The Theater of Grace

[spectrumbot]

My wife, Carmen, and I just returned from three weeks in Italy—our first visit to that absorbingly beautiful country. There are many reasons to visit Italy, but a Christian can’t help but enjoy it as one of the formative sites in the development of Western Christianity.

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This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://spectrummagazine.org/article/column/2008/11/20/theater-grace

[bevin_brett (Rheticus)]

Humberto Eco’s medieval mystery, The Name of the Rose, gives a fascinating account of the conflicts between the impoverished mendicant religious orders and the extravagantly wealthy Papacy. According to Eco, in the century after St. Francis, church leaders insisted that all must acknowledge that Jesus owned property and approved of wealth, for to say otherwise would destroy the church’s credibility

This is one of my favorite books - the movie starring Sean Connery is okay but a vast oversimplification.

All SdA should read it, along with “A Gathering Of Saints” that tells a true and equally insightful incident from the Later Day Saints.

One person said to me, “We Italians have been too close to the Vatican for too many years to take it as seriously as the rest of the world does.” (Just as my friends who work in the General Conference building aren’t dazzled by that institution; familiarity bleeds off some of the mystery.)

In business these days, a buzz word is “transparency”,

My generation - born circa 1955 - and all those following in the West have no trust at all of politicians, business leaders, and church leaders.

All our lives those groups have consistently lied to us - and been caught at the lies because they have lost control of the media. The internet has changed everything.

The business leaders have really caught on, The politicians are catching on, The religious leaders are still believing their own lies.

[ageis711Oxyain (Elaine Nelson)]

Does anyone question whether Adventists or Protestants will be around 2,000 years from now? If so, like Catholicism, it have no resemblance to its humble origins.

Perhaps the Catholic church has survived because it had adapted in the various regions of the world and not coerced uniformity it all its practices. It appeals to those who do not speak the native languages, necessarily, as it speaks to all who worship in their own heart, not in doctrinal statements requiring affirmation. Its doors are nearly always opened to those who wish to enter and quietly meditate or pray.