Really?

I like controversy because people say things they might otherwise be silent about. It's good to know what's cooking under the lid.

Other than the Missouri and Wisconsin Lutherans and high church Anglicans, I don't think the thousands of denominations consider themselves the one true church.

I think it's rather that they have the definition that all baptized Christians belong to the one church flowing from the true bible. A true church for them is going too far. Everyone just reads the bible which is true, and adapts the message in many forms. How else to explain all the different and conflicting adaptions? Whether these adaptions represent the truth is also going too far. It's enough that the bible starts out as true, and the adaptions are... well just adaptions.

If enough people come up with the same adaptions, they you've got a denomination. In other words, a committee has been formed.

Sometimes this committee is as large as the Baptists, or a smaller storefront, or as small as reading the bible on the front porch. Find a place to be comfortable and take a seat.

The Catholics, including Orthodox, are the only ones that dare consider themselves the one true Church. One true Jesus, 12 true Apostles, and their successors. If they are what they say they are, then there is a bright line drawn. It's this line that is the controversy.

Either it's the bible and me (and other like-minded people), or the bible and the Church. Good for Mohler for saying so.

link

Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr., one of the nation’s preeminent evangelicals, was also not surprised by the Vatican’s statement, and therefore “not offended.”

In a recent blog, the president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary – the Southern Baptist Convention’s flagship school – said the latest development “is not news in any genuine sense.”

“It is news only in the current context of Vatican statements and ecumenical relations,” Mohler wrote.

“No one familiar with the statements of the Roman Catholic Magisterium should be surprised by this development,” he also commented.

Mohler further noted that evangelicals should appreciate the “candor” in the document.
“I appreciate the document’s clarity on this issue,” he stated. “It all comes down to this – the claim of the Roman Catholic Church to the primacy of the Bishop of Rome and the Pope as the universal monarch of the church is the defining issue.”

The Southern Baptist theologian argues that the issue is “worthy of division.”

“The Roman Catholic Church is willing to go so far as to assert that any church that denies the papacy is no true church,” Mohler wrote. “Evangelicals should be equally candid in asserting that any church defined by the claims of the papacy is no true church."

Boy, that papacy thing is important to all of us it seems.

Is it like minded people who happen to be Baptist, or the single voice of the Pope and the Bishops united with him and the flock united with them?

Jesus and the Apostles seem to indicate a hierarchy. A teacher and the taught forever on.

Or is it the bible and me and other like-minded people.

Nice bright line. May the controversy continue.