Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Christian History Made Easy Lesson 9 Post Reformation Growing Pains





What was in this video?
How Jacob Arminius lost a debate before the debate even began.
How the Synod of Dort summarized Calvinism in five points.
How the Puritans, Separatists, and Baptists are related.
How slavery of Africans and exploitation of Native Americans changed the world.

What was going on at this time?
Religious differences between Catholics and Protestants repeatedly turned into violent conflicts.
In the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, French soldiers slaughtered thousands of Protestants.
The Thirty Years’ War, which began as a religious conflict, claimed at least 10 million lives between 1618 and 1648.

Who was Jacob (James) Arminius?
Not every conflict ended in bloodshed, however.
Jacob Arminius developed the foundations of Arminian theology, but before Arminius was an Arminian, he was a Calvinist.
While preparing to defend Calvin’s view of predestination, Arminius became convinced that Calvin was wrong.
The followers of Arminius summarized his views in the Remonstrance.





           What were the 5 points of Arminianism? 
          •The five points of the Remonstrance:
§1. Every good human action occurs because of God’s grace; humans do nothing righteous on their own.
§2. God saves every person who chooses to trust Jesus.
§3. Jesus died for everyone.
§4. People can freely choose to accept or to reject Jesus.
           §5. Scripture does not clearly state whether Christians can forfeit their                   salvation. 


           How did the Synod of Dort respond?

           •The five points of Calvinism:
§1. No human being naturally desires God; by nature, every person is spiritually dead.
§2. If someone trusts Jesus, it is because God chose to regenerate that person.
§3. Jesus died for everyone who would trust in him.
§4. When God regenerates someone, the person will not reject God’s grace.

§5. Every authentic believer will persevere in faith and good works until the end.

Five Doctrines which became the basis for the Arminianism/Calvinism debate.

                 Arminianism                                                  Calvinism






          A five point flower?
         •The five points of Calvinism can be remembered using the word TULIP:
§Total Depravity (Rom. 3:10–12; Eph. 2:1–3)
§Unconditional Election (John 6:44; Rom. 9:10–16)
§Limited Atonement (John 10:14–15, 28)
§Irresistible Grace (John 6:37, 44)

§Perseverance of the Saints (John 10:27–28; Rom. 8:29–39)

Who were the Puritans?

•In 1604, King James I met with a group of reformers at Hampton Court
  •These reformers wanted to purify the Church of England of all practices not found in Scripture.
   •As a result, they became known as Puritans.


How was the King James Version of the bible created?

•King James I disliked the Puritans’ Geneva Bible because of its Calvinistic study notes.
•When one Puritan suggested a new Bible translation, James quickly agreed.
•King James I gathered 54 scholars who worked 33 months on a new Bible translation.
•The first edition of the King James Version was published in 1611.





Why did the Separatists separate?

•After the Hampton Court Conference, some Separatist Puritans separated completely from the Church of England.
•One congregation fled to Holland and reorganized into two groups:
§One group sailed to the American colonies.
§The other group became the forebearers of a new expression of Christian faith.
•The group of Separatists who sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to a new world became known as the Pilgrims.

How did the English Baptists begin?
•The other group, influenced by Dutch Anabaptists, rethought their beliefs, and became known as Baptists.
•John Smyth was one of the Baptists’ early leaders.
•Smyth the Separatist became convinced that Scripture commanded believers’ baptism, not infant baptism.
•After Smyth’s death, his friend Thomas Helwys led the Separatist congregation home and founded England’s first Baptist Church.
•One of the most famous early English Baptists was John Bunyan.
•His wife’s dowry consisted of two Puritan books— nothing more.
•As Bunyan read these Puritan books, he was converted.
•“Down fell I,” he wrote, “as a bird shot from a tree.”
•He was baptized in 1653 into a Baptist church.
•After preaching without receiving permission from the Church of England, John was imprisoned.
•In prison, he penned his most famous book, The Pilgrim’s Progress.
•He died in 1688, only a few months before a new ruler returned religious toleration to England.

How did Christianity get to the New World?
•Even before the Reformation, seafarers had tried to find alternate routes to India.

•Claiming that his journey would fulfill Isaiah 11:11-12, Columbus convinced a king and queen to finance his journey.
Isaiah 11:11-12
“In that day the Lord will reach out his hand a second time to reclaim the surviving remnant of his people.... He will raise a banner for the nations and gather the exiles of Israel; he will assemble the scattered people of Judah from the four quarters of the earth.”

•In 1492 Columbus landed in the Bahamas, and later in Honduras.


•He died, still believing he had found an eastern
 route to India.
•But from the perspective of other Europeans he 
had discovered a new world.
•Spanish and Portuguese settlers and soldiers in the Americas subdued native populations, under pretenses of evangelizing them. 
•Through the encomienda system, natives were “entrusted” to Spanish settlers who forced them to work as slaves on sugar plantations.
•European diseases and brutality destroyed so many natives that there were no longer sufficient laborers for the sugar plantations.
•The solution? Enslavement and importation of Africans.
•Some settlers even claimed that, according to Genesis 9:25, God
intended Africans to be slaves.
Genesis 9:25  “Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.”
 Who were the “Priests Who Pursued Peace”?
•Two priests, Bartolome de Las Casas and Pedro Claver, worked to help slaves and natives.
•On Pentecost Sunday, 1514, Bartolome repented of his ownership of an encomienda.
•From that point, Bartolome worked unsuccessfully to convince the Spanish to stop exploiting natives.
•“Christ has given his life for them. … I do not know of any other people more ready to receive the Gospel.”
•When Pedro Claver took his ordination vows, he declared himself “always a slave of Africans.”
•Pedro Claver dedicated his life to sharing the gospel with African slaves.
He died in 1654, despised and alone.

Junípero Serra (1713-1784) Founder of California
In 1767, when he was fifty-four years of age, he was appointed to the


charge of the Missions to be established in Upper California. He arrived at San Diego in 1769, and, with the exception of one journey to Mexico, he spent all the remainder of his life here. He died at the Mission [San Carlos Borromeo] of Carmel, near Monterey, on the 28th of August, 1784, aged seventy- one years. 



The above post may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. It is being made available in an effort to advance the understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, social justice, for the purpose of historical debate, and to advance the understanding of Christian conservative issues.  It is believed that this constitutes a ”fair use” of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the Copyright Law. In accordance with the title 17 U.S. C. section 107, the material in this post is shown without profit to those who have expressed an interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
Federal law allows citizens to reproduce, distribute and exhibit portions of copyrighted motion pictures, video taped or video discs, without authorization of the copyright holder. This infringement of copyright is called “Fair Use”, and is allowed for purposes of criticism, news, reporting, teaching, and parody. This articles is written, and any image and video (includes music used in the video) in this article are used, in compliance with this law: Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. 107.
on

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please feel free to make civil comment. Divergent views encouraged,

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)