I agree with you on Evangelicals being Modernists.
They cannot get away from reason. Whenever there is a tension..it must be resolved. To me, they are very ‘man centered’. The whole enterprise (Christian faith) starts with you (your decision) continues with you (your sanctification process) and ends with you(now I qualify to hear “well done good and faithful servant”).

They nail everything to the floor and their Biblical legalism keeps them on this ‘me centered’ trajectory.

I cannot remember hearing (and I’ve heard a lot of ‘em) a single sermon from an Evangelical church where the preacher didn’t rip the gospel back out of your hands (if he even gave it to start with) by shifting the focus back to you…and what you should, ought, or must be doing.

My Evangelical freids ask me why I don’t go to their church with great big crowds and rock bands and no altars and a preacher that wears a Hawaiian shirt.
I tell them that there is way too much religion going on at their church. Religion being ‘that which we do to ascend to the divine’.
They think the opposite is true (of course).

When you take away the liturgy, and the creeds, and the vestments, and the altar, and the sacraments…you can and do end up everywhere else. And the everywhere else usually revolves around ‘me’.

Thanks!

The Reformation does show some signs of early Modernism, but pre-dated the whole Enlightenment thing. However, Luther taught against reason as a basis for truth, but did use reason to work his way through theological issues. And, of course Luther found the RCC of his day to be heretical, using the teachings of prior popes to support what he was teaching. I would agree with you on their take on Mary, etc., and some other issues, including Apostolic Succession. And, on areas where they differed with the remainder of the Church, I tend to side with the Orthodox branch, which had less of an Aristotelian influence.

I’ve held both sides of the Infant Baptism issue at various points in my life, eventually going back to what is essentially Lutheran (and prior) theology. I won’t bore you with that now, but I’ll probably deal with that at some point. The Vineyard, by the way, has allowed for infant baptism, leaving the individual church practices pretty much up to the church leadership. Ken Blue baptized 2 of my kids as infants.

Hey, thanks, I appreciate the discussion. I’m counting on grace, too, as I’m pretty convinced that I’m at least partially wrong on every opinion I have.

Now if you want to say that they are heretical to Scripture, then that would be one thing, but very difficult to establish. There you encounter the hermaneutics which blur the lines between the cultural and moral. Then you have different questions of what applies: does the Old Testament apply? The Epistles? Only the Gospels? How about Revelation? Different methods of interpretation and different criteria for application will create differences.

If a practice in the church is clearly opposed to the Word and has no foundational basis in scripture, it is pretty easy to spot it. I feel that if something is truly off, and irreconcilable to the Bible, someone will call our pastors and church leaders on it.

I have debated infant baptism with Lutherans and Catholics, primarily based on the examples of believers’ baptism in Acts and the Pauline Epistles. What I came to realize is that for everything intended by Catholics and Lutherans with the process of baptism then confirmation–the Evangelicals have a similar thing, dedication then baptism. Some of the implications of faith in both cases are different, and some Evangelical denominations don’t do dedication (Vineyard hasn’t, I have noticed), but the process is there. Is one the right way and the other abhorrent to God?

Now for me, Marian prayers are heresy. Transubstantiation and refusing to offer gluten-free communion wafer because somehow it’s the wheat in the host that turns into Jesus’ body is heresy (More on that). Preaching vegetarianism (SDA) is heresy if it is a requirement for a Christian life. Legalism in itself is heresy.

You state that anything post-Protestant Reformation is characterized by Modernism. I would say that the Protestant Reformation itself was modernist in nature. Luther wasn’t saying “I don’t know whether or not this new belief system is better than the old one.” He was unabashedly spreading his conviction as the correct way, or at least condemning the old way as the wrong one. It would also be impossible to say that Luther did not reason his way to the conclusions he made about the Church. Luther is the biggest heretic there is (according to the Church that came before him). Augustine himself said that we should not take Scripture literally if it tells us something about nature opposite from what we know of science–perhaps he found truth through reason as well?

As for the need to be right, that’s true for most everyone I think. Atheists need to be right because if they aren’t, there are serious implications for post-mortality. Christians feel that they need to be right because if we are not, then we are somehow failing God. If God is capable of forgiving all, then certainly he can forgive the fact that we bollocks this whole Jesus-thing up sometimes.

…a lot of the time.