The Black Cat In the Dark Room
"My philosophy teacher in college once said, "A philosopher is a blind man, in a dark room, looking for a black cat, that is not there."

"..It is one thing to say that you use principles in Scripture to build a system, and quite another to say you can do what ever you like. Likewise, it is one thing to build a system on 'necessary consequences' instead of actual Bible texts and admit that logic supplied many of your 'facts,' and quite another thing to build a system with logic and then boast that your entire system is totally biblical. It is one thing to believe you have caught the cat,1 but it is quite another to bring him out of the dark room of your own prejudices and sit him under the clear light of biblical texts of Scripture..." (John Reisinger)

" Sometimes, the Bible doesn’t give you enough evidence, one way or the other, to settle a question beyond the possibility of a continuing discussion and debate. If this is true, and if the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit does not remove this ambiguity, then there are points beyond which dicsussion and debate ought to proceed only with considerable and generous amounts of respectful humility." (
The Humility Zone)

One of my convictions is that I do not have to have hard, set in stone, convictions on every last little detail of theology, and that there are areas of theology where I should hold my own convictions with a loose hand, and a great deal of humility. The above articles by John Reisinger and Michael Spencer articulate some of the same concerns. To say such is not a deniel of the sufficancy of Scripture. On the contrary it is an affirmation of the sufficency of Scripture. I've seen ministries where it was insisted that the "black cat" was indeed in the room. What I saw in those ministries was not very pretty at all. In fact it often became really ugly. We have not been called to the boundage of men.

Sola Scriptura!

~ The Billy Goat ~

The Ekklesia of Christ - Part Three
(The use of authority in the local church.)
by John G. Reisinger

In a church I was once a part of, and in a noticeable part of the movement that church was part of, John Resinger was persona non grata. We knew he existed, but his name was not to be mentioned unless in that certain tone of voice that, without going into detail, would let the un-initiated know that Brother John didn't cross all our "t"'s and dot all our "i"'s, and as such was to be shunned as someone who should know better, but... Well, you get the picture...

Having been away from that church and movement for several years, I've had opportunity to more objectively evaluate John Reisinger and his ministry. I have found that years before he had come to conclusions that I only more recently had come to in the light of experience and Scripture. The above article touches on some of those issues.

The above article is part three of his discussion on The Ekklesia of Christ. The first part can be found here, and the second part of the series can be found here, with part four and five here and here.

Let me conclude by quoting the first paragraph from this third article.

"The theme of this third article on the ekklesia deals with authority. This is the main issue in nearly all discussions of the ekklesia of Christ. Several years ago a group of Reformed Baptist pastors published a book entitled Shepherding God's Flock. The book was specifically aimed at trying to correct a growing problem of abusive eldership within that movement. The very fact the book was written and published is testimony to the severity of the problem about which these men were concerned. It is obvious that there are a lot of elders in that movement, and in other movements, who are acting like mini-popes. These writers evidently felt a moral obligation to the church to expose such tyranny. The introduction says it all:.."

'nuff said.

~ The Billy Goat ~