David, David, Whither Goest Thou?

David Bercot is a prolific writer on the subject of the early church. He was driven to the writings of the early church in his early days when he converted from the Watchtower Society to evangelicalism. The doctrinal arguments in the evangelical wing of Christianity led him to look to the earliest documents of the Christian movement, to find out what the early Church believed.

His early works led him to conclude that the early Church was strictly pacifist, non-resistant, with respect to fighting in war, and was strictly opposed to the games and to the theater, embracing strict conventions with respect to modesty in attire, and lifestyle, including the wearing of the prayer veil for women in worship,  thus having a style of life somewhat akin, in his thinking,to the contemporary conservative Mennonites.  The Anabaptist vision was the vision his first edition of Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up, called folks to.  On the other hand he found unmistakable evidence of the centrality of Communion in worship, an Episcopal form of government, and a commitment to Apostolic Succession, along with a belief in baptismal regeneration, and adherance to the early Creeds of the Church. His second edition of Heretics called all to follow him into Anglicanism of a classical variety, Jeremy Taylor, Hooker,  Cranmer, and so forth.

As a result he and others who were under his influence, of which I was one, decided to practice our distinctive pacifistic and non-conformist Christian lives as a Society within the confines of some of the various 1928 Book of Common Prayer  Continuing Anglican Communions, thereby attaining apostolic succession of a sort, episcopal government, and liturgical worship.

This was an unstable combination, and many of the people attuned thereby to various Catholic issues that were mentioned, began to look at the claims of Roman Catholicism and of Eastern Orthodoxy, precisely because the early Church rested its understanding on a belief in the Church as a visible Institution that would preserve the Faith. The Branch Theory of Anglicanism was not early Church teaching.  Many went on to become Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox- my family did the latter.

David had earlier attempted to morph himself and his early associates into an ancient Church, but was shipwrecked at the prayers that were offered by Eastern Orthodox to the Virgin Mary. It was too much for him; he expostulated on a tape,  'why didn't they pray to the Holy Spirit or to Jesus?'

With many going in directions that David found untenable, he re-visited his viewpionts and edited his books anew, and came out with the book that now defines his position The Kingdom that Turned the World Upside Down.  David's thinking had turned away from the Church. He said the Apostles didn't envision that the Church would fall away from the truth and did not make provision for it.  Since in David's view all the historic Churches had erred in doctrine, he opted for Orthopraxy as the touchstone for choosing a Christian Assembly, as long as it somewhat loosely could be said to embrace the Apostles' Creed and the non- supplemented version of the 325 Creed of Nicaea.  And in his writing he began to side in many ways with groups that had been identified as schismatic or heretical down through the ages.  He opted for what he calls a commitment to the Kingdom in favor of a commitment to Church or a Church, a historical and visible Church.  He has embraced then an invisible Church doctrine with various groups appearing and disappearing expressing the spirit of the kingdom though varying quite wildly in doctrine and practice.  He for example includes Quakers, who neither baptize nor take communion.  He includes Waldensians who practice infant baptism.  He embraces Donatists and Novationists who believed that one could only sin once after baptism.  He mentions the Lollards who believed in women preachers and denied the Real Presence in the Eucharist.

Constant in David's thinking has been his commitment to total pacifism and to modesty and simplicity in style of life.  He likes the word 'radical' to describe the sort of Christianity that he believes to be normative.  On the web page he has devoted to his viewpoints, www.earlychurch.com.  He states his chief aim is to promote a personal, obedient love relationship with Jesus Christ.  That is good. We ought to love Jesus, relate to Him personally and obey Him

So, David puts forth an Ecclesiology that is distinctively protestant, an invisible Church ecclesiology, a soteriology that aligns with historical pietism of a personal love relationship to Jesus, and an ethic that is pacifistic and so has an inherent antipathy to any possibility of a Christian bearing the sword or being the one who commnds others to bear the sword, that is to say, to be a politician.

In the Apostles' Creed, there is the statement that  "I believe... in the holy catholic church".

That is a heavy thing to confess, and to do so with integrity. In the early centuries when this Creed appears, as a local or regional baptismal statement of belief, the ideas of catholic and church were full of content, and that content did not include the idea of an invisible Church.  The catholic Church of that Creed, had apostolic succession by the laying on of hands; it had a hierarchical rulership and three-fold offices of Bishop, Pastor and Deacon.  It had a robust Tradition of Prayer facing the East in Assemblies, of the usage of an altar in worship, of the sign of the cross in one's prayers.  It had liturgical baptismal formulae and prayer formulae, as is evidenced in the works of Hippolytus towards the end of the Second Century, and liturgies for ordinations and for all the various aspects of worship.  The Church was viewed to be Mystically and Adminstratively One, and had a doctrinal consensus that united the entire Church as well.  The early Church had a visible Church doctrine.  So that when David says that he embraces the idea of a catholic Church, he must break ranks with what the early Church believed about Itself.

The Early Church believed that the Visible Church would persist throughout all of history and that the gates of hell would not prevail against it. Christ, in His teachings, said as much. Thus, when one begins to state as David has that original faith had been lost and is not fully adhered to by any group, He comes very close to undercutting the veracity of the Lord who built the Church. If the Visible Church did not persist in the fullness of doctrine, then Christ's word ceases to become reliable. David says he believes in the catholic Church but he empties it of Apostolic Content and reconfigures it into an unrecognizable neologism.

This is serious for another reason.  Ecclesiology is a subset of Christology because the Church is now the Body of Christ, and in It is continued the ministry of Jesus Christ on the earth.  Therefore deviations in Ecclesiology become and lead to and are expressive of a heretical Christiology.

In the 5th Century,  there was an assortment of teachings, that said that Jesus Christ was not fully human; it came in different forms-  his humanity was like a drop of water swallowed up in the ocean of the Divine.  He was spoken of as having a Divine Will but not a human will.  He was spoken of as having a Divine Energy but not a human Energy.  Or that the humanity and the divinity were fused so that the body of Jesus was not like ours.  The heresy obtained the name of Monophysitism at a Council of the Church in 451.

David's invisible Church doctrine expresses Christological monophysitism because he denies the full humanity of the Church as the body of Christ.  He denies it in its historical dimension, its persistence through time, and he denies it in its Institutional Dimension, the apostolic succession, the authority of the Church to bind and loose through its Bishops, the authority of the Church in the Bishops to form Councils whereby decisions are made that bind the consciences of the faithful. David's invisible Church doctrine is a Christological monophysitism.

And this leads to the second big mistake in David's reactive thinking concerning the Church. His doctrine of salvation being a personal relationship to Jesus; that is what he wants to foster.  The Early Church did not teach this.  The early Church taught us that we needed the whole of Christ to be saved; we needed not only a personal relationship in communion with the Head of the Church- Jesus Christ; but we also needed to be incorporated into His Body, his very physical human Body, the Church on Earth, through baptism, and we also needed to eat His Body and Drink His Precious Blood, In Holy Communion to be saved.  Davids soteriology, his doctrine of salvation, is also monophysite because he emphasizes the Divine and the Spiritual in salvation in his personal relationship to Jesus, but neglects to mention that we incorporation into His Body to be saved as well. We are saved by the Whole Jesus-  Head and Body, not just the head.

So, my friend David, in order to cleave to his pacifism and the outer forms of separation from the world, has been forced into the embrace of an Ecclesiology and a Soteriology that are heretical- they are monophysite, and reflect negatively on who Christ is, this Christ who IS come in the Flesh.

At the www.earlychurch.com web site the webmaster states that the essential marks of the Church were separation from the world, unconditional love, and obedience to the teachings of Jesus Christ.  As David morphed away from any catholic expressions of the Church, he came to characterize the Conciliar period of the Church  from Nicaea in 325 till the 7th Council in the 9th Century as a time when the Church deviated from its mission of separation love and obedience and focused on incorrectly on right belief.  On the early church web site David does not mention right belief as an essential mark of the Kingdom.  Perhaps that is why he is no longer uncomfortable with such a range of heterodoxy in the groups he extolls. Yet Scripture is not so indifferent to doctrine, and especially the doctrine of the Incarnation.  We learn that the spirit of Antichrist is characterized essentially by unbelief- unbelief and rejection of the Incarnation.  ' We learn in I John 4:1 and following:  ¶  Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.1 ¶ 2  Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God:2

3  And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world."

It is of no small insignificance, then that the ecclesiology and soteriology that David has come to fails to be a confession of the Incarnation, but is a move away from it.  All of Christian life, worship and obedience must be an expression of the Incarnation.  To deviate from that is to allow the enemy within the gates.

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Was the early Church uniformly pacifist, and openly hostile to participation in any government activity that involved the power of the sword?  David thinks so in his reading of the Eerdemans Ante-Nicene Fathers.  I would suggest he has missed a few things.  First of all, the Ante-Nicene writings are not the totality of that which has been recorded from the early Church.  There are also Hymns from the period ; there are also stories of Saints from the period.  There are a number of hagiographic references to soldiers in the ante-Nicene era who were martyred for Christ. They did not eschew their soldiery because of their Faith, though they often gave evidence of finding the work of a soldier odious.  However, the hagiographic literature often records stories of valiant soldiers who were martyred because they refused to offer incense to the Emperor or the the pagan gods.

However, even if we do not consider the hagiography of the early Church we must consider neglected evidence from the writings of the early Church that are recorded in the Eerdemans collection.  In the Syriac documents we have the history of a First Century Kingdom whose king was converted to Christ by a miraculous healing and who made his kingdom a Christian Kingdom, and yet was not in any way instructed by the apostolic witnesses that had come to him to forsake his position of King and bearer of the sword.  This is the account of the Kingdom of Edessa, and the conversion of Agbar at the hands of Thaddeus.  There is perhaps apocryphal encrustations about the account, but it reflects a historic core, that there was a first century Kingdom that was converted to Christ.

Separation from the world did not entail forsaking participation in human government nor the necessary use of the sword as a terror to evil.   Selfless love, the mark of any truly Christian life could be practiced as the head of the State, and as a soldier as well.  The Church in this instance was established and had a different pastoral challenge than when it was persecuted by the State as in the case of the first Centuries in the Roman Empire.  But from the first century, the Church had an apostolic model that separation from the world did not necessarily entail forsaking the governance  that involved the sword.  It was for this reason that there was no protest when at the time of Constantinople there was a change in the demeanor of the State towards the Church.

The Church had an apostolic deposit that knew how to both abound and to be abased.

This is not to say that the Church promulgated a doctrine of just warfare.  The doctrine of just warfare was a corruption brought about at the time of Augustine in the West. However, as the canons of St. Basil makes note, though it may be necessary to act as a soldier in the defense of the helpless, to take a life was necessarily a sin, and required a penance by excommunication for three years.

Finally, to make a case for absolute pacifism as the New Testament teaching, in obvious contrast to the place of warfare in the Old and the governance of Israel by righteous kings in the Old , is to descend into a sort of Marcionite distinction between Old and New Covenants which the Church condemned in the Second Century as heresy.  It is a descent into Marcionite ethics.

If David seriously embraced belief in the Communion of Saints, then his reversion to anabaptism may have never occurred and he might have transitioned to one of the Ancient Churches.  David was once asked what the communion of Saints was and he said he didn't know.  The catacombs give us a clue. There are prayers offered to loved ones on the walls of the catacombs.  The early Church had a vital and mystical sense of being one with the Church in heaven.  Hebrews 12 records the apostle Paul talking about believers having come to the heavenly Jerusalem to the souls of just men made perfect, to an innumerable company of angels, and to Jesus the author and finisher of the faith.  This was Paul's experience put in to words.   The mystical communion of the ancient Church was with Jesus and with His people who are members of Him.  The early Church had a sense of that closeness. That closeness was a first fruits of the restored fellowship that all with have with one another in the Resurrection on the Last Day.  The Church is a fellowship seated in heaven; some of us while seated in heaven still have our feet on earth.

Therefore, the Communion of Saints is the pious practice of asking the departed Saints for their prayers, especially of the Virgin Mary, who is a type of the Church, and through the apostle John the mother of us all.  If David had truly embraced the Communion of Saints, he would not have been shipwrecked because some Orthodox were asking for the intercessions of the Virgin Mary.

When one studies the early Church and looks to history to figure out what the Church ought to believe, one discovers that the early Church did not have such a rationalistic approach to getting at the truth.  The early Church viewed itself as the pillar and ground of the Truth, and not history , nor some individual's reading of it, whether it be a sola Scriptura inductive Bible Student or the Pope in Rome.  The Historic, Faithful, Persistent-in-History Church, the early Church believed was the place where the Truth was preserved.  One did not go dig in history to find the Truth, one went to the Church and received Its teachings.  Consequently, David's epistemology is flawed; it is not ancient Church; it is rationalistically based in philosophy, the historiographical approach to ancient documents.  It is a flawed non-apostolic approach to the Truth.  Philosophy may have its place but unless it brings us to the Church, the pillar and ground of the Truth, then it has failed to serve us.

David knows what the Early Church taught about Holy Communion.  It took Christ's words quite literally.  But for David to know that then to put forth groups such as the Quakers who deny the Body and Blood of Christ, not discerning His Body and Blood in Communion, is a very serious mis-direction.  I am also astonished that he would put forth such groups as the Donatists and Novationists- groups that taught that one could only sin once after baptism.  Does he want to put forth that sort of standard? Is that a reform that anyone can admire?  Isn't our great and pressing need that God forgive us 70 x 7 even as we are called upon to forgive others 70 x7. Is God's calling for us to forgive more generous than his willingness to forgive us?

I found the Church. The Orthodox Church preserved the doctrine of the Apostles.  It has served up millions of martyrs for 2000 years including 45 million in the last century under the Bosheviks.  The Orthodox Russians gave a haven for the persecuted Anabaptists who fled Protestant and Catholic Western Europe.  It has a strong commitment to peace as is evidenced by the Orthodox Peace Fellowship www.incommunion.org   As a Church committed to visible unity, it does not have the luxury of schism as is used by radical Christians who divide and separate from the not-as-pure. It has to practice the parable of the wheat and the tares, and that of the net with the fishes.   Bt the high standards of holiness are lifted up, the Church continues to produce Saints, and the therapeutic regimen to make Saints has been preserved in such a way that is not found in any other Christian Body.  It is a blessing to have 'mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is won', and to have Church structures, if submitted to,  that will take one forward into the depths of Christian sanctification.  The Church didn't disappear to have to be reconstructed from the bones found in historical digs.  Christ did build His Church and the gates of Hell have not prevailed against it.

Denny Kenaston, Charity Christian Fellowship, and Remnant Christianity

I figured I'd weigh in on the discussion of Charity Christian Fellowship. I was very interested in the movement for a while. I attended meetings with them. Stayed in their houses. Participated in pastoral ministry. Had a house church that was a satellite of their ministry for a period of time.

I've also been away from them for quite a while, since the early 90s.  My path took me through Charity eventually into the Eastern Orthodox Church, where I have rested, at least from  ecclesiastical wanderings.  I've kept up with them only indirectly, through their web presence, and recently through YouTube preachings by Denny Kennaston. Denny has not changed much except he has gotten older.

There are burning questions out there.  Is Charity Christian Fellowship a Cult?  No, it is not, at least in the theological sense. It adheres to Traditional Christology and to a Trinitarian doctrine of the Godhead.  Is it a cult in the sociological sense?  No, because it is not a new religious movement but is a synthesis of two distinctively protestant theological movements from whom it has separated. It is a synthesis of revivalism with anabaptism.  Is it a cult in the mental health sense, that is to say, is it a group that practice physical or mental abuse?  That depends- if the group

 refuses membership to divorced and remarried people, is that mental abuse? If so, then the Catholic Church is also a cult in the mental health sense (although the Catholic Church has gotten around that hard position by being very liberal with marriage annulments, whereas Charity has not, that I know of).  I know that I was dealt with quite harshly by one of their leaders when I came to doctrinal convictions with which they did not agree.  Is that abuse?  I doubt it, though it made me glad I did not continue going their way.. Itis not good leadership. Is Charity a cult because they have strong leadership? I would say no.  This world needs good Christian leadership. Is it cultish to have empire building ambition? If so, the whole religious world lieth in cultishness.  No, Charity is not a cult. It is simply a zealous bunch of Christians with strong and directive leaders who lead as best they can as imperfect men in a terribly gone astray world.

Is Charity Christian Fellowship a sect?  Yes.  But in the Protestant world, being a sect is not a bad thing;  it is inevitable given the high priority it gives to the individual and private interpretation of Scripture.  A sect is a group of Christians that separates from another group for reasons of faith or practice.  Charity identifies itself as anabaptist, yet has separated from the myriad of other anabaptist bodies on a number of issues, most of them having to do with heart Christianity as opposed to outward religion.  Charity seeks to rescue itself and others from the problem of mere outward religion with the instruments of revivalism- chiefly protracted preaching and teaching with the induction of crisis experiences where individuals come to deepened repentance, and new inward states of subjective asssurance.  Yet, Charity retains many of the outward forms of anapbatism- conspicuous practice of dress modesty and non-conformity, and strict non-participation in most of the forms of entertainment that now engulf the modern western world.  The women persist in wearing a veil in prayer, and wear it all the time.  There is strict cultural distinctions between men's and women's roles.  Families and Church are strongly patriarchical.

Charity also continues to embrace the strict non-resistance of the Mennonites and Amish that

 extends to non-participation in the political processes of the governments of this world; it operates with a two Kingdom model, with the governments in this world held to be in antithesis to the Kingdoms of Christ.

On the other hand stylistically they embrace the fervent and emotion charged preaching. prayer,  and congregational styles of revivalism, in contrast to the somber and silent temperament of the Mennonites and the Amish.  Theologically they continue in the Arminian mode as far as the process of salvation is concerned, yet continue to advance the ideal of assurance of salvation that traditionally comes from the Calvinist end of the spectrum, but not the old Calvinism but the new light of Finney, with inner assurance flowing out of an inner experience of election.

Such was the case in the re-conversion of one of the leading ministers, tape Moses.  He was a man who joined Charity and became the heart of their tape ministry. He had pious children and a pious wife and was pious himself. Yet, several years after joining Charity, he concluded that he was not 'saved', and so had an altar call experience and finally got saved.  Tape Moses illustrates the extreme subjectivity of the revivalism that is practiced in Charity, as one can never be sure that one has enough faith to be saved.

So, this illustrates that one of the criticisms I have for Charity is a criticism that I have for revivalism in particular.  The other criticism has to do with the fixity of outward forms that Charity practices, and that is a criticism of conservative Anabaptism.  It is an odd collection of criticisms, as it posits an inordinate subjectivity on the one hand and an inordinate fixity in outward form on the other.

The fixity of outward forms-  the only sermon I ever preached at Charity Christian Fellowship was a sermon on Christian liberty from the writings of St. Paul. I was led of the Spirit to preach on that.  The general idea of the sermon is that Christian faith frees us from cultural captivity so that we may be free to present the Gospel in a multitude of cultures without outward forms being

 a stumbling block to the message of the grace of God in the person and work of Jesus Christ.  Perhaps this has changed in the fellowships, but I sort of doubt it.  A Youtube video of Denny preaching in 2008 shows him still wearing clothes that limit him to a particular cultural setting, that of Anabaptism. He was wearing a white shirt with long sleeves and without a tie, and black pants, with military short hair on his head and Moses length beard on his face.  When you look at

 his family pictures they are the same for his children.  White shirts, or pale blue, and so forth.  There is a fixity of form.  They style of dress is modest in that it covers his body, however it is a modesty that is conspicuous and calls attention to itself, so in that sense could be construed as very immodest. The idea of clothing in Scripture is clothing that neither calls attention to us or calls attention to our flesh.  Such fixity in outward form limits the out-reach of the Gospel and requires that converts not only respond in repentance to the Gospel but also adopt a particular cultural form, or so it seems to me.

There have always been Christians throughout Christian history who have practiced non-conformity in outward form, and the Lord gives them the liberty to do it. However, Scripture and the catholic practice of the faith go further and say that those who feel the need to practice such scruples for their conscience sake need to make room for those whose consciences are not weak- in the case of Charity, to make room for those who wear short sleeves without a sense of loss of Communion with God, or for ladies who do not wear a prayer veiling 24 /7 yet who likewise do not feel the loss of the presence of God to allow them to do so.  So, in the Church, as conceived by the apostles, there is the room for the weak conscience, the long sleeve wearer, and also for the strong- the catholicity of the Church requires room for both.  This is the missing of the mark of Charity, the failure to attain to catholicity in its expression of the Faith.  Such failure to achieve catholicity is called legalism, if the group that holds to such practices denies that those who do not are necesarily not of the fold of God. I know that Denny has had men who wear ties to speak at his Church, and subscribes to the teaching of others who do not hold to his particularist views. So, I would not say it is a legalism on Denny's part, but it merely that the practice of Charity is sectarian, that have narrowed for themselves the way that they wish to express the faith. I supose it would be legalism if when the attempted to take the Gospel to a very different culture, say, in Africa, and they were decking out people in a tropical climate with Mennonite coats with circumcised collars.  I do not wish to put on them a label.  I have my own failings to live in the light of Christ that occupy my sights.

But their practice does not attain to Cathlocity, and that means that they are a sect.  Now as to the subjectivity that is involved in their revivalism, I suggest that this is a misdirected mysticism. Christian faith is a mysticism; but it is a mysticism that is grounded and delivered from the inherent risks of mysticism by its existing within the life of the Church.  This balance of mysticism with Church is unique for Christianity because it is expressive of the mystery of the Incarnation.  How can this be?  Jesus Christ is the Eternal Logos who became a Man, without ceasing to be God.  In His Eternal Person, as the Second Person of the Trinity, He united The Divine and Human in Himself, the Uncreated and the Created.  Through His death and resurrection and asension, He then incorporated those who believe in Him, into the mystery of this Divine Human life.  This incorporation is accomplished through the medium of the Church. The Church is the ongoing presence on earth of the Ministry of Jesus Christ. It is His Body doing in the earth all the things that He did in the days of His flesh on earth.  While on earth He forgave sins, He sanctified souls through preaching, He gave his Body and Blood for our vivification.  In the Church Jesus Christ is doing the same Thing.  In the days of his flesh, as He moved about preaching and teaching and healing and being the world's pastor, the Spirit was mystically revealing Him to His followers. Peter was the first to be illumined and as a result this human Jesus Christ was revealed inwardly to Peter, who came to recognize Him as the Son of God.

There was a mysticism with inward revelation going on at the same time that the disciples were with Jesus in Body.  They knew Him first through His Body and as they experienced Him in the Body, the inward revelation of who He was was given to them.  In conjunction with the things He did was the revelation inwardly of who He was.

This is continued in the Church.  The Church is the bodily presence of Christ. It is Christ present in an objective way, and in the Church there are acts that are done that, in an objective way, begin the journey of being a Christian, so that we are not snared in the morass of mystical subjectivity.  In the Church our sins are forgiven. Christ gave that power to the Church through the apostles as is recorded in Matthew and also in John, both a synoptic and a johannine testimony.  How does the Church begin to forgive our sins?  Well, it preaches the Gospel of repentance, and those that hear the Gospel, present them to the Church and are baptized. Baptism is the ministry of forgiveness of sins.  It is objective. There is a time when we were not

 baptized, and had not entered into the mystery of forgiveness.  There is then a time when we have been baptized, and we cannot divest ourselves of that through subjectivity. It is an outward and bodily reality- our sins have been forgiven and the Holy Spirit has been imparted.  Such objectivity delivers us of the dangers of mystical subjectivity. We have been born again.

However, the mysticism of the Faith delivers us from the dangers inherent in the objectivity of baptism and of participation in the Church, for the impartation of grace which baptism is is to the end that we have Communion with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and that is the mysticism to which we all are called, and if we do not go on and know the Lord, something is amiss in how the grace in our baptism is being invoked.

And here is my criticism of Charity as a participant in the Christian movement called revivalism-

the call to inward illumination which is the call to every Christian has attached to it things which properly ought to be attached to the outward graces that subsist within the Church, in our previous discussion, baptism; but to all the mysteries, or sacraments that were placed in the Church as a Body.  The classical denominations of Protestant were all resistant to revivalism for this very reason, the personalistic, and subjective was set at war with the corporate, and the ecclesiastical, undermining the very basis of Christian life in the Church, and morphing it into something individual and private. In fact this attack on the Church by revivalism has directly led to the lone ranger Christianity that plagues the west, not to mention the smorgaasbord approache to finding a Christian fellowship, for it has led to the process of finding a fellowship that agrees with me, who in my subjectivity and private reading of Scripture am the final arbiter of what is the depths of Christian faith, rather than finding myself confonted with the Church and finding it nessary to pray and struggle until my understanding is transformed as it is conformed to the Apostolic deposit of faith. Yet the subjectivity of Charity and all revivalist movements almsot guarantees an endless succesion of further schisms and separations, and eventual dissolution of the movement after the parting of the strong leaders that served as the condensation point that brought the movement together in the first place.  The revivalist principle has within itself the seeds of its own destruction. That is why Finney, towards the end of his life, lamented, saying, 'where is the fruit', as he looked out on the territories he had worked with revival and found nothing really of substance remaining.  Futher, he had left the Churches in a weakened state. Is it any wonder that in that spiritual wasteland, that the Mormon movement emerged?

I would like to touch briefly on another aspect of the weakness of the tradition that is revivalism- Jessie Penn-Lewis who chronicled the Welch revival at the turn of the 20th century stated that itw as destroyed by emotionalism. (the Welch revival is another example of a powerful spiritual fervor that after a generation showed no fruit: another is the West Africa revival chronicled by Norman Grubb, a generation thereafter was the grounds of the Tutsi and Hutu genocides).  I go into this with reluctance because I like Denny, and I know that he has pointed many to Christ, and has a zeal and a discipline in the Christian life he has chosen that I cannot match, but Denny's preaching is exhausting. It is full of zeal, but it lacks the peace from above, it is as if Denny himself has not yet entered into the Stillness of the Father so as to minister that Peace in the

 midst of his calls given to us to pursue a holy life.  Perhaps that is not a criticism of Denny as it is a comment about his own personal spiritual neediness, but when inordinate weight is put on preaching as is the case of revivalism, and inordinate weight is put on inward subjective responses, as is the case in revivalism, then the temptation is inevitable to marshal the forces of emotion and striving to advance the things that are considered needful.  Denny comes across as a man, not at peace, but driven by his own lack of peace and lack of resolution. I feel for him because I recognize that own sense in my own life.  But it is a slough toward which one is tended by revivalism and the only way out is through a paradigm shift.

This failure to manifest peace to the world has deep roots, that are outside of the scope of this essay to pursue. However, it might be said that, the Peace from Above, is a peace that comes from a Revelation that comes that is deeper than Scripture and of which Scripture only hints at-

the peace that comes from the Revelation of the Stillness of the Father. It was spoken of by St. Ignatius, third Bishop of Antioch, who said, "those who have acquired the word of Jesus must hear His Stillness, so as to be perfect."  The deep Stillness of the Father is something that the Western Protestant Tradition knows nothing and writes nothing about, yet it is essential to being a Father in Christ, who draws others on into the depths of fellowship in the Holy Trinity. I suggest that the reader Google 'hesychasm', or look at others posts in this blog on Stillness, to follow up on this idea.

The tragedy is that Western Christians are cut off from the depths of the Apostolic Mystical Tradition and inevitably weight their preachings and their prayings with either too much emotion or too much thinking, for they have not plumbed the depths the Stillness that is within the heart.

So, misdirected mysticism, non-catholicity in terms of the forms of the Faith, these all speak to the failure to have found the Church. It is another evidence of men, earnest men, zealous men, men who have heard the word of Christ, attempting to re-invent the wheel of Christian faith for themselves, having the Bible but being divorced from the Church that both wrote it and canonized it and held within itself the Apostolic Tradition that interpreted it.  Failure to find the Church is also a failure to fully confess the Incarnation, and to the post,  David, David, Whither Goest Thou?, do I point the reader to see something of how the evangelical, revivalist, anabaptist, Western Christian inadvertently fails to confess the Incarnation in its doctrine of the Church and in its soteriology, as we have attempted to show in this post that failure to confess the Incarnation has led to an imbalanced Christian mysticism.

Lord have mercy on us all, for we have great need of Thee. amen.