Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
Surely there were serious errors eliminated. But are we sure that is the case for all issues? Have we continued to this day based on the doctrinal position of the ones with the legal authority rather than the ones with the spiritual authority?
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This was one of my questions/realizations a few months ago.
I'm not out and out denying Paul's instruction in scripture to have and submit (appropriately) to elders.
I am, however, on the one hand, curious as to where Paul got the notion to appoint elders as he did. Surely we should find some authority in scripture somewhere for such a thing, besides Paul's own instructions, right? Or at the least, shouldn't he have stated that such a thing was or wasn't a commandment of the Lord? But that's just my own speculation on the one hand.
On the other hand, accepting that Paul was 100% divinely inspired in appointing elders, where do we get our notions concerning elders other than through the traditions that we have received? We got an episcopacy which was reactionary to earlier error and that was modified and refined over time but was it ever really just based upon an erroneous model in the first place passed down from one generation to the next on the Protestant side of the tree?
The Local Church got it from The Brethren who got it from whoever who got it from somebody else and back on and on to the first time someone went back to an eldership model from the exclusive and annointed priesthood model.
But, really, hasn't it mostly been unexamined all along?
Most of what I've seen is a post-hoc justification for existing practice rather than an honest reexamination of the very premise of our traditional notions of having an eldership.
It is a fact: the Local Church has never gone back to "the pure word of the Bible" regarding their practice of having an eldership. They have merely perpetuated what The Brethren did before them.
Think about it.