Undiscovered doctrines, teachings, prophecies and other revelations

I would say we are far from discovering all of God's doctrines. I prefer to refer to orthodoxy as something in the future as opposed to anything in the past.

We must humbly, continually search His scriptures for what God is teaching us today as opposed to a prideful attitude of saying that we have God and the bible all figured out and everyone should listen to me.

 

Paul disagreed, Gold.

Rom 15:14 And I myself am certain of you, brothers, that you are full of what is good, complete in all knowledge, able to give direction to one another.

And again..

Col 1:28 Whom we are preaching; guiding and teaching every man in all wisdom, so that every man may be complete in Christ;

While 1Co 13:12 makes clear that we cannot fully understand what God is doing or why He does it, other passages of the Bible seem to teach that we can learn all doctrine.

After all, we have the Holy Spirit as our teacher..

Joh 16:13 However, when he, the Spirit of true knowledge, has come, he will be your guide into all true knowledge:

But Bro. Ruben's question was not whether we can know all doctrine, teaching and prophecy but whether it has all been discovered.

Yes, it has, but each man must discover it again for himself.

It is not hidden.

MR

 

Excellent points MR and I agree 100% with your description.

 

If they had "all knowledge" then why didn't Paul put his pen down and walk away? Why did John need to write his books?

 

I believed they have all been revealed, but the Holy Spirit is still illuminating them to us in our present experiences.

 

I guess I should have been more clear. There are things in MR's post I agree with and some things I don't.

Some excellent passages that acknowledge that fullness of wisdom and knowledge are things sought after in the scriptures.

In the Romans passage, few would interpret that as saying that the Roman Christians knew all things or even all doctrines. But that they knew all the principle teachings given to them.

The other passages talk of full wisdom and knowledge as something in the future and not the past.

These are the parts that I agree with. Things are not hidden and every man must discover things for himself. However, just because something appears new or has not been expressed in that way before, does not mean it is wrong.

 

Paul was not wrong, Grasshopper.

He was obviously referring to all the knowledge that God had made available to that point in time.

MR

 

But you used those verses as a proof text against the statement of Gold Dragon.

 

We haven't begun to "scratch the surface" of the total amount of information contained in the scriptures, we only know "in part".

Some scripture wasn't to be revealed until the "time of the end", but I'll have to admit, we are there.

 

All good advice. I would be careful, not completely opposed, but careful of any doctrine that has taken 2100 years to come to light. If it is a "new teaching," a lot of times it is the seed-bed of a cult. Examples: Mormonism, JW's, Adventists, Christian Science, Extreme (I mean extreme) Pentecostalism, One-ness Pentecostalism, Word-Faith, Emergent Church, Open Theism, New Perspective on Paul.

All of these are new doctrines that have come up in the last 150 years. All of them are heretical, or at least close to it.

 

As far as "prophecies" and "new revelations" I am a cessationist. I don't believe God is speaking that way today. If it ain't in the book, it ain't of God!

 

Dispensationalism is something that has come up in the last 200 years I would not call heretical but I disagree with. Calvinism, while influenced by Augustine came up in the last 500 years. I disagree with Calvinists on many things but I definitely would not call that heretical. Baptist disctinctives are also recent doctrines in the last 400 years and definitely not heretical.

I disagree that Adventism and the Emergent Church are heretical in any way. They may be wrong in some things but none of those things deserve the label heretic or are even close to it.

I would agree that Oneness Pentecostalism, Mormonism and JWs have some serious Trinitarian errors that are historically understood as heretical because of some early Christian councils. For One-ness Pentecostals, that is more or less the extent of their error but for Mormons and JWs, it goes well beyond that.

I disagree with Open Theism and Word of Faith and consider them to be in serious error. But would not call them heretical.

Christian Science is so "out there" that it is difficult to categorize but I am comfortable putting it in the heresy category.

I'm not sure what you mean by Extreme Pentecostalism. Would that be those who espouse that true Christians exhibit the gift of tongues? If so, I would call that serious error but not heresy along with Word of Faith and Open Theism.

And I'm not too familiar with the New Perspective on Paul. I've heard of it and read something about it a while back but I'll leave it uncategorized for now.

I guess my understanding of heresy has to do with the early Christian councils that made declarations on the Trinity. Some could argue that serious error in the absence of an ecumenical Christian council is also heresy and that is a valid argument.

I don't like to use the word cult because it can mean so many different things. I have two definitions of the word cult. The first one would not apply to any of these groups. While the second one would apply to all of these groups as well as all orthodox Christian groups. Both definitions have little value in this discussion.

 

I guess one of my problems with labels like heretic and cult are that they are forever applied and on the outside of Christian orthodoxy.

While I believe in biblical separation from false doctrine, I also believe it is our biblical call to help bring them back into the fold through loving rebuke and gracious teaching and dialogue.

 

While I agree with the concern over labels, I was using the word "heretical" in a very general sense as used by the dictionary (Merriam-Webster)

Heresy - adherence to a religious opinion contrary to church dogma

Same for the word "cult" - a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious; also : its body of adherents.

I pretty much agree with your assessment of the groups I mentioned. I probably shouldn't have put them all in the same list. By Extreme Pentecostalism, I am referring to those who handle snakes, drink poison, etc. I do not consider "mainline" charismatics extreme, although I disagree with them.

The one thing that all the groups I listed have in common is either a completely new understanding of Scripture or new revelation. I think that is dangerous.

Dispensationalism is an example of something people should take a hard look at because it was not taught by the church until the mid-1800's. I am not saying that because of that it is automatically wrong. I am just saying that we shouldn't swallow anything hook, line, and sinker like we have with dispensationalism.

Calvinism is older than Calvin. Calvin developed his understanding of Scripture from Augustine. Augustine's teaching was the norm at the time and deemed by the church to be Orthodox. This is before the Roman Catholic Church, so we don't have to worry about their corruption just yet! So, I wouldn't consider it new. It goes back at least 1600 years. I would argue it goes back farther than that, to at least Paul and Jesus.

 

I don't think we'll ever agree on this point. But my rebuttal would be that all the "newer groups" would have just as much reason to argue that their theologies go back to Paul, Jesus and the biblical authors because they believe their doctrines to be scriptural as well. Using that argument for Calvinism nullifies all criticism of any other groups.

 

I understand your point and don't disagree that these other groups would make the same argument about their view coming from Scripture. But all of these newer groups, even though they claim their view comes from Scripture, skip 2,000 years of what the church has taught. This is why the definition of "heresy" and "cult" involves orthodoxy. All the groups I mentioned have major parts of their theology that are outside of what the church has considered orthodox for 2,000 years.

But, before you call me a Roman Catholic, I don't believe the church has authority over the Bible. Quite contrary, I believe the Bible is the authority over the church. But if the church as a whole, has not come to a particular interpretation for 2,000 years, and all of a sudden, a small group of people say, "No, this is what the Bible means," we ought to be a little suspicious. That was my point.

 

I understand your point and don't disagree that these other groups would make the same argument about their view coming from Scripture. This is why the definition of "heresy" and "cult" involves orthodoxy. All the groups I mentioned have major parts of their theology that are outside of what the church has considered orthodox for 2,000 years.

But, before you call me a Roman Catholic, I don't believe the church has authority over the Bible. Quite contrary, I believe the Bible is the authority over the church. But if the church as a whole, has not come to a particular interpretation for 2,000 years, and all of a sudden, a small group of people say, "No, this is what the Bible means," we ought to be a little suspicious. That was my point. </font>[/QUOTE]Don't worry. I've been accused of being Catholic or way too sympathic to Catholics on this board many times so I would be the least of your concerns there.

I definitely agree that we should be critical of the new. But I would say that we should also be critical of our own beliefs that are "new". Our criticism of the new often only applies to those new things we don't already believe in.

However, we shouldn't let our skepticism of the new cause us to unjustly judge things just because it is new. I value tradition and the teaching of Holy Spirit indwelt Christians of the past. But I also keep that in tension with a skepticism of tradition for the sake of tradition or upholding a culture or cultural issues that no longer exist. Many doctrines we hold are products of both scripture and either sympathies or reactions against the cultural climate of their day.

I guess I should also mention that I consider myself to be closely associated with the Emergent Church movement and I hope you will not apply whatever stereotypes you have about that movement to me before finding out whether they apply to me.

Thanks for the great dialogue, Calvibaptist.

 

HERETIC! Just kidding