When we were unsaved the old nature dominated everything that we did, including our thoughts, words and deeds. Hendrikse’s church is part of the mainstream Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN). We find the same teaching about the divinity of Christ–His divine nature–in Gregory of Nyssa, in Basil the Great, in John Chrysostom, in Cyril of Alexandria, in Athanasios the Great, and in many other Fathers of the Church. Explore the nature of the Church and what it means by one, holy, catholic and apostolic. For permissions, view our Copyright Policy. The body of Christ as it is presented in the New Testament is that which is joined to Christ in a living union. In the next chapter of Hebrews it says. The Nature of Religion Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that relate humanity to spirituality and to moral values. There is still as much basic theological difference among individuals and churches now as formerly, however, and there is bona fide reason for believing that the ecumenical movement is not based upon sound Scriptural or theological consideration. June 19, 2020. If it is true that the church is the present divine undertaking, a lack of understanding on this important subject will blur not only the theological perspective, but will make impossible a practical approach to the present task of the church. Rather, the rapture should be a comforting doctrine full of hope; God wants us to “encourage each other with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:18). We will finally be free from sin. Yet he was without sin as Hebrews tells us. Paul states this dogmatically in Ephesians 4:4: “There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling.” The body of Christ is therefore entirely a divine undertaking and not a matter of human attainment. Gabriel Hebert in his sharp criticism of fundamentalism argues against any division in the organized church. But He did tell them to wait for a special gift from the Father. Out of the study of the history of the church and the problems causing its diversity have come many questions concerning the nature of the church. To understand the nature of the church in the New Testament, therefore, we must study the images of the church. Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a ruler of the Jews who sought out Jesus under cover of night. Do not be one of those believers who has abandoned the church because she has They were what, at the time, held the fibres of these communities together since they were highly regarded. In each locality there seems to have been only one church, in some cases very large as at Antioch with a number of teachers and pastors, and in other cases very small, meeting in a house and probably numbering only a dozen or two. When we read Genesis 1, we find that God called the entire world and everything in it into existence by His word, as we read repeatedly, “and God said.” Throughout the Old Testament we find God appearing to various people either in His glory or through His prophets and calling them to His service. A further major division took place in the separation of the Protestants from the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. The New Testament shows that it is in the local assembly of the faithful that the great issues of life PENANCE AND REPENTANCE. The best way to see this is to see how the teaching of the apostles was the final authority in the early church and how other prophecies did not have this final authority. Church is the lifeline of any society. He was mortal and subject to death. Though it is customary in some circles to assume the unity of the apostolic church as Dillistone does,7 a liberal scholar, John Knox of Union Seminary, New York, takes the opposite viewpoint. It was composed of all those who were outwardly believers in Christ and who assembled in one place to worship. To illustrate this, we turn to the story of Nicodemus. The church is not a building, but a body of believers with a specific nature and purpose. Though there is a large area of agreement among evangelical scholarship that the church fundamentally is the work of God rather than an institution of men, one is soon lost in difference of opinion as to the exact nature of that unity. That this involves or necessitates one organized church embracing Israel and Christendom in the New Testament is based on confusion of the unity of the body of Christ with the supposed unity in the organized church and Israel. His argument is based on the faulty identification of Israel, the organized church, and the church as the body of Christ. It should be clear that the Bible does not cover all the contingencies of the modern problem, but the principles laid down in the early church as contained in the Scriptures are sufficient in their guidance to enable an intelligent believer to arrive at some solid conclusions. 176. Much of the modern confusion on the doctrine of the church comes from a failure to understand the Scriptural revelation of the church as the body of Christ. As Dillistone points out, “No systematic treatment of the doctrine of the Church can be found in the Christian writings of the second century A.D.”1 He then cites Professor Bethune-Baker in support of the idea that the unity of the church “is implied from the first.”2 Something more is needed, however, than implication.