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Tag Archives: jonathan edwards

Church History & Emotionally Healthy Spirituality

I am finding that I need to speak more frequently about why a proper understanding of our church family history is paramount for growing spiritually. (click to see a larger version) I emphasize three critically important, major truths: 1. There was only one church for the first 1054 years. The first major split happened between the Eastern and Western church then. This was followed by the split of the Roman Catholic church in 1517 when Protestantism was born. Since then we have had over 200,000 other splits with countless Protestant and independent churches. So my particular tribe (evangelical) is finds itself far up into the upper right of the above chart. This is not a bad thing but I/we come from a family genogram. We are not the whole church by any means. And the church did not start with Luther, Calvin and the Reformers. 2. We need to learn from other traditions of. Read more.

Listening to God through Fallen Vessels

I receive e mails regularly from people who are troubled that I am quoting and learning from people who do not have a solid evangelical theology, who might be universalists, or tend towards a works-righteousness, or pray to saints. The following are a few points to consider to help us remain humble and teachable as we seek to listen to God. Firstly, many of our great evangelical heroes also appeared to have some large holes in their theological armor. Consider Jonathan Edwards who owned slaves like his father before him and even defended the practice, arguing the colonies were dependent on it. (However, he also was the first pastor in Northampton to baptize “negroes” and admit them into full membership.) John Calvin endorsed the drowning of an Anabaptist, that is a fellow-believer who believed in baptism by immersion for believers alone! Martin Luther was an anti-Semite. Hitler quoted those portions of his writings. CT. Read more.