From: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: jws: bible alone?
Date: 26 Sep 92 19:27:23 GMT
Distribution: talk
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

herb.sutter@canrem.com (herb sutter) writes:

>Yes; if we didn't believe it was the right religion, we'd change to the one we
>thought was right.
>There cannot be more than one true religion.  All religions disagree in at
>least a few beliefs (else they wouldn't be different)

I have two problems with this.  

(1) I assume that by religion you mean what I would call a
denomination or organization.  If someone asks me my religion I say
Christian, not Presbyterian.  Because we believe that differences
between Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, etc., have only a
transitory significance, we call these different churches or
denominations, but not different eligions.  I assume all the religions
you are talking about are Christian.  

Anyway, many churches differ in style of worship or church government,
but not doctrine.  There are also churches that hold essentially the
same beliefs, but are separate for historical reasons.  Most
Protestants don't believe it's a goal to have all "true churches"
united in a single organization.  For many, the real Christian action
occurs at the level of the congregation, and larger organizations are
there (if at all) to assist congregations.  Thus there's no motivation
for all churches that believe the same thing to get together into one
large organization.  I think you'll find that outside the JW's, RCC
and LDS, few of us think that the organization we belong to is the
only true church (not that those three groups mean exactly the same
thing in saying that theirs is the true church).

(2) Here you seem to identify true church with a group that holds
correct doctrines.  Thus you argue that there can be only one true
church, since at most one can have exactly correct doctrines.  But
later you admit that JW's change doctrines as they come to undestand
more.  This seems to lead to a different model of what it means to be
a true church.  It doesn't mean that your current set of beliefs is
exactly true, since those beliefs change.  Rather, what you seem to
suggest is that you are a true church because God is leading you, and
you are true to what he's led you to understand so far.  I think
that's a far better way to look at it.  But by that concept there can
be more than one true church.  They can even believe different things,
if God has revealed different subsets of the truth to them.  You may
ask why he should do that.  I can think of several reasons.  One would
be that what he reveals has to do with what people are ready to hear,
and different groups are prepared to hear different things.  Another
might be that he acts with churches the way I Cor 12 suggests he acts
with individuals: He may choose to have different churches have
specific witnesses.  The witness of the Quakers and JW's continually
reminds the Church of the importance of peace, the Baptists remind us
of the importance of making a decision for Christ, the Roman Catholics
show us that all of life can be seen of as a sacrament, etc.  I
believe that each of the major traditions has its own unique value to
the body of Christ, and we would all be poorer without them.
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc