Blog Archive

Followers

Come Reason's Apologetics Notes blog will highlight various news stories or current events and seek to explore them from a thoughtful Christian perspective. Less formal and shorter than the www.comereason.org Web site articles, we hope to give readers points to reflect on concerning topics of the day.

Powered by Blogger.
Showing posts with label heresies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label heresies. Show all posts

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Strengthening the Immune System for the Christian Faith


In his wonderful Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion, Os Guinness recounts an evening spent with a Roman Catholic cardinal where, as the evening was ending, the Cardinal asked him for his thoughts on how many Anglican clergy were abandoning the traditional teachings of the faith. Wishing to sidestep a conversation that would take much more time than was available at the moment, Guinness noted Catholic history had its moments of leaders (the Borgia popes) who were notoriously corrupt. He received a surprising response from the cardinal:
"Yes," he said, "Alexander VI (with his record of incest, murder, bribery, and corruption) was one of the worst leaders ever to have led the Christian church. But he never denied a single article of the Apostle's Creed, whereas several of the Episcopal bishops flout the teachings of the church catholic and deny the very heart of the Christian faith. That is the shame of the Episcopal Church, and that is unprecedented in Christian history."1
That's a stunning insight and it shows how much our 21st century biases have reduced matters of faith to relative insignificance. More importantly, as Guinness rightly notes, the abandonment of foundational principles of the church from within the church itself is as appalling as it is dangerous. Guinness then notes the irony that those who can do the most good to safeguard churches from falling into heresy–the apologists–are precisely the ones who have been widely excluded from church ministry teams:
Many revisionists in the Protestant liberal churches, followed by the extremes of Catholic progressivism and emergent evangelicalism, have reached the point where their thinkers preach "a different gospel," some of their leaders are hardly recognizable as Christian, and some have joked that they recite the Apostles' Creed with their fingers crossed. And as the above quotation shows, such revisionism is rife with new forms of toxic syncretism. But the cardinal's response also highlights a wider task facing contemporary apologetics and the church at large. Some of today's deadliest challenges to the Christian faith come from within the church itself, yet in many parts of the church Christian apologetics is weak, poorly understood and openly dismissed as an unworthy and a wrong-headed enterprise. Without faithful and courageous apologists, men and women who are prepared to count the cost, the church is vulnerable to the challenges it faces internally as well as externally2 (emphasis in the original).
One reason apologetics is so vitally important to the church today is that it guards against heresies. Apologetics can function in some ways like the immune system for the church, identifying foreign ideas that would infect and corrupt the one true faith. That's why every believer who cares about the truth of Christianity needs to support apologetics more. If you'd like to support our efforts here at Come Reason, you can do so by offering a gift at this link. Thank you for your consideration!

References

1. Guinness, Os. Fool's Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion. Downers Grove, Il. InterVarsity, 2015.  209.Print.
2. Guinness, 2015. 210.

Saturday, September 05, 2015

Identifying Impostor Christianity: The Danger Of Being Deceived (video)



What really defines Christianity? Mormons claim that they are Christians, simply another denomination. So do others who differ on Jesus' identity. What are the essentials of the Christian faith and how can we identify orthodox beliefs from heterodoxy or heresy?

In this short video, Lenny demonstrates why it's crucial for all Christians to be able to know what are the essential beliefs of Christianity and the dangers of being misled.



Watch part 2 here!

Image courtesy Canvas-rangeR and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.


Sunday, November 30, 2014

Modern Heresies and the Christian Response




Heresies — those deviations from essential Christian doctrine — were painstakingly refuted in the early years of the church. But today, some of those same heresies have reappeared, only using new labels or a different forms. Join us in this new podcast series where Lenny outlines how many of the "new religious movements" that crop up are actually regurgitations of old, deadly errors.

Sunday, November 02, 2014

Heresies and Scripture - Podcast

What are heresies and why are they so important to avoid? During the first 400 years of the Christianity's existence, the church fathers wanted to ensure that the doctrine passed down from Christ and his apostles would remain uncorrupted. Thus, heresies were a significant concern.

In my most recent podcast series, I reviewed a few of the significant heresies that the early church answered and why a proper understanding of who Jesus is can make all the difference. All four podcasts are available for download by following the links below.



If you would like to subscribe to the Come Reason podcast, just grab the RSS feed here.

Saturday, September 27, 2014

The Heresies of Mormonism



What is a heresy? Any belief that denies those Christians have historically recognized as essential to the faith; such beliefs include the triune nature of God, the divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ, His eternality,  and the nature of His incarnation. Mormonism rejects these essentials and substitutes its own fictions. In this video clip, Lenny takes a brief look at the teachings of the LDS church and demonstrates why Mormonism is not a Christian faith.


Saturday, April 12, 2014

Modern Heresies: Christian Science (video)



What is Christian Science? How does it relate to historic Christianity? In this video, Lenny reviews a bit of the history and beliefs of Mary Baker Eddy and the Church of Christ, Scientist. Drawing parallels to the ancient heresy of Gnosticism, Lenny show why Christian Science is really a wolf in sheep's clothing.

 

Saturday, November 02, 2013

How Heresies Tried to Change Scripture


Were books left out of the Bible? What are heresies against scripture? How did the early church determine which writings should be recognized as scripture and which shouldn't? In this one hour lecture, Lenny reviews the heretical movements that plagued the early church in regards to Scripture. The teaching is part of the Deepening Your Faith series put on at Harvest Christian Fellowship. For more information on that class, visit http://deepfaith.harvest.org/


Come Reason brandmark Convincing Christianity
An invaluable addition to the realm of Christian apologetics

Mary Jo Sharp:

"Lenny Esposito's work at Come Reason Ministries is an invaluable addition to the realm of Christian apologetics. He is as knowledgeable as he is gracious. I highly recommend booking Lenny as a speaker for your next conference or workshop!"
Check out more X