Survey Of Church History – Rationalism, Protestant Reformation, And John Wesley

Rationalism- To base opinions and ideas on facts and logical reasoning

• Three Christian Humanists are John Colet, Thomas More, and Desiderius Erusmus.
• The three subjects that Calvin studied and became familiar with are Humanism, Lutheranism, and the Early Church Fathers.
• The reasons why great missionary reformist expansions were taking place in the Church was because of immorality, political corruption and nepotism.
• The Methodist Church was formed by John Wesley and his group and the name was derived from the fact that the group used to conduct a methodical study of the Bible. Charles Wesley his brother was also an important member of the group. George Whitefield in the beginning was working together with Wesley but they later got separated on the difference over the idea of predestination. The idea of Whitefield was that the decision of damnation was taken by God since eternity. Wesley however did not believe in this ideal as this was against the idea of compassion of God. The two streams worked separately and both of them gathered many followers, however with time it was seen that the Wesley Methodist Church has gathered mch more followers.
• Deism- Deism is the belief in ultimately powerful Supreme God who is the creator of all reality and the whole universe however who do not interfere in the life of the created individuals (Ingram 2017).

Rationalism- To base the opinions and ideas on facts and logical reasoning rather than on abstract theories which cannot be actually proved in real world situations.

• Most of the Christians in the 19^thCentury had the idea that there country was progressing, however such progress was not actually visible in the real world situations. Along with that the idea of biological racism within the human world grew, in which it is stated that some of the human races were more advanced than others. These are some of the strange ideas that grew in the 19^th
• Pentecostalism means a revolution within the protestant Christianity and it is a renewal movement (Kay 2016). The idea is to mainly renew the traditional religious practices and to give an experience of the individual to be personally united with the Supreme Lord by baptism with the Holy Spirit. Therefore the two most important things to remember about Pentacostalism are union with the supreme on a personal level and baptism through the Holy Spirit.
• 1806
• The basic belief of Christian equality is that the people are equal before the eyes of the God and the Christ. All people have equal responsibilities towards serving the Lord in the similar ways. “All people are equal before God, and are equal in church, home, and society.” Discrimination is not a valid Christian view.

2.1 Germany had been progressing in various ways during the time before the Protestant Reformation movement finally happened. The two primary factors which led to the reformation movement in Germany was the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg in 1440 and the political organization of the German States as members of the Holy Roman Empire when Martin Luther stated his 95 theses (Wengert 2017). Protestantism are very close concepts of Germany, and were exclusively found in Germany that was then attached to the Holy Roman Empire in the years between 1510 and 1520 (Becker, Pfaff and Rubin 2016). The starting of Christianization of Germany happened in mainly the western part of the country. Before the advent of Protestantism the political scenario of Germany was chaotic and after the fall of the King Henry IV, the dukes in the country had elected their own king the Rudolf of Swabia. Latin as a language fallen at this time and the prevalent written language was German itself, the nationhood of Germany was rising at this time. Therefore there was a natural rise of people’s opposition against the all-powerful Church which they deemed an institution that harmed the nationalism within the country however it is not true that the people were not any more religious. Christian humanism was a concept that was going hand in hand with the reformation movement and brought about a renewed interest in the art, religious education and personal spirituality. It was actually an encouragement to the growth of protestant movement.

2.1 Johann Tetzel and Martin Luther had some basic differences about the views about God and how they perceived spirituality and religion (French 2017). Johann Tetzel was a catholic preacher under the Dominican Order which was radically different from the idea of Martin Luther about spirituality. The idea of Protestantism is that the words of Bible are final and the religious guidance to a Christian can be found in the Bible alone, however the Catholic movement gave importance to the teachings of the Church, the spiritual leaders and the traditions. Therefore this difference was visible in their religious views as well. Catholicism and Protestantism have particular perspectives on the significance and the expert of the Bible. For Protestant Christians, Luther clarified that the Bible is the “Sola Skriptura,” God’s solitary book, in which He gave His disclosures to the general population and which enables them to enter in fellowship with Him (Luther 2016). Catholics, then again, don’t construct their convictions with respect to the Bible alone. Alongside the Holy Scripture, they are furthermore bound by the customs of the Roman Catholic Church. Therefore this is the basic difference between the idea of Tetzel and Luther in their own areas of religious belief.

2.3 Protestantism in South Africa represented 73.2% of the populace in 2010. Its history goes back to the underlying European settlement on the Cape of Good Hope in 1652. From that point forward, Protestantism has been the prevalent religion of the European pilgrims and today, of South Africa all in all (Cabrita and Erlank 2018). The center of Protestant showing exists in the Five Solae (Latin: ‘Alone’), which give a rundown of Protestant religious philosophy. Basically, Protestantism is portrayed by accentuation on the Bible as the sole wellspring of dependable truth and the principle of salvation by effortlessness through confidence alone (These are known as the formal and material reasons for the Reformation individually). Also, Protestants have generally energized private elucidation of the sacred texts by people as opposed to depending on the understanding of the congregation (just like the case, for instance in Roman Catholicism with its Magisterium, or educating specialist). Sacred text is said to be perspicuous or clear with respect to the basic certainties of salvation. Because of varying elucidations, different categories have risen, for example, Baptists, Lutherans and Methodists, each holding their own particular conventions. Therefore it can be stated that the local theology is more like Martin Luther than Tetzel.

Factors leading to the reformation movement in Germany

3.1 John Wesley was a renowned minister of the eighteenth C. He served to establish the Methodist development. John Wesley was conceived on 17 June 1703 in the town of Epworth in Lincolnshire. His dad was Samuel Wesley and his mom was Susanna. In 1714 John had went to Charterhouse school. In the year 1720 Wesley visited the Oxford University. In 1724 he was granted a Bachelors of Arts and in the year 1727 a Masters of Arts. John Wesley was appointed a cleric in 1728. In 1729 John Wesley turned into a guide at Oxford University (Simon 2017). At the time he established a religious and spiritual club and individuals nicknamed them the Methodists. At that point in the year 1735 John had been to Northern America. Anyway his times in the province of Georgia wasn’t a win and he came back to England in the year 1738. However on the expedition to Georgia Wesley encountered some German Moravians and he was profoundly awed by those people. In the year 1738 Wesley’s experience and life was transformed when he was going to a religious and spiritual gathering in the city of London. He afterwards said that someone was perusing Martin Luther’s Preface to Romans. Then John Wesley stated ‘I felt my heart unusually warmed’. A short time later he turned into an extraordinary minister. On his voyage, Wesley turned out to be profoundly inspired by the quiet confidence of the Moravian pilgrims. At the point when a tempest startled the travelers, Wesley noticed how the Moravians tried to avoid panicking humming their psalms and asking. This urged the person to gaze all the more profoundly at their spiritual practices and devotion. Be that as it may, Wesley gone away from the city of Georgia underneath a cloud after an association with a lady went bad. She guaranteed Wesley had guaranteed to wed her, however Wesley had severed the rapport. Wesley was striven for breaching his statement; this brought about a malfeasance, and, after this understanding, he cleared out America to come back to England. In England, Wesley turned into a prominent evangelist in the Anglican Church. Wesley respected the evangelist George Whitefield who delivered great messages in the outside to individuals rejected from Church. Later an underlying hesitance, Wesley additionally started offering open air messages, trying to interest a more extensive scope of ‘miscreants’ than cooked for by the customary church. Wesley ended up a standout amongst the most productive ministers and explorers ever. He constantly went around the nation, offering messages any place individuals would get him. In the event that he was welcome to talk in a congregation he would, if that did not happen he was agreed in talking outside. It is assessed by Stephen Tomkins that he “gave away 30,000 pounds, rode 250,000 miles, and lectured in excess of 40,000 messages.” Wesley showed a basic regulation of urging individuals to admit their transgressions and utilize the customary techniques for elegance to purify the adherent. An outstanding part of his theory was instructing that everybody could encounter the adoration for God in this lifetime – on the off chance that they were true in their training. Wesley proliferated the possibility of an individual association with God – as opposed to the somewhat unapproachable thought recommended by the conventional High Church. Wesley was likewise persuaded of the significance of Holy Scripture. He connected every one of his lessons to the Bible and saw the Bible as a definitive specialist.

Basic differences between Johann Tetzel and Martin Luther’s views about God

3.2 The missionaries who were working for preaching mission in the Northern part of America were endeavoring to spread Christianity however the colonial authority was more driven by political motives therefore they often deviated from their missionary principles.

4.1 Established church, a church perceived by law as the official church of a state or country and bolstered by common specialist. Despite the fact that not entirely made by a legitimate get, the lawful foundation is more similar to an authoritative substance than like whatever else and, in this way, normally can’t be shifted or denied by just a single gathering to it. The church isn’t allowed to roll out improvements in such things as regulation, request, or love without the assent of the state. In tolerating such commitments, the church generally, however not generally, gets money related help and other extraordinary benefits.

Disestablishmentarianism alludes to battles to disjoin interfaces among church and state, especially in connection to the Church of England as an established church inside the United Kingdom (Royce 2017). The crusade to disestablish the Anglican Church of Ireland started in the eighteenth century. Given that in Ireland not in any case ostensible adherence by the prevalently Roman Catholic larger part populace could be normal for the (Protestant) established Church, protection of the last turned out to be progressively troublesome, particularly after Catholic Emancipation. In 1833 a Church Reform Bill was passed, diminishing the quantity of sees from 22 to 12, yet endeavors to redistribute the church’s riches fizzled in the midst of political contention.

4.2 Biblical criticism is an umbrella term for those techniques for concentrate the Bible that states two firm points of view: the worry to maintain a strategic distance from creed and inclination by applying a non-partisan, reason-based judgment, and the reproduction of history as indicated by contemporary comprehension (Fuller 2015). While with present day writings it is normally conceivable to check the printed duplicate against the writer’s original copy, this isn’t conceivable with old biblical writings. For no situation has the creator’s unique content, the signature duplicate, been saved. What have survived are duplicates of the first (or, all the more precisely, duplicates of duplicates), interpretations of the first into different dialects, and citations of the first by later creators. Frequently, these were composed numerous years, even hundreds of years, after the fact. Amid this mediating period, various changes happened, in the wording as well as the content. Now and again, whole areas of the first have been lost, and along these lines what remains is fragmented. Or then again, in different cases, maybe just bits of the first content have been safeguarded, regularly in light of the fact that just certain entries have been cited by different creators.

Modernism denies the scriptural portrayal of the idea of God. The God of the Old Testament is viewed as a derisive god of retribution and is rejected. Albrecht Ritschl, for instance, renounced the Bible confirmations with respect to Jehovah’s heavenliness and fierceness and saw the Lord exclusively as a being of affection. This view disregards the equity of God, neglecting to perceive that Jehovah will rebuff the rebel. Modernism receives a higher basic state of mind toward the Bible, which overlooks the declaration of Scripture itself. For precedent, it is asserted that Moses did not creator the Pentateuch, as both Old and New Testament proof propose. As far as anyone knows, the initial five books of the Bible are nevertheless an aggregation of archives.

Protestantism in South Africa

4.3 Quite a bit of what we know as biblical criticism today began with modernity, yet enthusiasm for understanding the significance of biblical writings is significantly more established than that. Indeed the Bible itself perceives the requirement for the clarification and elucidation of its substance. The look for understanding the Bible’s importance begins with specific inquiries not just about the substance of individual books, yet additionally about when, why, how these books were created. To give sensible answers to these inquiries, biblical researchers have utilized logical and quasiscientific techniques. It must, in any case, be said that biblical criticism is as much a craftsmanship as it is a science. Its items are the interests we have in knowing as much as we can about the Bible, its reality, its thoughts, its lessons, in fact its exceptionally truth. The purpose of flight for any sort of biblical criticism, at that point, is the human want to know whatever can be thought about the Book of scriptures.

4.4 The Germany Church had talked in contradiction to the ascent of Nazism, however the Catholic adjusted Center Party gave in 1933 and was prohibited. In the different 1933 decisions the level of Catholics voting in favor of the Nazis party was strikingly lower than the normal (Strehle 2017). Nazi key ideologist Alfred Rosenberg was prohibited on the file of the Inquisition, directed by later pope Pius XII. Adolf Hitler and a few key Nazis had been raised Catholic, however in adulthood wound up unfriendly to the Church. Article 24 in the NSDAP party stage called for contingent toleration of Christian groups and the 1933 Reichskonkordat bargain with the Vatican implied to ensure religious opportunity for Catholics, the Nazis were basically antagonistic to the religion and the Catholic Church confronted abuse in Nazi Germany. Its youth associations, press and schools and were shut, much possessions appropriated and about 33% of its pastorate confronted responses from specialists. Catholic lay pioneers were focused in the Night of the Long Knives cleanse. The Church chain of command endeavored to co-work with the new administration, yet in the year 1937, it is important to mention that the Papal Encyclical Mit brennender Sorge blamed the legislature for “essential antagonistic vibe” to the church. Catholics battled on the two parties in the World War 2. Then Hitler’s attack of prevalently Catholic Poland touched off the contention in the year 1939. Here, particularly in the regions of the country Poland attached to the Reich, and as in other added locales of Austria  and Slovenia, Nazi mistreatment of the congregation was extreme.

African Independent Churches which are also known as African Indigenous Churches, African Instituted Churches or African Initiated Churches (AIC) are the independent 10000 Churches which are spread across the continent of Africa and are comprised of the Christian denominations of Africa (Ngoepe and Ngulube 2014). These are more found in aggregate in the Western part of Africa. The main feature of these Churches are that they were established by the local African endeavors instead of foreign missionaries coming to the country. There are some very unique features and traditions that feature these Churches. Two ways these churches primarily came into being by the endeavors of the local Christian devotees, and not by foreign hands, either by breaking up from existing Churches or independently getting established. There are explanations that these churches are actually a combined syncretic belief of the local indigenous African traditions and the Christian faith. There are Roman Catholic, Anglican, Pentecostal, Orthodox, and Methodist AIC traditions. Other variations include Ethiopian, Zionist, or Messianic and apostolic.

Throwing off the white mask in this regard is mainly the phenomenon of doing away with the dominance of the white people in field of Christian religion. It was one of the most common feature of Christianity to see that the white skinned people occupying all the important positions in the church. The independent Churches in Africa are mainly constituted and run by the Black skinned indigenous African people. Therefore this is the phenomenon of throwing off the white mask.

5.2 The African Indigenous Churches or African Independent Churches are often seen as a problem to the demographic situation Africa. Often the traditions and customs followed by these Churches are not supported by the Vatican and the final authorities of the Catholic or protestant churches. The churches are spreading quickly across the continent and there are communal problems with mainstream Christian churches and also other religions. This is one of the issues pertaining the existence and spread of these churches. There are some times resistance from various quarters and the Catholic Church is often against the further spread of these churches.  There are various factions of the African Independent Churches which include the protestant variants as already mentioned.

5.3

1. a)  Georg Schmidt who was a zealous Moravian missionary  was one of the person who had great interest in preaching work and wanted to spread the words of Christ to distant lands which often put him into great trouble because many of the governments was doubtful about his desires. The state of DRC also therefore did not approve of his activities and there was friction among both the parties.
2. b) The congregational churches are of independent protestant churches in which each of the congregation manages itself and follows its own administration. The arrival of congregationalism in South Africa started with the arrival of protestant religious movement in the country. They are helpful in spreading the message of Christianity at a local level.  
3. c) The Ordinance 50 was helpful in bring a change in the autocratic and despicable system of slavery and discrimination by the British colonists to the African colonies (South Africa). The ordnance which was brought by the person called Dr. John Philip helped in bringing equality by stating that law is same for all people of any color.
4. d) The Boers were the farmers in the British colony of South Africa who used to mainly speak in Dutch. The great Trek was actually the movement of these settlers on wagon trains in the interior parts of the South Africa to escape British colonial forces. The Boers were of mixed religion however the common religion was Calvinism.
5. e) The problem and friction between Bishop Grey of Cape Town and Bishop Colenso of Pietermaritzburg was mainly on the issue of theology and philosophy. Bishop Grey was very strict about his theology and also held high value to his own role and expected Colenso to obey him. Colenso did controversial things like giving baptism to polygamous men.
6. f) Doppers Church or the Calvinist church developed in the Transvaal region which was mainly result of the Afgeskeie Gereformeerde Kerk of Holand. This was a part of the reformation movement within the Christian religion.

Reference:

Becker, S.O., Pfaff, S. and Rubin, J., 2016. Causes and consequences of the Protestant Reformation. Explorations in Economic History, 62, pp.1-25.

Cabrita, J. and Erlank, N., 2018. New Histories of Christianity in South Africa: Review and introduction, pp.123-190.

French, H.F. ed., 2017. Martin Luther’s Table Talk: Abridged From Luther’s Works, Volume 54. (pp.220-290) Fortress Press.

Fuller, R.C., 2015. Alexander Geddes 1737-1802: Pioneer of Biblical Criticism (pp.250-310) Bloomsbury Publishing.

Ingram, R.G., 2017. Atheism and Deism Revalued: Heterodox Religious Identities in Britain, 1650–1800, ed. Wayne Hudson, Diego Lucci and Jeffrey R. Wigelsworth, pp.190-300.

Kay, W.K., 2016. Pentecostalism. In The Wisdom of the Spirit (pp. 63-76). Routledge.

Luther, M., 2016. The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, 1520: The Annotated Luther (pp.163-210) Fortress Press.

Ngoepe, M. and Ngulube, P., 2014. Eternal memory or holy amnesia? Preservation of, and access to records and archives of African independent churches in South Africa. ESARBICA Journal, 33, p.36.

Royce, M.R., 2017. The Christian Federalism of Germany. In The Political Theology of European Integration (pp. 261-290). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Simon, J.S., 2017. John Wesley and the Religious Societies. Wipf and Stock Publishers.

Strehle, S., 2017. The Dark Side of Church/State Separation: The French Revolution, Nazi Germany, and International Communism (pp.150-250) Routledge.

Wengert, T.J., 2017. The 95 Theses as a Template for Lasting Liturgical Reform.