Sanctification and Reformation

Three minutes in the history of thought: This is a prequel to another post that is coming soon. Here, I simply lay out the terms pre-modernism, modernism, and post-modernism. They are not terms a lot of folks are familiar with and it helps to understand a little of where they came from. So history is divided into three large sections of thinking and knowledge. There are other ways to break up history but this is the division that makes the most sense to me. The pre-modern era : This is all of history leading up to the reformation of the 16 th century. God was seen as the principle center who created us to know him and the world around us; which he also created. The thinking of man followed a line of reasoning: I believe, in order to understand. I believe in God and he grants me understanding in matters for which I would not have been able to comprehend before. In other words, truth is revealed to me by God and defined by God in his word. The enlightenment p

Every denomination has an explanation for predestination. However, they all fall into one of three categories: Pelagianism, Semi-Pelagianism, and Augustinianism.   Some today would object to those categories but they’re accurate in where they came from historically.   Today we call  Semi-Pelagianism  = Arminianism and we call Augustinianism = Calvinism. In the next few posts I will undertake the doctrine of biblical predestination/election, give some portion of its history through the NT church age, what it consists of and means, and why it matters.   This is by no means exhaustive. So, let’s begin with how the debate began. The church underwent a great many trials in the fourth century and the staunch defender of the faith who arose was Saint Augustine of Hippo in the fifth century. This was in Hippo Regius which was located in modern-day Annaba, Algeria. After some time, a British monk by the name of Pelagius was appalled by the moral laxity he observed among Christ

On August 2 nd , 1939 mathematician Albert Einstein wrote a personal letter to then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.   Einstein could see the writing on the wall as he reviewed research being conducted by German scientists.   In the letter he warned the United States President that if German research continued, they would develop a process by which a “nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium” would result.   In other words, an atom bomb. He did not understand the gravity of his words at that time but it was those very words that caused the president to immediately demand the US take action.   The next actions resulted in the Manhattan Project, the development of our own atomic bomb, and the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 which castrated Japan and Germany ending World War II.  Albert Einstein’s letter is the way many people believe New Testament writers wrote the scriptures.  Many people mistakenly believe that when the NT writers wrote, they had