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Overview
In these articles I discuss my conclusions about Christianity, the church, the truth.
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The Institutional Church ...
The church is ...
- The mystical body of Christ
- An external, worldly, material, human institution
There are two aspects to the institutional church...
- The mystical idealized church — The Holy Spirit-inspired teaching authority (magisterium); it develops inerrant, infallible dogma and moral teaching; it only exists when the people involved are holy.
- The purely human, political, sociological institutional church. There can be many of these (examples: the Catholic Church, a local Protestant denomination, etc.) We must be loyal and obey this local institutional authority to have unity. We can only do this if we have faith. I've lost faith in the Catholic version of this kind of institution, now I must seek another that I can become united to.
Israel in the Old Testament had these two ...
- The mystical idealized church: The 10 commandments; the dogmatic teachings of Moses; the word of God from the prophets; etc.
- The purely human, political, sociological institutional church: Laws regulating society; commands of Moses to slay enemies; the sacrifical system (it was meant to teach truth).
Article originally written in April 15, 2009.
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