Reformation

In The Grace Awakening, his magnum opus, Dr. Charles R. (Chuck) Swindoll presents himself as fanning the flame of "the torch of freedom" as originally held by protestant Reformers like Martin Luther. In this he convinces his followers that by trusting him and his teaching in The Grace Awakening that they are in line with the historic Reformation teachings of grace and faith alone. Swindoll wrote:

In his magnum opus, The Grace Awakening, Charles R. (Chuck) Swindoll presents himself as taking up "the torch of freedom" as brandished by protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther. In this he leads his readers to believe that by following him and his teaching in The Grace Awakening that they are being true to historical Reformation teaching on the doctrines of grace and faith alone. Consider:

Skee.TV caught up with Bishop Lamont in studio recording the Dr. Dre produced track 'Grow Up', featured on his debut Aftermath album, 'The Reformation'. They talked about Dr. Dre's new $350 headphones 'Beats by Dre' out July 25th in conjunction with

Some observers consider the ten-year reformation period as not having positive impact. The corruption is still occurring and the state bureaucracy is poor.Experts for the state judicial system, Denny Indrayana, said that it is often a member of the DPR involved in the bribery case. DPD does not work properly while it should be in balance. “DPR cut the DPD's authority, they have more power but are uncontrollable so it becomes corrupted,” he said.He said most of the function at the DPR is full of corruption and bribery. Bribery is usually related to bargaining. “Just like what happened with Bintan Forest,” he said.Meanwhile, Supreme Court Justice (MA), Denny said, has corruption and bribery case as well. The decision of the MA refusing the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) indicates the cor

A story receiving much comment is the three year project commissioned by Turkey’s Department of Religious Affairs to revise Islamic hadith, aiming to bring the country’s interpretation of Islam in line with modern realities. Jeb over at FP Watch has an excellent summary of the story and significant reactions, as always. Read the BBC [...]

:: REFORMATIONEN brukar protestanter kalla kyrkohistoriens händelser på 1500-talet med Martin Luther. Då blir det uppenbart att frälsningens evangelium handlar enbart om tron allena. EN ANDRA REFORMATION benämns ibland det som hände på 1700-talet, då pietismen lyfter fram relationen och intimiteten med Herren.EN TREDJE REFORMATION sägs skulle beröra kristenhetens strukturer. Frågan är: Är det möjligt med en reformation av kyrkans och samfundens strukturer? VAD SKULLE denna tredje reformation innebära? Ja, säg det? Kanske en förnyelse i kyrka och samfund som inte bara handlar om förnyelseskeenden som via Oasrörelsen och AKKS. Utan som skulle vara mera genomgripande. Den ursprungliga kyrkomodellen upprättad av Herrens Jesus själv enligt Matt. 16:18 skulle restaureras. Det skulle innebära en Reformation Nr 3. Den lilla församlingen, ekklesian, och den autonoma kyrkomodellen skulle få bli kristenhetens tredje reformation. MÖJLIGT? "Vilken fråga! Det är väl

Happy Reformation Day! Yes, today is Reformation Day. It is Reformation day because on October 31st, 1517 Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of Wittenberg and ignited a storm that brought the gospel of Jesus Christ to the forefront of the church, culture and the mission of the world. To read Luther’s 95 theses or other things written by Martin Luther, go to this website: http://www.monergism.com/directory/link_category/Luther-Martin On another note my daughter is due to be born in five days. They say only 5% of babies are born on their due date. Which in my mind means that she is going to be early because I want her to be. I mean, she’s all done in there, so why not just come out now, you know? I seriously lack the fruit of patience, bad. So I am pretty distracted this week as Amy and I anxiously await this new addition to our family. But at the same time and am exhilarated today as I pause to contemplate and cherish the sublime truth that I am justi

Tim Challies is now hosting the second annual Reformation Day Symposium. Bloggers are invited to write articles dealing with the Reformation. A whole crowd of bloggers have participated and there are a lot of the articles to read. They have been written to celebrate such a monumental occasion in the history of the church.Take some time and visit The 2007 Reformation Day Symposium!

October 31, 1517 is the day that Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk, nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany. In an era when the Gospel had been eclipsed by a system of human merit, Luther and the other reformers were able to remind the people of God that we are declared righteous in the sight of the Lord through faith alone in the person and work of Christ Jesus.Ligonier Ministries is celebrating Reformation Day with a one-day special! On Wednesday, October 31st, buy a hardcover Reformation Study Bible (ESV) for only $15.17.Here's a video with more information on the Reformation Study Bible.

A historical theology sermon addressing the five solas resulting from the Protestant Reformation, that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in the person and work of Jesus Christ alone, revealed in Scripture alone, all for the glory of God alone. This sermon was originally preached October 28th of 2007 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA. (more…)

My apologies to any non-Lutherans who read this blog. The last Sunday in October is our day to commemorate the reformation and the freedom we have in Christ. If you were looking for thoughts about Pentecost 25c please try www.textweek.com.Freedom came to earth in the flesh and blood person of Jesus. He came to give us true freedom to trust both our earthly lives and our eternal lives into God’

Family Reformation is something that is near to my heart. With the grace of God and His Word, our family continually strives to be formed anew each and everyday into the type of obedient family God desires. Here is a link to a great article on family reformation. This next paragraph is a snippet from that article.....So, what is a family reformation? To reform something means to “form anew” or to “rescue from error and return to a rightful course.” Many Christian families are in error. We have churches full of “out of order” families where men are not leading, wives are disrespectful, children are rebellious, and everyone acts and reacts selfishly. Families need to be “formed anew” – reformed into the order God prescribes in His Word.READ MORE.........

Now that the Sangguniang Kabataan Elections is over the need to reform the SK institution is in its highest priority. With reports of politicking and vote buyig even in the SK elections was a sign that the institution is slowly becoming the enclaves of the youngest trapos ever. We call upon everyone to help rebuild this institution for the youth. WE STAND! WE RETAIN! WE REGAIN! No to SK Abolition! Yes to SK Reformation! CLICK HERE TO VIEW FULL TEXT OF THE ORGANIZATIONS OFFICIAL STAND AND MANIFESTO ON THE SANNGUNIANG KABATAAN (SK) CLICK HERE TO ADD YOUR SIGNATURE IN SUPPORT OF THIS MANIFESTO NOTE: If you are an organization and want to support or endorse this petition please do e-mail us at phil_lenin@yahoo.com or text your fullname, organization's name and contact details to 0915-223-8073.

Author: Andrew Pettegree Paperback: 250 pagesPublisher: Cambridge University Press (July 11, 2005)Language: EnglishISBN: 0521602645(R)Why did people choose the Reformation? What was in the evangelical teaching that excited, moved or persuaded them? Andrew Pettegree tackles these questions directly by re-examining the reasons that moved millions to this decisive and traumatic break with a shared Christian past. He charts the separation from family, friends, and workmates that adherence to the new faith often entailed and the new solidarities that emerged in their place. He explores the different media of conversion through which the Reformation message was communicated and the role of drama, sermons, song and the book. His findings offer a persuasive new answer to the critical question of how the Reformation could succeed as a mass movement in an age before mass literacy. Zip Password: T0sT@rN@

Another former jihadist, Mansour al-Nogaidan, is speaking out. It's very encouraging to see writing like this, but at the same time, this is a man who still has a long way to go before he has freed himself entirely of the poison that has afflicted his mind for so long, and he may never succeed (on the other hand, if he is to have any effect at all on his fellow Muslims, he obviously has to present himself as still being a believer): Islam needs a Reformation. It needs someone with the courage of Martin Luther. I don't know that Luther is a particularly good example. And he was protected by powerful men, courage didn't much play into it. Luther just sat on his toilet, squeezing out his ideas, when he wasn't looking over his shoulder to see if the Devil was after him. We should also remember that Protestantism led to all sorts of Bible thumpers, preachers, televangelists and strange sects and cults being inflicted on the world over the centuries - hardly a good model for Islam to f

It's always darkest before the dawn is true in more ways than one. We have Islamist terrorists on one hand and guys like this on the other. A very inspirational piece that bears repeating here!GUEST POST: Losing My Jihadism, Opinion - Mansour al-NogaidanThe Washington Post:Islam needs a Reformation. It needs someone with the courage of Martin Luther.This is the belief I’ve arrived at after a long and painful spiritual journey. It’s not a popular conviction — it has attracted angry criticism, including death threats, from many sides. But it was reinforced by Sept. 11, 2001, and in the years since, I’ve only become more convinced that it is critical to Islam’s future.Muslims are too rigid in our adherence to old, literal interpretations of the Koran. It’s time for many verses — especially those having to do with relations between Islam and other religions — to be reinterpreted in favor of a more modern Islam. Daniel Shayesteh talks about his former life as a member of th

As I mentioned in Part 2, a common stereotype of Protestant ethics is that it is wedded to nominalism. While this may be true for some (particularly modern) Protestant ethicists, it is false for Peter Martyr Vermigli and Jerome Zanchi, two older Reformed moral theologians. Before showing how this is so, and still by way of introduction, I want to point to four doctrines where natural law exerts some influence.First, it is important to recognize that none of the confessional documents of the magisterial Reformation — whether Lutheran or Reformed — rejected the doctrine of natural law. In fact, those documents universally state that Gentiles — though outsiders to God's special revelation to Israel in the law and the prophets — remain accountable to the moral law by means of the natural knowledge of God's will experienced in creation, conscience, and reason. Confessional examples abound to prove this point, but I will mention only what the Second Helvetic Confession (1566) sta

This post will begin a discussion of natural law in the thought of the Reformer Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562), but first I want to touch on the broader issue of natural law in the context of Reformation theology.More than any other Reformer, John Calvin is appealed to for his insight on natural law. This is probably due to the stubborn persistence among scholars to single him out as the chief early codifier of Protestant doctrine. While this approach is understandable given the force of habit, the discussion should be widened beyond Calvin to include those Reformers who either preceded him or were contemporaries of his and the later representatives of Protestant orthodoxy. Though Calvin talks a fair bit about natural law, his treatment of it is unsystematic and imprecise compared to the medievals and some of his contemporaries. Susan Schreiner, a Calvin expert and University of Chicago Divinity School professor, thinks Calvin's discussion of natural law should be seen as an exten

This post examines Peter Martyr Vermigli's understanding of natural law, while Part 6 will take up the natural-law thinking of Jerome Zanchi, Martyr's former student and colleague.Martyr was born in Florence in 1499, entered the Augustinian Canons, and took a doctorate in theology at the leading center of Renaissance Aristotelianism, the University of Padua. His favorite authors were Aristotle and Thomas. In Italy he enjoyed a distinguished career as teacher, preacher, and abbot. By 1540 he was already Protestant by conviction; after persuading many citizens and canons, including Zanchi, to convert, Martyr fled to Zurich in 1542 to escape the Inquisition. During the last twenty years of his life he taught at Strasbourg, Oxford, and Zurich. He died in 1562 two years before Calvin. Over half a dozen of his students became important theologians. And all together there were about 110 printings of his various writings, which consist of about twenty-five massive volumes. Within Reformed ci

This post sketches out the rough outline of Jerome Zanchi's understanding of natural law. An interesting difference between Zanchi and Martyr is that Thomistic elements are far more important in Zanchi's theology than in Martyr's theology.The historian John Patrick Donnelly thinks Zanchi is the best example of "Calvinist Thomism," meaning a theologian who was Reformed in theology and Thomistic in philosophy and methodology. Zanchi was born and raised near Bergamo where he entered the Augustinian Canons and received a Thomistic training. Martyr was his prior at Lucca and was instrumental in his conversion to Protestantism. Zanchi spent ten years as a Nicodemite, or crypto-Calvinist, teaching theology before fleeing north to Geneva in 1552, where he studied for a year under Calvin. Later he served as professor of theology at Strasbourg, Heidelberg, and Neustadt until his death in 1590. After his death his relatives gathered most of his writings into his Opera in eight large tome

As I mentioned in Part 1 of this series, my aim is to probe the natural-law doctrines of only a few influential sixteenth-century Protestant theologians. Some, such as John Calvin, may already be familiar to you, while others, such as Peter Martyr Vermigli (known as Martyr) and Jerome Zanchi, may be entirely new. What is surprising about Martyr and Zanchi is how much their natural-law doctrines are in line with the metaphysical essentialism of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. Before going any further I should forewarn you that what I just said challenges a good many Protestant and Roman Catholic stereotypes.The most common stereotype is that the Reformers and their successors were indebted to the nominalist metaphysics of William of Occam, which resulted in the Bible being treated as a law book and God being conceived as an arbitrary and irrational sovereign. In subsequent posts, this interpretation will be examined in relation to the thought of Marytr and Zanchi. So stay tuned for more

This post will introduce what I intend to be an extended series concerned with recovering and reviving the catholicity of Protestant ethics.Protestant catholicity? Isn't this an oxymoron? It may come as a surprise in light of a common stereotype of Protestant theology, but the older Protestant understanding of reason, the divine will, and natural law actually provided a bulwark against the notion of a capricious God, unbounded by truth and goodness, as Pope Benedict recently pointed out in relation to Islam's understanding of God. "In all honesty," he states,one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which ultimately led to the claim that we can only know God's "voluntas ordinata." Beyond this is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue of which he could have

This post concludes my series on the largely forgotten catholicity of Protestant ethics, with a few brief remarks and reflections.My goal for this series, as stated in Part 1, was to show that voluntarism and nominalism are not the same thing, that two important Reformed theologians (Peter Martyr Vermigli and Jerome Zanchi) had more than a passing interest in Thomism (or intellectualism as Pope Benedict XVI referred to it in his now famous Regensburg address), and that evangelicals need to revisit their wariness on the capacity of reason to discern moral truth. Much more could be written on each of these topics, and likely will be on this blog and some others, but the fundamental point should not be missed that two significant sixteenth-century Reformed theologians break the modern mold for Protestant ethics. Among the thinkers and writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, I can assure you there are numerous others who also break the mold.For almost one hundred years now, Pro

ON OCTOBER 31st in 1517, Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses to the door of the church at Wittenberg and changed the course of history. TODAY we celebrate All Saints’ Day, November 1st, Tomorrow All Souls’ Day, November 2nd. About these two two days (in Swedish). And… yesterday was REFORMATION DAY, October 31st. Therefore we celebrate a sort of Triduum during the fall, when storms, snow and darkness cover Sweden, where the Christianity needs just a New Reformation. You can listen to a Martin Luther "Here I Stand"-speech 31 October 1517 here.REFLECTION To all Lutheran friends Happy Reformation Day! during this Triduum the fall 2006. And to all friends that are (un)Lutherans: Let’s all together in Christianity pray and work for a New Reformation where Sola Scripture gets a broader space. ::

MARTIN LUTHER, protestantismens fader, spikade sina 95 teser om avlaten på slottskyrko-porten i Wittenberg den 31 oktober 1517. Efter reformationens start för 489 år sedan har kristenheten ”decentraliserats” ut till 9,000 eller kanske rentav 33,000 samfund beroende på hur man räknat. DAVE ARMSTRONG, själv protestantisk apologet under 10 år, innan han konverterade till den katolska kyrkan, ägnar Luther stor uppmärksamet. Imponerande är hans produktion! Index page ut för artiklar om Protestantism. Dave Armstrong skriver självfallet gärna om alla protestantismens samfund. - SVERIGE har 59 samfund, och globalt finns det åtminstone 9,000 samfund.REFLEKTION Martin Luther och Dave Armstrong är i olika mån inspirerande utmanare för kristenheten. Vi behöver flera apologeter i den protestantiska och svenska världen. Vi behöver re-formation av den kristenhet som - med modernismen och postkristen-domens era – alltmera tappar grund och gräns för den kristna trons autenticitet och

APOSTOLISK tro och lära... det allmänna prästadömet... Bibel- och bekännelsetro... Behöver vi en ny reformation - och mera omfattande än den på 1500-talet? Är samfunds- och kyrkostrukturernas pyramidabla överbyggnader hinder för Evangelium "i fullt mått" att bryta igenom med Himlens fulla och välsignande närvaro i samhälle och enskildas hjärtan? Heretiskt provocerande, eller? Mera...Technorati Tags: reformation apostolisk tro - Andra bloggar om: samfundstro, kyrklighet, apostolicitet ::