What is the Church of Christ (ReadyToHarvest)?
Review and Commentary by Charles Sulka
The Church of Christ boasts (some say arrogantly) that it is the original Christian church, claiming to date back to the earliest faith congregations after the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. They also say that their church is Bible-based and that the Bible is divinely inspired and therefore inerrant. This only confuses the issues and confounds the people.
The problem is, at the time of the founding of the Christian faith, there was no Bible, therefore the Bible cannot possibly have been the basis for their faith at the beginning. The Bible as we know it did not exist until the assembly of Bishops compiled the canon of the Bible at the Council of Rome in the fourth century A.D. Indeed, many of the New Testament scriptures had not even been written yet. The early church was based on tradition, and out of this religious tradition came the Bible, centuries later. Yet the Church of Christ rejects Tradition as a valid basis for Christian religious doctrine.
Interestingly, they dismiss the Old Testament out of hand, claiming to be New Covenant based with Jesus being the only way to salvation. But if the Bible were, as a whole, divinely inspired and inerrant, as they claim, then many might feel that this group has no right to dismiss the biggest part of the Bible as having no bearing on salvation.
A very good examination of the role of Tradition in the early church is an article addressing the Bible and prophecy by Fr. Stephen De Young, IS THE BOOK OF REVELATION CANONICAL IN THE ORTHODOX CHURCH? (August 15, 2018) at The Whole Counsel Blog:
It is particularly important to understand the Orthodox Church’s position because the Orthodox Church is generally regarded as being the first Christian church, being founded by the apostles and disciples of Jesus and continuing the Tradition of the Faith, without interruption for more than two thousand years.
“…while it is very common and simple for us to talk about ‘the Bible’ as a unit containing all of the canonical scriptures with a table of contents in the front listing the books, this is not how our forebears in the faith interacted with and understood the scriptures, particularly in the time period during which canonization was taking place.” As he points out, “Complete Bibles were extremely rare before the advent of the printing press.” [And non-existent prior to the Council of Rome in 382 A.D.]
The Bible as we know it did not exist before the fourth century A.D. and was not available to most people for the first fifteen centuries after the crucifixion of Christ. The early Christians had little access to scriptures; most could not read and write, and few could understand Hebrew. Moreover, the ‘scriptures’ accessible to the formative Christian church were not what the faithful today think of as holy writ. Consider the synoptic Gospels, for example. Of the estimated forty to fifty gospels scholars believe to have been in circulation at the time of the early church, nearly thirty have been found and translated to date. Only FOUR of these gospels — less than 10% of those known to be in circulation at the time — were deemed by the bishops at the Council of Rome to be inspired and worthy of inclusion in the canon of the Bible. More than 90% of these ‘scriptures’ were discarded, regarded by the Church as not being inspired writings.
By no stretch of the imagination could it be said that all scriptures are inspired (by the Spirit of God) as the vast majority were considered unworthy of inclusion in the Bible. Furthermore, there was no consensus as to which scriptures were inspired; the matter was simply put to a vote, and the final decision was often contentious. To this day the various denominations argue over the question of which writings should be included in the Bible.
There will never universal agreement on the question, and perhaps that is God’s intention. After all, when people are fighting over questions of the faith, at least they are thinking about their beliefs. It’s probably safe to say that if it weren’t for arguing points of minutia and self-righteous indignation, most people would never give their faith a second thought.
Obviously, the Church of Christ’s claim that it is the original Christian church is nonsense. Other Christian churches have a far better claim to being first … such as the tradition-based churches that compiled the Bible centuries after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
The producer of this video cherry-picks selected passages from dozens of different leaders of this denomination to give us what we can only hope is an accurate overall picture of the group’s religious doctrines. Actually, there is nothing else the narrator could do, as the Church of Christ has no central authority nor binding religious creed or confession of faith. Each congregation is autonomous. There can be, and indeed there is, a wide range of opinions among members of this sect on the various points of doctrine. In this sense, at least, this group is much like the early Church.
This is puzzling to an outsider like me. Why would thousands of congregations in various locations all adopt the same name for their church if in reality they are independent and not bound together by any creed, or in any formal, legal manner? Why don’t they all just call themselves “Independent Christian Church” or “Imaginary First Church of Christ”? From the reader comments, it would seem that more than a few might say the Church of Christ should be renamed “Hypocrites R Us” or something of the sort. If the only thing they all have in common is a vainglorious but patently false claim to be the original Christian church, what is the point of choosing the same name as other churches which have adopted different positions on questions of the faith?
As to the doctrines of the Church of Christ, the carefully selected quotes in this video from the various church leaders shows that some of the doctrines are well thought out, clearly expressed, and definitely in accordance with Christian tradition (and usually with Biblical teachings, which came later and which were based on Holy Tradition.) But some of the doctrines are questionable, and not a few are clearly wrong.
Consider the wine used at their celebration of the Eucharist (communion, or the memorial of the Lord’s Last Supper.) Only unfermented grape juice is allowed. This position is supported by the claim that in the Bible the word ‘wine’ is used to refer to both unfermented grape juice and fermented wine. Church of Christ spokesmen claim the term ‘wine’ can be interpreted either way. There is little question that much of the Bible is ambiguous, unclear, confusing, even contradictory. But there is no question that the term ‘drunkenness’ can only refer to inebriation caused by fermented grape juice — wine. The Lord, the Prophets, the Apostles, and the officials of the early Church warn of the danger of the abuse of alcohol, both in the Bible and the other Christian writings. Clearly the wine they are referring to is grape juice that is fermented.
We need only look to Old Testament legend to see the truth of this. The Hebrew people’s King David, who, in a drunken stupor, danced naked in the streets (reportedly to impress the ladies) was not inspirited to such a vulgar display by unfermented grape juice. When the Lord warns us about the perils of abusing alcohol he is clearly not referring to unfermented grape juice, but wine.
This is just one example from a list if issues addressed in this video’s examination of the doctrines of the Church of Christ. It looks to me like the denomination is about average, in terms of correct understanding of what it means to be a Christian. The greatest impediment to the group’s spiritual development has to be their arrogance, their prideful position that they are the one true faith, the original church of Christ. How can anyone make progress in their spiritual development if they obstinately close their minds to truth and understanding from the outset? That approach will get you nowhere.
At least they aren’t snake handlers, sham faith healers, disgusting TV preachers with their BS, or holy rollers babbling on, deluded into thinking their gibberish (technically, ‘glossolalia’) is the gift of tongues which was bestowed upon the first Christians at Pentecost. Furthermore, I doubt that a pedophile priest would be invited to fellowship with the Church of Christ (although it could possibly do the man a world of good.) They may be not be perfect … but at least they are trying. Let us pray that they continue to seek out Truth in service to God and their fellow man. That is what the Christian faith is all about.
(CHS 09-21-2022 1256 -0500)
What is the Church of Christ?
Youtube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bg6fKBaJlM
25:46
Sep 11, 2022
Ready to Harvest