A History of Christian Theology

Class Notes #12 – January 17, 2007

Chapters 15

1. O God, who hast sent thy beloved Son to be unto us the Way, the Truth and the Life, Grant that we, looking unto him, may set forward the teaching power of thy Church, to the nurture of thy people, the increase of thy Kingdom, and the glory of thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

2. Recap last class – January 10, 2007
   1. Summary of Anglican theological ‘ethos’ – pp 228 (green)
      
      
3. English Puritans & Quakers
   1. Generally Calvinistic
   2. Opposed any form of church structure – clergy, structures, etc
   3. Emphasized ‘inner experience’ and minimized or denied the importance of scripture (vs Anglican speaker in 16th or 17^th Century debate – see page 232) and the bodily resurrection.
   4. Believed ‘real’ conversion left one certain of salvation and free from moral faults.
   5. Westminster Confession & Catechisms

4. The Age of Reason
   1. Voltaire & others – belief in God, while maybe still held, was no longer the central point of their life or understanding of the world (pp 237).

                                                               i.      (God is no longer important or of interest because of our place in His creation; rather he is important because of the place we make for Him in our lives” (pp 238)

2. Placher’s five reasons for the center of thought to move from God to man (pp 238):

                                                               i.      Religious wars of the 15^th, 16^th and 17^th centuries

                                                             ii.      Increasing interaction between different cultures and faiths

                                                            iii.      Skepticism (Descartes)

                                                           iv.      Scientific development

                                                             v.      Increasing power of the states

3. In England – the rise of Latitudinarians in response to the distrust of the Puritans on the one hand and the Roman’s on the other (pp 241)

                                                               i.      Promoted a broadness of belief that nearly all sects could be accommodated.

1.      Just how broad can we be and still be Christian? How does this problem apply to the world today?

4. Locke – The Reasonableness of Christianity

                                                               i.      Locke believed a moral life and a simple faith (affirming the divinity of Christ) brought salvation

                                                             ii.      As is so often true, however, Locke’s disciples passed him by

5. Deism

                                                               i.      Rejected revealed religion, believing that nothing more than Natural Religion was necessary

                                                             ii.      Distrusted authority

                                                            iii.      Generally rejected the miraculous

6. Enthusiasm, Pietists and Methodists

                                                               i.      Pietism evolved as a reaction against rationalism

1.      Emphasized personal meditation and reform of believers’ life.

2.      Moravians

                                                             ii.      Methodism (pp 246-247)

1.      Greater emphasis on personal responsibility to turn from sin

a.       Rejected Baptismal Regeneration

2.      Greater emphasis on morality and lowered emphasis on dogma

3.      Rejected predestination (differing significantly from Whitfield on this question)

4.      In the end, Wesley’s ‘Holy Clubs’ lead to a new denomination while Whitefield’s followers became the Evangelical wing of Anglicanism.

5. End of the 18^th Century brought the end of the ‘Age of Reason’
   1. Hume and those after him applied their skepticism to science as well as faith