Podcasts about remonstrance

Faith Lit the Fire of Freedom. Lynette Kittle reminds us that the fight for liberty wasn’t just political—it was deeply spiritual. John Adams and other Founding Fathers understood that freedom begins with God. Influenced by the Great Awakening, their pursuit of independence was undergirded by prayer, Scripture, and a firm belief in God’s providence. From James Madison’s defense of religious liberty to Benjamin Franklin’s reflections on virtue and morality, America’s foundations were built on the understanding that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

On December 27, 1657, a group of Dutch colonists in New Netherland took a stand for religious liberty. Today, Stephen Nichols tells the story of the Flushing Remonstrance, one of the earliest American documents to defend religious freedom. Read the transcript: https://ligonier.org/podcasts/5-minutes-in-church-history-with-stephen-nichols/the-flushing-remonstrance A donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Donate: https://donate.ligonier.org/ Explore all of our podcasts: https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts

Probing the significance of the elder son's reaction to his father's offer of grace.

The Levellers were not an organized, structured politial party or pressure group. They were a loose association of radicals who found they shared new ideas that sprang from their religious view, the chaos and freedoms of the time, and the possibility of change. In 1646 their first coherent petition hit the streets - The Remonstrance of Many Thousand Citizens Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A new MP3 sermon from Grace Chapel Reformed Baptist Church is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: What is Reformed Theology/Calvinism 15: The Remonstrance & the Synod/Canons of Dort Subtitle: Reformed Theology & Calvinism Speaker: Traever Guingrich Broadcaster: Grace Chapel Reformed Baptist Church Event: Midweek Service Date: 3/27/2024 Bible: Jude 3 Length: 45 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Grace Chapel Reformed Baptist Church is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: What is Reformed Theology/Calvinism 15: The Remonstrance & the Synod/Canons of Dort Subtitle: Reformed Theology & Calvinism Speaker: Traever Guingrich Broadcaster: Grace Chapel Reformed Baptist Church Event: Midweek Service Date: 3/27/2024 Bible: Jude 3 Length: 45 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Grace Chapel Reformed Baptist Church is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: What is Reformed Theology/Calvinism 15: The Remonstrance & the Synod/Canons of Dort Subtitle: Reformed Theology & Calvinism Speaker: Traever Guingrich Broadcaster: Grace Chapel Reformed Baptist Church Event: Midweek Service Date: 3/27/2024 Bible: Jude 3 Length: 45 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Grace Chapel Reformed Baptist Church is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: What is Reformed Theology/Calvinism 15: The Remonstrance & the Synod/Canons of Dort Subtitle: Reformed Theology & Calvinism Speaker: Traever Guingrich Broadcaster: Grace Chapel Reformed Baptist Church Event: Midweek Service Date: 3/27/2024 Bible: Jude 3 Length: 45 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Grace Chapel Reformed Baptist Church is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: What is Reformed Theology/Calvinism 15: The Remonstrance & the Synod/Canons of Dort Subtitle: Reformed Theology & Calvinism Speaker: Traever Guingrich Broadcaster: Grace Chapel Reformed Baptist Church Event: Midweek Service Date: 3/27/2024 Bible: Jude 3 Length: 45 min.

A new MP3 sermon from Grace Chapel Reformed Baptist Church is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: What is Reformed Theology/Calvinism 15: The Remonstrance & the Synod/Canons of Dort Subtitle: Reformed Theology & Calvinism Speaker: Traever Guingrich Broadcaster: Grace Chapel Reformed Baptist Church Event: Midweek Service Date: 3/27/2024 Bible: Jude 3 Length: 45 min.

In this episode, the fellas talk about the 5 articles of The Remonstrance.

In Episode 210 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg traces the paradoxical trajectory from medeival heresies to the Protestant Reformation, proto-anarchist movements of the English Civil War, fights for religious freedom in colonial America (with an emphasis on the Flushing Remonstrance of 1657), Abolitionism and the Underground Railroad (e.g. at the Quaker homestead of Bowne House in Flushing, NY)—to evangelical Protestantism as a pillar of Christian fascism in the impending MAGA order. How did we get here, and what elements of American political culture can we look to as a source of resistance today? Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/countervortex Production by Chris Rywalt We ask listeners to donate just $1 per weekly podcast via Patreon -- or $2 for our new special offer! We now have 57 subscribers. If you appreciate our work, please become Number 58!

On Legal Docket, an opioid settlement deal arrives at the Supreme Court; on the Monday Moneybeat, big economic stories from 2023; and on the World History Book, a 17th century challenge to government oppression of a religious minority lays the groundwork for the first amendment to the Constitution. Plus, the Monday morning news.Support The World and Everything in It today at wng.org/donate.Additional support comes from Ambassadors Impact Network. Providing faith driven entrepreneurs the opportunity to apply for funding that aligns with their values. More at ambassadorsimpact.comFrom Free Lutheran Bible College. Students learn on campus, building a firm foundation for life in Christ through an Associate's or Bachelor's degree in Bible & Ministry. More at flbc.edu/worldAnd from Medi-Share. An affordable, reliable, Christian alternative to health insurance. Medishare.com/world

Catherine Cramer and Robert Kennedy — the duo behind THE FLUSHING REMONSTRANCE — sit down with Alec Rodriguez to discuss the art of live scoring in cinemas and other venues are NYC including their recent live score accompaniment to A PAGE OF MADNESS (1926) at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival last month. Find their upcoming shows at www.flushingremonstrance.com2024 badges for the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival are on sale now!Credits: Pod artwork by Cristina MontesPod music by Jeremy BullenYou can support the podcast by going to our Substack!Credits: Produced by Alec Rodriguez, Original Artwork by Cristina Montes, Original Music by Jeremy Bullen. Email us!

On Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded Podcast. EXPOSITORY NOTES ON THE PROPHET ISAIAH by H A Ironside For several years Dr. H. A. Ironside had it on his heart to write an exposition of the Book of Isaiah. His extremely busy preaching and teaching schedule, and later his failing sight, seemed to prevent his making headway on the exposition. Then, when he had progressed part way in this work, the Lord took him to be with Himself. It seemed as if the planned volume were doomed to be left uncompleted. But God had planned otherwise. Surely the events that transpired to produce this volume are of God. We have asked Mrs. Ironside to tell a little about the way this exposition on Isaiah has come to fulfillment, believing that readers of this volume will be thrilled, as we were, to see how God arranges men's affairs so that their work for Him can never be thwarted. In December 1949, Dr. Ironside gave lectures on the Book of Isaiah at Dallas Theological Seminary. One of the students, Ray C. Stedman, made wire recordings of the classroom lectures. Mr. Stedman also did a great deal of secretarial work for Dr. Ironside during his stay at the seminary. He was so efficient and helpful that Dr. Ironside asked him If he would be willing to travel with us during the summer, and help with the writing of his exposition of the Book of Isaiah, which had long been delayed on account of his failing sight. Mr. Stedman joined us in June 1950, after his graduation from the seminary, and for two months served not only as chauffeur, secretary, and companion, but as a “brother beloved” was so helpful in all the varied activities of the itinerant ministry that we came to love him as a son. Without his help and cooperation the publication of Dr. Ironside's “Isaiah” would have been impossible. Traveling constantly, Dr. Ironside's reference library consisted of M. A. Vine's Isaiah - Prophecies, Promises, and Warnings; F. C. Jennings' Isaiah; a one-volume Bible encyclopedia; and J. N. Darby's New Translation of the Holy Scriptures. Links ⁠⁠https://www.hiawathabible.org/youtube-playlist-index-page⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.hiawathabible.org/matthew-henrys-main-page⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZlTAw2GgUjPjhRRp6AY4JmkZjOG2p5ab⁠ You will find the text on my blog at ⁠⁠https://wordpress.com/home/downtoearthbutheavenlyminded.wordpress.com⁠⁠⁠https://downtoearthbutheavenlyminded.com/category/EXPOSITORY-NOTES-ON-THE-PROPHET-ISAIAH/⁠

A new MP3 sermon from Audiobooks by C. H. Spurgeon is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: A Remonstrance and a Rejoinder Subtitle: Metropolitan Tabernacle Vol 22 Speaker: C. H. Spurgeon Broadcaster: Audiobooks by C. H. Spurgeon Event: Audiobook Date: 1/1/1876 Bible: Galatians 5:6 Length: 47 min.

In chapter 13 of the book of Revelation, the apostle John sees a vision of a helping power that arises to deceive people into worshipping the antichrist system that came out of Rome. This second beast comes out of the Earth, which is contrasted to coming out of the sea (a populous area) and it looks like a lamb (resembles Christianity or Christian values) yet speaks (legislates) like a dragon. This power also exercises all the authority In history there is only one world power that came up out of nowhere, exercised world power status, looks like Christianity but acts otherwise and is currently helping to deceive people back into a worldwide acceptance of the first beast. This lamb-like power also arose right around the time that the first beast received a mortal wound, and today it is fulfilling its role as the false prophet who deceives the world into building an image of the first beast. Can you guess who this power is? Today we will find out what history and the bible tell us about it. Stay connected at: www.danceoflife.com RESOURCES: End Times Prophetic Timeline https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vRiMza0rWIbxv3wQ8mM9w8Kdw_eRgN6TeeMj1iHZYhrEqHsS8OOFBoT9T2aSUE_Nwt9-nEzKToeSovv/pubhtml Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 17, 157--61 https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_religions40.html From Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Priestley, 21 March 1801 https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-33-02-0336 Joseph Priestly https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/joseph-priestley/ The Enlightenment and Joseph Priestley's disenchantment with science and religion https://iscast.org/uncategorized/the-enlightenment-and-joseph-priestley-s-disenchantment-with-science-and-religion/ Joseph Priestly: Theology, Teaching & Politics https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Priestley From Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, 21 April 1803 https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-40-02-0178-0001 Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 24 January 1814 (scripture not inspired) https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-07-02-0083 The Jefferson Bible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance (1785) https://www.billofrightsinstitute.org/primary-sources/memorial-and-remonstrance Benjamin Franklin, Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin The Constitution of the United States https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript The Declaration of Independence https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript Started "Lucifer" Magazine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer_(magazine) The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2 https://www.sacred-texts.com/the/sd/sd2-2-06.htm Theosophy is of the Devil https://www.jesus-is-savior.com/False%20Religions/New%20Age/theosophy.htm "Lift High the Torch" by John Algeo, American Theosophical Society https://www.theosophical.org/publications/quest-magazine/1633-lift-high-the-torch 7 Rays, Theosophy Wiki https://theosophy.wiki/en/Seven_Rays Mithraism, Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithraism Mithra and Statue of Liberty Comparison https://aratta.wordpress.com/2014/02/28/the-roots-of-the-liberty-statue/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/roger_ulrich/5339861741 https://cyrus49.wordpress.com/2020/12/23/the-statue-of-liberty-iranian-history-the-land-of-the-original-aryans/ https://qcurtius.com/2018/02/25/the-religion-of-mithras-and-its-mysteries/ https://twitter.com/junaidamerhame1/status/881571842695331841 Rome, Greek, US Quarter comparison https://imgur.com/04aBiHg Mithra & Jesus https://www.worldhistory.org/Mithra/ Ascended Master Teachings, The Temple of the Presence https://www.templeofthepresence.org/Main/ascended_master_teachings Ascended Master Teachings https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/7329371 Colossus of Rhodes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_of_Rhodes George Washington Bust in Houlton ME https://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMNY83_George_Washington_in_Houlton_ME Apotheosis of Washington https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apotheosis_of_Washington

6/16/23: Daniel Wood filed a Remonstrance in the Arizona Supreme Court, with the Governor, Senate, House, AG & the Mari-Corruption Board of Supervisors. This addresses the unconstitutional ELECTIONS in Arizona & the Nation. The Remonstrance was filed on behalf of The People of Arizona to RECEIVE our long overdue JUSTICE! Now it's time for YOU to SIGN the Notice & JOIN US on the Battlefield!  TELL YOUR FRIENDS...THIS IS THE SOLUTION! www.AZSavesAmerica.us WATCH: FLAG DAY GET PATRIOTIZED SUMMIT - 46 of the Top Grassroots Speakers https://rumble.com/v2ugpfy-flag-day-get-patriotized-summit.html?mref=57ek9&mc=5i7vp PRAY - PLAN & TAKE ACTION! We're rounding up the Warriors & Everyone who wants to become one! When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, "The Lord is with you, mighty warrior." - Judges 6-8 (6:12) WE THE PEOPLE HOLD ALL THE CARDS & ARE THE REAL WHITE HATS! JOIN THE "SAVE MY FREEDOM" MOVEMENT TODAY & SUBSCRIBE! http://SaveMyFreedom.us "We're EXPOSING The Corruption To Take Back Arizona & America!" Take Action Toolkits, Exclusive Content, Invites To Collaboration Meetings, "Ask Anything" Special Events, Promotion of YOU & Much More! THE ARIZONA & AMERICA CORRUPTION EXPOSED TAKE ACTION TOOLKITS - Will Be Released In Multiple Toolkits Because There's New Information Every Day - All Videos Are On Rumble Now To Get Started! Stand Up, Speak Up, Show Up & JOIN US! Follow us on the Twatter: @EverythingHomeT

Rebecca, Liz, and Alison discuss the state of state/church separation with Professor Caroline Corbin, constitutional law professor at the University of Miami. They review the history of Establishment Clause jurisprudence, remind listeners about what the Supreme Court did to the religion clauses in 2022, and discuss where we stand now in regards to rights under the First Amendment. TLDR: If you're a Christian, rest assured it's a “Heads I Win, Tails You Lose” court.   Background Professor Caroline Corbin's bio  The Remains of the Establishment Clause (Lupu & Tuttle, updated 2023) James Madison's Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments Previous We Dissent episodes on Carson v. Makin The Sleeper Case: Carson v. Makin Bonus Episode! Carson v. Makin Update American Atheists Kennedy v. Bremerton amicus brief   Cases Firewalker-Fields v. Lee (2023) Town of Greece v. Galloway (2014) Sambrano v. United Airlines (2022) County of Allegheny v. American Civil Liberties Union (1989) The American Legion v. American Humanist Association (2019) Stone v. Graham (1980)   Check us out on Facebook and Twitter. Our website, we-dissent.org, has more information as well as episode transcripts.

This episode of Remonstrance is entirely devoted to the question, “What is the will of God?” We first discuss the Calvinist understanding of the will of God to provide context for the Arminian understanding. We also look at Calvin's distinction between the decretive and prescriptive will of God. We then discuss the philosophical differences between Voluntarism and Intellectualism. It is more important than you might think. We then look at the distinction between the Antecedent and Consequent will of God that Arminius emphasized in his theological writings. We then look at the question of divine determinism and look at how Thomas C. Oden explains how God governs the world according to His will. We hope you are blessed by this episode!

This is our second full episode of Remonstrance podcast! On this episode we will be taking an in depth look at the theology of Jacob Arminius and John Wesley in regards to Divine Providence. We will start off by defining Providence and Meticulous Providence. Then we will be looking at what Arminius had to say, specifically in regards to preservation, divine governance, divine concurrence, and permission. We also look at the “greater good” theodicy in the thought of Jacob Arminius and how God directs evil and sinful actions toward a greater good. We then look at what John Wesley had to say and how he affirmed both meticulous providence and “greater good” theodicy as well. 

This is the first full length episode of Remonstrance Podcast! On this episode we discuss the five Arminian articles of the Remonstrance of 1610. While journeying through the articles we talk about Wesleyan-Arminian soteriology, Pelagianism, Semi-Pelagianism, and perseverance of the saints.

December 27, 1657. Settlers in what is today Queens, New York write “The Flushing Remonstrance,” a petition that, for the first time in North American history, articulates that freedom of religion is a fundamental right.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Showdate:  11/2/22 Share the shows!  Share the links to the Bills at -- WriteYourLaws.com Connect your phone to your vehicle audio, Action Radio Drive Time!" ***** Action Radio Show Notes:  Greg Penglis - Creator and Host. 0:00 - The Fetke Report, with Bill Fetke.  Election and polls coverage. 32:00 - The OMG! Report, with Wendy Arthur.  Blessed are nations that follow God. 1:03:00 - John Gentry, Right of Remonstrance and Nullification. 2:12:00 - Lori-ann Kellert, the new Oregon gun laws on the ballot. ***** Our Discount Code is - WYL - and applies to all products on the slideshow and below! MyPillow Products!  Discounts up to 66%!  https://www.mypillow.com/wyl Graith Care Affiliates! 10% Discount! https://graithcare.vitafyhealth.com/code/WYL Strike Force Energy Drinks!  20% Discount Code - WYL. www.strikeforceenergy.com. ***** Live show 7-10 am Central time most weekdays, 6-9 am Fridays, then podcast. Use the "Keyword Search" window at the top to find previous shows! International Skype online call in - Skype name - live:.cid.fddbac53a2909de1   Contributors:  GiveSendGo site: https://prod.givesendgo.com/ActionRadio "Founding Moments" videos at our Youtube Channel:  Action Radio - Founding Moments! Sponsors:  https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/actionradio Bill writing site:  www.WriteYourLaws.com Email:  Greg@WriteYourLaws.com

Does the Constitution require our government to fund religion? In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court says, for the first time, that if a state has a program that includes funding for private schools it must also provide funding for religious schools. In this episode, Amanda and Holly examine the Carson v. Makin decision, which shows how the Supreme Court is shifting further and further away from the Establishment Clause's protections of religious liberty for all. They explore the Court's “bait and switch” to make this radical shift seem not so bad, and they look at all of the reasons the Framers thought it was smart to avoid government funding of religion. In segment three, Amanda and Holly review the latest misleading headlines that conflate “religious liberty” with a promotion of free exercise rights at the expense of Establishment Clause protections.    SHOW NOTES Segment 1: A radical shift in religious liberty law (starting at 03:50) You can contact Amanda and Holly with your thoughts on the show by writing to RespectingReligion@BJConline.org. Amanda Tweeted her reaction to the Dobbs decision on Friday, June 24. You can see her Tweet thread here.  Holly and Amanda recorded this episode before the Court released its opinion in the Kennedy v. Bremerton case on June 27, 2022. They will analyze that case in the next episode of Respecting Religion. Access BJC's resources on Carson v. Makin at BJConline.org/CarsonvMakin, including the brief we joined, Holly's article for our winter magazine, and our statement on decision day.  Read the Supreme Court decision in Carson v. Makin at this link. We mentioned the two recent cases that led to this case: Trinity Lutheran v. Comer: BJConline.org/TrinityLutheran Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue: BJConline.org/Espinoza   Segment 2: Where's the Establishment Clause?  (starting at 19:18) Holly and Amanda mentioned these cases when discussing how the Court abandoned the “play in the joints” principle in religious freedom law and the impact of this case in state funding of religious schools:  Locke v. Davey (2004) Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002) Amanda quoted from the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, written by Thomas Jefferson. Holly quoted from Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, written by James Madison.   Segment #3: More misleading headlines (starting at 33:02) Amanda and Holly discussed this New York Times newsletter written by Ian Prasad Philbrick: A Pro-Religion Court. It also links to a piece by Adam Liptak with some misleading shorthand, titled Supreme Court Rejects Maine's Ban on Aid to Religious Schools. Respecting Religion is made possible by BJC's generous donors. You can support these conversations with a gift to BJC. 

In this episode Trevor and Aaron discuss election, predestination, and unpack TULIP. Check out the articles mention in the podcast below: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/what-we-believe-about-the-five-points-of-calvinism https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/tweaking-the-tulip/ Five Articles of Remonstrance - https://www.theopedia.com/five-articles-of-remonstrance Canons of Dort - https://prts.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Canons-of-Dort-with-Intro.pdf https://www.9marks.org/article/whered-all-these-calvinists-come-from/?mc_cid=1adba450fd&mc_eid=3ac6a08b2a

Our show commemorates James Madison's birthday, March 16th. We recommend his https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-08-02-0163 (Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments). Then we discuss topics in our news sandwich segment, and talk about the value for value model in the podosphere. Call-to-Action: After you have listened to this episode, add your $0.02 (two cents) to the conversation, by joining (for free) https://secular-foxhole.haaartland.com/ (The Secular Foxhole Town Hall). Feel free to introduce yourself to the other members, discuss the different episodes, give us constructive feedback, or check out the virtual room, Speakers' Corner, and step up on the digital soapbox. Welcome to our new place in cyberspace! Show notes with links to articles, blog posts, products and services: https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2016/03/a-founding-father-is-born-on-march-16-1751/ (A Founding Father is Born on March 16, 1751) https://www.azquotes.com/author/9277-James_Madison/tag/religion (James Madison Quotes About Religion) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_God_We_Trust (In God We Trust motto on U.S. currency) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_affiliations_of_presidents_of_the_United_States (Religious affiliations of presidents of the United States) https://the-secular-foxhole.captivate.fm/episode/thomas-paine-memorial-association (Thomas Paine Memorial Association) https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/godinamerica/people/james-madison.html (James Madison on PBS.org) https://www.montpelier.org (James Madison's Montpelier in Virginia) https://theobjectivestandard.com/2017/02/america-at-her-best-is-hamiltonian/ (Richard Salsman on Hamilton) https://the-secular-foxhole.captivate.fm/episode/correction-and-wrap-up (News Sandwich segment) https://www.blueorigin.com/news/orbital-reef-commercial-space-station (Blue Origin and Sierra Space developing commercial space station) https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/starlink-satellite-internet-explained/ (Starlink Explained: Everything to Know About Elon Musk's Satellite Internet Venture) http://Value4Value.io (Value4Value.io) https://podcastindex.org/podcast/value4value (Value 4 Value podcasts on Podcast Index) http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/trader_principle.html (Trader Principle) https://podcastbusinessjournal.com/app-making-bitcoin-payments-easier/ (App Making Bitcoin Payments Easier) https://www.fountain.fm/blog/how-to-top-up-your-fountain-wallet-with-bitcoin (How to top up your Fountain Wallet with Bitcoin) https://play.fountain.fm/show/tAMgIwWrYj20GkK7x48m (The Secular Foxhole podcast on Fountain app) https://twitter.com/podStation_app (podStation on Twitter) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/podstation-podcast-player/bpcagekijmfcocgjlnnhpdogbplajjfn (podStation Podcast Player (Google Chrome extension)) https://tallyco.in (Tallycoin) https://the-secular-foxhole.captivate.fm/episode/celebrating-ayn-rand (Randsday) https://www.thesurvivalpodcast.com/curry (Adam Curry on the Future of Podcasting, episode 3037 of The Survival Podcast with Jack Spirko) Episode 44 (33 minutes) was recorded at 10 PM CET, on February 25, 2022, with https://ringr.com/ego (Ringr app).. Editing and post-production was done with the https://alitu.com/?fp_ref=egonetcast (podcast maker, Alitu). The https://www.veed.io/tools/transcription/podcast-transcripts (transcript is generated by Veed.io). https://the-secular-foxhole.captivate.fm/listen (Easy listen to The Secular Foxhole podcast) in your https://podnews.net/podcast/i9d1q/all (podcast (podcatcher) app) of choice, e.g., https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-secular-foxhole/id1529242825 (Apple Podcasts), https://open.spotify.com/show/2OZNzkrzItT4zmDpc8TdqO (Spotify), https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5jYXB0aXZhdGUuZm0vdGhlLXNlY3VsYXItZm94aG9sZS8?sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwif28Kq4IjsAhVK0IUKHbQpAREQ4aUDegQIARAC&hl=sv

In this series of podcasts Dr. Vic Reasoner teaches through the Book of Revelation. This is the second part of the twenty-seventh episode in the series. In this episode Dr. Reasoner continues to explore Revelation 13.   

In this series of podcasts Dr. Vic Reasoner teaches through the Book of Revelation. This is the twenty-seventh episode in the series. In this episode Dr. Reasoner continues to explore Revelation 13.   

In this series of podcasts Dr. Vic Reasoner teaches through the Book of Revelation. This is the twenty-sixth episode in the series. In this episode Dr. Reasoner continues to explore Revelation 12.   

In this series of podcasts Dr. Vic Reasoner teaches through the Book of Revelation. This is the twenty-fifth episode in the series. In this episode Dr. Reasoner continues to explore Revelation 11.   

In this series of podcasts Dr. Vic Reasoner teaches through the Book of Revelation. This is the twenty-fourth episode in the series. In this episode Dr. Reasoner explores Revelation 11. 

In this series of podcasts Dr. Vic Reasoner teaches through the Book of Revelation. This is the twenty-third episode in the series. In this episode Dr. Reasoner explores Revelation 10.   

In this series of podcasts Dr. Vic Reasoner teaches through the Book of Revelation. This is the twenty-second episode in the series. In this episode Dr. Reasoner explores Revelation 9.   

In this series of podcasts Dr. Vic Reasoner teaches through the Book of Revelation. This is the twenty-first episode in the series. In this episode Dr. Reasoner explores Revelation 8.   

A Covid Christmas A Merry KwanzaaBefore you eulogize the dead, I have stupid tweet you should considerMatt sort of emptywheels Harry ReidPlanes, Trains, and superspreader eventsYes, there are no testsThe usual Covid frustrationsThe Webb Hubbell telescopeThe Memorial shutdownThe non-historians lecture us on historyDestroy the idols of AmericanismWhat on Earth is the Flatbush Remonstrance? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this series of podcasts Dr. Vic Reasoner teaches through the Book of Revelation. This is the twentieth episode in the series.  

In this series of podcasts Dr. Vic Reasoner teaches through the Book of Revelation. This is the nineteenth episode in the series. In this episode Dr. Reasoner begins to discuss Revelation 7.   

In this series of podcasts Dr. Vic Reasoner teaches through the Book of Revelation. This is the eighteenth episode in the series. In this episode Dr. Reasoner continues to discuss Revelation 6.   

In this series of podcasts Dr. Vic Reasoner teaches through the Book of Revelation. This is the seventeenth episode in the series. In this episode Dr. Reasoner begins to discuss Revelation 6.   

In this series of podcasts Dr. Vic Reasoner teaches through the Book of Revelation. This is the sixteenth episode in the series. In this episode Dr. Reasoner begins to discuss Revelation 5. 

In this series of podcasts Dr. Vic Reasoner teaches through the Book of Revelation. This is the fifteenth episode in the series. In this episode Dr. Reasoner continues to discuss Revelation 4.   

In this series of podcasts Dr. Vic Reasoner teaches through the Book of Revelation. This is the fourteenth episode in the series. In this episode Dr. Reasoner discusses Revelation 4.   

In this series of podcasts Dr. Vic Reasoner teaches through the Book of Revelation. This is the thirteenth episode in the series. In this episode Dr. Reasoner continues to discuss the "Seven Churches of Revelation" found in Revelation 2-3. 

In this series of podcasts Dr. Vic Reasoner teaches through the Book of Revelation. This is the twelfth episode in the series. In this episode Dr. Reasoner continues to discuss the "Seven Churches of Revelation" found in Revelation 2-3.   

In this series of podcasts Dr. Vic Reasoner teaches through the Book of Revelation. This is the eleventh episode in the series. In this episode Dr. Reasoner continues to discuss the "Seven Churches of Revelation" found in Revelation 2-3. 

On this episode of Our American Stories, Karla Duerson shares the story of what it was like being pregnant with her daughter Wylie and the unexpected diagnosis she received from Doctors; and Larry Reid tells the history behind the 1657 Flushing Remonstrance petition that requested an exemption to Director-General of New Netherland Peter Stuyvesant's Quaker worship ban; and CEO of Richard's Rainwater, Richard Heinichen, shares how he makes his business out of selling rainwater. Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate) Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Although it surely would have grieved him had he lived to see it, Martin Luther's legacy in the years after his death a Century of war. This war didn't only pit Catholics against Protestants. Various factions among the Protestants warred with each other. If the Reformers hoped to purify the Church of both theological error and political corruption, they may have succeeded in the first endeavor but failed miserably in the second. Those who want to use religion for personal ends don't care what face the mask bears, so long as it gets the job done. Some of the more devastating wars included the French wars of religion, the Dutch revolt against Philip II of Spain, the attempted invasion of England by the Spanish Armada, the 30 Years War in Germany, and the Puritan revolution in England.The 17th C was a time of theological and political entrenchment. European Christendom was now divided into four groups: Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, and the Anabaptists. The first three became officially associated with regions and their governments, while Anabaptists, after their disastrous failure at Munster, learned their lesson and sought to live out their faith independently of entanglements with civil authority. During the 17th C, Catholics, Lutherans, and Reformed developed impenetrable confessional bulwarks against one another.As we saw in a previous episode, Catholic orthodoxy achieved its definitive shape with the Council of Trent in the mid-16th C. The Jesuits played a major role at Trent, especially in answering the challenge presented by Luther's view on justification and grace. The Council affirmed the importance of the sacraments and the Roman church's theological position on the Eucharist. At Trent, the Jesuits affirmed the importance Thomism, that is, the work of Thomas Aquinas, in setting doctrine. The triumph of Thomism at Trent set the future trajectory of Catholic theology.In the last episode, we looked at the rise of Protestant Scholasticism in post-reformation Europe. While Protestant orthodoxy is concerned with correct theological content, Protestant Scholasticism had more to do with methodology.From the mid-16th thru 17th C, Protestant orthodoxy clarified, codified, and defended the work of the early Reformers. Then, after the careers of the next generation of Reformers, it's convenient to identify three phases orthodoxy moved through. Early orthodoxy runs from the mid-16th to mid-17th C. It was a time when Lutheran and Reformed groups developed their Confessions.  High orthodoxy goes from the mid- to late 17th C. This was a time of conflict when the Confessions hammered out earlier were used as a litmus test of faith and formed battlelines to fight over. Late orthodoxy covers the 18th C, when the people of Europe began to ask why, if Protestant confessions were true, rather than leading to the Peace the Gospel promised, they lead instead to war, death, and widespread misery.In truth, people had been asking that question for a lot longer than that; ever since the Church and State became pals back in the 4th C. But it wasn't till the 18th they felt the freedom to voice their concerns publicly without the certainty they'd be set on by the authorities.As Protestants and Catholics identified their differing theological positions, they became increasingly mindful of their methodology in refining their Confessions. Each appealed to the intellectual high ground, claiming a superior method for defining terms and reasoning. This was the age when there was a return by Christian theologians to Aristotelian logic.Once the Council of Trent concluded and the Roman Church fixed its position, the opportunity for theological dialogue between Protestants and Catholics came to a firm end. After that it was simply up to the various major groups to fine tune their Confessions, then fire salvos at any and everyone who differed. It was the Era of Polemics; of diatribes and discourses disparaging those who dared to disagree.In a previous episode we dealt with the career of Jacob Hermanzoon; AKA Jacobus Arminius. Arminius rejected the Calvinism promulgated by Calvin's protégé Theodore Beza. Arminius' followers developed what they called the Remonstrance, a five-part summary of what they understood Arminius' positions to be on key issues of Reformed Theology. A theological and, wouldn't you just know it, political controversy ensued that was addressed at the Synod of Dort. The Synod declared Arminius a heretic, the Remonstrance in error, and the five-petals of the Calvinist Tulip were framed in response to the five-points of the Remonstrance. A few Arminianist leaders were either executed or jailed while some two-hundred pastors were removed and replaced with Dort-aligned ministers. Despite this, the Arminianist-position endured and continued to hold sway over the conscience of many.A couple decades after the Synod of Dort, another controversy surfaced among Reformed churches in France. It centered on the work of the brilliant theologian Moses Amyraut, professor at the then famous School of Samur. Amyraut took issue with one of the articles of the Canons of Dort, the doctrine of limited atonement. He argued for unlimited atonement, believing that Christ's atonement was sufficient for all humanity, but efficient only for the elect. His view is sometimes known as “Hypothetical Universalism” far more commonly as four-point Calvinism.In A Short Treatise on Predestination published in 1634, Amyraut proposed that God fore-ordained a universal salvation through the sacrifice of Christ for all but that salvation wouldn't be effectual unless appropriated by personal faith.Amyraut's modification of Calvinism came to be labeled as Amyraldism and led to recurring charges of heresy. Amyraut was exonerated, yet opposition endured in many churches of France, Holland, and Switzerland.Sadly, after Luther's death, the movement that bore his name fell into disarray and in-fighting. Lutherans broke into 2 main camps. Those who claimed to stay strictly loyal to Martin, and those who followed his cheif assistant, Philip Melancthon. They remained at something of a theological stalemate until the Formula of Concord in 1577, the definitive statement of Lutheran orthodoxy. Much of the destruction of the Thirty-Years War took place on German soil. Agriculture collapsed, famine spread, and universities closed. By the end the war, there were at least 8 million fewer people in Germany.The Peace of Westphalia made room for Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists, depending on the religious leaning of the ruler. Weary of bloodshed, the three communions withdrew behind polemic-firewalls. Instead of firing cannonballs at each other, they lobbed theological word-bombs.Pietism was a kind of war-weary reaction to the new scholasticism the theology of Lutheranism settled into. Pietists viewed what was happening in the retrenchment in Lutheran theology as a “deadening orthodoxy” that stole the life out of faith. Pietism didn't set out to establish a new church. It simply sought a renewal that would turn dead orthodoxy in a living faith. Pietism saw itself as an Ecclesiola in Ecclesia, that is, “a little church within the larger church.”It seems Pietism has been loaded with a lot of emotional baggage and negative connotation of late. Critics today regard Pietists as aiming to privatize their faith, to withdraw from the public square and divorce faith from the wider world. To use Jesus' term, they see pietism as an attempt to hide you light under a basket, to put the city, not just in a valley, but in a cave. While some Pietists did privatize faith, that wasn't the goal of Pietism.It was a movement that simply sought to keep piety, the practice of godliness, as a vital and integral part of daily life. It was understood that godliness wasn't the result of rules and regulations but of a genuine relationship with God. Pietism was a reaction to the dead orthodoxy of the State-approved Lutheranism of the early 17th C.This is not to say scholastic theologians were all lifeless profs. Some of them produced moving hymns and stirring devotional writings. But, if we're honest, we'd have to say the practical faith of a large portion of Protestant scholastics had indeed become moribund.Philipp Jakob Spener is known as the “Father of German Pietism.” Born at Rappoltsweiler in 1635, Spener was raised by his godmother and her chaplain, Joachim Stoll who became Spener's mentor. Stoll introduced him to writings of the English Puritans.Spener went on to study theology at Strasbourg, where his main professor was Johann Dannhauer, a leading Lutheran theologian of 17th C. Dannhauer deeply inspired the young Spener.When he entered his first pastorate in Frankfurt in 1666, Spener was convinced of the necessity of a reformation within Lutheranism. His sermons emphasized the necessity for a lively faith and holiness in daily life. His most significant innovation was the establishment in 1670 of what today we'd call small groups. These were gatherings of about a dozen church members in homes to discuss sermons, devotional reading, and mutual edification.In 1675, Spener was asked to write a preface for a collection of sermons by Johann Arndt. The result was the famous Pia Desideria (= Pious Wishes), which became an introduction to German Pietism.While this is a bit more detailed than our usual fare here on CS, I thought it might be interesting to hear the main points Spener made in the Pious Wishes.He enumerates 6 things as important for the Church to embrace. . .1) He called for “a more extensive use of the Word of God.” To that end, Spener advocated small groups to encourage greater study of the Bible.(2) He urged a renewed focus on the role of the laity in Christian ministry.(3) He placed an emphasis on the connection between doctrine and living.(4) He counseled restraint and charity in theological disputes.(5) He urged reform in the education of ministers. They ought to be trained in piety and devotion as well as academics.(6) He said preaching ought to edify and be understandable by common folk, rather than sermons being technical discourses only an educated few could understand.Spener's Pious Wishes won him many followers, but aroused strong opposition among Lutheran theologians and not a few fellow pastors. Despite criticism, the movement grew rapidly.Pietism had the good fortune of seeing Spener succeeded by August Francke. Francke was born in Lübeck and graduated from the University of Leipzig, where he excelled in biblical languages. While a student in 1687, he experienced a dramatic and emotionally charged conversion, which he described as the “great change.” Francke's conversion became something of a model for Pietism. In order for conversion to be considered legitumate, it needed to be preceded by a profound conviction of sin that's a datable event to which one can point for confirmation.Returning to Leipzig, Francke led a revival in the college that spilled over into the town. It provoked conflict, and Francke was expelled from the city. At this point the term “Pietist” was first coined by a detractor, Joachim Feller, professor of rhetoric at the university. A Pietist, Feller asserted, was “someone who studies God's Word and, in his own opinion, also leads a holy life.”By this time, Francke had become closely associated with Spener. It was due to Spener's influence Francke was appointed to the chair of Greek and Oriental languages at the new University of Halle. Francke emerged as the natural successor to Spener. From his position at Halle he exercised enormous influence in preparing a generation of Pietist pastors and missionaries all over the world. Under his guidance, the university showed what Pietism could mean when put into practice. In rapid succession, Francke opened a school for poor children, an orphanage, a home for indigent widows, an institute for the training of teachers, a medical clinic, a home for street beggars, a publishing house for Christian literature, and the famous Paedagogium, a preparatory school for upper-class students.For 36 years his energetic endeavors established Halle as the center of German Pietism. Together, Spener and Francke created a true Ecclesiola in ecclesia.Spener and Francke inspired other groups of Pietism. Count Nikolas von Zinzendorf, was Spener's godson and Francke's pupil. Zinzendorf organized refugees from Moravia on his estate and later shepherded them in reviving the Bohemian Unity of the Brethren.The Moravians carried their concern for personal piety literally around the world. This was of huge significance for English Christianity when John Wesley found himself in their company during his voyage to Georgia in 1735. What he witnessed in their behavior and heard in their faith after returning to England led to his own spiritual awakening.

The title of this episode is Faith in the Age of Reason, Part 2.In our last episode we briefly considered Jakob Hermanzoon, the Dutch theologian who'd sat under the tutelage of Theodore Beza, John Calvin's successor at the Academy in Geneva. We know Hermanzoon better by his Latin name Jacobus Arminius. Arminius took exception to Beza's views on predestination and when he became pastor of a church in Amsterdam, created a stir among his Calvinist colleagues. It was while teaching a series of sermons on the Book of Romans that Arminius became convinced Beza had several things wrong. The implication was that because Beza was Calvin's successor and the standard-bearer for Calvinism, Arminius contradicted Calvin. Things came to a head when Arminius' colleague Peter Planck began to publicly dispute with him.Arminius hated controversy, seeing it as a dangerous distraction to the cause of the Gospel and pressed for a synod to deal with the matter, believing once his views were set alongside Scripture, he'd be vindicated.In 1603, Arminius was called to the University at Leiden to teach when one of the faculty members died. The debate Arminius had been having with Planck was shifted to a new controversy with one of the other professors at Leiden, François Gomaer.This controversy lasted the next six yrs as the supporters of both Calvinism and Arminius grew in number and determination. The synod Arminius had pressed for was eventually held, but not till nine years after his death in 1609.In the meantime, just a year after his death, Arminius' followers gathered his writings and views and issued what they regarded as a formal statement of his ideas. Called the Five Articles of the Remonstrants, or just the Remonstrance, it was a formal proposal to the government of Holland detailing the points of difference that had come to a head over the previous years in the debate between Arminius and Gomaer.Those 5 points were –That the divine decree of predestination is conditioned on Faith, not absolute in Election.That the intent of the Atonement is universal;Man cannot of himself exercise a saving faith;That though the grace of God is a necessary condition of human effort it does not act irresistibly in man; and finally -By the enabling power of the Holy Spirit, believers are able to resist sin but are not beyond the possibility of falling from grace. In 1618, the Dutch Church called the Synod of Dort to answer the Remonstrance. The results of the Synod, called the Canons of Dort, strongly upheld Theodore Beza's formulation of the Calvinist doctrine of predestination and developed their own five-point response to the Remonstrance.It comes as a major surprise to most students of Church history to learn that TULIP, or the famous Five Points of Calvinism were a RESPONSE to the challenge of Arminianists; that they'd come up with their 5 points first. Most people who've heard of Calvinism and Arminianism have never even heard of the Remonstrance; yet it's the thing that formalized the debate between the two camps; a debate that's continued to today and has led to some prolific arguments and controversies among Christians.Put a Presbyterian elder and Methodist deacon in a room together and let the fun begin!Now, lest we think the Protestants fell out in the Calvinist-Arminianist brouhaha while the Catholics sat back, ate popcorn and watched the show, realize things were FAR from being all united and just one big happy family over in the Roman sector of the Church. Catholics were no monolithic entity at this time. It was a mixed bag of different groups and viewpoints with their own internal disagreements.In the late 16th and early 17th Cs there was a long dispute between the Jesuits and the Dominicans over how divine grace and human free-will interacted.In the late 17th C, Pope Innocent XI, spent his reign playing a power game with Louis XIV and the Gallic theologians who believed in the authority of the Church, but not the Pope.More serious was the rise of Jansenism. This movement grew out of the work of   Cornelius Jansen, a professor at Louvain University. Jansen published a book in 1640 titled Augustinus, in which he stated what he believed were the doctrines of Augustine. Jansen sounded a lot like Calvin and argued that divine grace can't be resisted, meaning it overrides the human will. He fiercely opposed the doctrine of the Jesuits that salvation depended on cooperation between divine grace and human will. So, the Jansenists believed in predestination, which meant that although they were Catholics they were in some ways more like Calvinists.Jansenism proved a thorn in the side of the Catholic Church, and especially the Jesuits, for quite a while. Its leading exponent after Jansen himself was Antoine Arnauld, an intellectual and cultural giant of the 17th C. Arnauld corresponded with such philosophical luminaries as Descartes and Leibniz. He possessed a penetrating critical faculty; and as a theologian he was no less brilliant.But back to our previous theme, stated at the beginning of the last episode – Protestant Scholasticism, or the Age of Confessionalism, in which the various branches of the Protestant church began to coalesce around distinctive statements of their theology.The Anglican Church of England occupied a curious position in the midst of all this. On the one hand it was a Protestant church, having been created in the 1530s when King Henry VIII took command of the existing Catholic Church in England. The Lutheran sympathies of his advisers, like Thomas Cranmer and Thomas Cromwell, influenced the new church, but so too did the Catholic tendencies of later monarchs like Charles I and churchmen such as William Laud. Unlike other churches throughout Europe, the Church of England rarely had to struggle for the soul of its nation with another movement. So it had never been forced to define its beliefs and practices in the face of opposition to others. By the turn of the 18th C, the one thing all Anglicans agreed on was a shared distrust of Roman Catholics.The doctrinal openness of the Church of England meant that it was in England that religious free-thinking had the greatest chance of taking root. In the late 16th C it was still possible to be burnt at the stake in England for denying the Trinity, but a C later those who asserted such things had no need to fear anything more damaging than government censure and a deluge of refutations by the clergy. The Church of England prided itself on its doctrinal orthodoxy, understood in terms of common sense, and a middle way between what were regarded as the bizarre excesses of continental Protestants and Catholics. This middle way was based on what its followers felt was a healthy respect, but refusal to fawn, for tradition. This took shape in the principle of the apostolic succession, an ancient Christian notion we've examined in previous episodes. Apostolic succession claims that Christian doctrines can be known to be trustworthy because they are taught in churches which were founded by the apostles or their immediate followers. In other words, great trust was placed in the notion of an unbroken chain of tradition going back to the apostles themselves. It was this ‘apostolic succession', together with the Scriptures, themselves handed down as part of this authoritative tradition, that mainstream Anglicans felt guaranteed the trustworthiness of their church. By contrast, many thought, the Catholics had added to that tradition over the centuries, while the more extreme Protestants had subtracted from it.There was considerable tension between the churches. The worst example was France, where after the Revocation of the Treaty of Nantes in 1685 Protestants were an actively persecuted minority: they felt especially threatened by surrounding Catholics, and all the more determined never to give in to them. Persecution only strengthened their resolve and inspired sympathy from Protestants throughout the Continent, who by the same token became increasingly hostile to Catholicism.In England, Catholicism was the minority faith: officially banned, its priests had to operate in secrecy.There's a story from this time of a Catholic bishop who, functioning as a kind of religious spy, held Mass in an east London pub for a congregation of Irish workers disguised as beer-guzzling patrons.Many people were scared of Catholics, whom they regarded as tools of a foreign power; those sneaky French or the Pope. There was also great suspicion of ‘Dissenters'—members of any churches other than the Church of England. ‘Dissenters' and Catholics alike, it was feared, were eating away at the social fabric of the country, and the policies of tolerance followed by the Whig party were opposed by many. Some Anglican churchmen formed a party with the slogan ‘Church in Danger', which spent its time campaigning against Catholics, Dissenters, deists, the principle of toleration and, essentially, everything that the Enlightenment had produced.In 1778, the English Parliament passed the Catholic Relief Act, which decriminalized Catholicism—to the enormous anger of a sizeable minority in the population. Two years later a Scottish aristocrat named Lord George Gordon led a huge mob to London, resulting in a week of riots in which Catholic churches were looted, foreign embassies burnt, and nearly 300 people were killed.But we ought not think it was all petty small-mindedness that ruled the day. There were some who worked tirelessly to effect peace between the warring camps of Christendom. In the 17th C, a number of attempts were made to open a dialogue between Roman Catholic and Protestant churches with the aim of reuniting them.The godfather of this endeavor, sometimes known as ‘syncretism', was a German Lutheran theologian named George Callixtus. He devoted huge effort in the early 17th C to find common ground between the different groups. Like his contemporary Hugo Grotius in the Reformed Church, he believed it should be possible to use the Apostles' Creed, and a belief in the authority of the Bible alone, as a basis for agreement among Christians.Callixtus made progress with Calvinists but the Catholics were less receptive. The Conference of Thorn, called by King Vladislav IV of Poland in 1645, attempted to put these ideas into practice, but after several weeks of discussions the Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist theologians were unable to pull anything substantive together.Sadly, Callixtus's efforts met with the greatest opposition from his fellow Lutherans.Let's turn now from the acrimony and controversy that marked Protestant Scholasticism for a moment to take a look at a guy more like the rest of us; at least we probably hope so.He was an obscure, uneducated Frenchman of the late 17th C.Nicolas Herman, a manservant from Lorraine, tried to live his life around what he called ‘the practice of the presence of God'. He was not a very good manservant, having a pronounced limp from his army days and appallingly clumsy; but he performed his duties diligently until 1651, when, at the age of 40, he went to Paris and became a Carmelite monk. His monk's name was Lawrence of the Resurrection.Brother Lawrence was put to work in the monastery's kitchen—a task he hated, but which he did anyway because it was God's will. To the surprise of the other monks, he not only did his work calmly and methodically, but spoke to God the entire time. Brother Lawrence declared that, to him, there was no difference between the time for work and the time for prayer: wherever he was, and whatever he was doing, he tried to perceive the presence of God. As he wrote to one of his friends:“There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful, than that of a continual conversation with God: the only ones who can understand it are those who practice and experience it. But I do not advise you to do it from that motive. It is not pleasure which we ought to seek in this exercise, but let us do it from a principle of love, and because God would have us. If I were a preacher, I would, above all other things, preach the practice of the presence of God. And if I were a spiritual director, I would advise all the world to do it. That is how necessary I think it is—and how easy, too.”Brother Lawrence became a minor celebrity among the hierarchy of the French Catholic Church, and he was visited by more than one archbishop, anxious to see if the reports of his humility and holiness were true. Lawrence's sixteen Letters and Spiritual Maxims testify of his sincere belief in God's presence in all things and his trust in God to see him through all things. They also testify to the way in which holy men and women continued to devote themselves to God's will, both in and out of monasteries, even as the intellectual revolutions of the Enlightenment were at their height.It's easy when considering the Age of Reason, to suppose theology was increasingly being seduced by philosophy, and that the simple, heartfelt faith of the commoners of the Middle Ages and the Reformation was being replaced by rationalism. That was true in some quarters, but the 17th and 18th centuries had their share of sincere and pious saints, as well as heretics, as much as any age; and there were some important movements that recalled the faithful to a living and wholehearted religion. As the theologians bickered, ordinary Christians were getting on with things, as they always had.As we bring this episode to a close, I want to end with a look at Blaise Pascal. That's a great name, isn't it? Blaise. Sounds like a professional skateboarder.Pascal was a Jansenist, that is, a member of the Roman Catholic reform movement we took a look at a moment ago. While the Jansenists began as a movement that sought to return the Roman Church to the teachings of Augustine, since Augustine's doctrines were considered as being based in Scripture, the Jansenists were a Roman Catholic kind of back to the Bible movement.A few days after Blaise Pascal's death, one of his servants noticed a curious bulge in the great scientist's jacket. Opening the lining, he withdrew a folded parchment written by Pascal with these words . . .The year of grace 1654. Monday, November 23rd.,… from about half past ten in the evening until about half past twelve, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars. >> Certainty, certainty, feeling, joy, peace. >> God of Jesus Christ, I have separated myself from Him. I have fled from Him, Renounced Him, crucified Him. May I never be separated from Him. Renunciation, total and sweet.For eight years Pascal had hid those words in his coat, withdrawing them now and again to read them and be reminded of the moment when grace seized his soul.Pascal's mother died when he was only three. His father, Stephen Pascal, began the education of his children, Gilbert, Blaise, and Jacqueline. Occasionally he took the young Blaise with him to meetings of the Academy of Science. The youth's scientific curiosity was aroused.Before he reached the age of 27 Pascal had gained the admiration of mathematicians in Paris; had invented the calculating machine for his father who was a busy tax-collector; and had discovered the basic principles of atmospheric and hydraulic pressures. He belonged to the age of the Scientific Greats.Blaise's initial contact with the Jansenists came as the result of an accident his father had. On an icy day in January, 1646, Stephen tried to prevent a duel. He fell on the hard frozen ground and dislocated a hip. The physicians who treated him were devoted Jansenists. They succeeded not only in curing their patient but in winning his son to their doctrines.They told the Pascals physical suffering was an illustration of a basic religious truth: man is helpless; a miserable creature. Blaise had seldom enjoyed a day without pain. He knew how helpless physicians could be, so the argument struck him with unusual force. It deepened his sense of the tragic mystery of life.He also learned from these Jansenist physicians how profoundly the Bible speaks to the human condition. He became an avid student of Scripture, pondering its pages as he had atmospheric pressures. He came to see the Bible as a way to a transformed heart.In 1651, Pascal's personal tragedy deepened with the death of his father. The loss brought him to a crisis. His sister, Jacqueline, renounced the world by entering the Port-Royal convent, and Blaise was left alone in Paris.He now gave himself to worldly interests. He took a richly furnished home, staffed it with servants, and drove about town in a coach drawn by four horses; an extravagance. He pursued the ways of elite but decadent Parisian society. After a year of pleasure he found only a “great disgust with the world,” and he plunged into quiet desperation. He felt abandoned by God.Blaise turned again to the Bible, to the 17th ch of the Gospel of John, where Jesus prepares for His sacrifice on the cross. It was then that Pascal felt a new blaze of the Spirit. As he wrote, “Certainty, certainty, feeling, joy, peace.”Pascal's new faith drew him magnetically into the orbit of the Jansenists. Late in 1654, he joined his sister, Jacqueline, as a member of the Port-Royal community. He was then asked by one of the Jansenist leaders for assistance in his defense against the attack of the Jesuits.Pascal responded brilliantly. He penned eighteen Public Letters exposing Jesuit errors in flashes of eloquence and sarcastic wit. As each letter appeared, the public snatched them up. They were instant best-sellers. Port-Royal was no longer an obscure Jansenist monastery; it was a center of public interest. The Pope condemned the Letters, but all educated French read them, as succeeding generations did for the next two centuries.Upon completing the Letters in March, 1657, Pascal planned a book on the evidences for Christianity. He was never able to complete it. In June, ‘62, he was seized with a violent illness and, after lingering a couple months, died on August 19 at the age of just 39.Friends found portions of his writing on faith and reason, and eight years after his death they published these notes under the title Thoughts (Pensées-Pahn'-sees). In the Pensées, Pascal is a religious genius who cuts across doctrine and pierces to the heart of man's moral problem. He appeals to the intellect by his passion for truth and arouses the emotions by his merciless descriptions of the plight of man without God.Man, Pascal said, is part angel and part beast; a Chimera. In Greek mythology the chimera was a she-goat with a lion's head and a serpent's tail. Pascal wrote, “What a Chimera is man! What a novelty, a monster, a chaos, a contradiction, a prodigy! The glory and refuse of the universe. Who shall unravel this confusion?”Reason, as great a faculty as it is, is no sure guide, Pascal warns. If we trust reason alone, we will doubt everything except pain and death. But our hearts tell us this cannot be true. That would be the greatest of all blasphemies to think that life and the universe have no meaning. God and the meaning of life must be felt by the heart, rather than by reason. It was Pascal who said, “The heart has its reasons which reason does not know.”He saw the human condition so deeply yet so clearly that men and women in our own time, after three centuries, still gain perspective from him for their own spiritual pilgrimage.

The title of this episode, is Faith in the Age of Reason.  Part 01After the first flush of Reformation excitement died down, the Protestant churches of Europe went into a long period of retrenchment, of digging in both doctrinally and culturally. This period lasted from the late 16th to the later 17th C and is referred to by church historians as the Age of Confessionalism. But “confession” here isn't the personal practice of piety in which someone admits error. Confessionalism is the term applied to how the various Protestant groups were increasingly concerned with defining their own beliefs, their confessions, in contrast to everyone else. It resulted in what is sometimes referred to as Protestant Scholasticism, called this because the churches developed technical jargon to describe their doctrinal positions ever more accurately—just as medieval Roman Catholic scholastics had done three Cs before.Don't forget; Roman Scholasticism helped spark the Reformation. It was the scholastics devotion to correct theology that highlighted the doctrinal and practical errors many in the Church began to call for reform over. But it was also the tendency of some Scholastics to forsake practical theology in favor of the purely hypothetical that fueled the Reformation's drive to return the practice of faith to everyday life and made religion the sphere, not just of academics and sequestered clerics, but the common people.So, we might conclude Protestant churches were now headed down the same path with their own version of Scholasticism. And in some cases, that's what happened. But instead of turning a theology back to Scripture as the Protestant Reformation had done in reaction to Roman Scholasticism, the reaction to Protestant Scholasticism was a decided turn away from Scripture to a decidedly irreligious philosophy.Many of the discussions of the Protestant Scholastics became dry and technical. Martin Luther sought to overturn centuries of medieval religious jargon and get back to the original message of the NT. John Calvin is often thought of as a more ‘systematic' theologian, but his Institutes of the Christian Religion, though carefully arranged by topics, was intended to be no more than a faithful exposition of Scripture.Luther's and Calvin's heirs, however, went beyond their intended simplicity. They didn't abandon the Reformation principle of Sola Scriptura, but they sought answers to questions not found in the Bible. A prime example was the issue of predestination and the relation between grace and free will—which, at the start of the 17th C was THE hot theological topic among Protestants and Catholics. A new kind of scholasticism was produced with some Protestant theologians happy to use the terminology of Aristotle and regarding the premier Roman Catholic Scholastic Thomas Aquinas as an authority.One of the key figures of this era was Theodore Beza, an aristocratic Frenchman who, although only ten yrs younger than Calvin, outlived him by forty and was widely regarded as Calvin's successor. It was Beza, rather than Calvin, who was regarded by most Reformed theologians of the 17th C as the theological authority. He was especially good at recasting the terminology of Aristotle and the medieval scholastics in disputing with his opponents, who were most often Lutherans and Catholics.Beza defined the doctrine of predestination and its role in Reformed theology. In doing so, he developed the doctrine of ‘double predestination', the notion that God deliberately predestines the reprobate to damnation and the elect to salvation. He put forward the ‘prelapsarian' position, which says God planned the Fall and the division of humanity into elect and reprobate before Adam sinned. These ideas were present in germ-form in Calvin, but weren't the touchstones of Reformation orthodoxy they later become.Beza was an eloquent author. That can't be said of all who took up their pens in the service of the Lutheran and Reformed cause. In place of Luther's and Calvin's attempts to simply expound what Scripture said about doctrine and theology, the Protestant Scholastics were all about logical consistency and adherence to a pre-established orthodoxy.The Age of Confessionalism is often thought of as a time when theologians conducted a war of words with sharp pens, rather than sharp swords. What comes as a surprise is how so much of their angry rhetoric was aimed, not at people far across the theological divide from themselves, but at their own, much closer colleagues.With the hardening of orthodoxy, there were inevitable splits within churches as some rebelled against what their colleagues were laying down as required doctrine. The greatest of these fractures occurred in the Reformed Church at the end of the 16th C, after the preaching of Jacobus Arminius, a Dutch minister and professor taught by Beza himself. Arminius was initially a supporter of Beza's views. But he rebelled against Beza's distinctions regarding predestination and prelapsarianism, declaring them unjust. Arminius argued that if God condemns some and saves others, it must be on the basis of who has faith, not on the basis of some eternal decree God's already worked out even before they're born.Arminius died in 1609, but the controversy he started rumbled on thru the centuries and has continued right on down to today.His Dutch name was Jakob Hermanzoon – but as did many scholars of the day, he Latinized that to Jacobus Arminius; and it's from that we get the theology derived from him – Arminianism – which as most listeners know, is usually posited as opposite to Reformed theology, or Calvinism. Now, before I get a pile of angry emails and comments – let me say what's called Arminianism and Calvinism today would likely be disavowed by both John Calvin and Jakob Hermanszoon.  If they attended a seminary class on these topics today they'd likely say, “What'ch you talkin' about Willis?”Both Arminianism and Calvinism have taken on theological accretions and associations their authors likely never intended. And strictly speaking, we can't equate Calvinism with what's known as Reformed Theology.But, back to the story. è Arminius was born in the Netherlands near Utrecht. His father was a blacksmith and armorer who died shortly after Jakob was born. He was educated at the expense of family-friends who recognized his keen intellect. He'd just entered Marburg University in Germany at the age of 16 when news reached him of a tragedy back home in his hometown of Oudewater.The Roman Catholic Spanish had occupied a good part of Holland for some time but were expelled from Oudewater when the city became a Protestant enclave. When the Spanish returned, they over-ran the town and carried out a brutal massacre that killed Arminius' mother and siblings. Jakob spent 2 weeks in inconsolable mourning.When the new University of Leiden opened nearby in 1576, he was the 12th student enrolled. At Leiden he adopted the controversial theology of the French scholar Peter Ramus, a Protestant progressive killed during the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. Leaving Leiden, Jakob went to Geneva where he enrolled in the Academy, then headed by Theodore Beza, Calvin's successor.Arminius's defense of Ramus angered the faculty of the Academy so he left for a trip to Basel where he declined the offer a doctorate, believing he'd not bring honor to the title.Returning to Geneva, Arminius seems to have been more prudent in his approach. In 1585, Beza wrote to the city magistrates of Amsterdam who'd sponsored Arminius's education, highly commending his ability and diligence and encouraging a continuance of their support in his studies.After a short visit to Italy, Arminius returned home, was ordained, and in 1588 became one of the ministers of Amsterdam. His 1590 marriage to a merchant's daughter gave him influential links.From the outset, Arminius's sermons on Romans 7 drew a strong reaction from staunch  Calvinists who disliked his views on grace and predestination. The Calvinists said that while God's saving grace is unearned, He offers it only to those He predestines to salvation. Arminius disagreed, saying God gives grace to those who believe.In 1592, a colleague accused him of Pelagianism, a 5th C heretical distortion of grace and free-will already condemned by the Church. Arminius was also accused of …1) An overdependence on the early church fathers,2) Deviation from two early Calvinist creeds, the Belgic Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism, and3) An errant views of predestination.When Arminius and his supporters challenged his critics, urging them to point out specifically WHERE he was in error, they were unable to do so. The city authorities ended up on his side. The question of predestination was not raised in any substantive form until Arminius became professor of theology at Leiden, where he served from 1603–9. The last six years of his life were spent in controversy over his views as they stood in opposition to those of his old mentor, Theodore Beza.In a 1606 message titled “On Reconciling Religious Dissensions among Christians,” Arminius argued that dissension damages people both intellectually and emotionally and creates doubt about religion that leads to despair. Left unchecked, it may ultimately lead to atheism. He proposed as a remedy to the controversy his ideas had stirred, the calling of a national synod. Arminius believed the proper arbiter between feuding clergy was a good and godly magistrate. The synod was eventually held at Dort in 1618, but Arminius had already been dead nine years.In assessing Arminius' theological position, we could say that in his attempt to give the human will a more active role in salvation than Beza's brand of Calvinism conceded, Arminius taught a conditional election in which a person's free will might or might not affect the divine offer of salvation.  It's important to distinguish between Arminius's teaching and what later became known as Arminianism, which was more liberal in its view of free will and of related doctrines than was its founder. Arminius's views were never systematically worked out until the year after his death, when his followers issued a declaration called the Remonstrance, which dissented at several points from Beza's description of Calvinism. It held, among other things, that God's predestination was conditioned by human choice, that the Gospel could be freely accepted or rejected, and that a person who'd become a Christian could “fall from grace” or forsake salvation.Though he was mild–tempered, Arminius nevertheless spoke his mind in controversy and characteristically defended his position from Scripture.We'll pick it up at this point in our next episode as we continue our look at Protestant Scholasticism. There's a whole lot more for us to learn about this period, including the Calvinist reaction to the challenge of the Remonstrance, as well as the career of a couple of major lights in Christian history, Brother Lawrence and Blaise Pascal – as well as several others.