An excerpt from "THE UNIVERSALIST CHURCH OF AMERICA" Robert Cummins
http://online.sksm.edu/univ/writings/cummins_uca.html
"We are not merely a company of men and women seeking to build another denomination. Most churches attempt to justify their separate existence by identifying their own organization or their particular faith with that of the "primitive church"- the church as it was during the early centuries of the Christian era; but such basis for separateness is scarcely tenable. The scholarly research of so eminent and unbiased a student as the late Canon B. H. Streeter 2 of Queens College, Oxford, proves beyond doubt that the early church possessed no single, distinct form, that its forms were many and varied, and that, while any one of today's churches might rightly claim to be patterned after one or another of the early churches (for there were several, not just one, so also might every other. In any event, what virtue would there be in such a claim, even were it true? Five of the seven schools extant in those early days were Universalist in their sympathies. Therefore, theologically, we may be said to have been in the majority and holding the "orthodox" viewpoint; but it would not occur to us to claim our right to separate existence today by reason of the situation which then prevailed."
Nor is it true that we are a people who merely "don't believe." The technique just referred to leads inevitably to the conclusion that there are some things we do not believe. Such matters as those over which, down across the years, the Christian Church has fought, bled, and all but died -belief in the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, the Immaculate Conception, miracle-working power of the Sacraments, literal interpretation of all portions of the Old and New Testaments-any and all of these, most Universalists do not accept; but we do not make the grave mistake of prescribing that our people shall not accept them. They may or they may not, as they choose; and, therefore (significantly), they do not. We hold a man's relationship with God is too sacred a thing to be tampered with from without. After all, who are we-who is anyone else-to dictate the terms of such relationship? As a matter of fact, such beliefs make no real difference anyway,-no difference, that is, morally and ethically. They are matters of opinion only and have nothing to do with richness of character, personal or social, which should constitute the primary concern of the church.
Universalism did begin as a protest, and properly so; but it was a moral protest, theological in form. There were in those early days a few souls who had the courage to rise up in protest against what they conceived to be a cruel, Moloch-worshiping Calvinism, and to call the Christian world back to Jesus' conception of God as Father of all His Creation. Universalists were the protestants of the Protestants, branded as heretics and rebels; but they proved to be in the vanguard of theological thought, pioneers in social reform, gadflies to themselves and others, one of the most humanitarian movements in the history of the Christian Church.3 Yet all this is only a lesser aspect of the thing we are banded together to do.
It is our judgment we are different; but we are not so simply because we wish to be. We are different because the very logic of the situation makes it inevitable. Universalism, by the very nature of the case, is an inclusive gospel. Universalist Fellowship is inclusive in character, that is, any exclusion is self-exclusion. We attempt to stand not only for a more liberal kind of religion, but for a point of view so radically at variance with most of the existing faiths as to make ours a different religion. The conception we have of the Church itself is fundamentally unlike that held by most of the established institutions of religion.
Orthodoxy (by this we mean that phase of religious life which includes both Catholic and Protestant friends) conceives of religion as constituting a body of truth to be believed. There may be differences of opinion as to what the truth is, and there may be an endless variety of interpretation of the same truth; but, beneath all opinions and interpretations, there is common agreement that religion is inevitably associated with a body of truth.
(I quoted the most objectionable from an Orthodox standpoint the writer goes on later to describe such things as disagreement with original sin, etc. that actually puts him closer to Orthodoxy concerning theosis, the nature of humans created in the Divine Image, etc.).
http://online.sksm.edu/univ/writings/cummins_uca.html
"We are not merely a company of men and women seeking to build another denomination. Most churches attempt to justify their separate existence by identifying their own organization or their particular faith with that of the "primitive church"- the church as it was during the early centuries of the Christian era; but such basis for separateness is scarcely tenable. The scholarly research of so eminent and unbiased a student as the late Canon B. H. Streeter 2 of Queens College, Oxford, proves beyond doubt that the early church possessed no single, distinct form, that its forms were many and varied, and that, while any one of today's churches might rightly claim to be patterned after one or another of the early churches (for there were several, not just one, so also might every other. In any event, what virtue would there be in such a claim, even were it true? Five of the seven schools extant in those early days were Universalist in their sympathies. Therefore, theologically, we may be said to have been in the majority and holding the "orthodox" viewpoint; but it would not occur to us to claim our right to separate existence today by reason of the situation which then prevailed."
Nor is it true that we are a people who merely "don't believe." The technique just referred to leads inevitably to the conclusion that there are some things we do not believe. Such matters as those over which, down across the years, the Christian Church has fought, bled, and all but died -belief in the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, the Immaculate Conception, miracle-working power of the Sacraments, literal interpretation of all portions of the Old and New Testaments-any and all of these, most Universalists do not accept; but we do not make the grave mistake of prescribing that our people shall not accept them. They may or they may not, as they choose; and, therefore (significantly), they do not. We hold a man's relationship with God is too sacred a thing to be tampered with from without. After all, who are we-who is anyone else-to dictate the terms of such relationship? As a matter of fact, such beliefs make no real difference anyway,-no difference, that is, morally and ethically. They are matters of opinion only and have nothing to do with richness of character, personal or social, which should constitute the primary concern of the church.
Universalism did begin as a protest, and properly so; but it was a moral protest, theological in form. There were in those early days a few souls who had the courage to rise up in protest against what they conceived to be a cruel, Moloch-worshiping Calvinism, and to call the Christian world back to Jesus' conception of God as Father of all His Creation. Universalists were the protestants of the Protestants, branded as heretics and rebels; but they proved to be in the vanguard of theological thought, pioneers in social reform, gadflies to themselves and others, one of the most humanitarian movements in the history of the Christian Church.3 Yet all this is only a lesser aspect of the thing we are banded together to do.
It is our judgment we are different; but we are not so simply because we wish to be. We are different because the very logic of the situation makes it inevitable. Universalism, by the very nature of the case, is an inclusive gospel. Universalist Fellowship is inclusive in character, that is, any exclusion is self-exclusion. We attempt to stand not only for a more liberal kind of religion, but for a point of view so radically at variance with most of the existing faiths as to make ours a different religion. The conception we have of the Church itself is fundamentally unlike that held by most of the established institutions of religion.
Orthodoxy (by this we mean that phase of religious life which includes both Catholic and Protestant friends) conceives of religion as constituting a body of truth to be believed. There may be differences of opinion as to what the truth is, and there may be an endless variety of interpretation of the same truth; but, beneath all opinions and interpretations, there is common agreement that religion is inevitably associated with a body of truth.
(I quoted the most objectionable from an Orthodox standpoint the writer goes on later to describe such things as disagreement with original sin, etc. that actually puts him closer to Orthodoxy concerning theosis, the nature of humans created in the Divine Image, etc.).
posted by Addai | 7:18 PM
4 Comments:
Thankfully, in the end at least, he admits that what he's talking about is not Christianity at all. (Small favors?) The smugness of moral superiority also noted.
"5 of 7 Sees"... ah, so that's where Drew gets the idea that the majority of the early church was universalist, and that orthodoxy is determined by majority. I see that vagueness about early church records is pointed to when it suits them, but they get specific enough when it suits them, too.
BTW, after you get done with universalism I think you should look into neo-Marcionism next. I see that cropping up, too.
And as it turns out you're doing your "modern-day heresies" project after all?
"BTW, after you get done with universalism I think you should look into neo-Marcionism next. I see that cropping up, too."
I've heard those sympathies around on the ooze. That the OT is about "judgement", but the NT is about "love". Which in some ways even contradicts what even St. PAul speaks of (Paul talks about Israel heard the gospel preached to them during the times of Moses. Concerning the Exodus).
Have you heard anyone on the ooze actually championing Marcion?
No, although Harlequin thinks the church adopted many of Marcion's NT "edits."
Now that is laughable! He's generally a smart guy, although a little to full of himself. But that idea is extremely absurd. The bishops were all over him like flies on poop. It was the edits, as well as the two gods theory that got them riled up.
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