Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Debating Calvinism: The Lessons of History

Fractured relationships and anger over the Calvinist debate? It fractured the relationship between two great men of God.

1 comment:

Edwardtbabinski said...

Whitefield and Wesley. Ah the good old days. Don't forget Luther and the Pope. Or Tyndale and Sir Thomas Moore, they exchanged tens of thousands of words, and both wound up executed in the end. Or the whole eastern and western churches of the Christianized Roman Empire that excommunicated each other.

I guess God had better things to do than step in during such trying times.

Whitefield and Wesley also differed over the issue of slavery. For every Wesley who was against slavery there were ten George Whitefields in favor of it. In fact no a single Christian denomination every spoke against slavery calling it a sin, except the Quakers, whom all the other denominations judged to be heretics, and even hung some Quakers.

Prior to the Civil War all Christians denominations refused to declare slavery to be a sin, though the issues of whether or not ministers ought to own slaves did divide some huge denominations in two, thus creating the SOUTHERN Methodists, SOUTHERN Baptists, and SOUTHERN Presbyterians who were in favor of ministers owning slaves, while their northern brethren thought it unseemly that ministers own slaves, since they ought to be above what is simply allowed in Scripture and act even more generous toward their fellow man by not owning one. But none denomination declared slavery to be a sin (except some Quakers).

The Bible never declares slavery to be a sin.