The Sacrament of Scripture

[captain_solo]

(02-24-2012 09:15 AM)myotch Wrote:  Baptists have liturgy; it is bare minimum, but it never changes. They just call it "order of worship" - the order of the songs and what types of songs, the order of the prayers, Music>Prayer>Music>Prayer>Preaching>Prayer>Altar Call>Prayer. Their liturgical calendar has two important days.

What got me about the Catholic Mass as opposed to the Baptist Church service was the difference in reverence. When one goes to mass, there's private prayer before the service instead of a cacophony of talking, laughing, people milling about, shaking hands. I go to a Baptist service now once or twice a year, and it's like I can't even think with all the action going on around me until five seconds into the first song. I'm like "The service has started and I haven't prayed for the pastor, yet!"

Several Baptist Churches I attended had this private prayer time either at the start or maybe toward the beginning of the service. And if you go to Baptist services you certainly recognize that they have adopted much more liturgy than for example many non-denominational churches that have a much less formal order of service. Think Baptists don't have liturgy? Change the order of service...everyone over the age of 55 will complain, the rest might notice.

I have attended several Catholic Mass services and found the attitude and the feel of it very similar to the serious and somber feel of the Baptist churches I have been in. Even the more personal portion of the service at the beginning where the friar was speaking more informally, and the traditional hymn singing was very familiar. It was not until more formal liturgy of the Eucharist where I felt a little less comfortable, and even the language was comfortable until the deeper more specific doctrine was voiced that I wished they had stuck to Latin, because it was really ruining it for me.

As for Lutherans, I was friends with a pastor starting a Lutheran church nearby (Missouri Synod) and his beliefs were surprisingly similar to Baptist theology, more than I expected for sure. He really didn't even hold to Luther's Sacramental view of Baptism and Communion. He used words that indicated these things were signs, that they were representing the truth behind them, etc. He viewed someone who was baptized, but later abandoned the faith as an adult as not regenerated.

In the transcript, I think most Baptists who are knowledgeable about what they believe would object to the word Sacrament. it has meaning, specific meaning, and they should recognize that. In fact, even the quote about the Gospel being the power of God, I have had this conversation with a KJVO guy regarding what I viewed as his false idolatry of holding up the text of scripture as being powerful. I would say the truths communicated by the text are where the power is, even a bad translation, or a loose paraphrase I might say to someone communicates the power of God in the truth of the Gospel, its not the combination of words, the book, the physical object that carries the power. This is the Sacramental view of these physical things, and the Baptist who conflates a paper Bible with the truth it communicates/represents/signifies, is (in agreement with the transcript) essentially holding a Sacramental view of scripture. Saying it "IS" the Word of God is not completely taking it to that level. Its just a limitation of the language. Or in more contemporary terms, that depends on what the word "is" is



Edit: just for the sake of clarity, my concern with the theology contained in the eucharist also did remind me of Baptist churches. Same Semi-Pelagianism that bothered me when certain IFB speakers would give what they claimed was "the gospel"