Friday, September 9, 2011

Cheap Building Materials


1 Corinthians 3:11-13
For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.  Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.
Over time, the pagans against whom Arnobius writes have moved from the foundations of their religious system by inventing new gods with the same names as preëxisting gods.  As well, their theologians are teaching this whole system.  Christ's church fell into the same type of trap.  Not content to build on the foundation and cornerstone of Jesus Christ with the gold, silver, and precious stones as did the apostles, adaptations have been made, even now abandoning the biblical names for the Triune God with other, more "culturally-relevant" monikers as the Presbyterian Church (USA) and United Church of Christ have done recently.

Arnobius points out the obvious results of such decisions—difficulty and confusion without any visible mooring.


But if it is true and certain, and is told in earnest as a well-known matter, either they are not all gods, inasmuch as there cannot be several under the same name, as we have been taught; or if there is one of them, he will not be known and recognized, because he is obscured by the confusion of very similar names.  And thus it results from your own action, however unwilling you may be that it should be so, that religion is brought into difficulty and confusion, and has no fixed end to which it can turn itself, without being made the sport of equivocal illusions.

Arnobius of Sicca, The Case against the Pagans, Book IV, cap. 15

No comments: