Podcasts about theodore beza

Question: I was very upset by the answer from you about the reason you prefer the KJV.... I need you to please send me several examples of what you consider "serious" errors [in modern translations]. I would also be very appreciative of some reading material that the lay person can understand...or names of some sources....Response: Thank you for your recent letter challenging me regarding my support of the KJV. This question is too complex to deal with in a brief letter, but let me try once again. You asked for sources.The best case against "KJV only" is presented by D. A. Carson in The King James Version Debate: A Plea for Realism. He points out, in "eight key Christological verses (Jn 1:1,18; Acts 20:28; Rom 9:5; 2 Thes 1:12, Tts 2:13; Heb 1:8; 2 Pet 1:1)... the KJV fails to underscore the deity of Christ in four." Most modern translations do as well or better. The NIV scores in seven of the eight. Even Thomas M. Strouse, though strongly criticizing Carson, admits these four KJV failures (Jn 1:18; 2 Thes 1:12; Tts 2:13; 2 Pet 1:1) and explains them as "a textual problem (Jn 1:18) and the other three are translational problems." Even its defenders must admit to some flaws in the KJV.Critics fault the KJV because it comes from a Greek New Testament which was put together by Erasmus in 1516, later improved by Theodore Beza and Robert Stephanus. The latter's fourth edition in 1551 is "substantially the Textus Receptus," according to Jasper James Ray, one of its most fervent defenders. Too late in time, say the critics, and too few manuscripts as its source. Yet this was basically the Greek text that had been accepted by the Greek church in the East for centuries (the Roman Catholic Church in the West used the Latin Vulgate), earlier manuscripts from which the Greek Bible came having been worn out and discarded. Modern translations (some are worse than others, the RSV in particular) come from a Greek text developed by Westcott and Hort (two scholarly heretics) based largely upon Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, which, though older, are clearly corrupted.

Calvinism has characteristically argued for limited atonement (the "L" in TULIP), but can they attribute that to John Calvin? Dr. Allen will prove from Calvin's original statements that he held to unlimited atonement without exception. Only later, through the revisions of Theodore Beza and the ecclesiastical councils of the Synod of Dort and the Westminster Assembly, was limited atonement adopted as representative of genuine Calvinism even though there was significant disagreement within those assemblies. Limited atonement is a theological extrapolation from a system based on a faulty understanding of total depravity. As Dr. Allen says limited atonement is a doctrine in search of a proof text. Dr. Allen received his PhD from the University of Texas and now serves at Mid-America Seminary in Memphis. He is currently a candidate for the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention. He also has a unique ministry coaching preachers in their preaching skills (see PreachingCoach.com). He has written extensively on the atonement in his lengthy book, The Extent of the Atonement, as well as a chapter in Calvinism: A Biblical and Theological Critique. Share this episode with your Calvinist, and non-Calvinist, friends and leave a comment with your thoughts.

This week Jeff and Dave welcome into the studio Classicist extraordinaire and all around good guy Dr. Kirk Summers. We should probably also mention that Kirk is a Prof. of Classics at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, former co-owner of the Red Cat Coffee Houses in the same city, and one of the world's leading experts in Theodore Beza. And he still finds time to root for the Alabama Crimson Tide. Kirk drops by to talk about one of his earliest works on Beza, A View from the Palatine. First published in 1548 before his conversion to the Protestant faith, Beza issued this collection of poems, Sylvae, much in the style of Catullus, Martial, and other Roman love poets. This got him into a little bit of hot water, as Kirk explains. Along the way, we hear how Beza's early training in the humanities shaped him for a career in theology and polemics, about his wife Claudine Desnosse (that she was not Candida of his poetry), and some of bases views on the relationship between Christianity and the ancient Greeks and Romans. All this and more can be yours, if you can survive Dave's first, atrocious pun.

Thursday, 25 April 2024   Passing it with difficulty, we came to a place called Fair Havens, near the city of Lasea. Acts 27:8   More exactingly, it reads, “And laboriously lying beside it, we came to a certain place being called Fair Havens, which was near Lasaea City” (CG).   Luke just detailed the slow and difficult sailing they had encountered on the Alexandrian ship since leaving Myra. He continues that now with the words, “And laboriously lying beside it.”   This is referring to sailing under the shelter of Crete off the shores of Salmone. The word translated as laboriously was just used in the previous verse. Luke repeats it here, providing extra emphasis concerning the immensely trying voyage they were on.   He also uses another new word seen only here and then again in verse 13 for “lying beside it,” paralegomai. It is another nautical term, coming from para, beside, and legó, a word that originally meant “lay down to sleep.” Later, it was used in the sense of “laying an argument to rest.” It is as if the ship were lying beside the coast, struggling to move on as the contrary winds and waves fought against them.   After this laborious time of trial, Luke says, “we came to a certain place being called Fair Havens, which was near Lasaea City.”   It was with great difficulty that they were able to pass the promontory. Eventually they made it and came to Fair Havens. This is found on the southeast part of Crete. It was a place where the ship could be harbored temporarily.   The word translated as “havens” is the plural of the Greek word limén. It is found only here and twice in verse 12. It signifies a harbor, port, or haven.   Barnes notes, “It is called by Stephen, the geographer, ‘the fair shore.' It still retains the name which it formerly had. It is called in ancient Dutch and French Sailing Directions ‘the beautiful bay.'”   The city of Lasaea appears to be otherwise unknown by this spelling, but Luke records it as a place that was well-known at his time.   Life application: Luke's detailed record of the sailing continues to allow the modern reader to follow along with a map and see exactly where the voyage went from and to. One can almost imagine the laborious efforts of fighting wind and water as the sailors worked to get the ship forward.   An interesting part of what Luke has written is noting the city of Lasaea. As stated, Luke's spelling of it seems to be otherwise unknown, however, Wikipedia notes –   “Lasaea or Lasaia (Ancient Greek: Λασαία) was a city on the south coast of ancient Crete, near the roadstead of the ‘Fair Havens' where apostle Paul landed. This place is not mentioned by any other writer, under this name but is probably the same as the Lisia of the Peutinger Table, 16 M.P. to the east of Gortyna. Some manuscripts have Lasea; others, Alassa. The Vulgate reads Thalassa, which Theodore Beza contended was the true name. According to the Stadiasmus Maris Magni, which calls the place Halas (Άλας), it had a harbour and was located 50 stadia from Leben and 80 stadia from Matala.”   A Hellenistic gravestone was found at this location which is pictured in the Wikipedia article. For much of history, since Luke penned his words, even until more recent times, the city was more or less unknown to scholars. And yet, Luke's record of it meant that it was there. By people getting out a spade and setting out in the area to search for it, evidence of it has been obtained.   If you are ever questioning the accuracy of what the Bible says because someone argues against it, be sure to do your own research. Don't just take people's arguments at face value. It is certain that there is a world full of people who are intent on destroying your faith.   Luke was a careful chronicler of the places and events he encountered. So, give him a nod of trust as you continue your search for validation of something he has stated. Eventually, it will present itself. Someday, we will be able to thank him personally for his detailed writings that helped us know the story of how the church and the message of Jesus Christ spread out from the land of Israel to the inhabited world.   Lord God, what a treat it is to read Your word and to consider the people and places that we read about. The word comes alive as we think about their struggles, their trials, their victories, and the hope that they possessed because of Your promise to the people of the world. What a wonderful record of Your guiding hand upon the process of redemption of mankind! Thank You for Your precious word. Amen.

A new NoCo segment has arrived: The Beza Briefing. Mike goes through Beza’s “The Christian Faith,” an easy to read, concise explanation of Christianity. Tune in to find out why Theodore Beza is perfect for NoCo.  

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Today on the Christian History Almanac podcast, we remember Theodore Beza and his impact on the Genevan and French Reformations. — Show Notes: 1517 Podcast Network Survey Support 1517 1517 Podcasts The 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 on Youtube What's New from 1517: 2023 HWSS Conference Livestream Signup Free 2023 Advent Resources 2024(May 3-4) NWA Tickets are Now Available! Join the 1517 Academy All Charges Dropped, Vol. 2 More from the host: ·       Dan van Voorhis SHOW TRANSCRIPTS are available: https://www.1517.org/podcasts/the-christian-history-almanac CONTACT: CHA@1517.org SUBSCRIBE: Apple Podcasts Spotify Stitcher Overcast Google Play FOLLOW US: Facebook Twitter Audio production by Christopher Gillespie (gillespie.media).

A new NoCo segment has arrived: The Beza Briefing. Mike goes through Beza’s “The Christian Faith,” an easy to read, concise explanation of Christianity. Tune in to find out why Theodore Beza is perfect for NoCo.  

“The Christian Faith” is a wonderful summary by Theodore Beza. Today, Mike dives into the First Adam and discusses Federal headship.

Protestant French thinkers like François Hotman and Theodore Beza propose a radical political philosophy: the king rules at the pleasure of his subjects.

Classic Friday! “The Christian Faith” is a wonderful summary by Theodore Beza. Today, Mike dives into the First Adam and discusses Federal headship.

This is part of a short series of episodes in which I look back on stuff I (Jeff) wrote in the past and reflect on ways my thinking might have changed, and what I might want to reject. In this episode, while I generally stand by my take on the history of thought within the Genevan Academy, under the rectorship of Theodore Beza (John Calvin's right hand man), I explore ways in which I didn't see how much the form or style of theology he propagated has had negative, unintended consequences on Western culture, especially that of American Christian culture. As always, feel free to skip this if it doesn't interest you. We'll be back with more playful stuff in weeks to come.

Tune in to hear about “The Christian Faith,” by Teddy B. Good works are great, unless you put your good works into the category of Justification.   

Theodore Beza began at the Geneva Academy as a Greek professor, but when John Calvin died, he assumed the responsibility of leading the school. On this episode of 5 Minutes in Church History, Dr. Stephen Nichols tells the story of how God directed Beza's life at every unexpected turn. Read the transcript: https://www.5minutesinchurchhistory.com/beza/ A donor-supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Donate: https://www.5minutesinchurchhistory.com/donate/

A helpful summary of the Christian faith by Calvin's Genevan co-laborer.•••There is a solitary, humble, wooden structure on a windswept hill in rural New England. To open the door is to engage our minds, our hearts, and our imaginations. In this place, preachers and professors, past and present, come alive as they walk the aisle, ascend the pulpit stairs, and teach…from theology, from history, and from the Word of God. Welcome to the Saybrook Meetinghouse, an audio production of Saybrook Ministries.Saybrook's Vision:Inspiring and invigorating Christians with imaginative and intellectual content.Saybrook's Mission:To provide didactic and devotional content from the Christian faith delivered to the saints; recovered and refined by the Protestant Reformation.With God's blessing, our prayer is that Saybrook's content will be…(1) to Christians convinced of Reformation truths: Encouraging & Powerful(2) to Christians unconvinced of Reformation truths: Educational & Persuasive(3) to Non-Christians: Engaging & Prophetic

Bibliology | Class 8 | Part 1 Plenteous Redemption Podcast  Monday, 14 March, 2022 This class covers:  Versions of the Traditional Text, Erasmus and his successors, Erasmus' Five Editions, Robert Stephanus' Four Editions, Theodore Beza's Ten Editions, and Forerunners to the King James Bible.    Unshackled Testimony: https://unshackled.org/program/thomas-irvin-pt-1/ https://unshackled.org/program/thomas-irvin-pt-2/   Deputation, Part One: Interview with Thomas Irvin Great Commission Conversations  ‎Great Commission Conversations: Deputation, Part One: Interview with Thomas Irvin on Apple Podcasts  Deputation, Part Two: Interview with Thomas Irvin Great Commission Conversations ‎Great Commission Conversations: Deputation, Part Two: Interview with Thomas Irvin on Apple Podcasts    Plenteous Redemption Podcast: Website: https://plenteousredemption.com/      Plenteous Redemption Podcast: https://www.plenteousredemption.media/     Plenteous Redemption YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/PlenteousRedemption/featured    Plenteous Redemption Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/plenteousredemption/    Plenteous Redemption Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sireofages     Missionary Thomas Irvin Plenteous Redemption Podcast

Plenteous Redemption Podcast Monday, 14 March, 2022This class covers: Versions of the Traditional Text, Erasmus and his successors, Erasmus' Five Editions, Robert Stephanus' Four Editions, Theodore Beza's Ten Editions, and Forerunners to the King James Bible. Unshackled Testimony:https://unshackled.org/program/thomas-irvin-pt-1/https://unshackled.org/program/thomas-irvin-pt-2/Great Commission Conversations: DeputationPart 1: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deputation-part-one-interview-with-thomas-irvin/id1524477392?i=1000486696780Part 2: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deputation-part-two-interview-with-thomas-irvin/id1524477392?i=1000487403760Great Commission Conversations: One Year reviewPart 1: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-first-year-part-one-interview-with-missionary/id1524477392?i=1000570748408Part 2: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-first-year-part-two-interview-with-missionary/id1524477392?i=1000571558149Missionary Thomas IrvinPlenteous Redemption Podcastwww.plenteousredemption.com

Bibliology | Class 8 | Part 2 Plenteous Redemption Podcast  Monday, 14 March, 2022 This class covers:  Versions of the Traditional Text, Erasmus and his successors, Erasmus' Five Editions, Robert Stephanus' Four Editions, Theodore Beza's Ten Editions, and Forerunners to the King James Bible.    Unshackled Testimony: https://unshackled.org/program/thomas-irvin-pt-1/ https://unshackled.org/program/thomas-irvin-pt-2/   Deputation, Part One: Interview with Thomas Irvin Great Commission Conversations  ‎Great Commission Conversations: Deputation, Part One: Interview with Thomas Irvin on Apple Podcasts  Deputation, Part Two: Interview with Thomas Irvin Great Commission Conversations ‎Great Commission Conversations: Deputation, Part Two: Interview with Thomas Irvin on Apple Podcasts    Plenteous Redemption Podcast: Website: https://plenteousredemption.com/      Plenteous Redemption Podcast: https://www.plenteousredemption.media/     Plenteous Redemption YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/PlenteousRedemption/featured    Plenteous Redemption Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/plenteousredemption/    Plenteous Redemption Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sireofages     Missionary Thomas Irvin Plenteous Redemption Podcast

Plenteous Redemption Podcast Monday, 14 March, 2022This class covers: Versions of the Traditional Text, Erasmus and his successors, Erasmus' Five Editions, Robert Stephanus' Four Editions, Theodore Beza's Ten Editions, and Forerunners to the King James Bible. Unshackled Testimony:https://unshackled.org/program/thomas-irvin-pt-1/https://unshackled.org/program/thomas-irvin-pt-2/Great Commission Conversations: DeputationPart 1: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deputation-part-one-interview-with-thomas-irvin/id1524477392?i=1000486696780Part 2: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deputation-part-two-interview-with-thomas-irvin/id1524477392?i=1000487403760Great Commission Conversations: One Year reviewPart 1: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-first-year-part-one-interview-with-missionary/id1524477392?i=1000570748408Part 2: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-first-year-part-two-interview-with-missionary/id1524477392?i=1000571558149Missionary Thomas IrvinPlenteous Redemption Podcastwww.plenteousredemption.com

Plenteous Redemption Podcast Monday, 14 March, 2022This class covers: Versions of the Traditional Text, Erasmus and his successors, The Textus Receptus, Erasmus' Five Editions, Robert Stephanus' Four Editions, Theodore Beza's Ten Editions, and Forerunners to the King James Bible. Unshackled Testimony:https://unshackled.org/program/thomas-irvin-pt-1/https://unshackled.org/program/thomas-irvin-pt-2/Great Commission Conversations: DeputationPart 1: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deputation-part-one-interview-with-thomas-irvin/id1524477392?i=1000486696780Part 2: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deputation-part-two-interview-with-thomas-irvin/id1524477392?i=1000487403760Great Commission Conversations: One Year reviewPart 1: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-first-year-part-one-interview-with-missionary/id1524477392?i=1000570748408Part 2: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-first-year-part-two-interview-with-missionary/id1524477392?i=1000571558149Missionary Thomas IrvinPlenteous Redemption Podcastwww.plenteousredemption.com

Bibliology | Class 7 | Part 2 Plenteous Redemption Podcast   Plenteous Redemption Podcast  Monday, 14 March, 2022 This class covers:  Versions of the Traditional Text, Erasmus and his successors, Erasmus' Five Editions, Robert Stephanus' Four Editions, Theodore Beza's Ten Editions, and Forerunners to the King James Bible.    Unshackled Testimony: https://unshackled.org/program/thomas-irvin-pt-1/ https://unshackled.org/program/thomas-irvin-pt-2/   Deputation, Part One: Interview with Thomas Irvin Great Commission Conversations  ‎Great Commission Conversations: Deputation, Part One: Interview with Thomas Irvin on Apple Podcasts  Deputation, Part Two: Interview with Thomas Irvin Great Commission Conversations ‎Great Commission Conversations: Deputation, Part Two: Interview with Thomas Irvin on Apple Podcasts    Plenteous Redemption Podcast: Website: https://plenteousredemption.com/      Plenteous Redemption Podcast: https://www.plenteousredemption.media/     Plenteous Redemption YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/PlenteousRedemption/featured    Plenteous Redemption Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/plenteousredemption/    Plenteous Redemption Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sireofages     Missionary Thomas Irvin Plenteous Redemption Podcast

Plenteous Redemption Podcast Monday, 14 March, 2022This class covers: Versions of the Traditional Text, Erasmus and his successors, The Textus Receptus, Erasmus' Five Editions, Robert Stephanus' Four Editions, Theodore Beza's Ten Editions, and Forerunners to the King James Bible. Unshackled Testimony:https://unshackled.org/program/thomas-irvin-pt-1/https://unshackled.org/program/thomas-irvin-pt-2/Great Commission Conversations: DeputationPart 1: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deputation-part-one-interview-with-thomas-irvin/id1524477392?i=1000486696780Part 2: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deputation-part-two-interview-with-thomas-irvin/id1524477392?i=1000487403760Great Commission Conversations: One Year reviewPart 1: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-first-year-part-one-interview-with-missionary/id1524477392?i=1000570748408Part 2: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-first-year-part-two-interview-with-missionary/id1524477392?i=1000571558149Missionary Thomas IrvinPlenteous Redemption Podcastwww.plenteousredemption.com

Bibliology | Class 7 | Part 1 Plenteous Redemption Podcast  Monday, 14 March, 2022 This class covers:  Versions of the Traditional Text, Erasmus and his successors, Erasmus' Five Editions, Robert Stephanus' Four Editions, Theodore Beza's Ten Editions, and Forerunners to the King James Bible.    Unshackled Testimony: https://unshackled.org/program/thomas-irvin-pt-1/ https://unshackled.org/program/thomas-irvin-pt-2/   Deputation, Part One: Interview with Thomas Irvin Great Commission Conversations  ‎Great Commission Conversations: Deputation, Part One: Interview with Thomas Irvin on Apple Podcasts  Deputation, Part Two: Interview with Thomas Irvin Great Commission Conversations ‎Great Commission Conversations: Deputation, Part Two: Interview with Thomas Irvin on Apple Podcasts    Plenteous Redemption Podcast: Website: https://plenteousredemption.com/      Plenteous Redemption Podcast: https://www.plenteousredemption.media/     Plenteous Redemption YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/PlenteousRedemption/featured    Plenteous Redemption Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/plenteousredemption/    Plenteous Redemption Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sireofages     Missionary Thomas Irvin Plenteous Redemption Podcast

Plenteous Redemption PodcastClass 6, Part 2March 7, 2022This class covers: Versions of the Traditional Text, Erasmus and his successors, the Textus Receptus, Erasmus' Five Editions, Robert Stephanus' Four Editions, Theodore Beza's Ten Editions, and Forerunners to the King James Bible. Unshackled Testimony:https://unshackled.org/program/thomas-irvin-pt-1/https://unshackled.org/program/thomas-irvin-pt-2/Great Commission Conversations: DeputationPart 1: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deputation-part-one-interview-with-thomas-irvin/id1524477392?i=1000486696780Part 2: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deputation-part-two-interview-with-thomas-irvin/id1524477392?i=1000487403760Great Commission Conversations: One Year reviewPart 1: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-first-year-part-one-interview-with-missionary/id1524477392?i=1000570748408Part 2: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-first-year-part-two-interview-with-missionary/id1524477392?i=1000571558149Missionary Thomas IrvinPlenteous Redemption Podcastwww.plenteousredemption.com

Plenteous Redemption PodcastClass 6, Part 1March 7, 2022This class covers: Versions of the Traditional Text, Erasmus and his successors, the Textus Receptus, Erasmus' Five Editions, Robert Stephanus' Four Editions, Theodore Beza's Ten Editions, and Forerunners to the King James Bible. Unshackled Testimony:https://unshackled.org/program/thomas-irvin-pt-1/https://unshackled.org/program/thomas-irvin-pt-2/Great Commission Conversations: DeputationPart 1: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deputation-part-one-interview-with-thomas-irvin/id1524477392?i=1000486696780Part 2: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deputation-part-two-interview-with-thomas-irvin/id1524477392?i=1000487403760Great Commission Conversations: One Year reviewPart 1: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-first-year-part-one-interview-with-missionary/id1524477392?i=1000570748408Part 2: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-first-year-part-two-interview-with-missionary/id1524477392?i=1000571558149Missionary Thomas IrvinPlenteous Redemption Podcastwww.plenteousredemption.com

Discovered by Theodore Beza, it has a Western Text, and may be as early as the 400's AD. God bless you and thank you for listening! Please subscribe and leave a 5 star review!

Rev. Andrew's good friend Rev. Charles Lehmann, Lutheran pastor and classmate at Institute of Lutheran Theology, comes on the show for the first time to discuss the Communicatio Idiomatum; how Jesus's human nature and divine nature are related which has been understood differently between the Lutheran and the Reformed traditions. We had a lot of fun. Charles will frequently appear on Doth Protest Too Much (so get used to him! :) ) *The debate between Jakob Andrae and Theodore Beza that is referred to in this episode is Colloquy of Montbéliard. *The reference to Jesus's "divine spittle" from Athanasius of Alexandria is from his Discourse against the Arians. This text can be read: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/28163.htm *The episode title is Charles's paraphrase of Martin Chemnitz's teaching from his work The Two Natures of Christ, p. 449. This work is available at: https://www.cph.org/p-677-Chemnitzs-Works-Volume-6-The-Two-Natures-in-Christ.aspx *The episode artwork is the 17th-century painting Christ Crucified by Diego Velázquez, held by the Museo del Prado in Madrid. (Public domain) --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

“The Christian Faith” is a wonderful summary by Theodore Beza. Today, Mike dives into the First Adam and discusses Federal headship.

In this episode, we look at how John Calvin and Theodore Beza practiced ministry and led their city during outbreaks of the plague in the late 16th century. We explore implications for Christian ministry today amidst a global pandemic. Calvin's Company of Pastors: https://amzn.to/3iK1ePF

The Meeter Center is pleased to present our summer scholar presentation series, featuring this year's visiting scholars who are pursuing their research at the Meeter Center. The first of these took place on July 1, 2021, and our speakers were Amanda Eurich and Preston Hill. Dr. Eurich, our 2019 Faculty Fellowship recipient, is professor of history at Western Washington University. Dr. Hill, a recipient of our Student Fellowship award in 2020, received his Ph. D. from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland this spring. After each scholar spoke, there followed a time of questions and discussion. A brief summary of their presentations appears below. "Coras under Cover: Rage and Resistance in the French Wars of Religion" Presented by Amanda Eurich The sixteenth-century French jurist, Jean de Coras, is largely known to Anglophone audiences as the judge who presided over a notorious case of identity theft that seized the imagination of celebrated writers, such as Michel de Montaigne. In real life, Coras himself was playing a double game, just like the peasant, Pansette, who briefly managed to steal the wife and property of a companion-in-arms, Martin Guerre. In 1568, Coras was expelled from office, along with seven of his Protestant co-religionaries, all deemed guilty of heresy and treason and condemned to death in absentia. In exile, Coras joined the service of Jeanne d'Albret, titular head of the militant Protestant party in France, as her chancellor and superintendent of finance, overseeing the funding of the Protestant insurgency and its armies in the field. He also began honing his skills as a Protestant propagandist, publishing two highly inflammatory works, which situate Coras among the earliest proponents of Huguenot resistance theory. In _A Political Question: Is it legal for subjects to negotiate with their prince_ (1570), Jean de Coras developed a highly original challenge to royal power and authority that finds reverberations in Theodore Beza's _Du Droit des magistrats_ (1574). These philosophical connections along with the more personal exchanges that may have occurred between Coras and Beza frame the research I am doing at the Meeter Center this summer. “The Death of the Soul: Christ's Descent into Hell in the Thought of Calvin, Lefèvre, and Cusa” Presented by Preston Hill There currently exists a substantial lacuna in scholarship on the place of Christ's descent into hell in the theology of John Calvin. The impression given by this scarcity is that Calvin had little to say about the descensus or that what he did have to say is so obvious as to require only minimal secondary exposition. However, a mere glance beyond the Institutes to Calvin's other writings significantly unsettles such an opinion. Calvin devoted five times more space in his Institutes to explaining the descent into hell than any other clause of the Apostles' Creed, and this explanation repeats the same interpretation already developed in his first treatise the Psychopannychia. Although Calvin defended his interpretation throughout his commentaries, sermons, letters, and final edition of the Institutes, the secondary literature on this theme is virtually non-existent in scholarship to date. This presentation aims to show that the French Humanist scholar Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples' reliance on Nicholas of Cusa demonstrates an organic stream of teaching in the late medieval period within which Calvin's own theology of Christ's descent into hell is obviously situated. Calvin, Lefèvre, and Cusa all understood the descent into hell as Christ's experience of the second death, or the death of the soul. The major finding advanced here is that Calvin's descensus theology was far from novel despite suggestions to the contrary in many popular summaries of Calvin's theology.

Dr. Jeff Mallinson joins Andy and Aaron in this jam-packed episode to discuss his family financial history, the dangerous combination of power and money, Christian schools and communities, the organism-like behavior of systems, cryptocurrency, financial tendencies of cult victims, Dave Ramsey, the ethics of debt, living a minimalist lifestyle, selling an underwater-mortgage house in the 2008 real estate crash, traveling and camping in a van, the dream van/vehicle, and more.  Note: The campsite mentioned in the show (which we couldn’t think of in real time) is called Streeter Park in Aurora, Nebraska, and features free camping, free electrical hookups, and more.Audio intro: Lana Del Rey, “Money Power Glory”Audio outro: David von Kampen, “Aurora” (feat. Andrea von Kampen)Links:Jeff Mallinson.comDr. Mallinson on TwitterProtect Your Noggin websiteProtect Your Noggin podcastThe Christian Difference: An Explanation & Comparison of World ReligionsVirtue in the Wasteland podcastViW: Antiwisdom episodeBoondockers Welcome: Boondocking and Free RV CampingRV Camping with Harvest HostsMitsubishi DelicaBio (lightly edited):Dr. Mallinson is the Professor & Chair of History and Political Thought at Concordia University, Irvine. He has a D. Phil. from Oxford University and is a speaker, podcaster, and writer. He specializes in the history of ideas, especially as they shed light on the ways in which religious and philosophical ideas can both emancipate and enslave people. In addition to several scholarly book chapters and articles, he is author of Sexy: The Quest for Erotic Virtue in Perplexing Times (New Reformation Press, 2017), Faith, Reason, and Revelation in Theodore Beza: 1519-1605 (Oxford University Press, 2003), and associate editor of The Encyclopedia of Luther and the Reformation (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). He is focused these days on rethinking the methods of religious education and outfoxing religious wolves, which is the mission of his podcast and curriculum called

This is part one of a series on the Lord's Supper where I present the arguments that Theodore Beza presented in treatise against the Lutheran position. In this video I introduce the series, provide important definitions, and finish by offering the first argument in many to come. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Rev. Dr. David Noe joins us to speak about John Calvin, God or Baal: Two Letters on the Reformation of Worship and Pastoral Service (Reformation Heritage Books), which includes translations of two letters. Dr. Noe is Professor of Classics at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He has also published a translation of Franciscus Junius’ (1545–1602) De Theologia Vera (Reformation Heritage Books) and a translation of Theodore Beza’s (1519–1605) Plana et Perspicua Tractatio De Coena Domini (Reformation Heritage Books).

A new NoCo segment has arrived: The Beza Briefing. Mike goes through Beza’s “The Christian Faith,” an easy to read, concise explanation of Christianity. Tune in to find out why Theodore Beza is perfect for NoCo.  

A new NoCo segment has arrived: The Beza Briefing. Mike goes through Beza’s “The Christian Faith,” an easy to read, concise explanation of Christianity. Tune in to find out why Theodore Beza is perfect for NoCo.  

Seorang yang tidak menyia-nyiakan anugerah dan kesempatan dari Tuhan,

This episode features an interview with our TEDS colleague Dr. Scott M. Manetsch, Professor of Church History, hosted by Dr. Josh Jipp and Dr. Madison Pierce.Hear Josh and Madison speak with Scott about his ministry and his interests and expertise in the Protestant Reformation.This episode showcases Scott's pastoral heart, which connects with his research in his book Calvin's Company of Pastors, a project that sits alongside his earlier work on Theodore Beza in particular. We also hear a bit about his work as the Associate General Editor of the Reformation Commentary on Scripture, to which he contributed the volume on 1 Corinthians.But before the interview, Josh tries to convince the Texan that Iowa is the "best state of the 50"...

On this day, we remember Theodore Beza, reformer Calvin's right-hand man, and Louis Berkhof, Dutch-American systematic theologian. The reading is an excerpt from Robert Farrar Capon's "Between Noon and Three." We’re a part of 1517 Podcasts, a network of shows dedicated to delivering Christ-centered content. Our podcasts cover a multitude of content, from Christian doctrine, apologetics, cultural engagement, and powerful preaching. Support the work of 1517 today.

The word “vandalism” comes from the Vandals, a Germanic tribe that sacked Rome in the middle of the 5th century. These “barbarians,” as Roman writers called them, actually behaved much better than their name might suggest. For example, they spared the lives of most of Rome's citizens and left her buildings standing—including, notably, Christian churches. This was because the Vandals themselves claimed the name of Christ—although their theology was of a type condemned by orthodox Christians. Modern vandals, on the other hand, fail to live up to their namesakes' example. Over the last few months, Europe has seen a wave of attacks against churches and other Christian sites. CBN reports that in countries like France and Germany, there has been “…a spike in violent vandalism, desecrating cherished churches and Christian symbols...” To clarify what the report means by “spike,” there were over one thousand attacks just in 2018, and the vandalism involved more than spray paint. Crucifixes, icons, statues, and sacramental vessels were damaged and destroyed. Sometimes attacks included human waste. According to Roman Catholic clergy in France, an average of two churches per day are desecrated. And that doesn't include Protestant sites. Recently, the Reformation Wall in Geneva was hit. The intended message of the vandals was made clear by the rainbow paint dumped all over the statues of 16th-century Reformers William Farel, Theodore Beza, John Knox, and John Calvin. This wasn't even the first act of vandalism at this site this year. Back in March, feminist activists graffitied the Reformation monument with the insightful message, “Where are the women?” Around the same time, Newsweek quoted Ellen Fantini, the executive director of a Vienna-based organization that tracks religious discrimination. She said that while the motives and identity of vandals aren't always clear, France in particular faces a surge of anti-Christian violence by “anarchist and feminist groups.” According to Fantini, attacks were up 25 percent in March over the same time last year. The fact that Christianity is no longer Europe's dominant religion, and hasn't been for some time, is not new news. Pew Research reports that while a majority of Western Europeans still identify as Christians, just 22 percent attend services at least once a month. Compare that with the U. S., where around half attend regularly. Increasingly, Europeans are devoted to a different religion—a militant form of secularism that sees the continent's Christian past as a time of darkness and oppression—a time to be not just forgotten, but intentionally abandoned. Yet how many of those who desecrate churches and vandalize religious monuments even know what it is they're attacking? How much could those who dumped rainbow paint on the Reformers in Geneva tell us about them, other than they were Christians...or men? But ignorance and/or cynicism of the past is a feature of the kind of secularism dominating western culture right now. C. S. Lewis dubbed it “chronological snobbery”—the belief that past people were unenlightened, evil, or just stupid. As Art Lindsley writes, chronological snobbery “not only rejects the values of the past, it claims that the study of history itself is pointless.” The Christians who built Europe's great churches—indeed, who built European civilization itself—are no longer read, nor are their beliefs taken seriously. Instead, along with their statues and churches, they are consigned to the ash-heap of history, condemned for not embracing our modern ideas about sexuality, gender, and God. Ancient Rome was sacked by Vandals. Western culture today has been invaded by ideas. Bad ones. It's a sad fate for a continent once alive with Christian faith—a continent that, today, is still littered with its buildings and monuments.

Tony and Jesse continue on in Reformed Preaching by Joel Beeke, with a discussion of Theodore Beza and the means of grace. Transcipt

Message from Jay Wertin on June 23, 2019

Theodore Beza gave form to what we now call Calvinism by explaining and defending the biblical doctrines Calvin had rediscovered.

Life of Theodore Beza

This episode looks at the thought of John Calvin and his heir Theodore Beza and the two most important Reformed documents of the 16th century: the Heidelberg Catechism and the Belgic Confession. Wesley was often critiqued from a Reformed perspective and so it is important to understand the history of that position and the most important players.

Dr. Mallinson joins us for the 4th time for a fantastic episode on Theodore Beza. Beza was the successor to John Calvin and is the subject of Dr. Mallinsons Ph.D. dissertation. Beza's impact is large especially when it comes to the theology of election. Sit back, relax, grab a drink, and enjoy the show.  Show Notes: Here We Still Stand Conference Ramus Method Sum Total of Christianity The Golden Chain Jeff's Dissertation  

Explore a sample of quotations that name the distinction between Law and Gospel as central and important for ministry and reading Scripture. Martin Luther stated, “Virtually the whole of the scriptures and the understanding of the whole of theology – the entire Christian life, even – depends upon the true understanding of the law and the gospel.” Augustine stated, "The usefulness of the law lies in convicting man of his infirmity and moving him to call upon the remedy of grace which is in Christ." For Calvin, "Moses had no other intention than to invite all men to go straight to Christ." Theodore Beza stated, "Ignorance of this distinction between law and gospel is one of the principal sources of the abuses which corrupted and still corrupt Christianity.” For Zacharias Ursinus, "The [Heidelberg] Catechism in its primary and most general sense, may be divided as the doctrine of the church, into the law and the gospel . . . The first treats of the misery of man, the second of his deliverance from misery." In John Foxe's Acts and Monuments we read, “There is nothing more comfortable for troubled consciences than to be instructed in the difference between the law and the gospel. The law shows us our sin; the gospel shows us the remedy for it. The law shows our condemnation; the gospel shows our redemption. The law is a word of ire; the gospel is a word of peace. The law is a word of despair; the gospel is a word of comfort. The law is a word of unrest; the gospel is a word of peace. The law says pay your debt; the gospel says Christ has paid it. The law says you are a sinner, despair you shall be damned. The gospel says your sins are forgiven, be comforted you shall be saved. The law says where is your righteousness? The gospel says Christ is your righteousness." John Bunyan is credited with, "Run John run the law commands, but gives me neither feet nor hands. Far better news the gospel brings, it bids me fly, and gives me wings." Charles Spurgeon stated, "As the sharp needle prepares the way for the thread, so the piercing law makes a way for the bright silver thread of divine grace." Isaac Watts wrote, "My soul, no more attempt to draw thy life and comfort from the Law. Fly to the hope the Gospel gives; the man that trusts the promise lives. Consider a portion of Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. Consider that there are many levels of discernment in pastoral theology.

Welcome to The Shaun Tabatt Show! In this episode I speak with William Boekestein about several great resources that will help you introduce your kids to the historic confessions of the Christian faith. About the Books: The Glory of Grace: The Story of the Canons of Dort - An important confession of the reformed churches for hundreds of years, the Canons of Dort teach clearly that salvation is by grace alone through Christ alone. yet some people may find it an intimidating document and wonder why it was even written. In The Glory of Grace, William Boekestein and evan hughes help our children understand the difficult challenges the churches in the netherlands faced in the Arminians' distortion of the gospel message. in this story about the Synod of Dort (1618), children will learn about the history and ideas that formed the Canons of Dort and come to a greater appreciation of this great treasure of the reformed faith and its emphasis on the glory of god in graciously saving sinners. Faithfulness Under Fire: The Story of Guido de Bres - The life of Guido de Bres teaches us that we can find enduring hope in the gospel of Jesus Christ, even during persecution. Author William Boekestein sensitively tells the story of de Bres for children, guiding them through his turbulent life and times--from his birth in 1522 in a small Belgium town, to his call to the ministry and study under Reformers such as John Calvin and Theodore Beza, to his authorship of the Belgic Confession and a life of suffering, to his martyr's death in 1567. Skillfully crafted illustrations and an easy-to-understand narrative combine to capture the interests--and admiration--of the entire family for this amazing Reformation hero. The Quest for Comfort: The Story of the Heidelberg Catechism - The Heidelberg Catechism has been taught to children for hundreds of years, encouraging them to seek Christ as their true source of comfort. But how did this catechism get written? In The Quest for Comfort, William Boekestein and Evan Hughes combine history and art to retell the events that led to making the catechism. By sharing the stories of Caspar Olevianus, Zacharias Ursinus, and Frederick III and how they came to Heidelberg, children will gain a greater appreciation of the Christian faith as it is expressed in the Heidelberg Catechism. About the Authors: William Boekestein is the pastor of Immanuel Fellowship Church in Kalamazoo, MI. He has authored several books including Why Christ Came: 31 Meditations on the Incarnation (with Joel Beeke), and (for children) Faithfulness under Fire: The Story of Guido de Bres, The Quest for Comfort: The Story of the Heidelberg Catechism, and The Glory of Grace: The Story of the Canons of Dort. Connect with William: SermonAudio.com Facebook Twitter (@WilliamBoek) Evan Hughes is an illustrator and graphic designer. He and his wife Kate live in Scranton, Pennsylvania with their two sons. For additional show notes visit ShaunTabatt.com/067.

We talk about the history of the Reformation as it affected the idea of vocation, the Max Weber thesis, the puritans, Theodore Beza, the practical syllogism, Slim Cessna's Auto Club, providence, Roger Williams, and Labor Day.

sermon transcript Introduction Look with me if you would, at Genesis Chapter 18. We are looking at a most remarkable passage of Scripture, you just heard it read, and it really is a passage that teaches us about faithful prevailing intercessory prayer. One of the great ministries of the church, one of the great privileges of the church, that we can stand in the gap on behalf of those in our generation, and we can intercede as Abraham, our father in faith did. You know, Scripture gives at least 190 exhortations or commands to prayer. Isn't that incredible? One hundred ninety times God has said, “Draw near to me and ask.” In James 5:16 it says, “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” Abraham gives us a display of that in Genesis 18. Or, in 1 John 3 it says “whatever we ask we receive from him.” What an incredible exhortation of prayer that is. And how about this one? John 15:7 says, “If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given to you.” What a blank check from heaven, of course, tempered by the will of God, but why would we want anything that is not in the will of God. And so, we stand, we intercede, we ask, and God has lavished to bless. Matthew 21:22 says, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer,” and many other such exhortations. Prayer is a proven active effectual reality in this world. Now, it is a mystery, and we see that mystery somewhat in the encounter between Abraham and God. God's plan and Abraham's initiative and his view of the thing as he stands on that ridge and looks down over those cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. But because it is proven and powerful and effective, and because there are so many commands and exhortations to prayer, the great men and women of God throughout time have taken up this prayer burden and have been faithful with it. Athanasius, for example, prayed five hours every day. Five hours every day. Bernard of Clairvaux would not begin his daily activities unless he had spent at least three hours in prayer. Augustine once set apart 18 months to do nothing but prayer. Now, you can do that when you are a monk and you don't have to hold down a regular job, but that's all he did, 18 months focused on prayer. Charles Simeon devoted the hours from 4 till 8 every morning to prayer. John Wesley spent two hours daily in prayer beginning well before dawn. John Fletcher frequently spent all night in prayer and would greet his friends saying, do I meet you in prayer? In other words, I don't want to interrupt your prayer time. Martin Luther once commented very famously, “I have so much work to do that I have to give myself to an extra amount of prayer, perhaps three hours today.” Oh, that speaks to our busy 21st century, doesn't it? What do we do to prayer when it gets really busy? We pitch it. We don't have time for it. But not Luther. Now you say, “Well, I'm busy.” Now, Luther, he was just running a reformation, the local church pastor, meeting with heads of state, writing letters and the commentaries, and all of that. God’s Intimate Public Revelation to Abraham About Sodom But I know you are busy and so prayer is a challenge for you, and that's the very reason we're looking at Genesis 18 today. Francis Asbury rose each morning at 4 to spend time in prayer. John Calvin, John Knox and Theodore Beza covenanted together that they would hold each other accountable to pray at least two hours every day. And so, we see also in our text this morning, Abraham, our father in faith, in prevailing intercessory prayer, and that is what is in front of us. Now, what is the context of this account? Well, we began last week with Genesis 18, it is I think the context of intimacy with God, that is I think what holds the whole chapter together. We saw last week, the intimate fellowship meal as the Lord was there, I believe, with two angels and Abraham set before them a meal. And so, there is an intimate fellowship meal there, God with Abraham. And then, also God's intimate personal revelation to Abraham concerning Sarah, that this time next year he would return and Sarah would have a son, Isaac. Angelic Mission to Sodom and Gomorrah And so, there is an intimate personal revelation there, and so that is the context, and now thirdly, we see this intimate public revelation to Abraham, this time about Sodom. Look at Verses 16-21, it says “When the men got up to leave, they looked down toward Sodom, and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way. Then the Lord said, ‘Shall I hide from Abraham what I'm about to do? Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.’” Verse 20, “Then the Lord said, ‘The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.’” And so, there is this angelic mission to Sodom and Gomorrah, the two men look down towards Sodom and they go on their way. This is God initiating a personal investigation into the situation in Sodom and Gomorrah. God says, “I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry, then I will know.” This is what we call anthropomorphic language in which God kind of is speaking like we do. I'm going to take a trip and find out and see. We see this again and again in Genesis. You remember in Genesis 3, how Adam and Eve heard the sound of God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, is what one translation says. It's this sense of the physicality of God or God kind of coming down to our level in a way we can understand. See the same thing in Genesis 11 with the Tower of Babel, you remember? You remember how God is looking down at this mighty tower that is rising up to the heavens, and God says, “Let's go way down and see that tiny little tower that they're making.” And so, down they travel to see. They had a long way to go to reach him. But it is again, this anthropomorphic language, and we see the same thing here, we'll go down and see if the outcry is as great, and if not, I will know. So, there's a sense of immediacy here, a sense of involvement, God is intimately involved in this judgment. Now, it is not because God was near-sighted. It wasn't like he had to get closer to see. Have you ever seen somebody near-sighted and they're trying to read and they have to hold it just at the right length, or they have to get a little closer and squint? Oh, that isn't God. God knew everything, He knew every inclination of the heart of Sodom, He knew the whole history, He knew all of their wicked deeds, He was intimately aware of every filthy excruciating detail. Job says in Job 31:4, “Does he not see my ways and count my every step?” And it says in Proverbs 5:21, “For a man's ways are in full view of the Lord, and he examines all his paths.” Why then does God speak like this? Why this kind of language? I will go down and see, and then, if not, I will know. Well, I think the first purpose is to show God's absolute commitment to justice to Abraham and to us. What He is going to do to Sodom and Gomorrah is noteworthy, to say the least. The cities are going to be erased by fire and brimstone, and immediately the sense of injustice may rise up, as it did with Abraham, and hence the intercession later on in this text. And so, God wants to show above all things a commitment absolutely to justice. God does nothing in wrath and judgment except what is deserved, and He is meticulously careful about preserving his reputation as a just judge. And so, he's going to investigate openly and clearly. It says in Romans 3:4, “Let God be true, and every man a liar. As it is written: ‘So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge.’” And it says later in that same Chapter, “. . . so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.” And so, God uses this kind of language to show, “I have thoroughly and completely investigated this matter, and this is what the matter calls for. I have looked into it, and I am not going by hearsay, I will know intimately the situation in Sodom and Gomorrah.” That's the first reason. The second reason is, I think, to involve the angels. He himself doesn't go, but through the two angels he does the investigation. Now realize that God doesn't need to use the angels, but He chooses to, and why? Because they are fellow servants with him. They are involved in the redemptive history as it unfolds, God wanted them involved. You know, interesting text in Revelation 19:10, John writing the Book of Revelation, after he had received this overwhelming vision from an angel. God had sent the angel to show His servants that says what must soon take place. John says “At this I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, ‘Do not do it! I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God!’” Did you hear what the angel called himself? A fellow servant. “I'm just doing a job; I'm serving just like you.” The Outcry Against Wickedness: How Long Must God Bear It And so, God wanted to involve the angels and so he sends the two of them down, and we'll see what happens to them in the next Chapter. But for this reason, we see this language and the outcry against wickedness. There's an outcry coming up from Sodom and Gomorrah, a clamor of wickedness, the boisterous noise of parties, or screams of wounded brawlers who are too drunk to know what's happened to them, or groans of sick drunkards or squeals of wild laughter, even worse, the outcry of blood from the ground of innocent victims. That's the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah, and God will investigate. He will come and see if the outcry, if their deeds are as bad as the outcry, is it true? God’s Deceptive Silence And here ends very soon, God's misunderstood silence. You know, the wicked of the earth misunderstand God, don't they? When day after day is like the previous day, it seems as though God consents. The Scripture says that “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God,’” and they assume that there is no God. God says in another place, “you thought I was entirely like you because I didn't do anything but remain silent in heaven. And you thought I didn't exist, or you thought I was like you, wicked.” It is misunderstood silence. Rather, God is patient and He is waiting. His quiet encounter with Abraham is actually the calm before the storm of Genesis 19. And there comes a day, a day in which all things are made right. God’s Desire for Intimacy with His People We see also in this text, God's incredible desire for intimacy with his people. God cannot hide from Abraham what He is about to do. Look at Verse 17, “Then the Lord said, ‘Shall I hide from Abraham what I'm about to do?’” Now in Shakespeare's plays and in other plays, you get these things called soliloquies, an actor or actress goes off to a part of the stage or perhaps is completely alone on a stage, and they just speak for a while to the audience. It is the playwright's way of letting you know into the mind of the actor to find out what they're really thinking. And so, you get these soliloquies, because we can't read the mind of the actor or actress. And so, Hamlet gives a soliloquy about whether he wants to go on living or not, or other actors or actresses in these plays, they give these soliloquies, and this way we can read the minds of the actors or actresses. That's exactly what's going on here. It's interesting that not only can God not hide from Abraham what He is about to do, He couldn't hide from us what He was thinking at the time. And so, through the pen of Moses, He says, “I want you to know the deliberations that went on in my mind right before this prayer encounter. I can't hide from Abraham what I'm about to do.” Realize that God is under no obligation to share a thing with us. He doesn't need to speak to us, He doesn't need to tell us a thing. He could have just erased Sodom and Gomorrah, He created it and everything in it. He doesn't owe us an explanation. Nebuchadnezzar said this in Daniel 4:35, “All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing. He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth. No one can hold back his hand or say to him: ‘What have you done?’” No one has the right to question God. And do you sense that Abraham feels that too? Again and again, he's saying, “Oh Lord, don't be angry with me,” or “I'm only dust and ashes.” And so, there's this sense, I don't have the right to ask these questions. But you see, God opens himself up, He reveals Himself to us. It says in Deuteronomy 29:29, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.” In other words, there are two categories of things in the mind of God, the things concealed, and the things revealed. And he decided that this judgement on Sodom, he would reveal beforehand, ahead of time. “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” It says in Amos 3:7, “Surely the Sovereign Lord does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets. That's an incredible thing, God wants us to know. He wants to open himself up, He wants intimacy with you. And so, He has told you the most vital things you need to know about today and about the future in the Scripture. He's opened up his mind and his heart; He has told you what's going to happen. Jesus Christ is coming back someday. The second coming of Christ, He is coming. And on that day, there will be a great judgment, and just like Abraham called God here, the judge of all the earth, He is the judge of all the earth and you will stand before him. More on that in a moment. You see, God reveals his secrets to us through His servants, the prophets. Now, what are the reasons for intimacy? Well, we've talked about this and we discussed it last week, but it bears repeating and looking at in detail. Look at Verses 18-19, it says, “Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him.” Verse 19, “For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.” God has a generational or multi-generational view. He's looking down the road, and He has a purpose that He is unfolding here. God’s Reasons for Intimacy: from Generation to Generation Now, what is the ultimate purpose? What is the focus of the redemptive plan of God? Is it not Jesus Christ? Is Jesus not the focus of everything God is doing? It says that he will become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through Abraham. And so, Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham, a descendant of Abraham, has come to bless the earth. But God knows there is a long journey to travel from here to there, and so he describes how that redemptive plan is going to unfold. It isn't here yet. The time for Jesus is still 2,000 years away. And so, there's a plan here, Abraham will become a great and powerful nation. At this time next year, I will return and Isaac will be born. And so, He has got a view down the road, and so, He has got to reveal Himself. And what does he reveal? Well, He says, first of all, “I have chosen Abraham so that he will direct his children and his household after him, to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham, what He has promised him.” There's a chain here, like a chain link, one after the other. First personal election, “I have chosen him.” The end result, all nations on earth will be blessed. But in the meantime, what? Well, “I've chosen him so that he will direct his family after him, to keep the way of the Lord, so that the Lord may bring about what he has purposed.” And so, we must be faithful just as Abraham was in training Isaac. We must be faithful with our children. I'll say more to fathers at the end of the message, but this is such a direct word to us, isn't it? The need for fathers to be faithful, to entrust to their children a godly heritage. And so, part of that is that God wants Abraham to know what he's doing in Sodom and Gomorrah. It wasn't just an anomaly of Nature, it wasn't just an accidental earthquake that just happened to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, no, this is direct judgment from God. And it's important for Abraham and his descendants after to know the heart of God in this matter. It's important so that they could be warned and protected from sin. God’s Perfect Holiness and Wrath It says in Ephesians 5:3-7, “But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person−such a man is an idolater−has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient.” Don't you think He wants us to know that? God’s Intimate Intercession with Abraham God Initiates Prayer We are Abraham's children by faith. And so, it's important that God draw near to us and warn us concerning the situation in Sodom and Gomorrah. That is why he reveals himself intimately to Abraham. He involves Abraham; He initiates prayer with Abraham. I think it's important as we look at this prayer encounter between Abraham and God, that God was both the Alpha and the Omega of this prayer encounter. It was God who drew near. And so, He opens up his heart and He says to Abraham, look at Verses 20-21, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin is so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. And if not, I will know.” And so, God reveals Himself, He shows himself to Abraham. You know that God doesn't need to use angels and He doesn't need to use people. He didn't need to use Noah's ark to save the animals, but He chose to do so. He involved Noah and his hammer and his saws and his sons in His redemptive plan. He didn't need to do anything with Moses. He could have rescued the people directly without Moses, but He chose to use Moses, his staff and his leadership; He chose to involve people. And in the same way, God doesn't need to send missionaries to the ends of the earth. He doesn't need to send missionaries to East Asia, He doesn't need to send missionaries to Greece or to Africa, but He has chosen to involve us in His work. And one of the number one ways we can be involved with God is, the same way Abraham was here, through intercessory prayer, that God initiates. Realize that we would have no access, no prayer life, if God had not granted it. It says in Verse 22, "The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord." God looked at Abraham and saw properly what he was. He was a sinner, saved by grace. He was justified by faith in a Christ who would come later and realize that none of us has access into the very presence of the holy throne room of God, except that Jesus shed His blood. He provided for us a new and living way into the throne of grace, and with it a command to come near, to draw near and let our consciences be sprinkled by the blood of Christ, to not stay distant. And we know that that's the problem in intercessory prayer. We are sinners and He is holy. It says in Isaiah 59, 1 and 2, "Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear." Only in Christ is that taken away, that obstacle to intercessory prayer. And so, Abraham stands before the Lord. The Lord has initiated, and Abraham is ready, and he stands before the Lord, to intercede. Abraham’s Three Great Concerns in Prayer There are three great concerns on Abraham's mind as he stands before them, and they are not equal. One is greater than the next and the next is greater than the third. Abraham's first and greatest concern is for the honor and glory of God and for his reputation as a just judge. That's his first and greatest concern. Abraham's second concern is for the righteous in the city of Sodom and Gomorrah. That's his second concern. Abraham's third concern is for the city generally, as created by God, and a concern that the city be spared on behalf of the righteous, that the wicked might have more time to repent. Those three are not equal in Abraham's mind. First and foremost, that God's reputation might be established. Look at Verse 25, this is Abraham speaking to God, "Far be it from you to do such a thing−to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you!" And then he says, a fascinating thing, "Will not the judge of all the earth do right?" I was in a class at MIT, it was a Bible class. I have mentioned it before. I took two Bible classes at MIT. Just a word to those of you that are interested in pursuing theological education, MIT is not the place to go. Okay. If you're interested in engineering or pure science, whatever, look at it. It might be for you. But theology, no. And so, I took these two classes with some other Christian friends, and there are two different classes on the Bible, blasphemy and heresy 101, blasphemy and heresy 102, first semester, second semester. And the professor, it seemed like his number one job was to separate us from any confidence that the Bible was actually the inspired word of God, and it seemed like every class, all it was, was just finding details and issues in which he was bringing up problems with the Bible. And one of the things he brought up was Genesis 18:25, I'll never forget it. He said, "Now, it's an interesting question as Abraham stands before God and he says, ‘Shall not the judge of all the Earth do right?’” It's almost like there is a standard of rightness above God, and that God needs to bow the neck to the standard of righteousness, that God has got to yield to it, He's got to follow the rules, too. Now, that's an interesting thought, isn't it? Is there a standard of righteousness above God, that God has to follow, too? Does He have to meet that standard or else He's not righteous? Well, let's put it this way. God is the standard of righteousness and God cannot behave contrary to His own nature. That's the issue, Abraham wants God to behave according to his own nature. That's all. Now, where did Abraham himself get the sense of what's right and wrong? Is it not because he was created in the image of God? And, therefore, is this not the moon reflecting rays back to the sun that gave it? The moon has no light of its own, only a reflected light. It came from the sun to begin with. And so here is this created being, created in the image of God, speaking back to God concerning righteousness. “Shall not the judge of all the Earth do right?” God does right all the time, everything He does is right, just as everything God does is loving, because God is love. Understand, God is not merely loving. You and I can be loving. We're not always loving, but we can be loving; but we cannot be love. That's something only God can be. And, we can behave righteously, but we cannot be righteousness. That's God. “Shall not the judge of all the Earth do right?” That is Abraham's first concern, that the judge of all the earth's reputation as a righteous judge would be established here. Abraham's second concern is the righteous in the city. People misunderstand here. They say that he's interceding for lost people. Indirectly, he is because there's a concern for sparing the city. Would you spare the city for the sake of the righteous? You understand that. And so, the city is in his mind, but his request is focused on whom? Focused on the righteous. Are you going to sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Far be it from you, to do that. And so, his concerns are first, God's reputation as a just judge. Secondly, the salvation of the righteous. And who does he have in mind there? Well, like they say, blood is thicker than water. He's concerned about his nephew, Lot. Is Lot going to be swept away or is Lot going to be saved? I think he's counting Lot's family among the righteous. He's got a wife, he's got. . . If you start to add them up, you could get up to 10 people. I think he got to that point and said, "Okay, well, we've got Lot's family." Well, apparently not, because the city got destroyed and God had promised He would not destroy it if there were 10 righteous people found in it. But there was Lot. And so, Abraham was concerned for the salvation of the righteous, and then thirdly, concerned with the city itself. He is interceding that the city would be spared for the sake of the righteous. God is concerned about that, too, because they are His created beings. It says in Jonah 4:11, "But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?" Yeah, He's concerned about the cattle because He made them, but He's especially concerned about the 120,000 Ninevites who needed to repent. And so, there is a concern in that order. Now, as you look at this time of intercession, it's really quite remarkable. Someone said it's like kind of a Middle Eastern bazaar, where there's a kind of a dickering back and forth, there's a bargaining. I don't think that's what's going on here, at all. I think there's a passion and a fear on Abraham's part. Do you see the fear? How he's afraid that he's asking too much, he's venturing forward timidly, kind of a step at a time? I think that's what's going on here. I don't think it's that he's trying to bargain with God. There is no such thing. Abraham’s Character in Prayer And as we look at Abraham's revealed character in this prayer, we see a number of things. First, I see faith. It's not directly mentioned, but what is faith but a response to the word of God. Faith doesn't generate anything. Faith responds to God's revealed Word. And so, God unfolds his purpose concerning Sodom and Gomorrah, and Abraham responds in faith by praying about it. Secondly, we do see intimacy, look at Verse 22, it says, "The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord." There's a sense of standing before God, an intimate relationship. And then in Verse 23 it says, "Then Abraham approached him and said: ‘Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?’" Do you see the intimacy in Verse 23? Abraham drew near to God. Oh, is this only perfected through the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross? Only by what He did on the cross, when He shed His blood and died, can there really be Immanuel. God with us or near us or in us, and us close to Him as well. It says in Hebrews 10:22, "Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith.” Let us get close to God. Let us lay aside everything that hinders intimacy with God. So, we see intimacy. We see also compassion. He is concerned about what is going to happen to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. There is a compassion there. He feels their pain and their agony before it even happens. That is what motivates his prayer. And so, he is compassionate. He is also bold, isn't he? Do you see boldness in this? Boy, is he courageous. He just keeps coming at it again and again, he even feels it. Look at Verse 25, he says, "Far be it from you to do such a thing−to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?" What a bold thing to say to God. And then he feels it in Verse 27, "Then Abraham spoke up again: ‘Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes.’" Do you see the boldness in prayer? Do you see also the humility? He calls himself dust and ashes. Is that hyperbole? Is that beyond what is really the case? Don't you remember what God said to Adam? "Dust you are and to dust you will return. I made you out of the dust of the earth." And Abraham accepted that, didn't he? He said, "I'm just dust, I'm just ashes." And so, there is a sense of humility and there is a sense of perseverance, isn't there? There is a relentlessness here−50 people, 45 people, 40 people, 30 people, 20 people, 10 people−six times he comes back to God with the same matter. Oh, this convicts me in my prayer. Are you this persistent in your prayer? When you ask and don't receive right away, do you keep on asking or do you give up quickly? Abraham kept on going, kept pressing on, persevering in prayer. And then finally, there's that reverence, the sense that Abraham standing there, is standing before the judge of all the earth, and now he's standing on behalf of some others. He is interceding on behalf of some others, but someday, he will stand himself before the judge of all the earth and he will be judged. And so, there is a reverence there, a sense of humility. This is the character of Abraham in prayer, faith-filled, intimate, compassionate, bold, humble, persevering, reverent. That's the way we need to pray, isn't it? That's the way we need to pray. Abraham’s “Failure” in Prayer? Now, I want to take up a matter concerning Abraham's failure in prayer. Abraham's failure in prayer you might say, well, there is a godly man, E. M. Bounds who wrote a lot of books on prayer, perhaps you have seen them, “Purpose in Prayer,” or “Prayer and Praying Men,” some of these things. He was a godly man, lived in the 19th century, Christ-like in his demeanor, Methodist pastor in the 19th century in Tennessee and Alabama. He woke every morning, 4 a.m., for prayer. Once when he was visiting a friend and his family in Brooklyn, New York, the family was awakened by sounds in the middle of the night, it was 3 in the morning, and it was E. M. Bounds, crying out for the lost and for the needy in prayer. This is the way he was. Prayer just saturated his life. But as you sometimes get with that kind of theological approach with the Methodist in particular, there was too much, I think, a man-centered focus in prayer. And listen to what E. M. Bounds wrote about Abraham's encounter with God here, in Genesis 18. He said, "Sodom's fate was for a while, stayed by Abraham's praying, and was almost entirely relieved by the humility and insistence of the praying of this man who believed strongly in prayer and who knew how to pray." Listen to this, "Perhaps the failure to ultimately rescue Sodom from her doom of destruction was due to Abraham's optimistic view of the spiritual condition of things in that city. It might have been possible, who knows, that if Abraham had entreated God once more and asked Him to spare the city if even one righteous man was found there, for Lot's sake, He might have heeded Abraham's request." Now, what is the basic idea? Abraham stopped too soon. He should have kept praying because we know there was one righteous man there, 2 Peter tells us that Lot was righteous, and so the city would have been spared. And so, there is almost a subtle blaming of Abraham for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Now E. M. Bounds would say, "Certainly not, because it was their own wickedness, but perhaps God might have extended the stay of righteous or of grace and mercy if he had only asked one more time.” Abraham’s Success in Prayer Well, I think there could be some confirmation of this in Abraham's own heart the next morning. Look over at Genesis 19, the very next chapter, 27 and 28, it says, "Early the next morning, Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the Lord." So, the next morning he goes to the place where he prayed. Verse 28, "He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, toward all the land of the plain, and he saw dense smoke rising from the land, like smoke from a furnace." Have you ever felt like that was your prayer life? You asked for something and you get exactly the opposite, it seems, of what you asked for. And so, it seems as though perhaps he felt he had failed in prayer. But did he really fail? I think not. There is a clear statement, the very next one in Verse 29 of Chapter 19, look what it says, "So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, He remembered Abraham and He brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived." He remembered Abraham. I don't think He just remembered that Abraham was related to him, I think directly, it's connecting to the previous chapter. He remembered his intercessory prayer; it was in response to the prayer that Lot was rescued, that he was delivered. And also, did Abraham get what he was asking for? Were all the righteous saved from Sodom and Gomorrah? Seems that way. He got the second thing he asked for, namely that all the righteous would be delivered. They were. And actually, some who were not righteous were delivered out, Lot's daughters came out with him and his wife, although she didn't make it the whole way. We'll get to that, next time. But some that were not righteous made it out, too, so he got even more than he asked for. And at the moment when Abraham was standing there on the ridge, looking at the smoke rising up from Sodom and Gomorrah, where was Lot at that moment but in Zoar, that little city, safe with his daughters. God had answered his prayer even though he didn't know it. The whole problem I have with E. M. Bounds' approach is that, he forgot who the alpha and the omega of prayer is. Isn't that the problem? Who began this prayer encounter? God did. Yes. And who ended it? Well, let's look and see, Verse 33. It says, "When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home." Who ended the prayer time? God did. He stopped at 10. Right? Now, when a servant is standing before a king, who gets to end the encounter? Who gets to turn and walk away? Is it not the king? And what happens to the servant, if the servant turns and walks away, ending the encounter? He might get in trouble, serious trouble. And so, the servants stood before the king until the king was done, and the king was done at Verse 33, and He went back and ended the prayer encounter. It was God's purpose to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. And so, he did not wait. But one more thing. Was not little Zoar spared in the exact way that Abraham had in mind? Lot went out to Zoar, and there was one righteous person in the little city of Zoar, and it was spared. All of it was spared because of Sodom. Now what, because of Abraham. Application What application can we take from this? Well, more than anything. Prevailing, passionate, intercessory prayer. How many of you would say you are satisfied with your prayer lives? How many of you can read this through and say, "Now, that's what I do on a regular basis?" I have been deeply convicted by Genesis 18, and I have been convicted on behalf of our church. Can I urge you to take part in our corporate prayer life with our church? There is power in corporate prayer, there is power in coming together. Be at the next quarterly corporate prayer meeting, Sunday evening, the end of the month, be there. Pour out your heart to God in prayer for mission work and for lost people around you, and for the righteous people you know that they would stand firm in the day of temptation. Be there and pray. Be there with us on Sunday morning. We pray every morning, 9 o'clock in the parlor. I like to see that place so packed out, we have to come in here. I guess you got music, things going, we will work it out. Just pack it out, let's come and pray. We pray for half an hour, for the service and for mission work and for anything that we feel led to pray for. Come and pray at 9 o'clock, pray on Wednesday evening, but then let's fill out into other times. Yes, you can pray on Tuesdays, with brothers and sisters in Christ, you can get together and pray. Let's intercede. Let's be bold and courageous. Let me speak also, to fathers. I have said this last week, I will say it again. Fathers, take responsibility for the spiritual welfare of your homes, take responsibility. Even if your kids are grown, still you have an influence over your grandkids. Fathers, take the lead as Abraham, our father in faith did. And mothers, you too. Parents are entrusted with the responsibility of training their children in godliness, the Book of Proverbs is clear on this. And so, have a multigenerational view. Lead your children to walk in a way that is right, don't leave it to the church ministry to do it. We are not here for that. We are here to exhort you to be faithful in your calling. And finally, all of you, but especially those of you who sit here today and don't know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, think of what Abraham said in Verse 25, "Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?" This is the God before whom each one of us will stand on Judgment Day, and only by the blood of Christ, will we survive that scrutiny, only by the blood of Christ, will we not be condemned for every careless word we have spoken throughout life. Jesus shed His blood, that we might be able to stand before the judge of all the earth, blameless and unafraid. Trust in Him today. And those of you who have already trusted in Christ, remember, there will come that day when you stand and give an account for your life, for the things done in the body, whether good or bad.

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.

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.

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.