DIVISIONS OF CHRISTENDOM
INTRODUCTION
Christianity means “Christ like.” One would expect Christianity to be a very easy concept to grasp: use the New Testament to be like Christ. Yet, Christians have generated so many different perspectives on being like Christ that it is almost impossible to understand what it means to be a Christian. The only explanation, for the complexity of Christendom, is the fact that Satan’s influence is very strong in a community of people who should, by their very nature, be more successful in resisting Satan. In any advent, in an attempt to avoid getting mired in all the mud of Christianity, we need to simplify things. We will look at the Christian community from 3 basic positions: the two extremes and the center. We will very briefly examine the characteristics of liberalism, fundamentalism and legalism: labels are dangerous but necessary to our study.
In our attempt to simplify the complexity of Christendom we have based our divisions on adherence to the Gospel of Christ: the New Testament. This has allowed us to divide Christendom into those who strictly follow the New Testament; those who ignore or deny the truth about parts of the New Testament; and those who use the New Testament but add their own rules and regulations governing salvation and obedience to Christ. The illustration above links each of these divisions to movements in the history of the Church, which displayed similar characteristics. Our method may be simple, but it still reveals how many in Christendom have and still are turning to a different gospel by either denying the deity of Christ or they are replacing the authority of Christ with their own.
LIBERALISM
The theology of liberal Christianity does not look for, or find, absolute truths in the Holy Bible; many theologians call these biblical truths propositions. Thus, a liberal Christian does not consider the Bible to be a collection of factual statements. A liberal Christian views the Bible as a collection of documents containing the human authors' beliefs and feelings about God; having taken into consideration the historic and cultural context, at the time of the scriptural writing. Liberal Christian theologians do not claim to discover scriptural truth (propositions); instead they create their own religious models and concepts, which reflect their own personal perspectives relative to a divine being and mankind.
Modern day liberal movements are underpinned by 1st century sects such as: Adoptionism and Dynamic Monarchianism. The actual origin of intellectuals attempting to define the will of God using human reasoning appears to be rooted in Humanism (14th century) and in the “Age of Enlightenment” (18th century). Instead of documenting the history of liberalism it might be more profitable for us to look at a few of the issues associated with liberal Christianity. Liberals are almost impossible to get in focus, however, because their community is in a constant state of change, especially when it comes to defining what they believe. For a liberal nothing is absolute and everything is relative, situational or conditional. The list below, therefore, is a generalized statement of liberal Christian beliefs.
1. Liberal Christians do not believe in, or they put little faith in, miraculous events associated with the life of Jesus. This issue is associated with disbelief in the divinity of Jesus.
2. Liberal Christians do not have a belief structure; for them there are no absolute truths.
3. Liberal Christians interpret scripture without any belief in the inerrancy of scripture, the finality of scripture or the completeness of scripture.
4. Liberal Christians view the Bible as a witness of God rather than the word of God; thus, they believe man must interpret the Bible. There is also the misconception that the quality of the interpretation is proportional to the education and intellect of the individual doing the interpretation.
5. Liberal Christians see God as being incorporeal (an undefined entity/power/force/etc.).
6. God's character is one of pure benevolence without standards. Sin separates no one from His love.
7. Liberal Christians do not belief in Jesus Christ as God's incarnation, which would mean no virgin birth and no deity of Christ.
8. Liberal Christians do not believe that Jesus rose from the dead.
9. Liberal Christians do not believe in the Genesis account of Creation.
10. Liberal Christians do believe that there is life after death and that it is important to be good in this life.
11. Liberal Christians do not believe in Satan or in hell.
12. Liberal Christians believe that all religions are forms of the same religion.
13. Liberal Christians believe everyone will end up in heaven and thus Jesus is not our source of salvation.
14. Liberal Christians tend to support such things as gay rights, abortion, feminism and socialistic agendas.
LEGALISM
Christian Legalism is an over-emphasis on codes of conduct, rules, regulations, and legal ideas, which are viewed as essential for obtaining or at least maintaining salvation. It is probably safe to compare Christian legalism to the way Pharisees established and enforced the Law. Jesus repeatedly resisted the Jewish legal system and pointed out that the Law was incomplete and could not provide salvation. Jesus also showed how people were a slave to the Law and ignored the Spirit of God. Still, legalist cannot resist their need to force everyone into the same Christian mold, by enforcement of their legal system.
It is important for modern man to realize that the Law was needed and that the Law did fulfill its purpose: to teach man that righteousness could not be obtained by human effort. The Apostle Paul had this to say about the Law, “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (Gal 3:24). The ineffectiveness of the Law revealed the absolute necessity of Jesus. With the coming of Jesus, and subsequently the Holy Spirit, the mission of the Law was fulfilled and was no longer required.
To better understand the evil of legalism we need to remember the Pharisees at the time of Jesus. A Pharisee not only focused on obeying and enforcing the Mosaic Law they also added hundreds of their own man-made rules. They were more concerned with enforcing legal details and traditions then they were in sharing the love of God with people. The Pharisees, just like modern legalists, believed in a strict literal adherence to rules, regulations and traditions. The Christian legalist will claim salvation by grace through faith and then take it away with their legal system.
The liberalist and legalist are at opposite ends of Christendom because the liberals deny any scriptural propositions and the legalists build their own propositions. Liberalism is rather easy for a mature Christian to recognize; but legalism can hid itself in a Christian’s zeal to serve God: not unlike Paul’s attitude when he was a Pharisee. It is good for a Christian to stand firm on the essential truths of scripture such as: the virgin birth of Jesus; the deity of Jesus; salvation by God's grace and through human faith; the bodily resurrection of Jesus; and the authenticity of Christ's miracles. It is not good when a Christian stands firm on manmade rules and regulation, which have been generated through inductions and deductions of scripture. The liberalist take away from scripture and the legalist add to scripture.
To hold a personal conviction, which rests outside of clearly defined scriptural, is understandable but to raise this conviction to Church doctrine is a grave tragedy. It can get so bad in a legalistic fellowship that loyalty to legalistic doctrine can become a requirement for fellowship and salvation. Some of the dogma a legalistic fellowship can be found elevating to Church doctrine will include:
1. Asceticism, such as fasting and other forms of self-denial;
2. Rules for keeping of the Christian Sabbath;
3. Various extra-biblical ordinances and customs such as prohibitions against movies, dancing, playing cards or mixed swimming;
4. Belief in the necessity of church creeds and ordnances;
5. Total abstinence from alcohol;
6. Requirement for isolation from non-fellowship individuals;
7. Strict adherence to a prescribed salvation ritual;
8. Requirements for rituals associated with such activities as prayer and liturgy;
9. Rigorous insistence on programmatics such as the name of God, words used in Baptism, use of musical instruments, type of music and dietary laws;
10. Over emphasis on certain days, Sacraments and the rituals practiced;
11. Restrictive beliefs, such as only one Bible translation and one worship structure; and
12. Stringent restrictions on dress and conduct in church.
FUNDAMENTALISM
Fundamentalism is a Christian movement that arose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries among conservative minded Christians. The movement was primarily in response to the rapid growth of liberal theology. In the beginning, the Evangelical and other strong conservative movements were almost identical to the concept of Fundamentalism, which asserted that there is a basic set of scriptural beliefs essential to the Christian faith. In general, Fundamentalist believes that there is only one inerrant and complete revelation of God’s will for man: the New Testament. They also believe that the New Testament contains essential instructions for our salvation and propositions to govern our way of life as a Christian.
The first formal declaration of American fundamentalist beliefs can be traced to the Niagara Bible Conference (1878–1897) and, in 1910, to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, which distilled these into what became known as the "five fundamentals."
1. Inerrancy of the Scriptures
2. The virgin birth and the deity of Jesus
3. The doctrine of substitutionary atonement by God's grace and through human faith
4. The bodily resurrection of Jesus
5. The authenticity of Christ's miracles (or, alternatively, his pre-millennial second coming),
A sideline to the 5-basic essentials is the fundamentalist belief that Moses was the primary author of the Pentateuch, which is in direct opposition to the liberal view that the Pentateuch was composed and shaped by many people over the centuries.
The Christian fundamentalist movement evolved during the 20th century and shrank in size as more and more conservative and evangelical congregations adopted or tolerated liberal positions. True fundamentalists have refused to compromise their belief in the divine authorship of all scripture and they have retained a deep concern for doctrinal purity. Fundamentalists also appear to be separatist in nature because they will not compromise scripture when it comes to working cooperatively with Christians of differing doctrinal views. As the liberalist movement continues to swallow up Christendom, Fundamentalism continues to shrink in numbers.
In essence a Fundamentalist Christian’s core beliefs center on:
* There is but one God the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob;
* The inerrancy of the Scriptures;
* The virgin birth and the deity of Jesus;
* The doctrine of substitutionary atonement through God's grace and human faith;
* The bodily resurrection of Jesus;
* The authenticity of Christ's miracles: and
* The fact that Jesus will return.
In spite of a common set of core beliefs, Fundamentalist allow themselves to be divided over semi-legalistic issues. Fundamentalist are an extremely stiff-necked people and they become dogmatic over many non-essentials. They may agree that the other congregation contains born again believers but they refuse to fellowship with them because of some nonessential issue such as: how often communion is issues, use of musical instruments, salvation rituals or for some other silly reason.
CONCLUSION:
We very briefly touched on the concept for dividing Christendom into three classes: liberalist, Fundamentalist and Legalist. What each section does with the gospel message becomes the classification for division. The issue we are addressing is the same issue Paul had in dealing with the Galations. In his letter (Galations 1:6-7) Paul wrote: “I am shocked that you are turning away so soon from God, who called you to himself through the loving mercy of Christ. You are following a different way that pretends to be the Good News but is not the Good News at all. You are being fooled by those who deliberately twist the truth concerning Christ.” The liberalist use human reasoning to decide which parts of scripture are not relevant for today or were never intended to be taken literally: they follow a “pretend Gospel.” The legalists agree with the gospel message; but they go beyond the gospel by using Pharisaical inductions and deductions to build a new gospel: they follow a “pretend Gospel.” Fundamentalists try to resist liberalism and legalism by speaking where the bible speaks and being silent where the bible is silent; but they do not fellowship together because they consider other Fundamentalist as being too liberal or too legalistic.
REMEMBER: When you do not acknowledge the authority of Scripture you have place Satan on the thrown of God. When you add your own inferences and deductions to scripture you have placed yourself on the thrown of God.