Mertcan Bulak
@MBulak
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Ağustos 2020 tarihinde katıldı
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Signs of reason’s deadening influence on the churches appeared in a large group within the Church of England called the Latitudinarians. The eloquent John Tillotson, the archbishop of Canterbury (1691–94), was among them. He vigorously denounced what he called religious enthusiasm. This included any emotional expression encouraged by fervent preachers. He and his fellow Latitudinarians stressed instead proper behavior. Men and women should reform their conduct; they should be generous, humane, and tolerant, and avoid bigotry and fanaticism.
Reklam
Most of the basic beliefs of these evangelicals could be found in Puritanism: the sinfulness of man, the atoning death of Christ, the unmerited grace of God, the salvation of the true believer. But Puritanism was more concerned with politics and trying to create the holy commonwealth, the true Bible society, in England and America.
The evangelicals were not detached from politics as the Pietists were, but their controlling passion was to convert the lost. They were less concerned about the reform of churches and more intent on the preaching of the gospel to all—nominal Christians, scoffers, and heathen.
Evangelicals inherited two important traits from Pietism.
First, emotion played so large a part in the Pietists’ religious life that reason was downplayed. Since the mind could not fathom the mysteries of human destiny, feelings were left to carry the meaning of faith.
Second, Pietism assumed the existence of the institutional church. It made no frontal attacks on it. But it shifted what was essential to Christianity—the new birth and the spiritual life—from the traditional state churches to smaller fellowship groups or voluntary associations of believers.
Pietism arose as a reaction to this ossification of the Reformation. Just as Jansenism opposed the cheap grace of the French Jesuits, so the Pietists challenged the nominal faith of German Lutheranism.
The aims of the Pietists were twofold: First, they stressed the importance of personal faith. They left behind all dreams of Catholic Christendom and Puritan commonwealths. They believed that Christianity starts with the individual. So for the first time in Christian history, the idea of conversions of baptized Christians (as well as pagans) came to prominence.
Second, the Pietists wanted to shift the center of the Christian life from the state churches, in which a person was born and brought up, to intimate fellowships of those who had a living faith in God. Revitalized laypeople from these centers were expected to spread the Word of God through all classes of men and women.
After Pascal’s death, the combined opposition of the Catholic Church and King Louis XIV succeeded in forcing Jansenism out of France. Port-Royal was destroyed and the movement forced to take refuge in Holland.
Reklam