Unlike most glossaries, this index will deal with church and doctrinal terms topically so that it can be read separately if desired. It is not intended to present a comprehensive overview of theology, or a full exposition of the issues and groups involved. It is here primarily as a quick reference for users of the database.
A concordance is a reference tool that lists the occurrences of each major word in the Bible. There are also exhaustive concordances that list every occurrence of every word. Commentaries are books that explain the meaning of a portion of the Bible, verse by verse. They give interpretations, historical and cultural details, and information about the original text. There are many different kinds of commentaries. One popular type is an expository commentary, which reads more like a series of sermons than like a reference book.
For doctrinal study, one basic resource is a systematic theology. These texts collect all the doctrines of Christianity and organize them into basic categories. In the earlier days of the church, when books were written in Latin, such a work was called a Summa Theologica. Finally, a catechism is a series of questions and answers (usually memorized), designed to teach children and new believers about the essentials of the Christian faith.
The broad term for classic/traditional Protestant belief is evangelical. Evangelicals try to base their beliefs on the Bible, which they believe is inspired by God and therefore entirely truthful. They also believe that forgiveness of sins comes only through belief in the gospel–that Jesus' death paid the penalty for their sins, was raised from the dead, and will some day return.
Many evangelicals have been called fundamentalists because they insist that beliefs such as these are fundamental to Christianity. But whereas fundamentalists of the past focused on the central teachings of the Bible, today's fundamentalists tend to be just as insistent on such issues as dispensationalism, young-earth creationism, and adherence to the King James Version of the Bible. Christians who were dissatsifed with trends in fundamentalism broke from the movement in the 1940s and began what is called new evangelicalism. These new evangelicals continue to hold the basic beliefs of Christianity, but they tend to be softer in tone, cooperate across denominational boundaries, and give more emphasis to education, debate, and social responsibility. See this article for more on evangelicals and fundamentalists.
Perhaps the majority of churches today do not have the focus on biblical doctrine that evangelicals have. The trend began with the development of pietism in Germany, which emphasized holy living and personal religious devotion over commitment to orthodox doctrine (though not necessarily to the exclusion of it). This trend, combined with the Enlightenment, which exalted human reason and scholarship and was skeptical about the possibility of miracles and divine revelation, led to the philosophy known as liberalism. Liberalism came to dominate Christianity in continental Europe and spread from there to England and America. Non-evangelicals who rejected liberalism developed neo-orthodoxy, which sought to recover an orthodox view of Christianity, but which retained a mostly liberal view of the Bible as subject to error. Neo-orthodoxy was essentially a modern reinterpretation of Protestant theology that stressed God's transcendence (to the point of continued skepticism about the miracles of the Bible) and the centrality of Christ (interpreted according to personal experience as an authority over against the Bible).
Throughout church history, especially in areas new to Christianity, people have taken a syncretist approach, combining Christianity with their own native religions. Examples would include mixing Catholic doctrine with voodoo or Buddhist philosophy, or seeing Jesus as one god among many.
Naturalism is the view that the universe exists as a self-contained whole and that it is self-directing. Naturalism thus denies that there is any supernatural element affecting the natural world. Classic naturalists had high views of science and rationality as capable of discovering absolute truth.
In the last 120 years, philosophies have arisen that question our ability to know objective truth. Existentialism sees truth as subjective and created by one's personal decisions. It interprets biblical narratives and end-time prophecy not as historical but as metaphorical calls for commitment to Christ. In existentialism, behavior does not arise out of one's nature; instead, our nature is continually re-created by our freely chosen behaviors. Postmodernism goes farther, rejecting the notion of truth, the powers of reason, and the existence of universal right and wrong. According to postmodernism, what "truth" exists is established by one's community and has to do with power and interpersonal relationships.
Related to existentialism and postmodernism is process theism, a complicated system that sees God as ever changing and evolving along with nature. Nature is free to accept or reject God's influence, and God then embodies whatever nature chooses to become. Similar to this view, but older, is panentheism, which sees God as in all things, with God and nature mutually dependent on each other. Panentheists typically deny that God does miracles or reveals Himself in any special way.
One of the most ancient rivals to Christianity is Gnosticism, which holds that spirit is good and matter is evil, so that the God who created the world is a being inferior to the true God. Gnostics also hold that Christ did not truly become man, and that salvation has to do with the imparting of secret knowledge.
The Bible teaches that God reveals His existence and power, and basic ideas about right and wrong, through creation and the human conscience. This is called general revelation. Some thinkers have looked to creation and reason for their primary knowledge of God, an approach called natural theology. Traditionally, Christians have preferred to derive their doctrine from the Bible. Evangelical Christians believe in biblical inerrancy: because the Bible was inspired by God when it was written, its authors did not err in any of their assertions, so the Bible is true in every matter it addresses. This includes not only theology and ethics, but also the historicity of the events it records (i.e., that the events really took place in the way the Bible claims they did).
The word canon is used to identify the books that Christians believe should be included in the Bible by virtue of being inspired by God. For each book, there are places where ancient manuscripts have different readings. Textual criticism is the effort to determine what the Bible originally said in those places, based on manuscripts and other evidence. When the printing press was invented, textual critics developed the Textus Receptus, a family of editions of the Greek New Testament based on the few manuscripts they had available. This became the underlying text of the King James Version. Most modern translations rely on older manuscripts that have been discovered since that time. It is largely for this reason that some Christians oppose modern English Bibles and are instead King James Only–accepting only the KJV as the Word of God. See this page for more on textual criticism.
English versions of the Bible fall into three categories. Many are literal translations that try to bring the text into English word-for-word. A more recent philosophy is free translation, which often changes the structure or simplifies the text to make it easier to understand. This is also called "thought-for-thought" or "idiomatic" translation, or "dynamic equivalency." A few Bibles are actually paraphrases, in which the basic ideas are re-presented using the translator's own words and images. There has been recent controversy over gender-neutral Bible translation, a strategy of rendering the Scriptures with less emphasis on the masculine gender than exists in the original texts, especially in passages in which a masculine word refers to both men and women. It is often called "gender-inclusive" or "gender-accurate" translation by its supporters. See this page for more on these philosophies of translation.
The art of interpreting the Bible is called hermeneutics. People who interpret the Bible strive for exegesis, explaining the author' meaning as expressed through the words of Scripture in their context, without reading into the text anything that is not already there. This is in contrast to eisegesis, which reinterprets texts in light of one's own preconceptions, personal experience, and biases. One common strategy for exegesis is called the inductive method: The reader observes a specific text, asking questions to determines exactly what the verse is saying. The meaning is then derived from the surrounding verses before applying the verse's principles to one's personal life. This technique rests on the conviction that each biblical passage interprets itself.
Historic Christian orthodoxy declares that God is a Trinity. God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit are three eternally distinct Persons, and each is fully God in His own right, yet they are only one God, one Being. (See this article for more on the Trinity.)
One man who opposed this teaching was Praxeas, who taught that God is one person with three manifestations. He said that God is Father when He creates, Christ when He redeems, and Spirit when He empowers; and that Jesus was God in His Spirit, which only inhabited the fleshly man. Only the human aspect of Jesus was the Son of God. This teaching is common today among some Pentecostal groups and is called Oneness or "Jesus-only" teaching.
Another modern group that rejects the Trinity is Unitarianism. For Unitarians, only the Father is God (who is sometimes conceived of as an impersonal force rather than a personal Being). Jesus is seen as a good man, but not divine.
One debated aspect of the doctrine of God has to do with His knowledge and power. Open theists teach that God neither knows nor controls the future decisions of His creatures. The result is that history is an unfolding of divine-human interaction and that God maintains a give-and-take relationship with mankind. It is also called free-will theism.
Many theologians who affirm God's knowledge and control of all things, but who deny that God causes human decisions, explain God's work with middle knowledge. Middle knowledge is God's awareness of what an individual will freely choose in any given situation. And so God controls human choices by bringing about the circumstances in which they will make the choice that fits His purposes.
Angelic conversion is an uncommon view that people can be saved through the work of angels, without ever hearing or believing in the gospel.
More common today are deliverance ministries that view the illnesses, psychological disorders, and sin patterns of Christians as affliction by demonic forces that take up residence with the believer. Deliverance ministers generally recommend rebuking or casting out evil spirits to free the believer from spiritual bondage. This is in contrast to the traditional view of spiritual warfare as consisting in prayer, Bible study, and resisting temptation.
One form of deliverance ministry teaches the existence of generational and territorial spirits. Generational spirits inhabit believers due to sin, and demonic affliction is passed on to succeeding generations until an exorcism is performed. Territorial spirits have authority over a nation or city and prevent the reception of the gospel there until a believer rebukes them and commands them to leave the region. According to these teachers, these spirits must be cast out by Christians before God can do any work in that area.
An occultic practice is any activity used to contact or use invisible, spiritual powers besides prayer to God. Occultism is often associated with paganism or the worship of Satan. Occultic practices include Druidism, witchcraft, real magic, astrology, fortune telling, channeling of the dead, prayers to ancestors, and the use of ESP or psychic powers.
Creationism is the doctrine that earth's different kinds of life were created separately by God. It is opposed to the theory of evolution, which states that humans and other species are ultimately descended from common ancestors. See this article for more on evolution.
There are three main forms of creationism, all of which reject evolution. Young-earth creationists believe that God created the universe a few thousand years ago, and that the "days" of Genesis 1 are literal, 24-hour days. They usually defend their view of creation with flood geology, explaining that earth's fossils and major geologic features were actually caused by Noah's flood. Old-earth creationists believe that God created the universe over the course of billions of years, and that the "days" of Genesis 1 are long periods of time. (Some, however, embrace a framework view that the six days are a literary device.) Their strategy to refute evolution is based on intelligent design; they provide evidence that the universe and its life forms could not have originated without the help of an intelligent designer. In between is the gap theory, which holds that God created the universe in Genesis 1:1 for Lucifer and his angels, on account of whose fall it was destroyed. Billions of years later, God re-created the universe in six days for mankind, as described in Genesis 1:2-2:4.
Bible-believing Christians are divided on how to interpret history, especially with regard to the differences between the Old and New Testaments. The classic Protestant view is covenant theology, which focuses on the ways the divine-human relationship has been established by covenants. In covenant theology, salvation has been by grace ever since the Garden of Eden, and the law in both testaments was given ultimately to show the impossibility of living up to God's standards by one's own power. The current popular scheme is dispensationalism, which divides history into dispensations in which God's expectations for mankind differ. Dispensationalists stress the distinction between God's plans for Israel and for the church. Israel's law related to physical blessings, and they remain God's earthly people, but the church operates by grace and is God's heavenly people. See this article for more on dispensationalism.
Recently, several scholars have formulated new covenant theology, a modification of covenant theology that makes a stronger distinction between the testaments. The Old Testament law was intended for Israel until the time of Christ, in whom it has been fulfilled, and Christians today are to live instead by the law of Christ. Likewise, progressive dispensationalists have modified their system to recognize greater continuity between the testaments, so that both major systems have been brought closer together.
Until the last century, most Christian discussion of human nature had to do with the problem of sin. The classic view of human nature affirms original sin, the doctrine that because of Adam and Eve's sin, all people are born in bondage to sin and stand justly condemned before God unless He acts to save them. Against this view is Pelagianism. Pelagius taught that people have the inherent ability to overcome their sin and essentially achieve their own salvation. In this regard, true Pelagians are in opposition to both Arminians and Calvinists.
In the past few decades, more attention has been given to broader questions about the human person, particularly with regard to mental disorders and counseling. Christians have had to decide what to make of the relatively new field of psychology, a scientific approach to describing, explaining, predicting, and affecting human thought and behavior; as well as psychiatry, which uses medicine to improve human thought and behavior.
One of the older schools of psychology is psychoanalysis. Drawing heavily from the theories of Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis emphasizes the importance of unconscious motivation as determining human behavior. It holds that humans are not morally responsible for many of their actions because they do not understand why they act the way they do. The view has been thoroughly discredited by secular psychologists but has a small following in Christian counseling.
Positive thinking has a very high view of human nature and ability. Advocates teach that the human mind has the power to turn wishes into reality through optimism. A Christianized form of this philosophy is called possibility thinking, which sees optimism and high self-esteem as the foundation for Christian living.
Personality theories have also grown popular in many churches. Most common among Christians is temperament theory, adapted from ancient Greek philosophy and emphasizing innate behavioral traits. Each individual's personality is a combination of two of the four temperaments, classically identified as sanguine (cheerful/expressive), choleric (hot-tempered/leader), melancholy (depressed/analytical), and phlegmatic (apathetic/cooperative). See this article for more on the temperaments. One alternative is the Meyer-Briggs multi-axis theory, a research-based concept that measures personality on a number of scales. These are Introvert vs. Extravert, reliance on Senses vs. iNtuition, Thinking vs. Feeling, and quick Judgment vs. cautious Perception. The resulting personality is expressed as a combination of the four dominant qualities (ISTJ, ESFP, ENFJ, etc.).
Gender roles are also a hot topic in today's culture. Many Christians are egalitarians. They believe that because men and women are of equal value, they should have equal access to roles in the church and family. They generally believe that husbands and wives share leadership of their family and that both men and women may serve as senior pastors. (In a broader sense, egalitarianism may imply a less authoritative role for pastors and parents of either gender.) At the other extreme is the hierarchical view that men should hold positions superior to women in every aspect of society. In between is the traditional complementarian view that men and women are of equal value but should have different roles in the church and family. Complementarians generally believe that a husband is the proper head of his family and that only men should serve as senior pastors.
One other gender-related issue has to do with the phenomenon of dating. Some Christians have sought to promote courtship as an alternative: a couple's activities are focused on the goal of eventual marriage, casual dating may be excluded prior to a certain level of commitment, and physical affections (such as kissing) are forbidden until the couple is engaged. Parents are usually to be included whenever the courting couple spends time together. Courtship is defined differently by different advocates, ranging anywhere from dating with parental consent to arranged marriage.
One of the central Christian claims about Jesus Christ is the Incarnation: the teaching that the Son, though existing eternally as God, took on flesh and a human nature when He came to earth. Jesus is therefore fully God and fully man, one Person with both a divine nature and a human nature, yet without sin. Related to this is the virgin birth, that Jesus was not conceived through sexual union, but that His mother Mary was a virgin when the Holy Spirit made Him of her substance in her womb. Catholics additionally believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary, that Mary remained a virgin all her life, even after Jesus was born.
From the time of the New Testament, there have been teachers in the church who have denied the orthodox doctrine of Christ. One early view was docetism, which held that Jesus was divine but not human; His appearance as a man was only an illusion. Another view was adoptionism, that Jesus did not become the Son of God until His baptism and the beginning of His earthly ministry. One other ancient group was the Jacobites, who taught that Jesus had a divine nature but merely inhabited a human body; they denied that He had a human nature.
Most evangelicals have traditionally believed that Christ's death on the cross was a substitutionary atonement. In other words, that Jesus acted as the substitute for sinners who deserved God's wrath, but that God poured out that wrath on Christ on the cross. In the Middle Ages, this was expressed in terms of preserving God's honor as the satisfaction theory. In both cases, Jesus paid the necessary penalty for the sins of His people and satisfied God on their behalf.
One group that challenges the Bible's presentation of Christ is the Jesus Seminar, a group of liberal scholars who believe the Bible gives a distorted view of Jesus. They try to determine who the "historical Jesus" was by voting on the historicity of the words and actions attributed to Jesus in the Gospels (including writings not included in the Bible). Also, a recent best-selling book called The Da Vinci Code asserts that Jesus was actually married to Mary Magdalene, and that the Gospels are part of a massive conspiracy to hide the importance of women in the early church.
The charismatic movement approaches worship and the Christian life based on the operation of ecstatic gifts such as speacking in tongues, revelatory prophecy, visions, and often faith-healing. As used in this database, the term includes Pentecostals, whose teaching spawned charismatic practices in mainstream denominations. Churches that adopt charismatic views are said to experience "renewal." Charismatic revivalism consists in mass meetings, often extended through television, with the goal of bringing about these ecstatic manifestations of the Holy Spirit through the use of human methods. In addition to miraculous gifts mentioned in the Bible, many charismatics also testify to being slain in the Spirit, losing consciousness from being overwhelmed by the presence of the Holy Spirit either upon one's self or a nearby "anointed" preacher. This is also sometimes called "falling out," "going under the power": or being "slain of the Lord."
One branch of charismatics is called apostolic because they believe God has restored apostles to the church and given them revelation and authority similar or equal to that of the apostles in the New Testament. Third Wave teaching goes beyond the usual charismatic gifts to "signs and wonders" focused on bizarre behavior and loss of control of one's bodily movements and emotions. Such manifestations are held to be evidence of the Spirit's power and are essential to worship and "power evangelism." Leaders of Third Wave revivals often claim to be contemporary apostles or prophets. The Kansas City prophets are one such group, established in 1984 by Mike Bickle, who claim a special anointing to do miracles greater than those described in the New Testament in order to set the stage for the end times. They are now among the leadership of the Vineyard churches.
One of the most visible branches of charismatic belief is the Word of Faith movement. Highly visible through the Trinity Broadcast Network, this group teaches that God desires physical health and prosperity for all believers, and that Christians can bring such blessings into their lives by speaking a "word of faith." In this respect it is similar to positive thinking. See this article for more on the Word of Faith movement.
Evangelists are Christians engaged in the task of persuading others to repent and believe the gospel, the Christian way of salvation. (See this page for a presentation of the gospel.) People who have never heard the gospel are called unevangelized. People who are not currently involved in a church that teaches the gospel are called unchurched, whether they themselves have heard the gospel or not.
Evangelical Christians have traditionally held that belief in the gospel is the only way to receive forgiveness from God and spend eternity in heaven. This view is called exclusivism. Some teachers hold to inclusivism, the belief that while Christianity is the only true religion, some God-fearing people may come to salvation without having heard or accepted the gospel. Still more radical is religious pluralism, the belief that God genuinely brings people to salvation through many religions, not just Christianity. The most inclusive view is universalism, the belief that everyone will ultimately receive salvation from God and spend eternity in heaven.
The Bible teaches that Christians are chosen from eternity by God, but that people must choose to embrace the gospel in order to be saved. The earlist Protestant explanation of how these teachings go together is Calvinism. Calvinism stresses the freedom and determining power of God. Full (5-point) Calvinists believe that all people are morally unable to accept God until regenerated by the Holy Spirit, that God chooses individuals for salvation unconditionally, that Christ's death paid the penalty for the sins of only those elect, and that the Spirit's work makes their salvation certain, both before and after they embrace the gospel. However, God uses human means to achieve His purposes, so that sinners are converted through the preaching of the gospel. See this article for an in-depth look at Calvinism. The theological system based on Calvinism is often called Reformed theology, which also places a heavy emphasis on biblical inerrancy and substitutionary atonement. (Reformed is also the name of a family of denominations, and can be used to designate specifically Presbyterian theology. I use it more broadly to identify the common doctrine of the Magisterial Reformers Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Knox, and the Puritans and Particular Baptists.)
Some theologians have departed from Calvinism for hyper-Calvinism (which they prefer to call "high Calvinism"). This view denies the need for evangelism, missions, and repentance, and instead emphasizes the need for introspection to learn whether a person is among the elect. Hyper-Calvinism also claims that God has no love or compassion for those who are not elect.
A more popular alternative to Calvinism is Arminianism, which stresses the free and self-determining will of man. Full Arminians believe that all people are morally able to accept God, that God chooses people for salvation based on His knowledge of who will one day believe, that Christ's death made atonement possible for everyone, and that people always retain the ability to reject God's salvation, both before and after they embrace the gospel. Most Baptists who are generally Arminian nevertheless believe in eternal security, the belief that it is impossible for a truly saved person to lose that salvation.
One way in which Calvinists and Arminians tend to differ is in their view of revival. Revival is marked by greater spiritual fervor among Christians, often accompanied by a greater-than-usual number of conversions among sinners. Calvinists see revival as a surprising, sovereign work of the Holy Spirit that believers can pray for but cannot manufacture. The Arminian approach, often called revivalism, seeks to bring about revival through human methods, and attributes the presence or absence of revival to humans' willingness to cooperate with what the Spirit wants to accomplish.
How is a person justified, declared righteous before God? The Catholic church teaches sacramentalism, in which saving grace for the forgiveness of sins comes through the proper exercise of sacraments such as baptism, the Mass (the Lord's supper), and confession. Many Protestants believe a form of this called baptismal regeneration, in which the blessings of salvation are conferred when a person is baptized. The primary evangelical view is justification by faith, in which a person who has faith in Christ alone for salvation has His sins forgiven as a result of Christ's work on the cross. Related is imputed righteousness: Christ's obedience is reckoned to or bestowed on the convert, given as an act of God's grace apart from works and received by faith alone. However, some recent scholars have developed a new perspective on justification in which a person's own good works play a significant part in determining his ultimate salvation.
One other debate about salvation is whether saving faith must involve repentance, or else consists simply in trusting in Jesus' sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins. Lordship salvation is the traditional view and holds that saving faith must involve a commitment to repent of one's sins and follow Christ as Lord. Those who also believe that salvation cannot be lost would then argue that Christians who do not persevere in obedience to Christ did not have genuine faith. The alternative view is that salvation is promised to all who rely on the saving work of Christ for forgiveness, and that a lack of repentance results only in the loss of rewards. Often this results in a two-tiered view of salvation, in which there are true Christians who have never repented but have Jesus as their Savior, and those who do repent break through to a higher level of Christian life in which Jesus is also their Lord.
In the Christian life itself, spiritual growth and one's relationship with God are developed through the exercise of Christian disciplines such as prayer, Bible study, giving, and worship. One ancient approach to Christian disciplines is asceticism, which sees the renouncing of good or neutral desires and pleasures as an inherently spiritually rewarding and character-building activity. There is also mysticism, which seeks knowledge of God and communion with Him, unmediated by the Bible and so direct as to be called union with God. Mysticism tends to stress the experiential elements of Christianity over against doctrine, to recommend introspection in search for truth, and is often connected with asceticism. Mystics often engage in contemplation, a form of meditation based on intuitive knowledge or visions rather than on knowledge derived from the Bible.
Many churches have moved beyond traditional music in their services, in favor of Praise and Worship. This form of congregational worship gives highest priority to simple choruses in contemporary/rock style. Improvisation and emotional expressiveness (esp. lifting the hands) are encouraged, and the music is usually led by a worship team rather than an individual music minister. Related to this is the concept of seeker sensitivity, a model for church services in which the atmosphere, forms of worship, and gospel presentation are accomodated to the sensitivities and preferences of non-Christian visitors ("seekers"). In some cases, seeker-sensitive churches do not present the gospel as such until the visitors have attended seeker services that make them comfortable with the idea of church and religion in general.
There are also a variety of preaching styles in today's churches. The classical evangelical model is expository preaching, in which the structure and content of a sermon come from a single biblical passage, which is explained verse by verse. The aim of expository preaching is to communicate the intended main idea of a passage, usually a timeless doctrine or principle that the preacher then applies to the lives of the congregation. This stands in contrast to topical preaching, which draws texts from different parts of the Bible without focusing on a single passage. Both kinds of preaching can also be doctrinal when a particular belief or teaching is the focus of the sermon. A more recent approach is called narrative preaching, in which the preacher tells stories, draws cultural analogies, and gives practical advice without necessarily preaching a biblical text or giving a doctrine.
Baptism and the Lord's supper have long been issues that unite the members of one denomination but divide denominations from one another. Many denominations practice paedobaptism, the sprinkling of infants to make them part of the church. But Baptists and Anabaptists oppose this view in favor of believer's baptism. Their practice is to baptize only those who profess true, conscious faith in Christ. See this article for more on baptism. There are also several interpretations of the meaning of the Lord's supper. One is the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, the belief that the bread and wine of the Mass literally become the flesh and blood of Christ when they are blessed by a priest. The Mass is therefore a literal continuation of the sacrifice of Christ, and the bread and wine receive worship as Christ's body.
Whereas for much of Christian history a professional clergy has done most of the work of the church, many churches today have embraced the concept of every-member ministry, in which most of the work is carried out by members of the congregation (lay members). The primary role of the pastor is to equip members for that ministry. Since participating members hold positions in the church, many Christians are advocating a return to the practice of church discipline. Disciplining churches regulate the faith and practice of their members through advice, correction, and if necessary, censure or excommunication. The Novatian controversy in the third century related to church discipline. Novatian believed that Christians who had compromised their commitment in order to avoid persecution should not be allowed to return to the church.
There exists a wide difference of opinion about how churches should relate to one another. The Middle Ages saw the rise of papal primacy, the view that the Pope is the highest spiritual authority for all Christians and the primary bishop among all other bishops in the church. Closely related is the idea of papal infallibility, that the Pope is providentially prevented from error when he speaks on doctrinal and ethical matters. His teaching is binding on all believers. Protestants have rejected the idea that all churches should have a single leader, but most Protestant denominations nevertheless have embraced the ecumenical movement represented by the World Council of Churches. Ecumenism began in the early 1900s with the goal of removing denominational boundaries and bringing about structural and (in some cases) doctrinal unity among the various Christian churches through dialogue and cooperation.
On the other end of the spectrum are some fundamentalists who embrace second-degree separation. Early fundamentalists and today's evangelicals would often cease fellowship and cooperation in ministry from people who rejected the essential teachings of Christianity, and the stricter fundamentalists would separate from anyone in doctrinal error. However, second-degree separationists also withdraw from people who do not themselves practice strict separation, even from other fundamentalists. One significant separationist group are Landmark Baptists, who hold that churches of other denominations are not true churches, and oppose any cooperation with non-Landmarkists. Landmarkists believe that Baptists come from an unbroken string of Baptist churches going back to the time of Christ. They do not recognize other churches' baptism or offer the Lord's Supper to anyone outside their own group.
Two other church-related terms appear in the database. Parachurch organizations are large ministries established independently of any church or denomination, and thus not answerable to any church. They often have leaders and representatives from diverse theological and church backgrounds, and sometimes conduct worship services, take communion, and carry out other church-like activities. Liberation theology was the basis for various 20th-century movements that saw the church's main task as liberating people from economic, political, and social oppression.
Eschatology is the doctrine of death, the afterlife, and the end of human history.
The historic Protestant view of death is that those who are saved go to heaven when they die, while the condemned are sent to hell. Catholics hold to a belief in purgatory, a place where the souls of Christians endure a painful period of purification to cleanse themselves of sin before they can enter heaven. Time in purgatory could be reduced through the purchase of indulgences. Some teachers deny the existence of hell, instead teaching annihilationism, the belief that the wicked simply cease to exist after death. A recent book called Embraced by the Light popularized near-death experiences and a New-Age understanding of death.
Throughout church history, most Christians have awaited the return of Christ. But the exact sequence of events associated with His return is the subject of debate. Much of the debate turns on how much of end-time prophecy with regard to God's kingdom has been "realized" and how much remains in the future. The premillennial view is that Jesus will return and then establish a kingdom on earth, the kingdom described in Revelation 20:1-6. Historic premillennialists believe that the resurrection of the dead and the rapture of Christians who are alive will occur at that time, to deliver them from the tribulation that spans the entire history of the church. However, most dispensationalists await a pretribulational rapture, in which Jesus will return to take the church to heaven, where they will stay while the earth endures seven years of tribulation. Only after that will Jesus return, this time with His church, to establish His kingdom. (Some dispensationalists are post-tribulational, belieiving in an end-time tribulation but associating the rapture with the return of Christ that follows.)
Another end-time view is postmillennialism, an optimistic view in which God will establish His kingdom through the work of the church in a worldwide revival and a long period of Christian preeminence. Only after this time will Christ return. (This is not to be confused with fringe groups who wish to reinstitute Old Testament law or take the world by force; postmillennialists and other orthodox Christians believe the kingdom advances through the spread of the gospel.) More common today is amillennialism, which sees the kingdom of Revelation 20 as symbolic of the church age itself. In these schemes, Jesus' return will bring about the end of the world and the beginning of eternity.
An alternative view is preterism, which sees all biblical prophecy as fulfilled in the first century. Partial preterists see most of the events prophesied in the Olivet Discourse and Revelation 6-18 as having taken place in A.D. 70, when Jerusalem was destroyed. Full preterists (sometimes called hyper-preterists) believe that prophecies of Christ's return and of the resurrection of the dead also occurred by that time, and that therefore all end-time prophecy has already been fulfilled.
The original church founded in the New Testament developed new traditions and teachings over time, and the church at Rome set the standard for all the others. The result is what we now call the Roman Catholic Church. The church in Eastern Europe split from Rome in the Middle Ages and become the Eastern Orthodox churches.
Beginning in 1517, a number of reformers and their followers broke from the church in what was called the Protestant Reformation. The reformers rejected church teachings they did not find in the Bible, and preached justification by faith as the only true gospel. Lutheran churches followed Martin Luther. While generally evangelical, they retained some rituals and liturgical worship, along with some remnants of sacramentalism. Reformed churches followed John Calvin and developed what we call Reformed theology. They preferred much simpler worship and had the highest view of God's sovereignty among the early Protestants. Anabaptist churches were the first to embrace believer's baptism. They also tended to be pacifists and opposed the death penalty. The Mennonites and the Amish are examples of Anabaptist groups that survive today. Meanwhile, the Roman Catholic Church commissioned the Jesuits to expand the realm of the church and convert Protestants back to Catholicism.
The Church of England, known as the Anglican or Episcopal Church, broke from Rome during the reign of Henry VIII. The reasons for the separation were more political than doctrinal, and so Anglicanism remains the Protestant body most closely resembling Catholicism. Some Anglicans, known as Puritans, sought to make the Reformation ideas of Calvin and others more common in their churches. Others, less confident that the church could be purified, became separatists and started their own churches and were often persecuted. Many of these separatists kept each of their churches free from higher authority and became known as Congregationalists.
One group of congregational separatists embraced believer's baptism and became known as the Baptists. Two separate groups of Baptists developed, one Calvinist and the other Arminian. It was the Calvinistic Baptists who first came to the United States and whose churches later became the Southern Baptist Convention, which is currently the largest Protestant denomination in the US.
Southern Baptists moved away from Calvinism around the year 1900, and after World War II there was a gradual shift toward neo-orthodoxy in the leadership and in the seminaries. Beginning in 1979, a conservative resurgence took place as Baptists consistently voted in conservative leadership that brought the denominational structure back in line with the churches. Many liberals, neo-orthodox, and moderates dissatisfied with the change left to form the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Another recent development in Southern Baptist life is the Founders' Conference, which promotes a return to the Calvinism of the early Southern Baptists.
Other Protestant bodies include Quakers (formally called the Society of Friends), a pacifistic group that resembles charismatics in some respects and that looks to an "inner light" for spiritual guidance rather than to the Bible exclusively. Also important are Presbyterians, who began as Calvinists in the British Isles and became the predominant English-speaking defenders of evangelical theology. The Evangelical Free churches with which Trinity Evangelical Divinity School is associated grew out of Swedish Lutheranism.
The preaching of John Wesley led to the formation of the Methodist denomination, which helped to popularize Arminianism in England and America. It was among Methodists that the Holiness movement began. It emphasized a sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit subsequent to salvation, that resulted in a perfectly holy Christian life. The movement was later associated with reports of miraculous healings. Such reports, combined with the advent of speaking in tongues, gave birth to the Pentecostal churches. However, many Holiness churches, such as Wesleyans and Nazarenes, rejected tongues and also avoided the liberal tendencies of the larger Methodist groups
Many churches simply called Christian, Churches of Christ, or Disciples of Christ arose from the efforts of Alexander Campbell, whose Arminian teaching and belief in baptismal regeneration led to defections from Baptist and other denominations in the 1830s. They range from very liberal to very strict, but are all decidedly independent. The United Church of Christ is a union of several liberal denominations from churches that value congregational autonomy. Another denomination with a broad range of diversity is the Seventh-Day Adventists. They worship on Saturday and are annihilationists, but their other teachings range from mainstream evangelical to straight-out legalism. They are also divided over whether early SDA teacher Ellen White was a prophetess.
A growing number of families, mostly evangelical Christians, have grown dissatisfied with public education and have turned to homeschooling, an educational alternative in which children receive their academic teaching from their parents at home rather than from professional educators. Homeschooling families are frequently networked together for joint projects, activities, and social events. (Webmaster's note: Most homeschool materials are laudable, however the ATI curriculum is controlled by Bill Gothard and thus should be avoided.)
Numerous subcultures and religious groups, not all of them Christian, subscribe to a conspiracy theory in which world events (including all the major global conflicts of the past hundred years) are secretly controlled by an evil organization, with the goal of bringing about a one-world government and one-world religion. Conspiracy theorists commonly implicate Masons, Jesuits, fraternal organizations, Jews, Communists, all modern Bible translators, and all major international institutions as being partners in a New Age conspiracy.
The effort to give support and evidence for the Christian faith is known as apologetics. Apologists use a variety of methods to defend the faith, from a presuppositional tactic that demonstrates the superiority of the Christian worldview as a whole, to evidentialist strategies to prove the existence of God and the reliability of the Bible. One classic proof is known as the ontological argument, an attempt to prove that God exists based on the nature of existence itself. In its early form, it states that God exists because God is the most perfect being, and a being that lacks existence is not perfect. More recent forms assert that God is a "necessary" being that everything else must depend on for its existence.
In addition, apologists frequently go on the offensive with polemics, efforts to establish that a teaching or position is false or harmful to Christianity. This may directed either at cults and religions outside the church, or at heresies, teachings that are presented as Christian, but which openly contradict the basic historic Christian understandings of God, salvation, and/or the Bible.
For a statement of my beliefs, see my Declaration of Faith.
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