[asa] picket fences

Our speaker last Sunday drew on a recent Mennonite publication on ways
view our differences, using a framework of four levels (described below.)

"Brick wall differences" – these are the most basic and involve the
definition of Christianity itself. These are the ones over which we
conclude whether or not somebody is even a Christian.

"Picket fence" differences are found within friendly neighborhoods.
Denominational differences were given as examples. E.g. baptism issues,
or relation between church & state -- things held as major doctrines but
seldom pushed as salvation or "brick wall" issues.

Third were "family discussion" differences that are left somewhat open
even within a denomination. I can't remember examples given here – and
they would overlap considerably with adjacent levels.

Fourth, and last are the "private conviction" issues which a person's
own conscience has to inform them about. Romans 14 gives great examples
of this – eating and drinking and not causing your brother to stumble, etc.

I think it would be interesting to apply this to creation issues. Much
of the controversy is about which level above to assign to each of our
issues. E.g. I get the feeling that many of the TEs here are willing to
grant that acceptance/denial of evolution is not a brick wall issue – at
least not as far as Christianity is concerned (they probably see it as a
brick wall issue of science, though). But YECs on the other hand seem
much more prone to push this controversy into "brick wall" status which
does present a challenge to the TE trying to relate to the YEC.

--merv

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Received on Tue Aug 1 09:06:19 2006