"Literal Observation.......".

In discovering Windows Eight provides me an app allowing free access to a library full of books, most written a century or so ago, I explored the theology section and came across “A History of Church Dogma” that was written in 1908. The first chapter was enough stir my thoughts. While Catholicism claims its genesis being rooted in Jesus giving Peter the keys to the kingdom, it was about two hundred years down the road, with the Body of Christ in serious theological dispute, leaders sat down and birthed an institution based on “apostolic laws and regulations”. Such event marked, perhaps not the first “doctrinal split”, the Gnostics teaching “spiritual oneness” achieved through knowledge and enlightenment, the Marcionites demanding a rejection of Old Testament influence, and the Montanists resembling something akin to modern-day Charismatics, but what seems to me, at least, the initial attempt to “contain faith in a box”. My assistant pastor, however, in conversation with me, countered “not if you’re willing to believe God to be the author of such transition”. Well, if I approach it from that perspective, then do not I have to apply the same idea to Martin Luther nailing his thesis to the door, John Calvin’s break with his roots, and at least a dozen others who created their own version of the Gospel? Could it not be, instead, that men are given the freedom to form their own theologies, the name over the cathedral not as important as the name written on the heart, the Book infallible only in that, within its pages one can encounter a connection with its author, bendable otherwise, humanity’s digestion of it always being subject to error? Truth is a stumble down the path, a lesson learned as we go. None of us have it entirely nailed down. Truth be told: not many of us teach it that way either……