Fantastic! I love this discussion. John Mark Hicks book is what caused me to start going down this road several years ago. I disagree with him on some things but am thankful for his willingness to push and test the way I think. Thanks for this discussion!
Ironically, during the time of BS and AC, the words Restoration Movement was not being used. They tried to not restore the church as a whole, but themselves.
A conclusion I have come to is that God is explicit for Law or not Deut. 29:29 God is not vague concerning His will for man towards or against Him. Just think that God could explicitly tell how to build the Ark, the Temple, Laws, what animals, in detail, not to eat in the OT, but could not or would not do this in the NT, so we would have to search and find and build a pseudo Temple earthly institution.
I published an extensive review of Hick's book, Searching for the Pattern, on the Amazon page where it can be purchased. My take is not the same as theirs.
Read your review-- I appreciated how thorough you were in your rebuttal. I would like to (lovingly) challenge your hermeneutic (with all grace in the Spirit of Unity) by specifically focusing on your understanding of our duty to assemble. You brought up Hebrews 10:25, yet the verse does not mention the first day of the week-- the Hebrews author is not calling for a return to Sunday morning attendance, he's calling for a return to fellowship with fellow believers. Applying verses 25 and following only to the meeting together for a corporate assembly shows the very 21st century lens we are looking through. If you were to tell someone in the first century church that we only meet together for one to two hours a week on Sunday (and maybe Wednesday if we're feeling frisky) they would fear for the sanctity of our souls. How could we be possibly be getting all we need to from those who are meant to "spur us on in love and good works" if our relationship begins and ends within a period of time that is dwarfed by the amount of time we spend in the bathroom each week? (Counting bathing, it's 3 and a half hours). Likewise, while Acts 20:7 is a beautiful example of the fellowship of believers, to make the claim that is meant to be prescriptive for either meeting every first day of the week or partaking of the Lord's Supper each and every Sunday is spurious at best. The very same verse states that Paul (the inspired apostle of Jesus Christ whom we look to as an example of righteous living) preached until midnight. I have never heard call from any reader of the New Testament that we should apply this principle as regulative to the pattern of the church, yet we do so with the passively stated "came together" and "broke bread." Even our understanding of "preached till midnight" can be painted by our 21st century, Western lenses-- in that day and time days began and ended at dusk, and so it's probable that Paul preached from sundown until midnight, as opposed to starting at 10:30 AM as we are privy to do. But we don't even apply this verse to mean that our assembly should begin (by our calendar) at the eve of Saturday, though that would be the example of the first century church. We happily make many other presumptions based off this singular verse (e.g. that the breaking of bread being spoken of here is the Eucharist, in spite of the fact that the same wording is used in Acts 2:46 and yet often applied as a common meal), but we must be very careful when constructing rules that we then apply to all believers based on assumption. We do not know the Will of our God because of assumption-- we know the Will of our God because He is a clear and concise God, giving explicit command where it is needed, and not where it is not. To apply example and inference in the same way we do as explicit command is to say that God left some things that could effect our ability to be pleasing unto Him up to our skills of deduction. If the ability to practice righteousness or continue in the way of the Cross is based on our ability to glean a purposely obscured and hidden pattern, then we're all without hope. In spite of our disagreements, I do appreciate your clear desire to be pleasing to God-- I don't believe you hold to the "blueprint" approach because you're trying to be obtuse, but instead because you wish to follow God's commands (and even His non-commands) to the best of your abilities. This is a good and admirable quality. The problem I see arises when the application of those non-commands is bound to other believers as well. That's where we start speaking for God and can find ourselves in a world of trouble. Blessings.
No you don't, everything I have read by the CoC agrees 100% with this guy. I have watched hours upon hours on the history of where the CoC came from and they all were put out by the CoC. You do not date back to the 1st century no evidence whatsoever of the doctrine y'all tech. The only one that gets close to y'all's water doctrine is the Catholic church.. which started long before y'all came into existence.. This guy was dead on the money by every paper found In about yalls History..
Not even the people during the RM believed that the coC had lineage from 33AD. J.D. Tant thought the church was apostate, then was restored. Never-the-less, there was no church earthly institution, but Spiritual, and the only link is to Christ.
If you had a direct link to Acts 2:38 then you must be a Jew. Because Johns Baptism of Repentance was preached to none by the Jews only . Jesus changed how we are to come to repentance by baptizing us with the Holy Ghost starting Im chapter 10. And carrying on still today..
The CENI hermeneutic (Command, Example, Necessary Inference) fails in that it puts example and inference as equal in importance to direct command. Growing up in the CoC, I would constantly hear Acts 20:7 applied as a proof text that Christians are required to meet on the first day of the week. This example is applied as if it were a command, and yet the latter half of the verse, "and Paul preached unto midnight," is not applied as a "blueprint example" of how we are to structure our corporate worship. It's strange to me to try to apply a verse as prescriptive that is clearly descriptive and yet ignore words within the very same verse. In the video they discuss "guardrails"-- direct command is and always had been the explicit guardrail. Uzzah didn't die because he had good intentions but didn't necessarily infer the Will of God, he was struck dead because God directly said that was what was going to happen (Numbers 4:15). God is not a God of confusion. Example and inference are great for informing one's own choices when we are faced with situations of a moral nature that we don't have a book, chapter, and verse for, but to apply them as hard fast rules for all people at all times is by definition adding to and taking away from the Word of God. Adding a "Thou shalt" where there is none-- whether it be making Sunday morning some kind of "new Sabbath" that must be strictly observed, or using the silence of scripture as restrictive-- we are speaking where God has not spoken.
