Into the Wardrobe

After the heated debate, I pause to reflect. Just as God makes developing Good out of the fall, so too may he make Good out of the schisms and separations of the Church. Even if a given split or heresy is inherently bad or erroneous, God, who forces no one, is working with the participants . Just as there are those outside the Church who will not convert, yet may be saved, so there may be [I hope, all of them] those among the churches who will not yield their separation, yet have synergy with God.

In fact, it's obvious once stated.

Yep. I would expand the phrase, "will not yeild their seperation" to include "will not yeild their idea of what unity consists of" -- and then hope I haven't said too much.

After all the debates about differences- what do we hold in common?
Maybe we find common ground in spiritual tradition.
Which people in the history of the church do you regard as fathers and mothers in faith?
Does anyone know Johannes Tauler- a medieval preacher, mystic and counselor?
In Germany most people know him because he has written the text of a well-known Christmas-Song.I have no idea if he is known outside the german-speaking countries.
http://www.heiligenlexikon.de/CatholicE ... auler.html
http://209.85.129.132/search?q=cache:Yb ... =104&gl=de

And then Ifound this:
http://www.conversantlife.com/philosoph ... nes-tauler
What kind of logic is this- and what specific kind of christianity??
I do not care much about Eckhard Tolle, but this writer has obviously no understanding of the old mystics and this comparison of the names is ridiculous.i can only hope that he is not typical for American Evangelicals.

Mitch- I had no intention to offend you personally and I say this not because I´m afraid of being scolded by John .
About Hitler [always when a German makes a mistake, Hitler is brought in, although he wasn´t a German at all]- he was in my eyes a mentally sick man and one of the few cases where I can imagine that he was demon - possessed. He gained power through the combination of several fatal circumstances- a country in desolate economic and political situation and people confronted with democracy, who were not prepared for it- perfect start for tyranny. That does not excuse what happened of course.
About American Evangelicals- that is my impression founded by personal relationships:
On the one side fine people who say: hey stop brooding over tricky little dogmatic questions and the past and start living what is in the gospel.That is refreshing and pragmatical and necessary. But on the other side they have problems to understand the peoples background or to co-operate with other churches or judge precisely difficult situations because their is to little knowledge about other churches. So my question was not meant as an offense but I really wondered if people who are not very informed about church history could be brought to accept such nonsense.And here is for me the crux of protestantisme- and their are some parallels to democracy:
To be free means to be responsible, it demands much of every individual. Decide yourself means- be informed , reflect, remember that you have great responsibility.

Vineyard is in my view a rather balanced group regarding mission, personal spiritual life and social work . Also they are balanced in their view of traditional evangelicalisme and charismatic elements.In Germany those groups were in a strong controverse, sometimes unnecesserily, sometimes with good reasons. vineyard seems to be very sensible in this too.I must say that my experience here is mostly with Vineyard Bern in Switzerland. I remember myself talkking to a Vineyard group about quietisme. Background-I asked them where they see their roots and the young people mentioned the Jesus-people and the Quaker- movement.As the latter come from the protestant branch of quietisme I just talked about quietisme. Looking back I demanded much of them by going into church-history and practising silence and silent prayer with them.

Quoting didn´t work somehow.
I´m surely not very talented with computers.