Re: The Left Hand of God or "is God a socialist"

I have long agreed with the following paragraph in what Janice sent:

You have to understand that we cannot let people get away with this.
If the term "Christian" is to have any meaning at all, it has to have
a specific meaning. And it already has a meaning: how it has been
defined for the past ages -- and how it is defined by the majority of
Christians today. Shall we revise the definition of this word simply
because a few people will have a hissy fit if we don't? Of course
not! If you deny the core beliefs that the majority of Christians
over the ages consider essential to the Christian faith, you should
not call yourself a Christian. To do so is intellectually dishonest.

My agreement with the overall point is unqualified. That is, if people
want to say that God is dead (and actually mean that God is dead, not just
use those words to say that people don't believe in God anymore) or that the
resurrection is a wild story invented by the disciples, then I do not
believe such persons have a right to call themselves Christians. What God
will do with them is up to God, just as what God will do with me is up to
God (and believe me, I'm worried about that), but it's "intellectually
dishonest" for such folks to transpose their claims to be Christians with
their negative catechisms (no God, no resurrection, no divine governance,
etc).

The application of this paragraph is where it gets awfully hard. It is
probably good to keep in mind that many Eastern Orthodox believers, ie, many
members of the church with the best claim to the apostolic succession, would
probably apply the final two sentences to me, to most or all "Protestants,"
and for all I know Janice directly to you as well. I say this as someone
who has a lot of good things to say about the Orthodox tradition, including
its commitment to Biblical truth as their tradition understands it. I hope
George Murphy or someone else will correct me if I'm mistaken here, but I
think it's completely correct to say that "the majority of Christians over
the ages" and perhaps a majority of Christians in our own day would consider
the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist (ie, transsubstantiation or
something darn close to it) to be "essential to the Christian faith." The
Reformed view on this (the Eucharist as a means of grace) doesn't fit into
this view and nor does the view of many fundamentalists (the MSLutherans
would be an obvious exception) and all of the Anabaptists (the Eucharist is
a remembrance of Christ, an ordinance rather than a sacrament). A lot of
people in the ASA, at TDI, and at Answersingenesis would probably dissent
from that opinion (and it isn't easy to say something like that). I'm
curious, Janice--what do you personally think about this one? How
"pluralistic" do you want to be, on something as "essential" as this?

If you want to follow Mr Moser into these waters, you'd better find out how
deep they are before you jump.

Ted
Received on Tue Mar 7 10:36:40 2006