@freemarketeer1 And we will! Sadly as Protestants we have largely failed to catechize our own people. That’s resulted in generations of theological drift, and now the word ‘evangelical’ means everything and nothing…ya know anarchy lol
@YeFutureSaint the faction that thought the magisterial Reformers kept too much Roman Catholic theology and compromised too much for state power. They would be Protestant though a slightly different kind.
@YeFutureSaint They’re both evangelical descriptively, but Pentecostals are really a Holiness movement offshoot of Methodism… Protestant sociologically, but about three steps removed from the Reformation.
Baptists are kinda odd, they trace back to the Radical Reformation, which was basically
@YeFutureSaint That’s what most people immediately imagine. If we’re counting non-denominational the number is massive, tens of thousands plus. That being said, idk if I consider them “Protestant”, properly speaking, as they don’t have any real ties to the Reformation and they don’t really want
@YeFutureSaint I would argue there are zero evangelical denominations, technically. Generally evangelical is going to be a descriptor not its own tradition. For example, there are evangelical Roman Catholics, they have an evangelical emphasis but they’re still Roman Catholic. When you say
@DemokratikNiko Yes, exactly! And honestly that’s one of Wesley’s greatest gifts to us… he saw the Moravian tension up close and attempted to build safeguards right into the our structure.
@YeFutureSaint these men weren’t just writing theology, they were seeking real and actual transformation.
Honestly, it’s hard to study Christianity and not be drawn to it. Once I saw that thread, I just wanted to follow it wherever it leads.
Wesley didn’t just preach about entire sanctification, he structured it into his day. Morning watch and evening prayer weren’t pietistic habits; they were theological acts. To consecrate the morning is to declare that time itself belongs to God. To close the evening in prayer is
@YeFutureSaint Every time I opened Scripture, pursuing holiness was everywhere, warnings to aim for it, Jesus’s commands for us. It’s definitely talked about constantly. Then when I started reading the Fathers, I found the same obsessive passion. Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Macarius,
@HettrickMichael I think I have more to say on it but I’m currently at work, so I don’t have access to anything to look at the context of the quotes provided
@HettrickMichael that it has binding authority over other churches. My issue with a cumulative case is it seems to retroject the post-Tridentine RCC and ask which of the early data points “fits” it best. To me it seems like this is a kind of confirmation bias dressed as historical argument.