₦airaland Forum

Anuoluwap: Three new Moderators have been appointed to run things in the Religion section. Hope we see improvements.

striktlymi: This is a great move by the organizers.

Disagreements do occur, even in the midst of brothers. What is important is how these disagreements are resolved. Goshen and Enigma your input in quelling this misunderstanding did not go unnoticed and I am glad you guys are part of this.

I will suggest that, in order to avoid future 'conflicts', the organizers give room for some kind of feedback on the event, from participants. This I think would help guide the planning of future events and hopefully resolve any conflict.

For now, I will suggest that everyone relegate this so called 'division' to the background and look forward to a rewarding convention.

Alwaystrue: @Drummerboy, I am answering this as I noticed you brought my monnikker into this discussion again though it is an old post.
The link you posted above summed up a lot on women in ministry. As Paul said 'he' does not suffer women to teach and he gave reasons just as 'he' would prefer some people do not get married. However, I understand clearly what he is passing accross irrespective. Women have a very important role to play in ministry and the men are best in leadership roles therefore. However, for a woman giving biblical insight on a forum, meeting or discusion on bible matters based on scripture that cannot be faulted is not wrong. Paul was right in saying He does not allow a woman Lord it over a man as that is not right but he never meant that a woman cannot discuss spiritual matters as you have times without number tried to bring accross here.
I answered you once when you brought this up and gave you explanation. I see women more as ministers like Phoebe and Dorcas and Priscilla working with her husband as the women have lots of responsibilities at the home front which many men do not. But even some of the women who have ministries have support from their husbands like Joyce Meyer and if men decide they love to partake of such ministry there is nothing anyone can do about that. There are many ministries run by women for family causes, abused women or children, widows and it often grows large enough to accept other genders therefore, it is quite myopic to try to cage such in a box because of certain prejudices.
In Christ there is no male or female so as long as the word is preached in spirit and truth, God has the final say.

Goshen360: You & this tithe sha, ONLY God will help you o.

[size=16pt]FREE GRACE[/size]

Donald Miller

My Pastor, who is one of my best friends experienced (some) emotional turmoil early in his faith. Rick became a Christian when he was nineteen. Before he became a Christian he played football at Chico State (University, USA), which at the time, was the number one party school in the nation. And Rick did his share of partying. After months of drunken binges, he began to wonder whether there was anything more fulfilling in life than alcohol and sex. He began to long for God. So the next Sunday morning he made a point of being sober and in fact walked to a local church to attend service. This was Rick’s first time to step foot inside a church, and that morning the Pastor happened to talk about sin, and how we are all sinners, and he talked about Jesus, and how Jesus died so that God could forgive us our sin. At the end of the service, Rick prayed and became a Christian.

After a few weeks the Pastors from Rick’s new church came to visit, each in their suit and tie, and Rick entertained them and made them coffee, all of them sitting around sipping their coffee and talking nicely while the smell of marijuana lofted above their heads. Rick’s friend was smoking pot in the next room. Rick laughs when he tells me he offered the Pastors a hit, not being too offended when they turned him down.

The Pastors talked to Rick about his conversion, explaining that he had been forgiven of his sins, and that it was important to try to live a righteous life. And Rick agreed with them, noting how much easier it would be to listen to the sermon on Sunday morning if he didn’t have a hangover. So Rick began to choose purity over sin, and for a while he did well, but soon he found that he wanted to party with his friends, or he wanted to have sex with his girlfriend, and from time to time he would fail at his moral efforts. Rick tells me that those were the most depressing moments of his life, because he felt that he was failing God who had saved him.

My Pastor was anguished by his inability to control his desires. He felt that he had been given this new life, this key to heaven, and yet couldn’t obey Jesus in return. So one evening he got on his knees and told God he was sorry. He told God how much he wished he could be good and obedient. He then sat on the edge of his bed and swallowed enough muscle relaxants and sleeping pills to kill three people. He lay down in a fetal position and waited to die.

Rick tells me, looking back, that he was too proud to receive free grace from God. He did not know how to live within a system where nobody owes anybody else anything. And the harder it was for Rick to pay God back, the more he wanted to hide. God was his loan shark, so to speak. Though he understood that God wanted nothing in return, his mind could not communicate this fact to his heart, so his life was something like a torture.

Rick tells me that as he lay there in his bed waiting to die, he heard God say to him, “Your life is not your own, but you have been bought with a price,” and at this point he felt a certain peace. Rick told me he understood, cognitively as well as emotionally, that his role in his relationship with God was to humbly receive God’s unconditional love.

My Pastor, of course, is still alive, a miracle he cannot explain. Before he could save himself, he drifted into sleep, but he woke the next morning with ample energy, as if he had never swallowed the pills at all.

After surviving the suicide attempt, Rick went to Bible College, married a girl he met in school, and now they have four children. A little over a year ago, he planted a church in downtown Portland, widely considered the most unchurched region in the United States. There were only about eight of us at our first meeting, and now the church has grown to more than five hundred people. On a given Sunday there are dozens of non-believers at our church, and each week Rick shares with them the patient love of God. He talks about Jesus as if he knows Him, as if he talked to Him on the phone earlier that morning. Rick loves God because he accepts God’s unconditional love first.

Rick says I will love God because He first loved me. I will obey God because I love God. But if I cannot accept God’s love, I cannot love Him in return, and I cannot obey Him. Self discipline will never make us feel righteous or clean; accepting God’s love will. The ability to accept God’s unconditional grace and ferocious love is all the fuel we need to obey Him in return. Accepting God’s kindness and free love is something the devil does not want us to do. If we hear, in our inner ear, a voice saying we are failures, we are losers; we will never amount to anything. This is the voice of Satan trying to convince the bride that the groom does not love her. This is not the voice of God. God woos us with kindness and He changes our character with the passion of His love.

(from Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller)

Enigma: I am
saddened and sorry to read just now that this initiative is bringing
division. I personally did not think of being divisive when I agreed to
take part. In fact this position of mine is more so as I knew that two
of the other presenters are not even Trinitarians.

I hope the matter of divisiveness is resolved quickly and that the
initiative is not blighted (further?) by this matter.

Pastor Olu T: Great, this is the kind of things to be done on this forum n not we criticising n fighting one another as if Christ is divided.
MORE GRACE TO THE ORGANIZERS IN JESUS NAME

Romans 8:32 He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

Goshen360: Tithing is ABOLISHED in the New Testament - Hebrews 7. Read it slowly and with understanding!

damosky12: When I say Law, I mean 'rules u must follow to keep your salvation intact, ie: keeping the old testament laws. When I say principles, I mean things you must do to attract God's "special" intervention on specific areas of your life. Ie, Giving is a principle for Recieving, Paying Tithe opens the windows of heaven for your benefits and rebukes devourers for your sake. MALACHY 3:11

chukwudi44: They are the Big 5—the five most influential theologians in the history of the church. Together, their lives and teachings have affected religious and political systems and have dramatically changed or contributed to how people understand theology.
Although differing at times on significant points of doctrine, these five theologians share certain things in common. Each has written a massive number of volumes revealing their views on the major areas of doctrine. Second, each has significantly shaped how people view theology, not only in their era, but in the centuries after they lived. Third, each theologian has made such a significant contribution to theology that no serious discussion of Christian doctrine can safely ignore them or their teachings.

Who are these theologians who have left the biggest footprints on the path of church history? We list them in chronological order:

1. AUGUSTINE (354–430)

By far, Augustine of Hippo was the most important theologian of the Patristic Era. He wrote hundreds of works including City of God and On the Trinity. He was the first theologian to thoroughly address the doctrines of man and salvation. Augustine taught that all people are born with original sin and that God predestines those whom He will save. Augustine also made huge contributions in the areas of the church and prophecy. In his battle with the Donatists, Augustine argued that people who lapsed because of persecution should be allowed back into church fellowship. Augustine is also known as "the father of amillennialism" since he promoted the idea that Satan is currently bound and that the millennium of Revelation 20 is being fulfilled in the present age. Many of his views carried over into the Middle Ages and became accepted as the orthodox positions of the church. Today, both Roman Catholics and Protestants often claim this greatest theologian of antiquity as support for their views.

2. THOMAS AQUINAS (1225–1274)

The greatest theologian of the Medieval Era, Thomas Aquinas developed a system of theology that became synonymous with Roman Catholic orthodoxy. Aquinas merged Aristotelian philosophy with Christianity, and in so doing, argued for a strong relationship between faith and reason. A strong proponent of natural revelation and the ability of nature to teach truths about God, Aquinas argued that God's existence and attributes could be proven through reason and observation of the created order. Aquinas produced 18 large volumes of theology. His most significant work was his massive Summa Theologiae ("summation of theology". When the Protestant Reformation challenged Roman Catholicism, the Catholic Church drew upon the writings of Aquinas in drafting the decrees of the Council of Trent.

3. MARTIN LUTHER (1483–1546)

Little did this Augustinian monk know that when he nailed his "95 Theses" to the door of a Wittenberg church in 1517 that he would set in motion a chain of events that would change the course of history. The Protestant Reformation, of which Luther was the primary mover, forever changed the religious and political landscape of the Western world. Luther's contributions to theology are many. He rejected the idea that church tradition was equal to Scripture in authority. He also questioned the authority of the papacy. Luther argued that there were two marks of the church—the Word preached and the sacraments of Baptism and Lord's Supper rightly applied. Luther's most important contribution was his insistence that justification was based on faith alone, apart from works. The Lutheran denomination was based on his teachings. Both Life magazine and Biography of the Millennium (which aired on the A&E network) listed Luther as the third most important person of the millennium.

4. JOHN CALVIN (1509–64)

If Luther was the primary starter of the Reformation, John Calvin was its main theologian. With the precision of a surgeon, Calvin systematically expounded the major doctrines of the Protestant Reformation including the three solas—sola fide ("faith alone", sola gratia ("grace alone" and sola scriptura ("scripture alone". He also taught the doctrines of predestination and the absolute sovereignty of God. Calvin also ably defended that justification was a legal declaration of God and not a process of becoming right with God. In addition to his commentaries, this French theologian is most known for his work, Institutes of the Christian Religion. Calvin eventually became known as the Father of Reformed and Presbyterian theology. The popular designation "five points of Calvinism" is linked to the beliefs of John Calvin. Many today claim Calvin as a major influence in how they view theology.

5. KARL BARTH (1886–1968)

Though perhaps a notch below the other four theologians mentioned in this article, Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, rightly takes his place as one of the most influential theologians in church history. Barth exposed the bankruptcy of Protestant liberalism and ushered in the era of neo-orthodoxy. In stark contrast to the liberal overemphasis on God's immanence, Barth stressed the absolute transcendence of God. Also in contrast to liberalism, Barth stressed that God was the main agent in salvation, not man. Barth took a strong objective approach to the doctrine of salvation. According to Barth, Christ objectively united the entire human race to Himself and wrought salvation for all by His victory on the cross. Barth is also known for his strong emphasis on Christology, which for him was the corner
stone of all areas of theology. Barth's massive Church Dogmatics records the teachings of this influential theologian. When Barth died in 1968, volume 13 was unfinished. Evangelicals, liberal Protestants, and Catholics often refer to Barth in serious discussions of theology.
These are the Big 5—Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and Barth. Those who desire to be serious students of theology should become acquainted with the basic teachings of these five men. Students researching a particular area of doctrine such as salvation or the church should also search to see what these five theologians said about that subject. Doing so does not mean that one will necessarily embrace all that these five wrote, but having a familiarity with their teachings will add depth to one's knowledge and will reveal a keen sensitivity to the major movers in church history


http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?16068-THE-BIG-5-The-5-Most-Influential-Theologians-in-Church-History