1.
Protestantism
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Protestantism is a form of Christianity which originated with the Reformation, a movement against what its followers considered to be errors in the Roman Catholic Church. It is one of the three divisions of Christendom, together with Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy. The term derives from the letter of protestation from German Lutheran princes in 1529 against an edict of the Diet of Speyer condemning the teachings of Martin Luther as heretical. Although there were earlier breaks from or attempts to reform the Roman Catholic Church—notably by Peter Waldo, John Wycliffe, Protestants reject the notion of papal supremacy and deny the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, but disagree among themselves regarding the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The Five solae summarize the reformers basic differences in theological beliefs, in the 16th century, Lutheranism spread from Germany into Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Baltic states, and Iceland. Reformed churches were founded in Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Scotland, Switzerland and France by such reformers as John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, the political separation of the Church of England from Rome under King Henry VIII brought England and Wales into this broad Reformation movement. Protestants developed their own culture, which made major contributions in education, the humanities and sciences, the political and social order, the economy and the arts, some Protestant denominations do have a worldwide scope and distribution of membership, while others are confined to a single country. A majority of Protestants are members of a handful of families, Adventism, Anglicanism, Baptist churches, Reformed churches, Lutheranism, Methodism. Nondenominational, evangelical, charismatic, independent and other churches are on the rise, and constitute a significant part of Protestant Christianity. Six princes of the Holy Roman Empire and rulers of fourteen Imperial Free Cities, the edict reversed concessions made to the Lutherans with the approval of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V three years earlier. During the Reformation, the term was used outside of the German politics. The word evangelical, which refers to the gospel, was more widely used for those involved in the religious movement. Nowadays, this word is still preferred among some of the historical Protestant denominations in the Lutheran and Calvinist traditions in Europe, above all the term is used by Protestant bodies in the German-speaking area, such as the EKD. In continental Europe, an Evangelical is either a Lutheran or a Calvinist, the German word evangelisch means Protestant, and is different from the German evangelikal, which refers to churches shaped by Evangelicalism. The English word evangelical usually refers to Evangelical Protestant churches, and it traces its roots back to the Puritans in England, where Evangelicalism originated, and then was brought to the United States. Protestantism as a term is now used in contradistinction to the other major Christian traditions, i. e. Roman Catholicism. Initially, Protestant became a term to mean any adherent to the Reformation movement in Germany and was taken up by Lutherans. Even though Martin Luther himself insisted on Christian or Evangelical as the only acceptable names for individuals who professed Christ, French and Swiss Protestants preferred the word reformed, which became a popular, neutral and alternative name for Calvinists
2.
China Christian Council
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The China Christian Council was founded in 1980 as an umbrella organization for all Protestant churches in the Peoples Republic of China with Bishop K. H. Ting as its president. It works to provide education and the publication of Bibles, hymnals. It encourages the exchange of information among local churches in evangelism, pastoral work and it has formulated a church order for local churches, and seeks to continue to develop friendly relations with churches overseas. Together with the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, the organizations are known as the lianghui, through the CCC, the registered Protestant church participates in the World Council of Churches. The China Christian Council and the National Committee of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches in China together are called the Lianghui. Christianity was introduced to China first by Nestorian priests in 635AD, due to various historical, cultural, social and political reasons, Christianity did not take root in China. In the 19th century, Protestant Christianity was brought to China, riots broke out in several areas throughout the country. The spread of the gospel is slow, during the 150 years from the introduction of Christianity in 1807 to the foundation of New China in 1949, there were only 700,000 believers. In the 1950s, in order to change the image of Christianity as a foreign religion, the principle of self-governance, self-support and self-propagation quickly received a positive response from Chinese Christians. The first Chinese Christian national conference was held in Beijing in 1954, after that, the National Committee of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement of the Protestant Churches in China was set up. In the spring of 1979, Chinese churches resumed worship after the Cultural Revolution, in order to revive the church, the China Christian Council was founded at the third national Christian conference in 1980. It serves to unite and provide services for churches in China by following the Bible, formulating Church Order, in the recent 30 years, Christianity in China has developed rapidly. It introduces the best developing period in Chinese Christian history, incomplete statistics indicate that there may be over 23 million Christians throughout the country,30 times than in 1949. There may also be over 56,000 churches and meeting points,70 percent of which are newly built, more than 55 million copies of the Bible have been printed,3,500,000 copies per year in recent years. There are a total of 21 theological seminaries with more than 1900 students in China, the highest authority of CCC/TSPM is the national congress. At present, the CCC/TSPM has 12 commissions and 7 departments, CCC/TSPM endeavors to serve the construction of the church, lead Chinese Christians on the road to God, and encourage Christians to make contribution to economic and social development. CCC/TSPM seeks to establish and develop fellowship on the basis of respect and equality. 219, Jiujiang Road, Huangpu District, Shanghai, gao Feng Executive Associate General Secretary Rev
3.
China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing
4.
Traditional Chinese characters
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Traditional Chinese characters are Chinese characters in any character set that does not contain newly created characters or character substitutions performed after 1946. They are most commonly the characters in the character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong. Currently, a number of overseas Chinese online newspapers allow users to switch between both sets. In contrast, simplified Chinese characters are used in mainland China, Singapore, the debate on traditional and simplified Chinese characters has been a long-running issue among Chinese communities. Although simplified characters are taught and endorsed by the government of Mainland China, Traditional characters are used informally in regions in China primarily in handwriting and also used for inscriptions and religious text. They are often retained in logos or graphics to evoke yesteryear, nonetheless, the vast majority of media and communications in China is dominated by simplified characters. Taiwan has never adopted Simplified Chinese characters since it is ruled by the Republic of China, the use of simplified characters in official documents is even prohibited by the government in Taiwan. Simplified characters are not well understood in general, although some stroke simplifications that have incorporated into Simplified Chinese are in common use in handwriting. For example, while the name of Taiwan is written as 臺灣, similarly, in Hong Kong and Macau, Traditional Chinese has been the legal written form since colonial times. In recent years, because of the influx of mainland Chinese tourists, today, even government websites use simplified Chinese, as they answer to the Beijing government. This has led to concerns by residents to protect their local heritage. In Southeast Asia, the Chinese Filipino community continues to be one of the most conservative regarding simplification, while major public universities are teaching simplified characters, many well-established Chinese schools still use traditional characters. Publications like the Chinese Commercial News, World News, and United Daily News still use traditional characters, on the other hand, the Philippine Chinese Daily uses simplified. Aside from local newspapers, magazines from Hong Kong, such as the Yazhou Zhoukan, are found in some bookstores. In case of film or television subtitles on DVD, the Chinese dub that is used in Philippines is the same as the one used in Taiwan and this is because the DVDs belongs to DVD Region Code 3. Hence, most of the subtitles are in Traditional Characters, overseas Chinese in the United States have long used traditional characters. A major influx of Chinese immigrants to the United States occurred during the half of the 19th century. Therefore, the majority of Chinese language signage in the United States, including street signs, Traditional Chinese characters are called several different names within the Chinese-speaking world
5.
Simplified Chinese characters
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Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of the two character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the Peoples Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s in an attempt to increase literacy and they are officially used in the Peoples Republic of China and Singapore. Traditional Chinese characters are used in Hong Kong, Macau. Overseas Chinese communities generally tend to use traditional characters, Simplified Chinese characters may be referred to by their official name above or colloquially. Strictly, the latter refers to simplifications of character structure or body, character forms that have existed for thousands of years alongside regular, Simplified character forms were created by decreasing the number of strokes and simplifying the forms of a sizable proportion of traditional Chinese characters. Some simplifications were based on popular cursive forms embodying graphic or phonetic simplifications of the traditional forms, some characters were simplified by applying regular rules, for example, by replacing all occurrences of a certain component with a simplified version of the component. Variant characters with the pronunciation and identical meaning were reduced to a single standardized character. Finally, many characters were left untouched by simplification, and are identical between the traditional and simplified Chinese orthographies. Some simplified characters are very dissimilar to and unpredictably different from traditional characters and this often leads opponents not well-versed in the method of simplification to conclude that the overall process of character simplification is also arbitrary. In reality, the methods and rules of simplification are few, on the other hand, proponents of simplification often flaunt a few choice simplified characters as ingenious inventions, when in fact these have existed for hundreds of years as ancient variants. However, the Chinese government never officially dropped its goal of further simplification in the future, in August 2009, the PRC began collecting public comments for a modified list of simplified characters. The new Table of General Standard Chinese Characters consisting of 8,105 characters was promulgated by the State Council of the Peoples Republic of China on June 5,2013, cursive written text almost always includes character simplification. Simplified forms used in print have always existed, they date back to as early as the Qin dynasty, One of the earliest proponents of character simplification was Lubi Kui, who proposed in 1909 that simplified characters should be used in education. In the years following the May Fourth Movement in 1919, many anti-imperialist Chinese intellectuals sought ways to modernise China, Traditional culture and values such as Confucianism were challenged. Soon, people in the Movement started to cite the traditional Chinese writing system as an obstacle in modernising China and it was suggested that the Chinese writing system should be either simplified or completely abolished. Fu Sinian, a leader of the May Fourth Movement, called Chinese characters the writing of ox-demons, lu Xun, a renowned Chinese author in the 20th century, stated that, If Chinese characters are not destroyed, then China will die. Recent commentators have claimed that Chinese characters were blamed for the problems in China during that time
6.
Standard Chinese
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Its pronunciation is based on the Beijing dialect, its vocabulary on the Mandarin dialects, and its grammar is based on written vernacular Chinese. Like other varieties of Chinese, Standard Chinese is a language with topic-prominent organization. It has more initial consonants but fewer vowels, final consonants, Standard Chinese is an analytic language, though with many compound words. There exist two standardised forms of the language, namely Putonghua in Mainland China and Guoyu in Taiwan, aside from a number of differences in pronunciation and vocabulary, Putonghua is written using simplified Chinese characters, while Guoyu is written using traditional Chinese characters. There are many characters that are identical between the two systems, in English, the governments of China and Hong Kong use Putonghua, Putonghua Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, and Mandarin, while those of Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, use Mandarin. The name Putonghua also has a long, albeit unofficial, history and it was used as early as 1906 in writings by Zhu Wenxiong to differentiate a modern, standard Chinese from classical Chinese and other varieties of Chinese. For some linguists of the early 20th century, the Putonghua, or common tongue/speech, was different from the Guoyu. The former was a prestige variety, while the latter was the legal standard. Based on common understandings of the time, the two were, in fact, different, Guoyu was understood as formal vernacular Chinese, which is close to classical Chinese. By contrast, Putonghua was called the speech of the modern man. The use of the term Putonghua by left-leaning intellectuals such as Qu Qiubai, prior to this, the government used both terms interchangeably. In Taiwan, Guoyu continues to be the term for Standard Chinese. The term Putonghua, on the contrary, implies nothing more than the notion of a lingua franca, Huayu, or language of the Chinese nation, originally simply meant Chinese language, and was used in overseas communities to contrast Chinese with foreign languages. Over time, the desire to standardise the variety of Chinese spoken in these communities led to the adoption of the name Huayu to refer to Mandarin and it also incorporates the notion that Mandarin is usually not the national or common language of the areas in which overseas Chinese live. The term Mandarin is a translation of Guānhuà, which referred to the lingua franca of the late Chinese empire, in English, Mandarin may refer to the standard language, the dialect group as a whole, or to historic forms such as the late Imperial lingua franca. The name Modern Standard Mandarin is sometimes used by linguists who wish to distinguish the current state of the language from other northern. Chinese has long had considerable variation, hence prestige dialects have always existed. Confucius, for example, used yǎyán rather than colloquial regional dialects, rime books, which were written since the Northern and Southern dynasties, may also have reflected one or more systems of standard pronunciation during those times
7.
Pinyin
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Pinyin, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is often used to teach Standard Chinese, which is written using Chinese characters. The system includes four diacritics denoting tones, Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, and also in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters. The pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang and it was published by the Chinese government in 1958 and revised several times. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as a standard in 1982. The system was adopted as the standard in Taiwan in 2009. The word Hànyǔ means the language of the Han people. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing and this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years later, another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, and the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing Dynasty scholar-official, the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the effect of the kana syllabaries. This galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script, while Song did not himself actually create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, and it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. This Sin Wenz or New Writing was much more sophisticated than earlier alphabets. In 1940, several members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Societys new journal. Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Yat-sens son, Sun Fo, Cai Yuanpei, the countrys most prestigious educator, Tao Xingzhi, an educational reformer. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, biographies, some contemporary Chinese literature, and a spectrum of textbooks
8.
Lianghui
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Lianghui is a common Mandarin Chinese abbreviation for a pair of organizations which have close relations. It is used also by the officially-sanctioned Protestant and Catholic churches in China, a less common political usage of lianghui is abbreviating the Republic of Chinas Straits Exchange Foundation in Taipei, and the PRCs Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits in Beijing. Protestantism in China uses lianghui to name the two Chinese government-sanctioned Protestant organizations, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and the China Christian Council, due to the close relationship between these two organizations, they are sometimes mistaken as the same organization. Beginning in the 1980s, both associations were headed by K. H. Ting, an ordained Anglican Bishop of Zhejiang in 1955. He would retire from both positions at the 6th National Christian Conference, where he addressed the delegates on 29 December 1996, the TSPM and CCC together form the constituent organizations of the National Conference of Chinese Protestant Churches. The distinctive roles of the TSPM and CCC are hard to distinguish due to overlaps, publication Ministry Coordinates the editing, publication and distribution of books, audio and video materials, Bibles and hymnals. Also sets guidelines for the publication of materials by local TSPM committees, there are large numbers of Chinese house churches in China which are outside of the registered organizations. Together, the TSPM and CCC claims a total of between 9.8 million to 13.5 million Protestant Christians in China, the TSPM and CCC are viewed with suspicion and distrust by some Christians both within and outside China. Some claim the TSPM to be a tool of the Communist Party of China to control, there are allegations of regular and systematic persecution against Christians associated with the House Church movement and other unregistered Christian organizations in China. Roman Catholicism in China uses lianghui, or yihuiyituan, referring to the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and these two state-approved Catholic organizations do not accept the primacy of the Roman Pontiff, in contrast to the Chinese Catholic Bishops Conference in Taiwan. During the 2011 Chinese pro-democracy protests, the word became a covert means of avoiding Internet censorship. If the government were to censor this dissenters circumlocution, it would effectively block internet news about the governmental NPC, all China Lianghui Report 2008 Christian Lianghui Home Page List of Main Churches and Theological Seminaries of China Christian Council The Amity Foundation
9.
Mainland China
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Mainland China, also known as the Chinese mainland, is the geopolitical area under the direct jurisdiction of the Peoples Republic of China. It generally includes Hainan island and excludes the special regions of Hong Kong and Macau. The term mainland China was coined by the Kuomintang after receiving control of Taiwan from Japan after World War II. By 1949, the KMT-led Republic of China government was defeated in the Chinese Civil War, there are two terms in Chinese for mainland, Dàlù, which means continent, and Nèidì, literally inland or inner land. In the PRC, the usage of the two terms are interchangeable and there is no prescribed method of reference in any jurisdiction. To emphasize equal footing in Cross-Strait relations, the term is used in official contexts with reference to Taiwan, but in its relations with Hong Kong and Macau, the PRC government refers to itself as the Central Peoples Government. Mainland area is the term to free area of the Republic of China used in the ROC Constitution. It treats the mainland as part of ROCs territory despite the lack of effective control, by 1949, the Communist Party of Chinas Peoples Liberation Army had largely defeated the Kuomintang s National Revolutionary Army in the Chinese Civil War on the mainland. This has resulted in a situation in which two co-existing governments compete for legitimacy and recognition as the government of China. The phrase mainland China emerged as a neutral term to refer to the area under control of the Communist Party of China. Until the late 1970s, both the PRC and ROC envisioned a military takeover of the other, during this time the ROC referred to the PRC government as Communist Bandits while the PRC referred to the ROC as Chiang Bandits. Later, as a military solution became less feasible, the ROC referred to the PRC as Communist China, due to their status as colonies of foreign states during the establishment of the Peoples Republic of China in 1949, the phrase mainland China excludes Hong Kong and Macau. Since the return of Hong Kong and Macau to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 and 1999, respectively, the territories also have their distinct identities. Therefore, mainland China generally continues to exclude these territories, because of the One country, the term is also used in economic indicators, such as the IMD Competitiveness Report. International news media often use China to refer only to mainland China or the Peoples Republic of China, in the PRC, the term 内地 is often contrasted with the term 境外 for things outside of the mainland region. Examples include Administration of Foreign-funded Banks or the Measures on Administration of Representative Offices of Foreign Insurance Institutions, Hainan is an offshore island, therefore geographically not part of the continental mainland. Nonetheless, Hainanese people still refer to the mainland as the mainland. In some coastal provinces such as Guangdong, Fujian and Jiangsu, in contrast, the pro-Taiwan independence Democratic Progressive Party prefer to use the term China instead, referring to the PRC, to imply that Taiwan is separate from China
10.
Henry Venn (Church Missionary Society)
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Henry Venn, was an Anglican clergyman who is recognised as one of the foremost Protestant missions strategists of the nineteenth century. He was an administrator who served as honorary secretary of the Church Missionary Society from 1841 to 1873. He expounded the basic principles of indigenous Christian missions, these were later made widespread by the Lausanne Congress of 1974. The son of John Venn, rector of Clapham, and grandson of Henry Venn and he matriculated at Queens College, Cambridge in 1814, graduated B. A. as nineteenth wrangler in 1818, and was elected a Fellow of his college in January 1819. He graduated M. A. in 1821 and B. D. in 1828 and he was ordained deacon of Ely in 1819, and priest in 1820, and soon afterwards took the curacy of St Dunstan-in-the-West. In practice it was a charge, and he remained there four years. He returned to Cambridge in 1824, where he was a lecturer and he was proctor in 1825, and for a short time evening lecturer at Great St Marys. In 1826 he was appointed by an old friend of his family, named Wilberforce, to the incumbency of Drypool and he resigned his fellowship in 1829 on his marriage. In 1834 he accepted the living of St Johns, Holloway, in the gift of Daniel Wilson who was vicar of St Marys Church, Islington. He was appointed a prebendary of St Pauls Cathedral in 1846 and he resigned St Johns in 1846, and devoted himself to the work of the Church Missionary Society. He acted as secretary for thirty-two years, from 1841 to 1873. When he first undertook the work there were 107 European clergy employed by the Society, when he died in 1873 these numbers had risen to 230 and 148 respectively. During his tenure of office 498 clergymen were sent abroad, all of them passing under his inspection and he was involved in the establishment of eight or nine bishoprics for the superintendence of the missionary clergy, and was often consulted in the appointments made. Venn and Rufus Anderson of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions were the first to use the indigenous church in the mid-nineteenth century. They wrote about the necessity for creating churches in the field that were self-supporting, self-governing. Venn is often quoted as encouraging the euthanasia of missions, which meant that missionaries were to be considered temporary workers, with a view to checking the slave trade on the west coast of Africa, Venn spent time in developing trade in African products. He had young Africans sent to England to learn methods of preparation of cotton, palm oil, and other articles of trade, in his later years his position as an evangelical in the Church of England was recognised by his being placed on two royal commissions. Venn died at Mortlake, Surrey, where he had resided for twelve years, on 13 January 1873, there was a portrait of him, by George Richmond, in the committee-room of the Church Missionary Society, and a marble relief in the crypt of St Pauls Cathedral
11.
Church Mission Society
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Founded in 1799, CMS has attracted over nine thousand men and women to serve as mission partners during its 200-year history. The society has given its name CMS to a number of daughter organisations around the world. The Baptist Missionary Society was formed in 1792 and the London Missionary Society was formed in 1795 to represent various evangelical denominations and their number included Charles Simeon, Basil Woodd, Henry Thornton, Thomas Babington and William Wilberforce. Wilberforce was asked to be the first president of the society, the treasurer was Henry Thornton and the founding secretary was Thomas Scott, a biblical commentator. Many of the founders were involved in creating the Sierra Leone Company. In 1802 Josiah Pratt was appointed secretary, a position he held for until 1824, the first missionaries went out in 1804. They came from the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Württemberg and had trained at the Berlin Seminary, the name Church Missionary Society began to be used and in 1812 the society was renamed The Church Missionary Society. The West Africa mission was extended to Sierra Leone, Samuel Ajayi Crowther, a Yoruba by birth, was selected to accompany the missionary James Schön on the Niger expedition of 1841. Crowther was the missionary to Yorubaland in 1844 and the Niger in 1857. West Indies, The CMS started work in Antigua and expanded to other islands, by 1838 the CMS had congregations of 8,000, with 13 ordained missionaries,23 lay teachers and 70 schools. In about 1848 a shortage of funds resulted in the CMS withdrawing from the West Indies, New Zealand, The Revd Samuel Marsden became the chaplain of the penal colony at Paramatta, Australia in 1874. India, William Carey, the founder of the Baptist Missionary Society was the pioneer of the Evangelical, the CMS Mission in India began in 1814 when 7 missionaries arrived, two were placed at Chennai, two at Bengal and three at Travancore. The Indian missions were extended in the years to a number of locations including Agra, Meerut district, Varanasi, Mumbai, Tirunelveli, Kolkata, Telugu Country. While the Revolt of 1857 resulted in damage to the missions in the North West Provinces, after the revolt the CMS expanded its missions to Oudh, Allahbad, the Santhal people, and to Kashmir. Sri Lanka, Four CMS missionaries were sent to Ceylon in 1817, in 1850 a mission station was established at Colombo. In 1822 the CMS appointed West to head the mission in what was known as the Red River Colony in what is now the province of Manitoba. He was succeeded in 1823 by the Revd David Jones who was joined by the Revd W. Cockram, the mission worked among the Cree, Ojibwe, Chippewa, and Gwichin of the upper west Great Plains. Egypt and Ethiopia, Five missionaries were sent to Egypt in 1825, the missionaries were expelled from Abyssinia in 1844 following the Siege of Khartoum and the death of General Gordon
12.
Rufus Anderson
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Rufus Anderson was an American minister who spent several decades organizing overseas missions. Rufus Anderson was born in North Yarmouth, Maine, on August 17,1796 and his father, also named Rufus Anderson, was Congregationalist pastor of the church in North Yarmouth. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1818, and from Andover Theological Seminary in 1822 and he married Eliza Hill on January 8,1827. He worked at the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions as an assistant while studying at Andover, in 1822 he applied to go to India but was asked to remain at headquarters and later appointed assistant secretary. In 1832 he was given responsibility for overseas work as a Secretary of the ABCFM. In this capacity, he corresponded with missionaries from around the world and he traveled in Latin America, the Mediterranean and Near East, India, Ceylon, Syria, and Turkey, and Hawaii. During the winter of 1843-1844, he visited the ABCFMs mission stations in Turkey and he resigned as ABCFM secretary in 1866 but continued on the ABCFM Prudential Committee until 1875. Anderson believed that missions are instituted for the spread of a scriptural self-propagating Christianity, Missions were for, converting lost men, organising them into churches, giving these churches a competent native ministry, conducting them to the stage of independence and of self-propagation. Anything beyond this, he felt, was secondary, the end of the mission was to be a scriptural, self propagating Christianity the test of which is seen in evidence of a religious life, a genuine change in the church and the individual. He wrote that Bible translation, literature, schools, press and all activities should be directed to building a mature local church which evangelised. He also prohibited any mission becoming engaged with a government or engaging in any kind of business and he advocated cooperation with other societies to avoid the waste of people and money. The missionary was not to be a pastor or ruler but an evangelist, moving on to the place as soon as possible, their business was with unbelievers. The society existed solely to help the missionary discharge their duty rather than making them a servant, native ministers were to be the spiritual leaders. Though there is dispute as to who wrote about the idea first and they both wrote about the need for creating churches in the missions field that were self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating. He published several books, as well as articles in The Missionary Herald. He is remembered in Sri Lanka for shutting down American Ceylon Missions popular Batticotta Seminary because it was not converting enough locals to Christianity. He traveled to the Hawaiian Islands in 1863 after crossing the Panama Canal, described the trip in a book and he died May 23,1880 in Boston and was buried in Forest Hills Cemetery after a funeral at Eliot Congregational Church. His son Edward Anderson became a chaplain in the American Civil War, indigenous church mission theory Works by Rufus Anderson at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Rufus Anderson at Internet Archive
13.
Shanghai
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Shanghai is the most populous city proper in the world, with a population of more than 24 million as of 2014. As one of the four direct-controlled municipalities of the Peoples Republic of China, it is a financial centre and transport hub. Located in the Yangtze River Delta in East China, Shanghai sits on the edge of the mouth of the Yangtze in the middle portion of the eastern Chinese coast. The municipality borders the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the north, south and west, as a major administrative, shipping and trading city, Shanghai grew in importance in the 19th century due to trade and recognition of its favourable port location and economic potential. The city was one of five treaty ports forced open to foreign trade following the British victory over China in the First Opium War, the subsequent 1842 Treaty of Nanking and 1844 Treaty of Whampoa allowed the establishment of the Shanghai International Settlement and the French Concession. The city then flourished as a center of commerce between China and other parts of the world, and became the financial hub of the Asia-Pacific region in the 1930s. However, with the Communist Party takeover of the mainland in 1949, trade was limited to other socialist countries, and the citys global influence declined. In the 1990s, the reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping resulted in an intense re-development of the city, aiding the return of finance. The two Chinese characters in the name are 上 and 海, together meaning Upon-the-Sea. The earliest occurrence of this dates from the 11th-century Song Dynasty, at which time there was already a river confluence. There are disputes as to exactly how the name should be understood, Shanghai is officially abbreviated 沪 in Chinese, a contraction of 沪渎, a 4th- or 5th-century Jin name for the mouth of Suzhou Creek when it was the main conduit into the ocean. This character appears on all motor vehicle license plates issued in the municipality today, another alternative name for Shanghai is Shēn or Shēnchéng, from Lord Chunshen, a third-century BC nobleman and prime minister of the state of Chu, whose fief included modern Shanghai. Sports teams and newspapers in Shanghai often use Shen in their names, such as Shanghai Shenhua F. C. Huating was another early name for Shanghai. In AD751, during the dynasty, Huating County was established at modern-day Songjiang. Today, Huating appears as the name of a hotel in the city. The city also has various nicknames in English, including Pearl of the Orient, during the Spring and Autumn period, the Shanghai area belonged to the Kingdom of Wu, which was conquered by the Kingdom of Yue, which in turn was conquered by the Kingdom of Chu. During the Warring States period, Shanghai was part of the fief of Lord Chunshen of Chu and he ordered the excavation of the Huangpu River. Its former or poetic name, the Chunshen River, gave Shanghai its nickname of Shen, two important events helped promote Shanghais development in the Ming dynasty
14.
Worship
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Worship is an act of religious devotion usually directed towards a deity. An act of worship may be performed individually, in an informal or formal group, or by a designated leader. The word is derived from the Old English weorþscipe, meaning worship, honour shown to an object, Worship in Buddhism may take innumerable forms given the doctrine of skillful means. Buddhist Devotion is an important part of the practice of most Buddhists, according to a spokesman of the Sasana Council of Burma, devotion to Buddhist spiritual practices inspires devotion to the Triple Gem. Most Buddhists use ritual in pursuit of their spiritual aspirations, in Buddhism, puja are expressions of honour, worship and devotional attention. Acts of puja include bowing, making offerings and chanting and these devotional acts are generally performed daily at home as well as during communal festivals and Uposatha days at a temple. Meditation is a form of worship in Buddhism. This practice is focused on the step of the Eightfold Path that ultimately leads to self awakening. Meditation promotes self-awareness and exploration of the mind and spirit, traditionally, Buddhist meditation had combined samatha and vipasyana to create a complete mind and body experience. By stopping ones everyday activities and focusing on something simple, the mind can open, by practicing the step of vipasyana, one does not achieve the final stage of awareness, but rather approaches one step closer. Mindful meditation teaches one to stop reacting quickly to thoughts and external objects that present themselves, although in traditional Buddhist faith, enlightenment is the desired end goal of meditation, it is more of a cycle in a literal sense that helps individuals better understand their minds. For example, meditation leads to understanding, leading to kindness, leading to peace, Anglican devotions are private prayers and practices used by Anglican Christians to promote spiritual growth and communion with God. Among members of the Anglican Communion, private devotional habits vary widely, depending on personal preference, roman Catholic devotions are external practices of piety which are not part of the official liturgy of the Catholic Church but are part of the popular spiritual practices of Catholics. Catholic devotions do not become part of worship, even if they are performed within a Catholic church, in a group. The Congregation for Divine Worship at the Vatican publishes a Directory on Popular Piety, the church service is the gathering together of Christians to be taught the Word of God and encouraged in their faith. Technically, the church in church service refers to the gathering of the rather than to the building in which it takes place. In Christianity, worship is reverent honor and homage paid to God, in the New Testament various words are used for worship. The word proskuneo to worship means to bow down to Gods or kings, in the New Testament various words are used for worship
15.
Dixon Edward Hoste
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He was the son of Major General Dixon Edward Hoste. He was educated at Clifton College and the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, in 1882 he experienced conversion under the influence of Dwight Lyman Moody. He was sent to Küwu, to the south of Linfen in Southern Shanxi, in 1886 he was ordained as a pastor by Hudson Taylor, and moved to Hungtung to work with Stanley Peregrine Smith who had opened an opium refuge there at the invitation of Pastor Hsi. He worked under Xi, wore Chinese clothes, ate Chinese food, Hoste is credited with making the Chinese churches apply the indigenous principles of self-government, self-support, and self-propagation. This threefold motto was adopted by the Three-Self Patriotic Movement after missionaries were expelled from China. In 1893, he married Gertrude Broomhall, daughter of CIM General Secretary Benjamin Broomhall, because of ill-health Mr Hoste visited England in 1896 and then spent some time in Australia before returning to China. His wife had died in Shanghai 12th April 1944
16.
OMF International
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OMF International is an international and interdenominational Protestant Christian missionary society with an international centre in Singapore. It was founded in Britain by Hudson Taylor on 25 June 1865, the non-sectarian China Inland Mission was founded on principles of faith and prayer. From the beginning it recruited missionaries from the class as well as single women. Even today, no appeals for funds are made, instead a reliance upon God is practiced to move people through prayer alone, the name was officially changed to Overseas Missionary Fellowship in 1964 and to OMF International in the 1990s. Like his missionary forebear Karl Gützlaff and contemporary William Chalmers Burns, on 3 October 1865, Taylor sent John and Anne Stevenson and George Stott to China, where they arrived on February 6,1866. On 26 May of that year, Taylor accompanied the largest group of missionaries that had sailed to China on the Lammermuir. There were 16 missionaries as well as Hudson, his wife, Maria, in 1872, the China Inland Missions London council was formed. In 1875, it began to evangelise China systematically, Taylor requested 18 missionaries from God for the nine provinces which were still unreached. In 1881, he requested a further 70 missionaries, and, in 1887 The Hundred missionaries were sent to China. Taylor travelled across several continents to recruit for the China Inland Mission, by the end of the nineteenth century, the CIM was well known around the world. Richard Lovett wrote about the practices of the missionaries in 1899, In 1900, attacks took place across China in connection with the Boxer Rebellion which targeted Christians, the China Inland Mission lost more members than any other agency,58 adults and 21 children were killed. In the same year, Dixon Edward Hoste was appointed to the directorship of the mission, the early 1900s saw great expansion of missionary activity in China following the Boxer Rebellion and during the Revolution of 1912 and the establishment of the Chinese Republic. He died in Egypt while still in training, a musician and an engineer named James O. Fraser was the first to bring the Gospel message to the Lisu tribes of Yunnan in southwest China. This resulted in phenomenal church growth among the tribes in the area that endured to the 21st century. The Warlord period brought widespread lawlessness to China and missionary work was often dangerous or deadly, John and Betty Stam were a young couple who were murdered in 1934 by Communist soldiers. The Japanese invasion further complicated efforts as the Japanese distrusted anyone with British or American Nationalities, when the Japanese invaded China in World War II, the China Inland Mission moved its headquarters up the Yangzi River to Chongqing. Many missionaries were put into concentration camps until the end of the war, one such camp was at Weifang. The entire Chefoo School run by the mission at Yantai was imprisoned at a concentration camp, as the children and teachers were marched off they sang, The students were separated from their parents for more than 5 years
17.
Anti-imperialism
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A less common usage is by isolationists who oppose an interventionist foreign policy. The phrase gained a wide currency after the Second World War, some anti-imperialist groups who opposed the United States supported the power of the Soviet Union, such as in Guevarism, while in Maoism, this was criticized as social imperialism. In the Arab and Muslim world, the term is used in the context of anti-Zionist nationalist. In the late 1870s, the term Imperialism was introduced to the English language by opponents of the imperial policies of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. It was shortly appropriated by supporters of such as Joseph Chamberlain. For some, imperialism designated a policy of idealism and philanthropy, others alleged that it was characterized by political self-interest, John A. Hobson and Lenin added a more theoretical macroeconomic connotation to the term. Many theoreticians on the left have followed either or both in emphasizing the structural or systemic character of imperialism. As the application of the term has expanded, its meaning has shifted along five distinct but often parallel axes, the moral, the economic, the systemic, the cultural, and the temporal. Those changes reflect—among other shifts in sensibility—a growing unease with the fact of power, specifically, J. A. Hobson said that domestic social reforms could cure the international disease of imperialism by removing its economic foundation. Hobson theorized that state intervention through taxation could boost broader consumption, create wealth, conversely, should the state not intervene, rentiers would generate socially negative wealth that fostered imperialism and protectionism. An early use of the term anti-imperialist occurred after the United States entered the Spanish–American War in 1898, most activists supported the war itself but opposed the annexation of new territory, especially the Philippines. The Anti-Imperialist League was founded on June 15,1898 in Boston, in opposition of the acquisition of the Philippines, the anti-imperialists opposed the expansion because they believed imperialism violated the credo of republicanism, especially the need for consent of the governed. British anti-imperialism emerged in the 1890s, especially in the Liberal Party, the key impetus around 1900 came from public disgust with the British failures and atrocities connected with the Second Boer War. The War was fought against the Afrikaners, who were Dutch immigrants who had built new nations in South Africa, opposition to the Second Boer War was modest when the war began, and was always less widespread than support for it, let alone the prevailing indifference. However, influential groups formed immediately and ineffectually against the war, including the South African Conciliation Committee, much of the opposition in Britain came from the Liberal party. Intellectuals and activists Britain based in the Socialist, labour, and Fabian movements generally oppose imperialism, and John Hobson, after the Boer war, opponents of imperialism turn their attention to the British colonies in Africa and Asia. By the 1920s, the government was sponsoring large-scale exhibits promoting imperialism, notably the 1924 British Empire Exhibition in London, some intellectuals use the opportunity to criticize imperialism as a policy. Moderately active anti-imperial movements emerged in Canada and Australia, the French-Canadians were hostile to the British expansion, while, in Australia it was the Irish Catholics who were opposed
18.
Zhou Enlai
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Zhou Enlai was the first Premier of the Peoples Republic of China, serving from October 1949 until his death in January 1976. Zhou served under Chairman Mao Zedong and was instrumental in the Communist Partys rise to power, and later in consolidating its control, forming foreign policy, a skilled and able diplomat, Zhou served as the Chinese foreign minister from 1949 to 1958. He helped devise policies regarding the disputes with the U. S. Taiwan. Zhou survived the purges of other top officials during the Cultural Revolution, while Mao dedicated most of his later years to political struggle and ideological work, Zhou was the main driving force behind the affairs of state during much of the Cultural Revolution. His attempts at mitigating the Red Guards damage and his efforts to protect others from their wrath made him popular in the Cultural Revolutions later stages. As Mao Zedongs health began to decline in 1971 and 1972, Zhous health was also failing, however, and he died eight months before Mao on 8 January 1976. The massive public outpouring of grief in Beijing turned to anger towards the Gang of Four, although succeeded by Hua Guofeng, it was Deng Xiaoping, Zhous ally, who was able to outmaneuver the Gang of Four politically and eventually take Maos place as paramount leader by 1978. Zhou Enlai was born in Huaian, Jiangsu province on 5 March 1898, the Zhou family was originally from Shaoxing in Zhejiang province. During the late Qing dynasty, Shaoxing was famous as the home of such as Zhous. To move up the ladder in civil service, the men in these often had to be transferred. Even after the move, however, the continued to view Shaoxing as its ancestral home. Zhous grandfather, Zhou Panlong, and his granduncle, Zhou Junang, were the first members of the family to move to Huaian, Panlong apparently passed the provincial examinations, and Zhou Enlai later claimed that Panlong served as magistrate governing Huaian county. Zhous father, Zhou Yineng, was the second of Zhou Panlongs four sons, Zhous birth mother, surnamed Wan, was the daughter of a prominent Jiangsu official. Like many others, the fortunes of Zhous large family of scholar-officials were decimated by a great economic recession that China suffered in the late 19th century. Zhou Yineng had a reputation for honesty, gentleness, intelligence and concern for others and he was unsuccessful in his personal life, and drifted across China doing various occupations, working in Beijing, Shandong, Anhui, Shenyang, Inner Mongolia and Sichuan. Zhou Enlai later remembered his father as being away from home. Soon after birth, Zhou Enlai was adopted by his fathers youngest brother, Zhou Yigan, apparently the adoption was arranged because the family feared Yigan would die without an heir. Zhou Yigan died soon after the adoption, and Zhou Enlai was raised by Yigans widow, madame Chen was also from a scholarly family and received a traditional literary education
19.
Separation of church and state
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The separation of church and state is a concept defining the distance in the relationship between organized religion and the nation state. It may refer to creating a state, with or without explicit reference to such separation. The concept parallels various other social and political ideas, including secularism, disestablishmentarianism, religious liberty. Whitman observes that in many European countries, the state has, over the centuries, taken over the roles of the church. Many societies in antiquity had imperial cults where heads of state were worshiped as messiahs, ancient history is replete with examples of political leaders who derived legitimacy through religious titles. Sargon of Akkad was referred to as the deputy of Ishtar, julius Caesar was elected as Pontifex Maximus, the chief priest of the Roman state religion before he became the consul of Rome. Caligula referred to himself as a god when meeting with politicians, in this work, Augustine posited that major points of overlap were to be found between the earthly city and the city of God, especially as people need to live together and get along on earth. Thus Augustine held that it was the work of the city to make it possible for a heavenly city to be established on earth. For centuries, monarchs ruled by the idea of divine right, sometimes this began to be used by a monarch to support the notion that the king ruled both his own kingdom and Church within its boundaries, a theory known as caesaropapism. On the other side was the Catholic doctrine that the Pope, as the Vicar of Christ on earth, should have the authority over the Church. In the West the issue of the separation of church and state during the medieval period centered on monarchs who ruled in the secular sphere, at the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther articulated a doctrine of the two kingdoms. While there was a diversity of views in the days of the Radical Reformation. Anabaptists came to teach that religion should never be compelled by state power, approaching the issue of church-state relations primarily from the position of protecting the church from the state. In the 1530s, Henry VIII, angered by the Pope Clement VIIs refusal to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, decided to break with the Church and set himself as ruler of the Church of England. The monarchs of Great Britain have retained ecclesiastical authority in the Church of England since Henry VIII, having the current title, englands ecclesiastical intermixing did not spread widely, however, due to the extensive persecution of Catholics that resulted from Henrys power grab. Some of these people voluntarily sailed to the American Colonies specifically for this purpose, the concept of separating church and state is often credited to the writings of English philosopher John Locke. For Locke, this created a right in the liberty of conscience. At the same period of the 17th century, Pierre Bayle and some fideists were forerunners of the separation of Church and State, maintaining that faith was independent of reason
20.
Cultural Revolution
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The Cultural Revolution, formally the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement that took place in China from 1966 until 1976. The Revolution marked the return of Mao Zedong to a position of power after the Great Leap Forward, the movement paralyzed China politically and negatively affected the countrys economy and society to a significant degree. The Revolution was launched in May 1966, after Mao alleged that bourgeois elements had infiltrated the government and society at large, to eliminate his rivals within the Communist Party of China, Mao insisted that these revisionists be removed through violent class struggle. Chinas youth responded to Maos appeal by forming Red Guard groups around the country, the movement spread into the military, urban workers, and the Communist Party leadership itself. It resulted in factional struggles in all walks of life. In the top leadership, it led to a purge of senior officials, most notably Liu Shaoqi. During the same period Maos personality cult grew to immense proportions, a large segment of the population was forcibly displaced, most notably the transfer of urban youth to rural regions during the Down to the Countryside Movement. Historical relics and artifacts were destroyed, Cultural and religious sites were ransacked. Mao officially declared the Cultural Revolution to have ended in 1969, after Maos death and the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976, reformers led by Deng Xiaoping gradually began to dismantle the Maoist policies associated with the Cultural Revolution. In 1958, after Chinas first Five-Year Plan, Mao called for grassroots socialism in order to accelerate his plans for turning China into an industrialized state. In this spirit, Mao launched the Great Leap Forward, established Peoples Communes in the countryside, many communities were assigned production of a single commodity—steel. Mao vowed to increase production to twice 1957 levels. The Great Leap was an economic failure, uneducated farmers attempted to produce steel on a massive scale, partially relying on backyard furnaces to achieve the production targets set by local cadres. The steel produced was low quality and largely useless, the Great Leap reduced harvest sizes and led to a decline in the production of most goods except substandard pig iron and steel. Furthermore, local authorities frequently exaggerated production numbers, hiding and intensifying the problem for several years, in the meantime, chaos in the collectives, bad weather, and exports of food necessary to secure hard currency resulted in the Great Chinese Famine. Food was in shortage, and production fell dramatically. The famine caused the deaths of millions of people, particularly in poorer inland regions, the Great Leaps failure reduced Maos prestige within the Party. Forced to take responsibility, in 1959, Mao resigned as the President of the Peoples Republic of China, Chinas de jure head of state
21.
House church (China)
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This article is about the house churches in China. For Chinese churches outside of China, see Chinese church, K. H. Ting, one of the key leaders of the TSPM and the CCC for many years, did not like the term house church and preferred to use the term house gathering. This was because he found such as house church and official church as returning to the pre-Cultural Revolution practice of denominationalism. Others suggest the need to discard the house church vs. TSPM church dichotomy as there is a lot that blurs these divisions, moreover, as a result of the rapid urbanization of China since the 1990s, there has been a growing development within urban Christianity. Some congregations have preferred to self-identify as being part of a church to differentiate from both traditional house churches and TSPM churches. After the Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in 1949, during this period, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement would be established for Protestants to declare their patriotism and support of the new government. However, by the time of the Cultural Revolution, all religious practice came to an end. Due to the changes in policy after the end of the Cultural Revolution, in 1980, the Three-Self Patriotic Movement would be reinstated. Protestant congregations that wished to worship publicly registered with the TSPM, since the 1990s, a number of developments have resulted from the rapid urbanization experienced in Chinese society. While house churches originated as being independent of one another. These networks have sent missionaries all over the country and have started sending them abroad to neighboring states. The rapid urbanization has also resulted in migration to Chinas urban centers, some of these have developed through migrant worker communities and university students. Other new communities can be seen among urban intellectuals and entrepreneurs, House churches in China are generally considered illegal, yet smaller house churches of less than 25 members tend to be tolerated by the government. However, some have grown to a large size, such as the Shouwang Church which reached 1,000 members at its height. House churches today still experience persecution, though the situation tends to differ depending on the region, House churches may choose to operate legally by joining the state-sanctioned Three-Self Patriotic Movement. However, during the 1950s, the TSPM was often used by the government to oppress churches throughout China, while this legacy itself is problematic, joining the TSPM would also result in restrictions such as limiting the times and the locations for religious activities. These groups would also be instrumental in inspiring the creation of indigenous Pentecostal groups, such as the True Jesus Church, today, Chinese house churches are commonly described as being Pentecostal or charismatic. This is often the case due to the experience of miraculous healing, according to some surveys, 90% of converts to Protestant Christianity, in both house churches and TSPM churches, cite healing as a reason for their conversion
22.
Creed
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A creed is a statement of the shared beliefs of a religious community in the form of a fixed formula summarizing core tenets. One of the most widely used creeds in Christianity is the Nicene Creed and it was based on Christian understanding of the Canonical Gospels, the letters of the New Testament and to a lesser extent the Old Testament. Affirmation of this creed, which describes the Trinity, is taken as a fundamental test of orthodoxy for most Christian denominations. The Apostles Creed is also broadly accepted, Some Christian denominations and other groups have rejected the authority of those creeds. Muslims declare the shahada, or testimony, I bear witness there is no god but God. Whether Judaism is creedal has been a point of some controversy, although some say Judaism is noncreedal in nature, others say it recognizes a single creed, the Shema Yisrael, which begins, Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. The word creed is particularly used for a statement which is recited as part of liturgy. The term is anglicized from Latin credo I believe, the incipit of the Latin texts of the Apostles Creed, within Evangelicalism, the terms doctrinal statement or doctrinal basis tend to be preferred. Doctrinal statements may include positions on lectionary and translations of the Bible, the term creed is sometimes extended to comparable concepts in non-Christian theologies, thus the Islamic concept of ʿaqīdah is often rendered as creed. Several creeds have originated in Christianity,1 Corinthians 15, 3–7 includes an early creed about Jesus death and resurrection which was probably received by Paul. The antiquity of the creed has been located by most biblical scholars to no more than five years after Jesus death, the Old Roman Creed is an earlier and shorter version of the Apostles Creed. The Apostles Creed is widely used by most Christian denominations for both liturgical and catechetical purposes, the Nicene Creed reflects the concerns of the First Council of Nicaea in 325 which had as their chief purpose to establish what Christians believed. The Chalcedonian Creed was adopted at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 in Asia Minor and it defines that Christ is acknowledged in two natures, which come together into one person and hypostasis. The Athanasian Creed is a Christian statement of belief focusing on Trinitarian doctrine, the Tridentine Creed was initially contained in the papal bull Iniunctum Nobis, issued by Pope Pius IV on November 13,1565. The creed was intended to summarize the teaching of the Council of Trent, the Maasai Creed is a creed composed in 1960 by the Maasai people of East Africa in collaboration with missionaries from the Congregation of the Holy Ghost. The creed attempts to express the essentials of the Christian faith within the Maasai culture, the Credo of the People of God is a profession of faith that Pope Paul VI published with the motu proprio Solemni hac liturgia of 30 June 1968. Pope Paul VI spoke of it as a profession of faith, Protestant denominations are usually associated with confessions of faith, which are similar to creeds but usually longer. By the martyr French Huguenots Jean du Bourdel, Matthieu Verneuil, Pierre Bourdon and André la Fon at the site of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
23.
Bible
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The Bible is a collection of sacred texts or scriptures that Jews and Christians consider to be a product of divine inspiration and a record of the relationship between God and humans. Many different authors contributed to the Bible, what is regarded as canonical text differs depending on traditions and groups, a number of Bible canons have evolved, with overlapping and diverging contents. The Christian Old Testament overlaps with the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Septuagint, the New Testament is a collection of writings by early Christians, believed to be mostly Jewish disciples of Christ, written in first-century Koine Greek. These early Christian Greek writings consist of narratives, letters, among Christian denominations there is some disagreement about the contents of the canon, primarily the Apocrypha, a list of works that are regarded with varying levels of respect. Attitudes towards the Bible also differ amongst Christian groups and this concept arose during the Protestant Reformation, and many denominations today support the use of the Bible as the only source of Christian teaching. With estimated total sales of over 5 billion copies, the Bible is widely considered to be the book of all time. It has estimated sales of 100 million copies, and has been a major influence on literature and history, especially in the West. The English word Bible is from the Latin biblia, from the word in Medieval Latin and Late Latin. Medieval Latin biblia is short for biblia sacra holy book, while biblia in Greek and it gradually came to be regarded as a feminine singular noun in medieval Latin, and so the word was loaned as a singular into the vernaculars of Western Europe. Latin biblia sacra holy books translates Greek τὰ βιβλία τὰ ἅγια ta biblia ta hagia, the word βιβλίον itself had the literal meaning of paper or scroll and came to be used as the ordinary word for book. It is the diminutive of βύβλος byblos, Egyptian papyrus, possibly so called from the name of the Phoenician sea port Byblos from whence Egyptian papyrus was exported to Greece, the Greek ta biblia was an expression Hellenistic Jews used to describe their sacred books. Christian use of the term can be traced to c.223 CE, bruce notes that Chrysostom appears to be the first writer to use the Greek phrase ta biblia to describe both the Old and New Testaments together. The division of the Hebrew Bible into verses is based on the sof passuk cantillation mark used by the 10th-century Masoretes to record the verse divisions used in oral traditions. The oldest extant copy of a complete Bible is an early 4th-century parchment book preserved in the Vatican Library, the oldest copy of the Tanakh in Hebrew and Aramaic dates from the 10th century CE. The oldest copy of a complete Latin Bible is the Codex Amiatinus and he states that it is not a magical book, nor was it literally written by God and passed to mankind. In Christian Bibles, the New Testament Gospels were derived from traditions in the second half of the first century CE. Riches says that, Scholars have attempted to reconstruct something of the history of the oral traditions behind the Gospels, the period of transmission is short, less than 40 years passed between the death of Jesus and the writing of Marks Gospel. This means that there was time for oral traditions to assume fixed form
24.
Apostles' Creed
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The Apostles Creed, sometimes entitled Symbol of the Apostles, is an early statement of Christian belief—a creed or symbol. It is also used by Presbyterians, Methodists and Congregationalists, the Apostles Creed is Trinitarian in structure with sections affirming belief in God the Father, Jesus Christ His Son and the Holy Spirit. The Apostles Creed was based on Christian theological understanding of the Canonical gospels and its basis appears to be the old Roman Creed known also as the Old Roman Symbol. Because of the origin of its original form, it does not address some Christological issues defined in the Nicene. It thus says nothing explicitly about the divinity of either Jesus or the Holy Spirit and this makes it acceptable to many Arians and Unitarians. Nor does it address many other questions which became objects of dispute centuries later. The earlier text evolved from simpler texts based on Matthew 28,19, part of the Great Commission, pirminius, written between 710 and 714. Bettenson and Maunder state that it is first from Dicta Abbatis Pirminii de singulis libris canonicis scarapsus and this longer Creed seems to have arisen in what is now France and Spain. Charlemagne imposed it throughout his dominions, and it was accepted in Rome. It has been argued nonetheless that it dates from the half of the 5th century. Some have suggested that the Apostles Creed was spliced together with phrases from the New Testament, for instance, the phrase descendit ad inferos echoes Ephesians 4,9, κατέβη εἰς τὰ κατώτερα μέρη τῆς γῆς. It is of interest that this phrase first appeared in one of the two versions of Rufinus in A. D.390 and then did not appear again in any version of the creed until A. D.650. This phrase and that on the communion of saints are found in the Apostles Creed. Musical settings of the Symbolum Apostolorum as a motet are rare, the French composer Le Brung published one Latin setting in 1540, the Spanish composer Fernando de las Infantas published two in 1578. More recently, in 1979 John Michael Talbot, a Third Order Franciscan, composed and recorded Creed on his album, in 1986 Graham Kendrick published the popular We believe in God the Father, closely based on the Apostles Creed. Rich Mullins and Beaker also composed a musical setting titled Creed, released on Mullins‘1993 album A Liturgy, the song Creed on Petra’s 1990 album Beyond Belief is loosely based on the Apostles Creed. In 1991, GIA Publications published a hymn text directly based on the Apostles’ Creed, called I Believe in God Almighty and it has been sung to hymn tunes from Wales, the Netherlands, and Ireland. In 2014 Hillsong released a version of the Apostles Creed under the title This I Believe on their album No Other Name, in 2016 Keith Getty and Kristyn Getty released an expression of the Apostles Creed under the title We Believe on their album Facing a Task Unfinished
25.
Nicene Creed
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The Nicene Creed is a Symbol of faith widely used in Christian liturgy. It is called Nicene /ˈnaɪsiːn/ because it was adopted in the city of Nicaea by the First Council of Nicaea in 325. In 381, it was amended at the First Council of Constantinople, the Anglican and many Protestant denominations generally use the singular form, but sometimes use the plural. The Apostles Creed is also used in the Latin West, on Sundays and some other days, one or other of these two creeds is recited in the Roman Rite Mass after the homily. The Nicene Creed is also part of the profession of faith required of those important functions within the Catholic Church. In the Byzantine Rite, the Nicene Creed is sung or recited at the Divine Liturgy, immediately preceding the Anaphora, Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed can stand for the revised version of Constantinople or the later Latin version or various other versions. Icon/Symbol of the Faith is the designation for the revised version of Constantinople 381 in the Orthodox churches. Profession of Faith of the 318 Fathers refers specifically to the version of Nicaea 325, profession of Faith of the 150 Fathers refers specifically to the version of Constantinople 381. In musical settings, particularly when sung in Latin, this Creed is usually referred to by its first word, the purpose of a creed is to provide a doctrinal statement of correct belief, or orthodoxy. For that reason a creed was called in Greek a σύμβολον, a word that meant half of an object which. The Greek word passed through Latin symbolum into English symbol, which later took on the meaning of an outward sign of something. The Nicene Creed was adopted in the face of the Arian controversy, whose leader, Arius objected to Alexanders apparent carelessness in blurring the distinction of nature between the Father and the Son by his emphasis on eternal generation. Alexander accused Arius of denying the divinity of the Son and also of being too Jewish, both Arius and Alexander rejected Gnosticism, Manichaeism and Sabellian formulae. The Nicene Creed was created as a result of the adoption of the doctrine of Arius far outside Alexandria. The Nicene Creed of 325 explicitly affirms the co-essential divinity of the Son, the 381 version speaks of the Holy Spirit as worshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son. The Athanasian Creed describes in much detail the relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Apostles Creed makes no statements about the divinity of the Son and the Holy Spirit, but, in the view of many who use it. The original Nicene Creed was first adopted in 325 at the First Council of Nicaea, at that time, the text ended with the words We believe in the Holy Spirit, after which various anathemas against Arian propositions were added
26.
Trinity
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The Christian doctrine of the Trinity holds that God is three consubstantial persons or hypostases—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—as one God in three Divine Persons. The three persons are distinct, yet are one substance, essence or nature, in this context, a nature is what one is, whereas a person is who one is. Reflection, proclamation, and dialogue led to the formulation of the doctrine that was felt to correspond to the data in the Bible. The simplest outline of the doctrine was formulated in the 4th century, further elaboration continued in the succeeding centuries. Scripture contains neither the word Trinity, nor an expressly formulated doctrine of the Trinity, rather, according to the Christian theology, it bears witness to the activity of a God who can only be understood in Trinitarian terms. The doctrine did not take its shape until late in the fourth century. During the intervening period, various solutions, some more. Trinitarianism contrasts with nontrinitarian positions which include Binitarianism, Unitarianism, Oneness Pentecostalism or Modalism, the word trinity is derived from Latin trinitas, meaning the number three, a triad. This abstract noun is formed from the adjective trinus, as the word unitas is the noun formed from unus. The corresponding word in Greek is tριάς, meaning a set of three or the number three, the first recorded use of this Greek word in Christian theology was by Theophilus of Antioch in about 170. He wrote, In like manner also the three days which were before the luminaries, are types of the Trinity, of God, and His Word, and His wisdom. And the fourth is the type of man, who needs light, that so there may be God, the Word, wisdom, man. The Ante-Nicene Fathers asserted Christs deity and spoke of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Trinitarians view these as elements of the codified doctrine. Ignatius of Antioch provides early support for the Trinity around 110, exhorting obedience to Christ, and to the Father, and to the Spirit. Justin Martyr also writes, in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, the first of the early church fathers to be recorded using the word Trinity was Theophilus of Antioch writing in the late 2nd century. He defines the Trinity as God, His Word and His Wisdom in the context of a discussion of the first three days of creation, the first defence of the doctrine of the Trinity was in the early 3rd century by the early church father Tertullian. He explicitly defined the Trinity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, St. Justin and Clement of Alexandra used the Trinity in their doxologies and St. Basil likewise, in the evening lighting of lamps. The highly allegorical exegesis of the Valentinian school inclined it to interpret the relevant scriptural passages as affirming a Divinity that, the Valentinian Gospel of Phillip, which dates to approximately the time of Tertullian, upholds the Trinitarian formula
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God in Christianity
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In Christianity, God is the eternal being who created and preserves all things. Christians believe God to be both transcendent and immanent, although the Judæo-Christian sect of the Ebionites protested against this apotheosis of Jesus, the great mass of Gentile Christians accepted it. This began to differentiate the Gentile Christian views of God from traditional Jewish teachings of the time, in the 8th century, John of Damascus listed eighteen attributes which remain widely accepted. As time passed, theologians developed systematic lists of these attributes, some based on statements in the Bible and this never becomes a tritheism, i. e. this does not imply three Gods. The doctrine of the Trinity can be summed up as, The One God exists in Three Persons and One Substance, as God the Father, God the Son, Trinitarians, who form the large majority of Christians, hold it as a core tenet of their faith. Nontrinitarian denominations define the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in a number of different ways, early Christian views of God are reflected in Apostle Pauls statement in 1 Corinthians, written ca. In John 14,26 Jesus also refers to the Holy Spirit, by the middle of the 2nd century, in Against Heresies Irenaeus had emphasized that the Creator is the one and only God and the maker of heaven and earth. These preceded the presentation of the concept of Trinity by Tertullian early in the 3rd century. This did not exclude either the fact the father of the universe was also the Father of Jesus the Christ or that he had even vouchsafed to adopt as his son by grace. Eastern creeds began with an affirmation of faith in one God and almost always expanded this by adding the Father Almighty, as time passed, theologians and philosophers developed more precise understandings of the nature of God and began to produce systematic lists of his attributes. These varied in detail, but traditionally the attributes fell into two groups, those based on negation and those based on eminence. Throughout the Christian development of ideas about God, the Bible “has been, in Christian theology the name of God has always had much deeper meaning and significance than being just a label or designator. It is not an invention, but has divine origin and is based on divine revelation. This is reflected in the first petition in the Lords Prayer addressed to God the Father, in Revelation 3,12 those who bear the name of God are destined for Heaven. John 17,6 presents the teachings of Jesus as the manifestation of the name of God to his disciples, the Bible usually uses the name of God in the singular, generally using the terms in a very general sense rather than referring to any special designation of God. However, general references to the name of God may branch to other forms which express his multifaceted attributes. Scripture presents many references to the names for God, but the key names in the Old Testament are, God the High and Exalted One, El-Shaddai, in the New Testament Theos, Kyrios and Pater are the essential names. The theological underpinnings of the attributes and nature of God have been discussed since the earliest days of Christianity
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God the Father
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God the Father is a title given to God in various religions, most prominently in Christianity. In mainstream trinitarian Christianity, God the Father is regarded as the first person of the Trinity, followed by the second person God the Son and the third person God the Holy Spirit. Since the second century, Christian creeds included affirmation of belief in God the Father, primarily as his capacity as Father and creator of the universe. While a religious teacher in one faith may be able to explain the concepts to his own audience with ease, many believe they can communicate with God and come closer to him through prayer – a key element of achieving communion with God. For instance, after completing his monumental work Summa Theologica, Catholic St. Thomas Aquinas concluded that he had not yet begun to understand ‘God the Father’. Although God is never addressed as Mother, at times motherly attributes may be interpreted in Old Testament references such as Isa 42,14, Isa 49, 14–15 or Isa 66. This passage clearly acknowledges the Jewish teachings on the uniqueness of God, over time, the Christian doctrine began to fully diverge from Judaism through the teachings of the Church Fathers in the second century and by the fourth century belief in the Trinity was formalized. Judaism In Judaism, God is described as Father as he is seen as the one, indivisible and incomparable, transcendent, immanent. The God in Judaism is the giver of the shabbath and the torahs—written, oral, mystical—to his chosen people. In Judaism, the use of the Father title is generally a metaphor, referring to the role as Life-giver and Law-giver, and is one of many titles by which Jews speak of and to God. The Jewish concept of God is similar to the Christian view, being that Christianity has Jewish roots, though there are some differences, and also the concept of God the Father in Biblical Judaism is generally more metaphorical. Islam The Islamic concept of God differs from the Christian and Jewish views, the father is not formally applied to God by Muslims. Also Muslims believe God is Wali, Wali means custodian, protector and helper. In Quran 9,23, Allah is more preferred to Father, also, Allah is called as Rahim. Rahim means both Merciful, Compassionate and Womb, Uterus Baháí Faith In the Baháí faith God is also addressed as father. Since the second century, creeds in the Western Church have included affirmation of belief in God the Father, the primary reference being to God in his capacity as Father and creator of the universe. This did not exclude either the fact the father of the universe was also the Father of Jesus the Christ or that he had even vouchsafed to adopt as his son by grace. Tertullian also discussed how the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, while the expression from the Father through the Son is also found among them
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Jesus
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In Christology, the Person of Christ refers to the study of the human and divine natures of Jesus Christ as they co-exist within one person. There is no discussion in the New Testament regarding the dual nature of the Person of Christ as both divine and human. Hence, since the days of Christianity theologians have debated various approaches to the understanding of these natures. In the period following the Apostolic Age, specific beliefs such as Arianism and Docetism were criticized. On the other end of the spectrum, Docetism argued that Jesus physical body was an illusion, docetic teachings were attacked by St. Ignatius of Antioch and were eventually abandoned by proto-orthodox Christians. However, after the First Council of Nicaea in 325 the Logos, historically in the Alexandrian school of christology, Jesus Christ is the eternal Logos paradoxically humanized in history, a divine Person who became enfleshed, uniting himself to the human nature. The views of these schools can be summarized as follows, Alexandria, Antioch, Logos assumes a specific human being The First Council of Ephesus in 431 debated a number of views regarding the Person of Christ. At the same gathering the council debated the doctrines of monophysitism or miaphysitism. The council rejected Nestorianism and adopted the term hypostatic union, referring to divine, the language used in the 431 declaration was further refined at the 451 Council of Chalcedon. However, the Chalcedon creed was not accepted by all Christians, because Saint Augustine died in 430 he did not participate in the Council of Ephesus in 431 or Chalcedon in 451, but his ideas had some impact on both councils. On the other hand, the major theological figure of the Middle Ages. The Third Council of Constantinople in 680 held that both divine and human wills exist in Jesus, with the divine will having precedence, leading and guiding the human will. John Calvin maintained that there was no element in the Person of Christ which could be separated from the person of The Word. Calvin also emphasized the importance of the Work of Christ in any attempt at understanding the Person of Christ, the study of the Person of Christ continued into the 20th century, with modern theologians such as Karl Rahner and Hans von Balthasar. Balthasar argued that the union of the human and divine natures of Christ was achieved not by the absorption of human attributes, thus in his view the divine nature of Christ was not affected by the human attributes and remained forever divine
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God the Son
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God the Son is the second person of the Trinity in Christian theology. The doctrine of the Trinity identifies Jesus as the embodiment of God the Son, united in essence but distinct in person with regard to God the Father. In these teachings, God the Son pre-existed before incarnation, is co-eternal with God the Father, Son of God for some draws attention to his humanity, whereas God the Son refers more generally to his divinity, including his pre-incarnate existence. The term God the Son is not found in the Bible, by scribal error the term is in one medieval manuscript, MS No.1985, where Galatians 2,20 has Son of God changed to God the Son. The term in English follows Latin usage as found in the Athanasian Creed and other texts of the church, In Greek God the Son is Theos o Iios. In Latin God the Son is Deus Filius, the term deus filius is found in the Athanasian Creed, Et tamen non tres omnipotentes, sed unus omnipotens. Ita Deus Pater, Deus Filius, Deus Spiritus Sanctus, but this phrase is also translated So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God. The distinction holds true in modern languages apart from English, for example. As distinct from the son of God as found in the Hebrew New Testament. The term deus filius is used in the Athanasian Creed and formulas such as Deus Pater, Deus Filius, Deus Spiritus Sanctus, Et non tres Dii, sed unus est Deus. The term is used by Saint Augustine in his On the Trinity, for example in discussion of the Sons obedience to God the Father, deo patri deus filius obediens. Jacques Forget in the Catholic Encyclopedia article Holy Ghost notes that Among the apologists, Athenagoras mentions the Holy Ghost along with, and on the plane as, the Father. Who would not be astonished, says he, to hear us called atheists, us who confess God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Ghost, Saint Augustine in Sermon 90 on the New Testament says,2. For hold this fast as a firm and settled truth, if you would continue Catholics, that God the Father begot God the Son without time, the Augsburg Confession adopted the phrase as Gott der Sohn. A manuscript variant in John 1,18 has led to translations including God the One and Only referring to the Son. But the term Son of God is used to refer to Jesus in the first gospel of Mark at the beginning in verse 1,1 and at its end in chapter 15 verse 39. Max Botner wrote, Indeed, if Mark 1,1 presents the normative understanding of Jesus identity, as such, the title is associated more with the development of the doctrine of the Trinity
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Gospel
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A gospel is an account describing the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Christianity places a value on the four canonical gospels, which it considers to be revelations from God. This position however, requires a view of Biblical inerrancy. The word gospel derives from the Old English gōd-spell, meaning good news or glad tidings, the gospel was considered the good news of the coming Kingdom of Messiah, and of redemption through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, the central Christian message. The Greek word euangelion is also the source of the terms evangelist, the authors of the four canonical Christian gospels are known as the Four Evangelists. Paul the Apostle used the term εὐαγγέλιον when he reminded the people of the church at Corinth of the gospel I preached to you, the earliest extant use of gospel to denote a particular genre of literature dates to the 2nd century. Justin Martyr in the Apology wrote of. the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, more generally, gospels compose a genre of early Christian writings. Gospels that did not become canonical also circulated in Early Christianity, many, such as the work known today as Gospel of Thomas, lack the narrative framework typical of a gospel. Scholars hold a wide spectrum of views on the origins and composition of the gospels, for example, the vast majority of material in Mark is also present in either Luke or Matthew or both, suggesting that Mark was a source for Matthew and Luke. He writes that the four gospels were probably all written by the end of the first century. But they did not yet at that time have a consistent narrative, in 170 Tatian sought to find a solution by composing a single narrative out of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, with some additional oral material. Richies concludes that the gospel passages themselves can be unclear, and some of the messages within are straightforwardly ambiguous, the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are considered synoptic gospels on the basis of many similarities between them that are not shared by the Gospel of John. Synoptic means here that they can be seen or read together, the fourth gospel, the Gospel of John, presents a very different picture of Jesus and his ministry from the synoptics. Of the many gospels written in antiquity, only four came to be accepted as part of the New Testament. An insistence upon there being a canon of four gospels, and no others, was a theme of Irenaeus of Lyons. Irenaeus was ultimately successful in declaring that the four gospels collectively and he also supported reading each gospel in light of the others. This canon, which corresponds to the modern Catholic canon, was used in the Vulgate, Gospel of Matthew Gospel of John Gospel of Luke Gospel of Mark This order is found in the following manuscripts, Bezae, Monacensis, Washingtonianus, Tischendorfianus IV, Uncial 0234. Although there is no set order of the four gospels in patristic lists or discussions, moody Smith suggests that the standard order of Matthew-Mark-Luke-John projects a kind of intention that can scarcely be ignored
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Heaven in Christianity
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Traditionally, Heaven in Christianity is the location of the throne of God as well as the holy angels, though this is in varying degrees considered metaphorical. In traditional Christianity, it is considered a state or condition of existence of the fulfillment of theosis in the beatific vision of the Godhead. The resurrected Jesus is said to have ascended to heaven where he now sits at the Right Hand of God, various people have been said to have entered heaven while still alive, including Enoch, Elijah and Jesus himself, after his resurrection. According to Roman Catholic teaching, Mary, the mother of Jesus, is said to have been assumed into heaven and is titled the Queen of Heaven. Some specific descriptions of this Kingdom as given in the canon of scripture include—, Seeing God as He is, sharing in his life—1 Jn 3,2,1 Cor 13,12, Jn 17,24 Peaceful Conditions on a New Earth—Is. 2, 2–4,9,7,11, 6–9,27,13,32, 17–18,33, 20–21,60, 17–18,5, 3–5, Rev.21 Eternal Rule by a Messiah–King—Ps. 72, Jer 31, 33–34, Zech 2, 10–11,8,3,14,9, Matt 16,27, Jude 2,34 an heir of David, Is. 9, 6–7,11, 1–5 Bodily perfection—No hunger, thirst, death, or sickness,1,25,4,4,33,24,35, 5–6,49,10,65, 20–24, Jer. 3, 9–19, Matt 13,43 Ruined cities inhabited by people, a fragment from the early 2nd century of one of the lost volumes of Papias, a Christian bishop, expounds that heaven was separated into three distinct layers. He referred to the first as just heaven, the second as paradise, Papias taught that there is this distinction between the habitation of those who produce a hundredfold, and that of those who produce sixty-fold, and that of those who produce thirty-fold. According to some views, some Christians in the 1st century believed that the Kingdom of God was coming to earth within their own lifetimes and they looked forward to a divine future on earth. In the 2nd century AD, Irenaeus wrote that not all who are saved would merit an abode in heaven itself, Eastern Orthodox cosmology perceives heaven as having different levels, the lowest of which is Paradise. At the time of creation, paradise touched the earth at the Garden of Eden, after the Fall of man, paradise was separated from the earth, and mankind forbidden entry, lest he partake of the Tree of Life and live eternally in a state of sinfulness. At his death on the Cross, the Orthodox believe Jesus opened the door to Paradise to mankind again, various saints have had visions of heaven. However, in the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox, it is only God who has the final say on who enters heaven, in the Eastern Orthodox Church, heaven is part and parcel of deification, the eternal sharing of the divine qualities through communion with the Triune God. The Catholic Church teaches that heaven is the end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings. It holds that, by his death and Resurrection, Jesus Christ has opened heaven to us, the life of the blessed consists in the full and perfect possession of the fruits of the redemption accomplished by Christ. Heaven is the community of all who are perfectly incorporated into Christ
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Holy Spirit in Christianity
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For the majority of Christian denominations, the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost is the third person of the Trinity, the Triune God manifested as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each person itself being God. The New Testament details a relationship between the Holy Spirit and Jesus during his earthly life and ministry. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke and the Nicene Creed state that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary. The Holy Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove during his baptism, the theology of the Holy Spirit is called pneumatology. The Holy Spirit is referred to as the Lord, the Giver of Life in the Nicene Creed, since the first century, Christians have also called upon God with the trinitarian formula Father, Son and Holy Spirit in prayer, absolution and benediction. The Koine Greek word pneûma is found around 385 times in the New Testament, Pneuma appears 105 times in the four canonical gospels,69 times in the Acts of the Apostles,161 times in the Pauline epistles, and 50 times elsewhere. These usages vary, in 133 cases, it refers to spirit in a general sense, around 93 times, the reference to the Holy Spirit, sometimes under the name pneuma and sometimes explicitly as the pneûma tò Hagion. It was generally translated into the Vulgate as Spiritus and Spiritus Sanctus, the English terms Holy Ghost and Holy Spirit are complete synonyms, one derives from the Old English gast and the other from the Latin loanword spiritus. Like pneuma, they refer to the breath, to its animating power, and to the soul. In particular, Another Stoic concept which offered inspiration to the Church was that of divine Spirit, cleanthes, wishing to give more explicit meaning to Zenos creative fire, had been the first to hit upon the term pneuma, or spirit, to describe it. The sacredness of the Holy Spirit is affirmed in all three Synoptic Gospels which proclaim blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is the unforgivable sin. What the Hebrew Bible calls Spirit of God and Spirit of Elohim is called in the Talmud, although the expression Holy Spirit occurs in Ps.51,11 and in Isa. 63, 10–11, it had not yet acquired quite the same meaning which was attached to it in rabbinical literature, in Gen.1,2 Gods spirit hovered over the form of lifeless matter, thereby making the Creation possible. The most characteristic sign of the presence of the ruach ha-kodesh is the gift of prophecy, the use of the word ruach in the phrase ruach ha-kodesh seems to suggest that Judaic authorities believed the Holy Spirit was a kind of communication medium like the wind. The spirit talks sometimes with a masculine and sometimes with a feminine voice, the Holy Spirit does not simply appear for the first time at Pentecost after the resurrection of Jesus, but is present in the Gospel of Luke prior to the birth of Jesus. In Luke 1,15, John the Baptist was said to be filled with the Holy Spirit prior to birth, and the Holy Spirit came upon the Virgin Mary in Luke 1,35. In Luke 3,16 John the Baptist stated that Jesus baptized not with water but with the Holy Spirit, in Luke 11,13 Jesus provided assurances that God the Father would give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. Matthew 10,20 refers to the act of speaking through the disciples
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Sacrament
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A sacrament is a Christian rite recognised as of particular importance and significance. There are various views on the existence and meaning of such rites, many Christians consider the sacraments to be a visible symbol of the reality of God, as well as a means by which God enacts his grace. Sacraments signify Gods grace in a way that is observable to the participant. The Catholic Church recognises seven sacraments, Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Reconciliation, Anointing of the Sick, Marriage, many Protestant denominations, such as those within the Reformed tradition, identify two sacraments instituted by Christ, the Eucharist and Baptism. The Lutheran sacraments include these two, often adding Confession as a third sacrament, the English word sacrament is derived indirectly from the Ecclesiastical Latin sacrāmentum, from Latin sacrō, from sacer. This in turn is derived from the Greek New Testament word mysterion and these seven sacraments were codified in the documents of the Council of Trent, which stated, CANON I. During the Middle Ages, sacraments were recorded in Latin, even after the Reformation, many ecclesiastical leaders continued using this practice into the 20th century. On occasion, Protestant ministers followed the same practice, since W was not part of the Latin alphabet, scribes only used it when dealing with names or places. In addition, names were modified to fit a Latin mold, for instance, the name Joseph would be rendered as Iosephus or Josephus. The Catholic Church indicates that the sacraments are necessary for salvation, the Church applies this teaching even to the sacrament of baptism, the gateway to the other sacraments. It states that Baptism is necessary for salvation for those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed, catechumens and all those who, even without knowing Christ and the Church, still sincerely seek God and strive to do his will can also be saved without Baptism. The Church in her liturgy entrusts children who die without Baptism to the mercy of God, in the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, the sacraments are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us. The visible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and make present the proper to each sacrament. They bear fruit in those who receive them with the required dispositions, the Church teaches that the effect of the sacraments comes ex opere operato, by the very fact of being administered, regardless of the personal holiness of the minister administering it. The sacraments presuppose faith and through their words and ritual elements, nourish, strengthen, through each of them, Christ bestows that sacraments particular grace, such as incorporation into Christ and the Church, forgiveness of sins, or consecration for a particular service. The Eastern Orthodox tradition does not limit the number of sacraments to seven, however it recognizes these seven as the major sacraments, which are completed by many other blessings and special services. Some lists of the sacraments taken from the Church Fathers include the consecration of a church, monastic tonsure, more specifically, for the Eastern Orthodox the term sacrament is a term which seeks to classify something that may, according to Orthodox thought, be impossible to classify. According to Orthodox thinking God touches mankind through material means such as water, wine, bread, oil, incense, candles, altars, icons, how God does this is a mystery
