M
MBinSTL
Guest
I’m curious whether any other forum participants have encountered a new and growing “denomination” called Passion for Truth Ministries?
About a month ago, a Catholic friend of mine (I’m Catholic too) saw an advertisement for an upcoming big conference PFTM would be holding at a conference center in downtown St. Louis (where we both live). Registration was free, so we decided to attend, listen, ask questions, poke around, etc. We began researching their materials online and learned a lot at the conference too, which was held last weekend. It turns out the group is headquarter in the greater St. Louis area, but this is the first year they’ve held their annual conference in town. ]
What we found was very interesting. The founder is an ex-Catholic turned Evangelical Protestant more than two decades ago, and having encountered the early Church Fathers in his own deeper studies a few years ago, rather than it being a motivation for him to return home, it launched him on a path of creating a new religious movement, though it retains a number of Protestant distinctives. He’s attracted a lot of interest from individuals participating in a variety of other movements-denominations, but most especially Messianic Judaism (in an overt way) and Seventh Day Adventism (this connection is not overt, but cross-referenced Google searches and some off-the-cuff conversations indicate strong connections). Many of these folks are now helping him to lead the movement, write its materials, give presentations, etc.
Essentially, this group rejects the early Church Fathers as a corruption of the apostolic Christian Faith by way of their introduction of Greek philosophy and a disdain for Jewishness (that’s the claim, anyway). They even make rumblings, though not stated quite as strongly as this hellenization-corruption hypothesis, that the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament are a corruption and that Christians need to somehow recover or re-construct the Aramaic and Hebrew “originals” of the New Testament. They see this early hellenization as principally responsible for all the so-called corruption that follows (sacraments, indulgences, etc.), and they understand historically that things only began to get turned around at the time of the Reformation in the 16th Century. But it’s only now, in the present century, that a true restoration of biblical Christianity is set to begin, and they’re going to lead it!
What are the elements of this so-called restoration? Basically, Christians need to become much more attuned to their Jewish roots: observing the Sabbath and not Sunday, studying the Torah and the Talmud and other Jewish texts and theology, shedding all influence of Greek philosophical-cultural thought from A.D. 90+. It’s a bit of a “judaizing” movement, though that’s not perhaps the best way to describe it.
The interesting thing, is that of the dozens of “joiners” we talked to one-on-one at the conference, we met only one person who wasn’t an ex-Catholic or soon-to-be ex-Catholic – and these folks were from all over the USA. So there is something about this group’s message that is ringing a bell with post-V2 Catholics. As it’s in our own backyard, the little group of amateur apologists I hang around with is going to try to meet this “challenge” head on and see if we can’t engage in what we’ll aim to be charitable, friendly but frank dialogue with leadership of PFTM.
We need though to come up with an apologetic that goes to the heart of the hypotheses and “first principles” on which this movement is built. Unfortunately, the typical maneuver of appealing to the witness of the early Church Fathers is a non-starter as they reject those writings outright as a corrupted form of Christianity.
So we’ll need a different approach… Your ideas and insights are most welcome!
About a month ago, a Catholic friend of mine (I’m Catholic too) saw an advertisement for an upcoming big conference PFTM would be holding at a conference center in downtown St. Louis (where we both live). Registration was free, so we decided to attend, listen, ask questions, poke around, etc. We began researching their materials online and learned a lot at the conference too, which was held last weekend. It turns out the group is headquarter in the greater St. Louis area, but this is the first year they’ve held their annual conference in town. ]
What we found was very interesting. The founder is an ex-Catholic turned Evangelical Protestant more than two decades ago, and having encountered the early Church Fathers in his own deeper studies a few years ago, rather than it being a motivation for him to return home, it launched him on a path of creating a new religious movement, though it retains a number of Protestant distinctives. He’s attracted a lot of interest from individuals participating in a variety of other movements-denominations, but most especially Messianic Judaism (in an overt way) and Seventh Day Adventism (this connection is not overt, but cross-referenced Google searches and some off-the-cuff conversations indicate strong connections). Many of these folks are now helping him to lead the movement, write its materials, give presentations, etc.
Essentially, this group rejects the early Church Fathers as a corruption of the apostolic Christian Faith by way of their introduction of Greek philosophy and a disdain for Jewishness (that’s the claim, anyway). They even make rumblings, though not stated quite as strongly as this hellenization-corruption hypothesis, that the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament are a corruption and that Christians need to somehow recover or re-construct the Aramaic and Hebrew “originals” of the New Testament. They see this early hellenization as principally responsible for all the so-called corruption that follows (sacraments, indulgences, etc.), and they understand historically that things only began to get turned around at the time of the Reformation in the 16th Century. But it’s only now, in the present century, that a true restoration of biblical Christianity is set to begin, and they’re going to lead it!
What are the elements of this so-called restoration? Basically, Christians need to become much more attuned to their Jewish roots: observing the Sabbath and not Sunday, studying the Torah and the Talmud and other Jewish texts and theology, shedding all influence of Greek philosophical-cultural thought from A.D. 90+. It’s a bit of a “judaizing” movement, though that’s not perhaps the best way to describe it.
The interesting thing, is that of the dozens of “joiners” we talked to one-on-one at the conference, we met only one person who wasn’t an ex-Catholic or soon-to-be ex-Catholic – and these folks were from all over the USA. So there is something about this group’s message that is ringing a bell with post-V2 Catholics. As it’s in our own backyard, the little group of amateur apologists I hang around with is going to try to meet this “challenge” head on and see if we can’t engage in what we’ll aim to be charitable, friendly but frank dialogue with leadership of PFTM.
We need though to come up with an apologetic that goes to the heart of the hypotheses and “first principles” on which this movement is built. Unfortunately, the typical maneuver of appealing to the witness of the early Church Fathers is a non-starter as they reject those writings outright as a corrupted form of Christianity.
So we’ll need a different approach… Your ideas and insights are most welcome!
Wonder what they have to say about this from Matthew 16:
. On a serious note, my first apologetic instinct would be to read good Catholic books about our Jewish roots - to find the spot in time where these folks claim some sort of divergence or break occurred, and go from there.