scholarly journals Verlossing: van Pelagius tot Joseph Smith

2010 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
H.F. Van Wyk
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Eternal Life ◽  
Methodist Church ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Mormon Church ◽  
The Church

Salvation: from Pelagius to Joseph Smith Every Christian church believes that she is a true church and proclaims that man can be saved and has eternal life. This dogma of salvation is usually based on the Bible as the Word of God. Mormons claim that Joseph Smith, founder and first president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, received a divine message to restore the church that Jesus had started.  In studying the plan of salvation the Mormons proclaim it is quite clear that that way of salvation was not restored in their church, but that it followed a pattern of false doctrine that was revealed time and again in history.  The core of their preaching of salvation is that man has the free will to choose his own salvation. Mormons are not the first to preach this message. This article will show that Pelagius oisty-kated the free will of man. In the Reformation the Anabaptists preached the same message, being a third movement next to the reformed and Roman Catholic believes. The Anabaptists became part of the churches of the Netherlands and at the Synod of Dordt the theology of the free will was rejected and answered.  The dogma of the free will of man did not end at this Synod: 150 years later John Wesley preached the same message of salvation during his and Whitefield’s campaigns at the dawn of the nineteenth century in the USA.  During this time Joseph Smith started to seek the true church and founded the Mormon Church. Although his theology differs quite strongly from the Methodist Church in which he grew up, the core of the way of salvation is the same: man has free will in choosing his salvation.

scholarly journals Rasesynet hos mormonerne i det forrige århundre

1991 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johnnie Glad
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Dark Skin ◽  
White Skin ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Book Of Mormon ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Mormon Church ◽  
The Church

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (also known as the Mormon Church) was established on April 6, 1830, by Joseph Smith, Jr. in Fayette, New York. The Mormon Church claims to be not only a Christian church, but also the only true church here on earth. In addition to the Bible, this church has several authoritative sacred scriptures, such as the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price.One of the issues that has haunted the Mormon Church down through the years and caused considerable embarrassment and unrest, has been the race issue. Why were Negroes prohibited from entering the priesthood? Why were the Indians and the Negroes stigmatized? Why should a white skin be considered better and more favourable than a dark skin?The intention of this article is to throw some light on this issue and see how it developed during the previous century. It is important in this context to examine the Mormon scriptures. What did they have to say about this issue? And what about the church leaders? How did they look upon and tackle these problems? The leaders of the church had great authority and power. What they said and did had far-reaching consequences in the church and created a pattern for other to follow. The following century is a case in point.

“Not to Be Trammeled”

2019 ◽  
pp. 241-270
Author(s):  
Terryl Givens ◽  
Brian M. Hauglid
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Boundary Maintenance ◽  
Articles Of Faith ◽  
The Church

Christian creeds go back to the first Christian centuries. Catholics produced creeds largely to establish the lines demarcating orthodoxy and heresy. Protestants at first were hostile to creeds and often invoked the Bible as the lone and sufficient creed for Christians. Joseph Smith’s hostility to creeds was common, especially among other restorationists. Eventually virtually all Protestants realized that without a creed, boundary maintenance was impossible. Early missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints found it necessary to summarize and define the uniqueness of their message—effectively creating the first creeds. Joseph Smith, explicitly hostile to creeds as too circumscribing of belief, found himself forced by the same imperative to articulate his own summation of Mormon teachings. His Thirteen Articles of Faith are, however, wholly inadequate as a creed, since they omit many of the most core doctrines of the church. They are best understood, in Rodney Stark’s formula, as establishing an optimum tension with competing religious faiths—not too radical and not too familiar.

4. Church and biblical Christianity

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Woodhead
Keyword(s):  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Eastern Orthodox ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
Equivalent Position ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Church

What is meant by ‘Church Christianity’ and ‘Biblical Christianity’ and where do they come from? ‘Church and Biblical Christianity’ explains that ‘Church Christianity’ is centred around the institution of the church, whereas for ‘Biblical Christianity’ the scriptures have the equivalent position of authority. Both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox branches belong to Church Christianity and are the most enduring and extensive types of Christianity having been in existence since the 3rd century. Biblical Christianity can trace its roots to the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century when the Bible became widely accessible. Its sectarian nature and desire to shelter from wider society in order to retain Godly purity limited its growth.

scholarly journals Contribution of Early Missionaries to the Expansion and Management of Education in Colonial Kericho, Kenya, 1901-1962

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 82
Author(s):  
Thomas Kipkorir Ronoh ◽  
Anthony K. Sang
Keyword(s):  
Elementary Education ◽  
Family System ◽  
Extended Family ◽  
Female Circumcision ◽  
Close Association ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Dialectical Materialism ◽  
Missionary Education ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Church

<p><em>The paper critically analyzed the contribution of the early missionaries to the expansion and management of education in colonial Kericho of Kenya. Arguably, it extensively utilized structural functionalism and dialectical materialism theories as organizing frameworks as well as guided the conceptualization of data analysis and interpretation. As aptly articulated in this paper, </em><em>the close association of Christianity and education among the local Kipsigis of Kericho cannot be overemphasized, for it was through the innumerable schools established by both Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries that many Kipsigis came into contact with Christianity. In fact, school was the church in many parts of Kipsigis. The Christian missionaries therefore saw the school as a key institution, being the most reliable means for membership recruitment and for creating self-perpetuating congregations whose members would ensure the survival of Christianity. Education and evangelization were so closely linked that for, many parts of Kipsigis, the pitching of the missionary tent was synonymous with the establishment of a school. Among the inhabitants of Kericho, as elsewhere in Kenya, the missionaries preceded the administrators and settlers. Education was the inevitable concomitant of Christian proselytisation, since the ability to read the Bible was fundamental. But from the onset, it had been recognized that the principal actor in conversion would have to be the locals themselves. The missionary education was thus intended to prepare the locals in Christian dogma and to ensure that the students observed proper Christian principles. The education also aimed at discouraging the extended family system, encouraging individualism, abolishing polygamy and more so female circumcision. The Christian missionaries had entered Kericho region with a purpose of preaching the Gospel of Christ, but when they realized that illiteracy among the local inhabitants especially the Kipsigis was a serious hindrance to their enterprise they picked up pen and book to spread Western education. This education was geared to serving their interests - basically evangelism. They achieved this by trying to reach out to the locals i.e. the Kipsigis through elementary schools in the villages. Largely, they taught elementary education aimed at producing cheap but literate manpower. On the other hand, the early converts saw education as a sure way of bridging the cultural gap between them and the Europeans who appeared to represent a superior type of human being and this synthesis found its fulfillment within the realm of dialectical materialism framework.</em><em></em></p>

Baby Blessing

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan A. Stapley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Great Basin ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
Church Members ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
Mormon Church ◽  
Church Elders ◽  
The Church ◽  
At Home

The baby blessings performed by Mormon church elders were among the very first rituals adopted by the church. While Joseph Smith revealed no explicit details of this ritual beyond its necessity, church members began to perform it on the eighth day of the child’s life and in many cases associated it with naming the child. Baby blessings functioned in the early Zion period to delineate citizenship in the salvific community. After the fall of the temporal Zion and the rise of the Nauvoo Temple cosmology, baby blessings functioned to annunciate the sealed position of the child in the priesthood of heaven. After the arrival in the Great Basin, two concurrent practices emerged: the blessing of children at home by family members and the blessing at church by ecclesiastical leaders. In the twentieth century, church leaders focused exclusively on blessings at church, recasting them as the solemn duty of priesthood-holding fathers.

United and Uniting Churches

2019 ◽  
pp. 236-247
Author(s):  
Joshva Raja
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Social Development ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
North India ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Wage Disparities ◽  
The Church

In 1947, the Church of South India brought together Anglicans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans and Congregationalists. Since then, other churches have come together to form united churches in South Asian countries. Today the CSI is 4 million strong, within 15,000 congregations in 24 dioceses. The Church of North India (CNI) is a union of six churches and is spread out over northern, eastern, western, and mid-India. They grew from a sense of freedom from European institutions, a post-colonial fervour, and a global ecumenical movement. The Church of Pakistan, is the second largest church in the country after the Roman Catholic Church, called to unity in correspondence with the nationalistic movement in India. The Church of Bangladesh took shape through the Liberation War in 1971 uniting Anglicans and Presbyterians under the Church of Bangladesh. However, Christians from united churches are the most persecuted minorities. Christian fundamentalist groups from the USA and South Korea run public programmes against local faiths as part of their proclamation of the gospel. United churches must still address wage disparities, dependence on foreign donations, and following-up on education and social development in mission fields.

William Perkins and His Contemporaries on “Free Will”

2020 ◽  
pp. 7-44
Author(s):  
Richard A. Muller
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Early Modern Era ◽  
Assurance Of Salvation ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
Roman Catholics ◽  
The Church

William Perkins’ thought on grace and free choice belongs to the context of the Elizabethan Settlement and developing English Reformed theology in an era of polemics with Roman Catholic adversaries. The works in which he deals with this issue exposit and defend English Reformed theology, address matters of doctrinal definitions, and deal with problems of piety, conscience, and assurance of salvation. Perkins’ several expositions of the problem of human freedom were written during a period of ongoing debate, sparked by the Reformers, between Protestants and Roman Catholics over this issue, particularly in relation to the economy of salvation and the question of the catholicity of Protestantism. His context in the particular historical stage or moment of this debate is also of significance. He has been variously identified in scholarship as a distinctly English churchman and prominent apologist of the Church of England, a “father of Puritanism,” an exponent of early Reformed orthodoxy, a supralapsarian Calvinist, and one among several ancestors of the anti-Arminian line of English theology in the early modern era.

The Effects of Confessional Strife on Religious Authority in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century

2021 ◽  
pp. 303-324
Author(s):  
Henk Nellen
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Hard Core ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Religious Authority ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Biblical Authority ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

This chapter discusses the confessional controversies on biblical authority and ecclesiastical tradition in the first half of the seventeenth century. While Protestant theologians upheld the status of the Bible as a divinely inspired, unique, coherent, and self-evident source of faith and stressed the subordinate significance of the patristic legacy, the Roman Catholic camp embraced the importance of the teachings of the Church Fathers, conciliar decrees, and papal decisions as a rock-solid criterion for a sound interpretation of the Bible. On the basis of treatises authored by eminent and hard-core exponents of Calvinism like Abraham Scultetus, Jean Daillé, Louis Cappel, and André Rivet, set against the views of the Jesuit Denis Pétau, expert in the history of the primitive church, it is argued that debates led to a reciprocal undermining of viewpoints, which eventually paved the way for more radical positions at the end of the century.

A Historical Survey of Southern African Liturgy: Liturgical Revision from 1908 to 2010

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-87
Author(s):  
Andrew-John Bethke
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
South India ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Historical Survey ◽  
Anglican Church ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Church

AbstractThe article surveys liturgical developments in the Anglican Church of Southern Africa from 1908 to 2010. The author uses numerous source documents from several Anglican archives to analyse the experimental and fully authorized liturgies, detailing the theological and sociological shifts which underpinned any significant changes. The author includes several sources which, until this point, have not been considered; particularly in relation to the reception of newer liturgies. These include letters, interviews and newspaper articles. Influences from the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of South India, the Church of England, the Episcopal Church in the USA and the Church of New Zealand all contributed to the authorized rites in the local church. Furthermore, the article shows that local, traditionally disenfranchised voices are now beginning to be included with liturgical transformation.

scholarly journals Ekumenisiteit as ’n Skrifgefundeerde raamwerk vir kerklike eenheid – ook op die gebied van sendingwerk

2006 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
C. J. Smit
Keyword(s):  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Church Of Christ ◽  
History Of Christianity ◽  
Reformed Tradition ◽  
Missionary Work ◽  
The Core ◽  
History Of ◽  
Core Characteristics ◽  
The Church

Ecumenicism as a Scripturally-founded framework for ecclesiastical unity – also in missionary work In this article the foundations of a Scripturally-based ecumenicism utilised as a framework within which the dilemma of church division, also in missionary work, can be approached are investigated. The article identifies these foundations as the attributa ecclesiae (the core characteristics of the church), namely unity, catholicity, apostolicity and holiness. The conclusion arrived at is that the purpose of ecumenicism is the unity of the church, because of the catholicity of the church, based on the apostolicity of the church and aimed at the holiness of the church. Within this framework, missionary work should rather focus on cooperation than on emphasising ecclesiastical differences. The concluding issue concerns the boundaries of ecclesiastical cooperation, also in missionary work. Is it possible that different churches within the Reformed tradition can cooperate in missionary fields? Is it furthermore possible that the boundaries can be extended to encompass more than the approach of the Reformed tradition? In which way can churches from the Reformed tradition also cooperate with, for instance, churches from the Lutheran tradition, or with churches from the charismatic or even Roman Catholic traditions? The conclusions arrived at point to the notae ecclesiae (the core marks of the church) as the widest boundary for ecclesiastical cooperation. This approach accommodates the diversity of culture and ethos within the boundaries of the core marks of the church which determine what the church should be like in order to be church of the Lord. In the currently rising ecumenical phase of the history of Christianity the emphasis will increasingly fall on unifying rather than on dividing aspects of the church. The conclusion indicates that the unity of the church, also in missionary work, can only be attained and maintained within the framework of the core characteristics of the church (the attributa ecclesiae) – and that ecumenicism is no longer possible if a church is not recognisable as church of Christ and does not function within the core marks set for the church (the notae ecclesiae).

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