scholarly journals Die aktualisering van die gemeenskap van die gelowiges binne die erediens

1991 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. F. Van der Merwe ◽  
M. J. Du P Beukes

The actualising of the commimity of believers within public worship The youth experiences the public service in the Nederduitsch Hervormde Church of Africa as cold and dead. According to investigations it feels that the public service lacks warmth and intimate atmosphere. Therefore this article wants to investigate the community of believers in the church. The question of how the church can realise the community of believers is raised. To reach this point, firstly the Bible and the articles of faith is investigated, and after that a look is taken at the nature of the public service, and the actualising of the believers.

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Hendrik L. Bosman

Jacobus Eliza Johannes Capitein (1717-1747) was a man of many firsts-the first black student of theology at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, the first black minister ordained in the Dutch Reformed Church in the Netherlands, the author of the first Fante/Mfantse-Dutch Grammar in Ghana as well as the first translator of the Ten Commandments, Twelve Articles of Faith and parts of the Catechism into Fante/Mfantse. However, he is also remembered as the first African to argue in writing that slavery was compatible with Christianity in the public lecture that he delivered at Leiden in 1742 on the topic, De Servitute Libertati Christianae Non Contraria. The Latin original was soon translated into Dutch and became so popular in the Netherlands that it was reprinted five times in the first year of publication. This contribution will pose the question: Was Capitein a sell-out who soothed the Dutch colonial conscience as he argued with scholarly vigour in his dissertation that the Bible did not prohibit slavery and that it was therefore permissible to continue with the practice in the eighteenth century; or was he resisting the system by means of mimicry due to his hybrid identity - as an African with a European education - who wanted to spread the Christian message and be an educator of his people?


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Hugh Pattenden

Abstract This article considers attacks on reredoses in the late Victorian Church of England with the objective of placing such controversies within the context of anti-idolatry and anti-ritualism campaigns of the period. By doing so it seeks to rectify the lack of focus in the historiography on how the ritualist controversy affected discussion of changes to church architecture. In particular, by using local newspapers, it extends consideration of the reredos issue beyond the two main cases, namely those of Exeter and St Paul’s cathedrals. It argues that the reredos cases provide a powerful tool for considering how the Church of England moved towards a more ‘catholic’ position on ornamentation during this period, showing how it became impossible for the more Protestant members of the Church to prevent what they saw as the ‘Romanization’ of ecclesiastical spaces. This was part of a broader process by which ornamentation was coming to be accepted on purely aesthetic terms, and not as a challenge to the theology of the Church of England. It further assesses the significance of the Public Worship Regulation Act 1874 in relation to cases involving church fabric, arguing that the introduction of the bishops’ veto had only limited practical effects on such disputes.


Author(s):  
Erika Rummel

Although Erasmus was not a systematic philosopher, he gave a philosophical cast to many of his writings. He believed in the human capacity for self-improvement through education and in the relative preponderance of nurture over nature. Ideally, education promoted docta pietas, a combination of piety and learning. Erasmus’ political thought is dominated by his vision of universal peace and the notions of consensus and consent, which he sees as the basis of the state. At the same time he upholds the ideal of the patriarchal prince, a godlike figure to his people, but accountable to God in turn. Erasmus’ epistemology is characterized by scepticism. He advocates collating arguments on both sides of a question but suspending judgment. His scepticism does not extend to articles of faith, however. He believes in absolute knowledge through revelation and reserves calculations of probability for cases that are not settled by the authority of Scripture or the doctrinal pronouncements of the Church, the conduit of divine revelation. Erasmus’ pioneering efforts as a textual critic of the Bible and his call for a reformation of the Church in its head and members brought him into conflict with conservative Catholic theologians. His support for the Reformation movement was equivocal, however. He refused to endorse the radical methods of the reformers and engaged in a polemic with Luther over the question of free will. On the whole, Erasmus was more interested in the moral and spiritual than in the doctrinal aspects of the Reformation. He promoted inner piety over the observance of rites, and disparaged scholastic speculations in favour of the philosophia Christi taught in the gospel. The term ‘Christian humanism’ best describes Erasmus’ philosophy, which successfully combined Christian thought with the classical tradition revived by Renaissance humanists.


2019 ◽  
pp. 241-270
Author(s):  
Terryl Givens ◽  
Brian M. Hauglid

Christian creeds go back to the first Christian centuries. Catholics produced creeds largely to establish the lines demarcating orthodoxy and heresy. Protestants at first were hostile to creeds and often invoked the Bible as the lone and sufficient creed for Christians. Joseph Smith’s hostility to creeds was common, especially among other restorationists. Eventually virtually all Protestants realized that without a creed, boundary maintenance was impossible. Early missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints found it necessary to summarize and define the uniqueness of their message—effectively creating the first creeds. Joseph Smith, explicitly hostile to creeds as too circumscribing of belief, found himself forced by the same imperative to articulate his own summation of Mormon teachings. His Thirteen Articles of Faith are, however, wholly inadequate as a creed, since they omit many of the most core doctrines of the church. They are best understood, in Rodney Stark’s formula, as establishing an optimum tension with competing religious faiths—not too radical and not too familiar.


2000 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 240-261
Author(s):  
Johannes Nissen

AbstractThe focus of this article is on the church-state issue, particularly in relation to the use of the Bible. The article has three parts. The first introductory part identifies four contemporary challenges: the attitude of Christians toward asylum-seekers and refugees, the question of civil disobedience, the role of the church in nation-building and the problem of nationalism and identity. Then follows some notes on the question of definition and methodology. The way we define the "state" influences our selection of relevant biblical texts. Any use of the Bible must face the risk of "proof texting." The second part offers some historical comments on selected texts. This includes the traditional "state" texts as well as other texts that reveal a critical perspective on the power issue. The third part points at a number of hermeneutical problems: (1) diversity and unity in the New Testament; (2) various levels of authority; (3) selective Bible reading and the method of correlation; (4) three different ways of perceiving the church-state issue: assimilation, alienation and critical solidarity. Both formation and malformation can be the result of the encounter of the churches with the public world. The article concludes with some reflections on the search for a just society in the biblical tradition.


2010 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 108-121
Author(s):  
Gerrit de Kruijf ◽  
Henk de Roest

This article offers a bird’s-eye view of the position of the church towards the state, ending in a description of the church’s relationship to democracy. In addition, the authors sketch Dingemans’s view of the role of the church in society and describe possibilities for relevant speaking and acting of the church in the public domain, both at the national level and at the local level of villages and housing estates. Special attention is paid to the role of churchgoers who are active as volunteers both within their own religious communities and outside (e.g. community and public service). Empirical research demonstrates that church attendance predicts volunteering or, in the words of Robert Putnam, that ‘church people are unusually active social capitalists’.


2000 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 329-351
Author(s):  
Allan Blackstock

AbstractWHEN writing his monumental history of the British army, Sir John Fortescue devoted just two paragraphs to the military implications of the Union. He noted that Union greatly simplified British military affairs in general and that this was an excellent thing for historians, driven to distraction by the confusing archival situation produced by the pre-Union military relationship of the two countries. The Irish military historian, Sir Henry McAnally, was equally succinct, merely remarking that `military matters had not bulked largely in the Union debates'. In ways they were both right. Although none of the eight articles of the Union refer to the army, it was understood that the assimilation principle, which regulated other branches of the public service and the church, would apply to the army. Yet, beneath and perhaps because of the delusive brevity of these bare facts, lies a seriously under-researched subject with wider ramifications, both in the short and longer term. Before these issues can be developed, it is first necessary to set the context by describing the pre-Union military background Ireland and then outlining the formal changes wrought by the Union.


1997 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Juel

The oral/aural power of the Bible has been strangely neglected within the worship life of the church as well as in recent biblical scholarship. In order to recover the Bible's power to take captive the imagination of readers and interpreters, we must once again attend to the public reading, or performance, of the Bible.


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