Posts by Taigen Joos

With the spread of the Reformation throughout Europe and the subsequent beginnings of Protestantism, came the birth of various denominations within Protestantism, along with their own Creeds and Confessions. From the teachings of Martin Luther came those who were called Lutherans, mostly in Germany (The Augsburg Confession of 1530). Conrad Grebel and Felix Mantz, former…

John Knox of Scotland (1514-1572) was the founder of the Church in Scotland, also known as the Presbyterian church based on its form of church polity.1 Knox was heavily influenced by John Calvin, making Calvinism key in the theological roots of Presbyterian church. Prior to the time of Knox, Catholicism and Anglicanism ruled the religious…

Since the beginning of the Reformation period, certain men rose to prominence, along with their teachings. Three such men were Martin Luther of Germany, John Calvin of France, and Ulrich Zwingli of Switzerland. They held much in common, though they also had their differences. One commonality was that they all still held to the Catholic…

In our study of the progress of doctrine, we now turn towards the coming Reformation and the recovery of gospel truth, there are two key English figures to consider who lived and ministered in England prior to the Reformation period. John Wycliff (c.1320-1384) disagreed with the Catholic Church1 in the mid-1370s. He argued against things…

The Reformation fires were sparked by Martin Luther in a formal sense, but those fires were stoked and further spread throughout Europe due to not only Luther’s influence, but also men like Ulricht Zwingli and John Calvin in Switzerland, along with their many followers. The name “Protestant” was assigned to those who protested the treatment…

With Martin Luther, we really have the first major denominational split from Roman Catholicism in the Lutheran Church. It is not that the true gospel didn’t exist prior to Luther, but those who held to the true gospel were simply viewed as non-conformists, people with relative anonymity. That would not be the case during and…

Perhaps the most significant event during the “Middle Ages” was the Great Schism that divided the Church into the Western Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church in 1054. After that time period the Roman Catholic Church continued to gain incredible political power, but also continued to develop its problematic doctrines and practices, such…

In the early centuries of the Christian church, there were important events that helped to articulate orthodox biblical truth. The Apostles’ Creed may or may not have been the earliest chronologically, but it was significant for its understanding of trinitarian doctrine. The Councils of Nicaea in 325 and Constantinople in 381 helped to further articulate…

The doctrine of the Trinity began to be articulated in the early centuries of the Christian church. The Apostles’ Creed began a formal articulation of trinitarian belief by stating it in three parts, “I believe in God the Father, almighty…and in Jesus Christ his only begotten Son…and in the Holy Ghost….” But the Apostle’s creed…

The Bible is a book that transcends human intellect. It is a Divine book, yet a revelation of God and by God that He intends his people to understand. We know that there are things in the Bible that are more easily grasped and understood than others. For instance, which of us can wrap our…