The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Romans 6, Freed from sin?

1. Referring to the Confessions and Catechisms is certainly not a bad thing since most all were written due to controversy within the Church; i.e., to expose heretical teachings and to positively state biblical truth. The average professing Christian is woefully ignorant about nearly all Christian doctrine and the history of Christian doctrine. This is one of the main reasons why so many heretical teachings have made gains within the various denominations, including Reformed and Calvinistic denominations. So again, the great confessions which came out of the Protestant Reformation have been adopted as the official position of the respective churches and were mainly used as a guard against heresy for the laity.

2. The reason for poor participation on this board may be due to the precision practiced by myself and others here whose desire is to remain orthodox, biblical, and confessional. If that is the main reason, then I have no regrets whatsoever. And if that is the main reason, then it only goes to demonstrate the observable and rapid falling away of so many churches from their respective roots; their historic confessions and catechisms.

It is surely possible to be nitpicky in an unwarranted way, e.g., arguing over how to pronounce "tomato". But being nitpicky can be a virtue which the Church throughout history has demanded due to the deceitfulness of those wanting to introduce error into the Church have used to gain a foothold. Perhaps one of the early and classic examples of a legitimate nitpickiness comes from the 4th century concerning the doctrine of the Trinity where the truth of the deity of the Son hung on but one solitary letter: homoiousios vs. homoousios; the former being damnable error and the latter representing the biblical truth. The terms homoiousios and homoousios mean "similar essence" and "same essence." They were part of a controversy in Christianity when people disagreed over the nature of Jesus Christ and his relationship to God.

I for one am very thankful that there were some nitpicky individuals at the Council of Nicea who demanded that a statement of correct biblical doctrine must have all the t's crossed and i's dotted.

Lastly, I am saddened that you have expressed your reluctance to post here due to your personal "fear" that whatever you submit is going to be unnecessarily scrutinized. The truth is your posts/replies are not singled out and read with unwarranted nitpickiness. They are given the same attention as everyone else's, not excluding my own. I am not above correction in regard to error and I welcome questions and positive criticism.

And personally, my assessment of the poor participation here is that the current attitude among many (most?) professing Christians in our day is one of doctrinal apathy. In fact, the effort it would take for many (most?) to exercise that muscle between their ears would result in a cerebral 'Charlie horse'. We are living in a day of audio/visual communication and 10 second sound bytes. Meaty discussions and a desire to increase in the knowledge of God are not only avoided by disdained because it doesn't entertain.

May the Lord bring REFORMATION among His people who will once again search the Scriptures to see if what they are reading and being taught is biblically sound. And may they rise up and cast out the false teachers and prophets among them regardless of what title or how many degrees they own.