence of a wide variety of sects. The nineteenth century was particularly productive in this respect, with most of the major sects - Christian Scientists, Mormons, the Salvation Army, Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists - emerging during this period, some claiming new revelations and manifestations of the Spirit, some genuinely attempting to recapture the spirit of primitive Christianity. But influences entirely alien to original Christianity have often been instrumental in shaping the characteristic doctrines and attitudes of the sects. Metaphysics features prominently in Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science, and nationalistic feeling has had an obvious role to play in the teaching of the Mormons and British Israelism. Few have shrugged off completely the legacy of Plato.