Christian heresy

Dutch Reformed in the Netherlands. So in the sixteenth century, Lutherans and Calvinists were the biggest groups. Other protestant groups that were not under the Calvinist model were the Anabaptists and Anglicans. In fact, even today, the biggest Christians in U.S. are Evangelicals . In contrast, there was less division within the Catholic Church because when the Catholics broke from the Eastern Churches, they were one group. There was a higher tendency to absorb more people in the Catholic…

Julian of Norwich, in her Revelations of Divine Love, synthesizes the asceticism which had permeated the Roman Catholic Church from its earliest history with the philosophical advancements made by Saint Thomas Aquinas only one hundred and fifty years before her. She does this seamlessly and almost certainly unintentionally, demonstrating that the philosophical developments of Saint Thomas Aquinas were familiar concepts to her such that they shaped her mystic religious view. Despite the…

Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony to argue that the church has been called on by God to be what they call a “unique colony” within today’s world, and not a social group who makes their decision based on society’s opinions. The authors chose to use the metaphor of a colony to symbolize that although the church is part of the state its first priority is God and his will, rather than the governments. The second metaphor the authors chose to use throughout the book is that Christians are…

increased due to growing trade relationships, disagreements and arguments ensued between opposing cultures. In the 1500s, the Japanese culture was introduced to the Christian religion, which led to political and social unrest in the Asian nation. This unrest quickly evolved into a full persecution of the Japanese converts and foreign Christian missionaries, and there were also numerous laws and limitations placed on other Japanese citizens. In a fictional novel written by Shusaku Endo, this…

Gregory addresses is that God supposedly must exist either as one person or three; that is, that the concept of the Trinity is either impossible, or that it is, in fact, a polytheistic construct. Gregory makes four basic arguments in response to this heresy that are just as enlightening for us today as they were for the early church leaders of his time. Gregory’s first argument is that the word “Godhead” does not imply that there are three gods that together fulfill the role of “God.” This…

There are many people and religious sects that resemble the Scribes and Pharisees from when Jesus was walking the earth. Even though there is plenty of evidence of the events that took place some two thousand years ago, people and religious groups do not believe they had taken place. Some groups that could resemble the Pharisees and Scribes of today lack some of the attributes of the teachers of the past. When Jesus was dealing with the questions of the different religious sects of the day, He…

There are many obstacles that holding the church back from being a helping hand in the care of creation. In an article called We Hug Trees for Jesus we find a number of issues that face the church today. First we see there is a problem with how “Christian Environmentalist” relay our Biblical responsibility to the earth. Second though they are passionate about the need to take care of the earth they can come across to strong trying to force others into believing what they say is true without…

Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears Chapter Summaries Chapter One: Trinity: God Is Humans seek unconditional love for ourselves and for others as well as to live in a perfect world. We are designed by God to need him and his perfect love. We are made to worship and love Him. God is one person, but He has three separate identities: not three separate beings. The Father, Son and the Holy Spirit are all one who is known as God. Jesus is also God, but we…

The Eucharist is an important part of the Catholic, Protestant and Eastern Orthodox Christian traditions. Although the topic and much of the performance associated with the Eucharist is uniform across Christian traditions, the way in which each branch understands the ritual practice of the Eucharist is unique. The Eucharist is an important aspect of the Christianity that incorporates the ritual, social and mythological dimensions in giving meaning to the suffering of Christ and the unity of…

How did Christian thinkers and missionaries adapt Greco-Roman ideas to Christian theology and develop effective techniques for converting barbarian peoples? Christian thinkers and missionaries adapted Christian principles to assimilate social and cultural norms of the time. Church teachings in the third and fourth centuries adapted ideas on gender roles and sexuality to conform to existing Roman values. Furthermore, missionaries seeking to spread Christianity beyond the Roman Empire did so by…