Lex credendi

I’m again reminded of a little essay by S. M. Hutchens, on the Touchstone blog, which concludes:

The apostasy of a church rarely happens as the result of an epiphany; it is normally a slow process involving “certain currents of ideas” plunged into because they seem modern and successful, a drift, unresisted, unstudied (or only prejudicially studied), and prayed about dishonestly only after the current has been entered. After years of concentrating on the worship of Jesus (lex orandi), God becomes something subtly but significantly different in our minds than the Trinity of orthodox faith (lex credendi), just as after years of adjusting the scriptures to answer to our sect’s distinctive beliefs, elementally profound departures from the faith and practice of the universal church seem no more than reasonable concessions to the way people think these days, and what they enjoy (how else can we “evangelize” them?). These are now taken up into our doctrine and defended by the same kind of dodging we have always used to avoid the parts of the Bible that trouble us.

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