“The church grows when congregations are committed to the historic faith. God is in charge of us, He is in charge of his church and his world and he is not going to forsake us. He is going to stick with us regardless of our mistakes”—Retired Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey
I’m not sure what he means by “historic faith”. There are lot’s of things in the church’s history that I’d rather not commit to.
But I do believe that God will never forsake his church, his bride.
Reasoning this out, a church that isn’t committed to the historic Christian faith isn’t really a Christian church… I say this because if a place that isn’t committed to the historic faith grows, or doesn’t grow, whatever it is that does or doesn’t grow isn’t really the church, so the contrapositive to Carey’s statement may not be used to prove that departure from the historic Christian faith means anything to the Apostolic Christian should such a place have growth.
One of the straw-man arguments against the historic faith, that I often run into, is the confusion of the history of the faith with the historic faith.
There are many troubling, and I would warrant evil, episodes in the history of the faith, but these are not the components of the historic faith. Abuses of dogma certainly, but not inseparably defined as “the faith”.
So what are the components of the historic faith? These are regularly defined as what is containedin/defined by Scripture, the Apostles’ teaching, the Creeds, and the Ecumenical Councils.
Definitely an important clarification, EA!