Reformed and Fundamentalist Christians

[Goblin_Taters]

Originally Posted by 1ke:

The purpose of Apologetics is to give a reasoned explanation of the faith to ALL-- not just to other Christians.

I agree.

The context of my original post was Catholic Apologetics in relation to specifically Protestant Christianity.

Originally Posted by 1ke:

Only within the Anglican Church does it have roots in pietism. In the Lutheran church the term “evangelical” has an entirely different and unique meaning.

The modern Evangelical movement is unrelated.

Pietism began in Lutheranism, and John Wesley took its ideas to Anglican England and ran with them.

 

[Goblin_Taters]

Originally Posted by Jeanette L:

It you’ve never been neck deep in the disunity of Evangelicalism and all the splintered and bitterly disputed doctrinal beliefs among themselves, and if you have never experienced the head spinning confusion that a great many Christians do within the borders of it, I don’t think you can appreciate what happens to someone who opens their mind to the possibility that it wasn’t meant to be that way, and that there was already a provision to thwart that kind of confusion, ordained by God in the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.

Sadly, I haven’t had the opportunity to experience, firsthand, the disunity of Evangelicalism.



I have, however, experienced the confusion of a post-Vatican II Catholic Church.

 

[Goblin_Taters]

Originally Posted by Jeannette L:

Church Authority is a welcomed relief to those of us who realized that we were in a world where there was no authority. We of course were always taught that the Bible was the ultimate authority, but the boogaboo was that the unfettered interpretations of the Bible was that which was/will be the unraveling of Evangelicalism/Fundamentalism as a whole. That’s where the Magisterum’s Authority was most desperately needed, in the interpretations, even while most within those communities will go to their deathbeds bitterly denying this.

Yes, I’ve heard many former evangelical Christians tell me this as their reason for converting.

There is a profound and wonderful freedom, a sweet rest, to be under the Church’s Authority, and you can’t appreciate it until you’ve been without it. Submission to authority seems contrary to our human instinct/and or desires, (which is how all deceptions gain their foothold) which is why so many rebel against it, but so it is with many things in this strange thing we call the Christian spiritual life.

Yes, I agree, so long as you are submitting to the right authorities. I mean, it would be a bad thing, wouldn’t it, for a person to submit to the spiritual authority of a Pope Shenouda, an Orthodox Patriarch, or even the Archbishop of Cantebury, and not Pope Benedict?

Many communists have been quite loyal and submissive to the authority of the government, or to that of the party. This does not mean that this submission to an authority seen greater than themselves is warranted, holy and good.