The Bible Answer Man!

Back years ago, when I drove into the office every day, before I had kids, and later part-time, when they were in daycare, I used to listen to the talk shows on WYLL, a local Christian talk radio station, specifically Hugh Hewitt, from 5 – 6, and the Bible Answer Man at 6:00.  (Or thereabouts; it was a while ago).

The Bible Answer Man, Hank Hanegraaf, had a format of mostly answering listener’s questions on-air, either about doctrine generically, or about particular preachers and whether they were Biblical in what they taught — that is, he enlightened his listeners on the faults of snake oil peddlers like Benny Hinn, and his concoction of being “slain in the spirit,” as well as, more generically answering questions like “my pastor said X; is that right?”

And often his listeners would ask him whether Catholicism was a cult, or would simply state that it was and expect his affirmation, and I recall him repeatedly telling those listeners that, no, some specific teachings of Catholicism he believes are wrong, but it is a part of historic Christianity and cannot be called a cult, and then would launch into his definition of what a cult is, and how to draw the line between “teaching you disagree with” and “cult.”  He was also extremely well-versed in scripture and history, and cited both from all manner of theologians, and was able to cite insights from the original Greek to his callers.

So I suppose it wasn’t that great a surprise to read, first on facebook in a shared post, and then at Aleteia, that Hanegraaf has now been received into, no, not the Roman Catholic church, but the Orthodox church.  His particular reasons for finding a home there, vs. in a Catholic church, seem to be based in part on his own personal experience, per an online statement he made as quoted here, and the particular theologians he studied, but I also wouldn’t blame him, to be honest, if the day-to-day experience of a Catholic church, with its day-to-day squabbles and seemingly indifferent laity and politics and so forth, wouldn’t be something he could sign on to.  (But the Orthodox fasting requirements?  Unless those are no longer observed in practice – ugh!)

Image: a Greek Orthodox church interior. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A(1)Greek_Orthodox_Church-4.jpg; By Sardaka (talk) 06:23, 15 January 2013 (UTC) (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons