SEMESTER 4
164 – Terminology – Part 9
BIBLE INSTITUTE OF CORRESPONDENCE
COURSE: THEOLOGY IV LESSON # 64
WORDS AND TERMS DESCRIBING THE CHURCH AND ITS ORDINANCES
ECCLESIOLOGY:
[Greek ecclessia (assembly) ology (study or science of)] The study of the church.
CATHOLICISM:
The word Catholic means universal. The nation of Rome which both aspired and claimed to be a universal government, realizing that if they were to remain so, must have and control a “universal church,” conceived the idea of, and implemented, the Roman Catholic Church.
PROTESTANTISM:
The group of churches who came out of Catholicism in protest to the heresies and spiritual crimes being committed in and by the Roman Catholic Church. These groups, without exception, yet hold to the validaty of a “Holy Catholic Church.” Catholicism wishing to assert itself as the original church of Christ, along with Protestantism, seeks to persuade the world that all Christendom is either Catholic or Protestant. However, other groups, the chief of which are the Baptists, predated, and have never been affiliated with Catholicism or Protestantism.
TRANSUBSTANTIATION:
The Catholic doctrine teaching that when the priest sanctifies the bread and wine, the substance is actually transformed, the wine becoming the actual blood of Christ, and the bread becoming the actual body. In medieval, European terminology this “blessed bread” was referred to as the “good god.”
CONSUBSTANTIATION:
The Protestant (originally Lutheran) doctrine that the bread and wine, when blessed by the priest, are mixed with the body and blood of Christ. Only a slight variation from the heretical doctrine of transubstantiation.
MYSTICAL PRESENCE:
There is another view of the Lord’s Supper known as the Mystical Presence. That is that the body and blood are dynamically present in the elements; that is, though the real personal Christ is in no way associated with the bread and wine, the Efficiency of His grace is present. He employs these elements as instruments of His power, whereby they become means of grace. Consequently, when the communicant partakes of the elements, he receives therefrom a spiritual blessing.
ALIEN BAPTISM:
Any water baptism which is foreign to the teachings of the New Testament which would include improper authority, purpose and/or doctrine.
PEDO-BAPTISTS:
Those who engage in the baptism of infants. This does not refer to them as being some division of Baptists. No Baptist Church baptizes babies.
NEO-EVANGELICALISM:
The participating in a new, modernized, or unorthodox evangelism. That is, instead of preaching the Gospel, and accepting spontaneous professions, they seek to extract professions or make disciples through schemes and new messages which are foreign to the Scriptures.
SACERDOTALISM:
That division of Christendom which believes that the ordinances or other religious activities, constitute sacraments, and therefore have, in some measure, saving or keeping power.