Thursday, January 27, 2011

By Schisms Rent Asunder

So I am currently at a retreat with the Board of Ordained Ministry and it has added a few puzzlers to me. As the church faces the future, and as she changes through time she has to renew and rethink, reapply, and re-imagine the doctrines the make up her core when do we cross the line from exploration to heresy. This is not to say that our doctrines must necessarily change but they have throughout time needed to be reinterpreted and reunderstood in the light of new information. We moved from a geocentric to a heliocentric universe which changed how we understood creation. God is still creator of all says the church, but the universe is far more storied than we originally understood.

As the story of the universe unfolds, as science lends it's voice to understanding, as history teaches and as the arts continue to lift our heads into the universe, the church will grapple with everything she has learned. However with all these avenues for revelation being open, each a six lane superhighway pushing more ideas for consideration, as what point do we lose God's voice? When do we cross that line between orthodoxy, to heterodoxy, to heresy?

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