my new denomination how many would be interested

[Jacque_Pierre22]

I'm just curious how many nondenominationals would be interested in my idea for a hypothetical evangelical denomination with these distinctives; this would be like a mixture of many denominations
1. Presbyterian view of baptism
2. TULIP or TUP (strategic ambiguity like ACNA)
3. Lutheran view of real presence/ Lord's Supper
4. Greek Orthodox liturgy and worship style (so not evangelical music like guitars etc), standing, black robes, hats etc
5. Catechetical sermons style (like Presbyterian style where the sermon is very long like 40 minutes from OT and NT)
6. Amillenial/Postmill acceptable escatology
7. icons allowed in church but no prayer to Saints
8. LXX OT and Greek NT, required Greek for all members for ease of understanding depth of Scripture

 

[sandman]

I'm just curious how many nondenominationals would be interested in my idea for a hypothetical evangelical denomination with these distinctives; this would be like a mixture of many denominations
1. Presbyterian view of baptism
2. TULIP
3. Lutheran view of real presence/ Lord's Supper
4. Greek Orthodox liturgy and worship style (so not evangelical music like guitars etc), standing, black robes, hats etc
5. Catechetical sermons style (like Presbyterian style where the sermon is very long like 40 minutes from OT and NT)
6. Amillenial/Postmill acceptable escatology
7. View of Salvation-- Lutheran Orthodox view of objective justification/subjective but without denying Limited atonement.-- this is for trinitarian theology reasons (which would be social trinitarian)
8. Only two groups of people, unlike Presbyterians who have 3 (covenant members, elect, nonelect); it would be like Reformed baptist in this way where there are both elect/nonelect church attendees that the sermon would reflect.
9. icons allowed in church but no prayer to Saints
10. An order of monks/ monasteries
11. LXX OT and Greek NT, required Greek for all members for ease of understanding depth of Scripture

I am perfectly fine with the Word of God as my directive…. I don’t need or want mans ideas or inputs.

 

[Jacque_Pierre22]

this denomination would also hold to Sola Scriptura, and the other ones Sola Fide, etc; the point of this denomination is to fill the need of Christians like me want a more inclusive denomination that isn't rigid and ideological requring adherence to a confession like the Book of Concord or Westminster, etc

 

[Maria Billingsley]

I'm just curious how many nondenominationals would be interested in my idea for a hypothetical evangelical denomination with these distinctives; this would be like a mixture of many denominations
1. Presbyterian view of baptism
2. TULIP
3. Lutheran view of real presence/ Lord's Supper
4. Greek Orthodox liturgy and worship style (so not evangelical music like guitars etc), standing, black robes, hats etc
5. Catechetical sermons style (like Presbyterian style where the sermon is very long like 40 minutes from OT and NT)
6. Amillenial/Postmill acceptable escatology
7. View of Salvation-- Lutheran Orthodox view of objective justification/subjective but without denying Limited atonement.-- this is for trinitarian theology reasons (which would be social trinitarian)
8. Only two groups of people, unlike Presbyterians who have 3 (covenant members, elect, nonelect); it would be like Reformed baptist in this way where there are both elect/nonelect church attendees that the sermon would reflect.
9. icons allowed in church but no prayer to Saints
10. An order of monks/ monasteries
11. LXX OT and Greek NT, required Greek for all members for ease of understanding depth of Scripture

Wow! This is really a mix. I think what you did here is point out the severity of our differences in Christianity. Kind of disturbing.
Thanks for sharing.
Blessings.

 

[Grafted In]

There are plenty already around. Why not add another one. It's not like it'd be anything new.
Like a buffet....without a sneeze guard.
I cannot get my mind around denominations that are SO sure they are right that it's nothing more than a private club.
Not being rude to you. Just frustrated that I'm not good enough to join in conversations here and elsewhere when we are all members of the same Body.
I look around and can't help but wonder what Jesus thinks of the situation.

 

[DragonFox91]

I see most denominational differences as anthills made mountains. So b/c they’re minor, I can understand why wanting a new denomination is okay, but also don’t understand why individuals can’t also have different views than whatever their current denomination teaches & why they must insist a completely new denomination needs to be created.

 

[Jacque_Pierre22]

I tried to create the denomination of Cyril Lucaris as it would have been the Orthodox Church's doctrine at the time; this is not really a mishmash to me; he was friends with many Dutch Reformed and Lutheran theologians around the time of Lutheran Orthodoxy and would have modified Greek Orthodoxy in this way if you look at his confessions . Also, I have Gregory Palamas's homilies, and they are long! definitely wouldn't fit the modern 10 minute sermons nowadays
Sources:

https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2922&context=sot_papers

 

[Techo]

Be careful!

Gal 5:19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
Gal 5:20 idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousies, wraths, factions, divisions, parties,
Gal 5:21 envyings, drunkenness, revellings, and such like; of which I forewarn you, even as I did forewarn you, that they who practise such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

 

[Jacque_Pierre22]

Be careful!

Gal 5:19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
Gal 5:20 idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousies, wraths, factions, divisions, parties,
Gal 5:21 envyings, drunkenness, revellings, and such like; of which I forewarn you, even as I did forewarn you, that they who practise such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

Honestly. The reality is this denomination is being the opposite of divisive. It would only strengthen the church as a whole by bridging all the gaps. Unlike a lot of Reformed churches who say that eschatology is non-essential, this church takes a firm stance.
Unlike many denominations that use different Bible translations requiring Latin, or Hebrew, so you need to be trilingual, this one uses only Greek, as would have been the case for over 1,000 years since the ancient world did not speak Latin or Hebrew, thus why most NT authors reverenced the LXX a lot.
Unlike calling it anthills, all denominations have anthills. That's why they are formed. The Lutheran Brethren is premillenial and uses grape juice instead of wine, that's what distinguishes them from other Lutherans. Anglicans don't take any stance on the real presence, or TULIP, etc. This church allows a place to be a Calvinist while still being Liturgical and sacramental as it would have been for over 1,000 years. The only clearly sacramental, liturgical church in existence that doesn't treat church like a business meeting, or corporate meeting with suits and ties and rarely has communion. How does unity occur, exactly, by having so many denominations if each does not intersect with the others. Horton for example, wrote a law gospel book with Braaten, an ELCA lutheran, that is basically what I am doing here, he is very inclusive in his systematics, but in my opinion, not liturgical enough, although he is on the right track with at least the pastor wears a slight robe now over the suit and tie. I believe it's the "URCNA" although I could be wrong. Now using them as an example, was it divisive to found the URCNA? No. I beleive this denomination actually bridges the divide in that it adds some Lutheran doctrine and makes it more liturgical with the robe at least, although a very small step in the right direction but it still requires adherence to the Heidelberg Catechism so that is divisive. So I think my point is to picture a tree, rather than an offshoot twig, like the Lutheran brethren, this would be like a new main branch with a thicker xylem/phloem like an oak tree that would unite.

 

[Techo]

If that tree was pruned so that all the twigs that were offshoots of the main life of the tree were removed it would grow straight, tall and strong... focused on the source of it's life rather than other... distractions?

What is the purpose of liturgy? Why do we observe various sacraments? How will the unsaved within our communities here the gospel it we speak to them in any language other than what they know and understand? Is the work of the Wycliffe Bible translators of no value?

In an ideal Christian society all true believers would belong to the one Church. They would not call themselves Methodist, Orthodox, Pentecostal (whatever flavor), Catholic or by any other label. All of them would hear the message preached, from what the teachers have been studying, and go away to study the scripture themself to see if what was said is what the scripture says (like the Beroeans in Acts 17:10-12). The Word taught would come out of fellowship with others who have been given to study and understand the Word of God so what would be taught should not just be someone's good idea but solid truth that has been examined and tested by the Body of Christ. Where some point is not clear this would be presented as still requiring some revelation from the Holy Spirit but would not be a point of contention that divides the Church. In each city there would be one Church with multiple individuals, supported by the tithe, to minister to the needs of the fellowship (i.e. every ten families would support one person for the work of the ministry... whether it be administration, worship, teaching or pastoral... whatever). Operating expenses would come from a different offering. Maybe call the church er... non-denominational?

I guess we probably need to examine why we gather together. What is the purpose of the things we do when we gather together. Are they necessary or just dross left over from a past where they may have had some meaning or relevance. Like it or not but it sure looks like we are getting down to the pointy end of history. We need to focus on what really matters and not get caught up in useless debates or futile exercises.

1Ti 1:5 But the end of the commandment is love out of a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned,
1Ti 1:6 from which some, having swerved, have turned aside to foolish talking,
1Ti 1:7 desiring to be teachers of the law, neither understanding what they say nor that which they affirm.
(Not sure this is the best reference to make that point but it'll have to do).

 

[PloverWing]

Forming a group around the ideas of Cyril Lucaris is an interesting undertaking. This part of it is odd to me, however:

Unlike many denominations that use different Bible translations requiring Latin, or Hebrew, so you need to be trilingual, this one uses only Greek, as would have been the case for over 1,000 years since the ancient world did not speak Latin or Hebrew, thus why most NT authors reverenced the LXX a lot.

Latin was widely spoken in the western half of the Roman empire, so I'm not sure what you mean about the ancient world not speaking Latin. However, since the Bible was not written in Latin, this doesn't really affect early Bible manuscripts.

I'm puzzled, though, by the preference of Greek over Hebrew for the OT. I appreciate that Hebrew is a challenging language for an English speaker to learn. But if one is going to read a translation of the OT into a language different from the Hebrew original, what is the advantage of reading a Greek translation rather than an English translation?

 

[Jacque_Pierre22]

Forming a group around the ideas of Cyril Lucaris is an interesting undertaking. This part of it is odd to me, however:



Latin was widely spoken in the western half of the Roman empire, so I'm not sure what you mean about the ancient world not speaking Latin. However, since the Bible was not written in Latin, this doesn't really affect early Bible manuscripts.

I'm puzzled, though, by the preference of Greek over Hebrew for the OT. I appreciate that Hebrew is a challenging language for an English speaker to learn. But if one is going to read a translation of the OT into a language different from the Hebrew original, what is the advantage of reading a Greek translation rather than an English translation?

Well think about it this way.... the Greek empire's were the Ptolamaic, the Seleucid, Byzantine, as far as Ukraine in modern day Russia there were Greek cities and even Afganistan, so all ancient books were written in Greek. The Roman empire collapsed around the 300s AD along with most books, there's podcast "Told in Stone"; now its not too apparent how dominant Greek over Latin was because the scribes could not continue to update the Greek books due to the Arab conquests, financing, the library of Alexandria was destroyed etc, but the whole Middle east and Turkey used Greek. However, at least in Byzantium they still had old Greek works lying around, the book "Sailing from Byzantium" goes over how Italian scholars used the Byzantine books that managed to survive in 1453 to spark the Renaissance, and Protestant reformation, because eventually the Lutherans (what would become Lutherans) could obtain these writings and study them to use in interpreting the Bible, so if we operated on the same premise as the reformers we would be conversant in at least Greek. Sure Melanchthon knew Latin and German too but the most essential was Greek. The advantage is you can literally pick up on the nuances in the Greek syntax that helps with interpreting certain prepositions, and connecting words that are hard to discern because each NT English translation differs on this and comes out with a different sentence structure, that's why Lutherans prefer ESV but a lot of Reformed follow New King James, it's all about the Greek--- so you can't make an informed decision for yourself unless you know Greek, you're trusting that the pastor of your denomination has figured all of this out.

 

[PloverWing]

I'm still confused. Clearly, a person will understand the NT better if they know Koine Greek and can read it in the original language.

But how does knowing Greek help a person understand the OT better, when Greek was not the original language of the OT books?

 

[Jacque_Pierre22]

because even though the Masoretic text is useful, if you look at GK Beale's "the commentary of the NT use of the OT", the LXX has way more cross references that the average person will pick up on when reading the NT, and see the whole Bible as one coherent whole basically rather than two separate books. Just flipping through, there are way more references to the LXX than the Masoretic even though that's useful of course to decipher meaning, before Beale's book, this wasn't decisively proven, but now it is abundantly clear how important Greek is for understanding the NT. Also, I'm not saying don't study Hebrew too but the average layman can easily learn an alphabet like Greek compared to Hebrew. I myself did a year of Russian and a year of Arabic ,and those scripts are very easy, however even for me, Hebrew is insanely difficult to decipher; so just practically speaking, it wouldn't be that hard for a congregation to be taught Greek in Bible study, Sunday school, compared to Hebrew. I mean if Jesus said the scriptures spoke of him then the OT is interpreted by the NT language; if not then the NT authors would have quoted the MT more than the LXX, so as a percentage then, NT agrees more often with the LXX. I don't believe in a pre-existing Hebrew NT, that some Hebrew roots people believe--- what they do is reinterpret the NT meaning based on a more OT, Hebrew reading, and they get a different result, like 119 Ministries.

 

[Techo]

Jacque, you make a reasonable argument for the use of Greek. Western education tends to use a Greek mindset in the way it teaches logic and reason. I can understand the difficulty with Hebrew because they would have a different mindset that does not fit as well with the way we have been taught to think. I guess, under that premise, any Greek translation of the Old Testament is likely to miss some of the message that God is bringing to the Children of Abraham. It's possible that the Hebrew way of thinking, at least in the Old Testament anyway, has been shaped by their interaction with God from the time going back as far as Abraham so it sometimes makes it difficult, perhaps impossible, for us to understand some of the things written within the Old Testament... even if we could read Hebrew.

Not sure that requiring a congregation to learn a foreign language to be a part of the Church is really any part of the Gospel of Christ though. I have enough trouble with English, my native tongue, to not want another language cluttering up my brain.

 

[Jacque_Pierre22]

Secondarily, I forgot to include: I think there should at least be an option of their being an "amralydian church" if my denomination is not created. This is because there is nowhere for these people to go. My church would allow anywhere from infralapsarian, amralydian and Lutheran views on perseverance. This is because the early church tended to not believe in perseverance ; however on atonement, they clearly weren't universalist so they were at least Lutheran on atonement, (in that it was limited because not all would believe); however, my church according to #7 rejects the entire Lutheran debate between Eldona and other Lutherans because even if you hold to Eldona's view, it is still the same tautological argument as someone would make for "eternal election" (versus regular election in time) to claim that there is an objective/subjective distinction; it was created entirely to get around the fact that the atonement is still limited at least in the sense of infralapsarian/Amyradianism since neither are universalists. In Lutheranism, election is a cause not the cause of salvation in the Formula of Concord (which we won't hold to since we don't hold to such restrictive dogmatic texts). The elect are simply those finally saved. The "universal saving will" should be equated with the order of degrees being started by "creation" and this UOJ/ SJ distinction is just superfluous to me, no hackles intended (This is an Aristotelian arbitrary distinction). Most if not all church fathers could be viewed as Amyraldyian or infralapsarian but I've yet to see how the church fathers fall under "efficacious grace" and not "definite atonement" or "election of some", universal grace is never written about in books on Lutheranism as the topic of a whole book or a compare/contrast.
See the chart for comparison. to put the point more succinctly, I just find it really odd that Lutherans emphasize "universal grace" to safeguard God's omnibenevolence yet leave perseverance open, yet if you want to be open on the atonement issue, or leave it ambiguous that's somehow a problem. I don't think TULIP needs to be logical to believe in it , is what I'm saying. What really got me when I was officially Lutheran was how Lutherans were still being rationalists despite what they say because they are trying to uphold God's omnibenevolence, the same as al-Razi , when he constructed his cosmology, they tweaked TULIP in a rationalistic way but it is still just as illogical as a calvinist view--- the problem to me is not TULIP itself therefore, it is simply rationalism itself and not focusing on the actual text and exegesis. However, I do not believe in throwing off everything from Orthodoxy as "adiaphora" is right either, that's how I arrived at these beleifs.... no pews, monks, the liturgy as necessary in my view, no need to innovate or Westernize the church.

Infographic: The Order of Decrees denominational comparison chart - Apostles Creed

Below is an Inforgraphic chart that shows the comparison between general soteriological views taught in different Christian denominations. The chart is based off of the TULIP Calvinist theology. This is similar to the Order of Decrees chart made by B.B. Warfield in his book Plan of Salvation...

apostles-creed.org

 

[Jacque_Pierre22]

An observation I noticed is that Lutherans cite a variety of professors from outside their traditions to exegete the text, and come to their theological conclusions such as on perseverance and apostasy including the church fathers and premillenialist ; ideally a tradition would stick to its own tradition and hermeneutics, so as to have consistency across the whole Bible.

 

[Gregory Thompson]

I'm just curious how many nondenominationals would be interested in my idea for a hypothetical evangelical denomination with these distinctives; this would be like a mixture of many denominations
1. Presbyterian view of baptism
2. TULIP
3. Lutheran view of real presence/ Lord's Supper
4. Greek Orthodox liturgy and worship style (so not evangelical music like guitars etc), standing, black robes, hats etc
5. Catechetical sermons style (like Presbyterian style where the sermon is very long like 40 minutes from OT and NT)
6. Amillenial/Postmill acceptable escatology
7. View of Salvation-- Lutheran Orthodox view of objective justification/subjective is rejected; hold to Limited atonement.-- this is for trinitarian theology reasons (which would be social trinitarian)
8. Only two groups of people, unlike Presbyterians who have 3 (covenant members, elect, nonelect); it would be like Reformed baptist in this way where there are both elect/nonelect church attendees that the sermon would reflect.
9. icons allowed in church but no prayer to Saints
10. An order of monks/ monasteries
11. LXX OT and Greek NT, required Greek for all members for ease of understanding depth of Scripture

I thought there already were churches like that.

What's social trinitarian refer to though?

 

[Jacque_Pierre22]

I thought there already were churches like that.

What's social trinitarian refer to though?

the Greek Fathers rejected absolute divine simplicity of Aquinas and emphasized the persons more, a relational ontology. Social Trinitarianism is a way of understanding the Trinity that's different from the monarchy of the father of the EO and the Latin understanding so it's like a 3rd way. there are ways of understanding it that can be orthodox although some are heretical. Although you could hold these views in an e-free church or Anglican, they are mostly ambiguous on it. Those are the only denoms I can honestly go to and not be considered a heretic for not accepting all doctrines.

 

[Gregory Thompson]

a relational ontology

Okay, I've heard correct versions of that.

Thanks for explaining.