Great, though unfortunately accurate post. This is a much better way of putting the same criticisms I had of contemporary Restorationism than I chose on my blog in that post we’ve already discussed.

This is going to sound like blatant self-promotion, but confessional Lutheranism has many of the attributes you’re longing for. After visiting many churches, I am convinced this doctrine does the best job of explaining scripture, rather than explaining it away.

I long for the church to be unified in creed, confession, and communion, but let’s face it: It’s not. In order to deal with this fragmentation, we’ve got to pick a room (as C.S. Lewis puts it in _Mere Christianity_) that gives us a doctrine with which to live out our lives, rather than remaining in the hallway of Christianity, as much of non-denominational evangelicalism has chosen. There is no perfect church, but some are better than others.

Hey, at least we have a website now. We can’t be that close to dead, can we?

http://www.christianchurchtoday.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=606

There’s a already a couple of excellent books written on it, most notably by Dr. North. I probably still have it around here if you’d like to borrow it.

I humbly stand on the shoulders of giants.

But I find my desire is to know Him, not know about Him. In my 30 plus years as a Christian I finally realized that salvation is not static but the culmination of our life in Christ. Doing away with a lot of question about when and how am I saved.

Thankfully, God is the judge of that and not myself or anyone else. As for the standards of conduct, worship, baptism, marriage, death etc. etc. I decided to accept what our fathers in the faith determined in the first 700+ years in the formation of Christianity, believing them to be “closer” to the history and understanding of the Apostles.

I find that this gives me a foundation that I had never seen or heard and that the foundation has been preserved by the Holy Spirit from Petecost til now.

May God have mercy on our souls!
Joannicius

Thanks for sharing your story, it’s great to hear. I’ve been going through what I think is a similar journey through Christendom. The realisation that salvation is not a single static experience, but instead a process, has been integral to this.

Mainly because of the way my mind is wired, I think that knowing about Him is, for me, closely related to–and inseperable from–knowing Him. To an extent, this is probably true for everyone. Even in earthly relationships, we get to know someone with both our minds and our emotions, though we don’t all give the same amount of emphasis to each faculty of knowing.

Pax tecum

What it seems like both of you are saying is that working out the ramifications of salvation (ie sanctification, knowing God, etc.) is something that is worked out over a lifetime. Which I can certainly agree with.