Last week, we started exploring the evolution of soteriology from the apostolic period to the early medieval period. Here’s a quick summary of the medieval period where we left off.
Medieval Soteriology (11th to 13th Centuries) Review
In the 11th to 13th centuries, Europe’s feudal society was structured around land ownership and rigid social hierarchies. People were obsessed with honor and debt, and the church held immense social and spiritual power. Many lived in fear of God’s judgment, purgatory, and hell, seeking forgiveness through penance and church rituals. Amid this anxiety, theologians proposed answers that would shape Christian thought for centuries.
One of the most influential was Anselm of Canterbury, who asked:
Why did Jesus have to die?
In Cur Deus Homo, Anselm argued that humanity owed God a debt of honor too great to repay. Only Jesus’ perfect obedience and sacrificial death could restore God’s honor and make forgiveness possible. His Satisfaction Theory became the dominant view in Western Christianity and still influences Catholic theology today. While it helped believers understand the seriousness of sin, critics said it risked portraying God as more concerned with honor than love.
At the same time, Peter Abelard posed a different question:
How does Jesus’ death actually help people turn back to God?
Abelard proposed the Moral Influence Theory, teaching that Christ’s death revealed God’s immense love and inspired people to repent. His view was praised for highlighting God’s love but criticized for downplaying the seriousness of sin and humanity’s need for more than inspiration.
During this time, both Eastern and Western Christians agreed that salvation comes through Jesus. But in the West, and still today in many Orthodox and Catholic traditions, Anselm’s Satisfaction Theory shaped the view that salvation involves repaying the debt caused by sin to restore a relationship with God.
Pre-Reformation Voices (12th to 15th Centuries)
As we moved closer to the Reformation, reform-minded Christians across France, England, Bohemia (modern Czech Republic), and nearby regions began questioning the church’s authority and teachings on salvation. Dissatisfaction with church corruption and rigid sacramental systems led many to seek a more direct relationship with God.
Why did this happen?
The Black Death (1347–1351) devastated Europe, killing up to half the population and profoundly reshaping society. Economically, the massive death toll created a labor shortage, allowing surviving workers to demand higher wages and gain new social mobility, which weakened the rigid feudal order. Spiritually, many people were disillusioned when church prayers and rituals failed to stop the plague, and faith in the church’s authority declined. The deaths of so many priests left parishes desperate to fill vacancies, leading to the hurried ordination of poorly trained and often morally lax clergy. This influx of unqualified priests accelerated corruption in the church, as many sought church offices for wealth or power rather than spiritual service. Together, these changes planted seeds of resentment and skepticism toward the medieval church and clergy that would later fuel calls for reform.
During this period, one question people asked was:
Does salvation require church sacraments and clergy, or can believers find forgiveness and confidence through personal faith and Scripture?
In the late 12th and early 13th centuries, the Waldensians, founded by Peter Waldo in France, called Christians back to apostolic simplicity, lay preaching, and moral living. They insisted Scripture, not church hierarchy, should guide salvation, challenging many church practices. The church condemned them as heretics, and they were forced underground.
In England, John Wycliffe (1320s–1384) raised a similar question:
Who has ultimate authority in faith matters—the church or God’s Word?
Wycliffe argued that salvation comes by faith in Christ, not indulgences or sacraments administered by corrupt clergy. He translated the Bible into English so ordinary people could read it, insisting Scripture should guide understanding of salvation. Though he died of natural causes, the church posthumously declared him a heretic and burned his bones.
In Bohemia, Jan Hus (1369–1415) continued Wycliffe’s challenge, asking:
Can a person receive salvation without clergy mediation?
Frustrated by corruption in the clergy, Hus taught that faith in Christ alone brings salvation. His bold preaching in Prague attracted many disillusioned with church abuses. When he refused to recant at the Council of Constance, he was burned at the stake, but his martyrdom ignited a movement that inspired the Reformation.
These early reformers didn’t develop full systematic theologies of salvation, but their insistence on faith in Christ, the authority of Scripture, and moral reform planted seeds of discontent with the church’s control over salvation.
Protestant Reformation (16th Century)
By the early 1500s, people across Europe were increasingly angry with the Catholic Church’s corruption, lavish spending, and especially the selling of indulgences, papers claiming to reduce time in purgatory if you paid money. This crisis exploded in Germany, Switzerland, and parts of the Holy Roman Empire, where people longed for assurance of forgiveness but doubted salvation could be bought through church-approved channels.
The central question confronting the church was:
- How can sinners know they are truly forgiven and right with God?
- Is salvation by faith alone, or does it require works, penance, and the church’s sacraments?
In Germany, Martin Luther (1483–1546) answered: salvation is a gift of grace received by faith alone (sola fide), not earned by works or mediated by priests. Luther defined salvation as justification by faith, a once-for-all legal declaration by God that the believer is righteous solely because of Jesus’ merits. He taught that good works follow true faith but do not contribute to justification. Key Scriptures included
- Romans 1:17: “The righteous will live by faith,” and
- Galatians 2:16: “A man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ.”
While Luther’s stand brought many believers comfort, it was controversial, and the Catholic Church condemned him as a heretic at the Diet of Worms in 1521.
This Reformation wasn’t just theological; it reflected sweeping social change. Rising individualism reshaped how people viewed faith and identity, while increasing literacy let more people read the Bible themselves, fostering personal responsibility in belief. Meanwhile, emerging nation-states challenged the Catholic Church’s power, and new economic classes questioned traditional hierarchies. These shifts gave people freedom to question religious authorities and embrace ideas like Luther’s call to salvation by faith alone, sparking movements that would transform Europe.
Another interesting thing to note here is that the printing press, invented by Gutenberg around 1440, came decades before Luther and played a crucial role in the Reformation. By 1517, presses were widespread across Europe, allowing Luther’s writings and translations of the Bible to spread rapidly and cheaply. Ordinary people could now read Scripture for themselves, challenging the Catholic Church’s authority and fueling debates that energized the Reformation. The printing press acted like the social media of its time, amplifying new ideas and making the Reformation a Europe-wide movement almost overnight.
As Luther’s ideas spread, Penal Substitution Theory developed alongside his teaching, especially as John Calvin (1509–1564) expanded it. Unlike earlier theologians who emphasized satisfaction, Reformers taught that Jesus’ death not only restored honor but bore the punishment sinners deserved, satisfying God’s justice and turning away His wrath. This view found support in
Isaiah 53:5: “He was pierced for our transgressions,” and
2 Corinthians 5:21: “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”
Many embraced this explanation for its clarity and assurance, while critics argued it portrayed God as harsh or demanding violence to forgive.
In Switzerland, Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) asked:
How should Christians live when Scripture alone is their authority?
He taught that faith alone saves, sacraments like the Lord’s Supper are symbolic, and unbiblical rituals and images should be abolished. Although Zwingli agreed with Luther on faith, they clashed bitterly over Christ’s presence in Communion, revealing divisions among Reformers.
Anabaptists
By the early 1500s, nearly everyone in Europe was baptized as an infant, automatically joining the church and society. Since Augustine’s influence in 418 AD, infant baptism had become the norm, shifting over centuries from a spiritual act to a civic ritual binding people to the social order. Reform-minded Christians noticed that despite universal baptism, churches were full of uncommitted, nominal Christians lacking repentance or discipleship.
This raised a fundamental question for Anabaptists:
Does baptism mean anything if given to people who don’t personally believe?
They saw the state-church system, where baptism tied citizens to both church and government, as corrupting true Christianity. Anabaptists believed only a gathered community of believers, those who freely accepted Christ, could live out Jesus’ radical teachings like loving enemies and living holy lives.
Therefore, they concluded baptism must follow an individual’s conscious confession of faith, not be inherited at birth, creating a church of committed believers. They also rejected the idea that infant baptism guaranteed lifelong salvation, teaching instead that salvation requires an ongoing relationship with Christ. They pointed to
Hebrews 6:4–6, warning of falling away after being enlightened, and
John 15:6, where Jesus says, “If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers.”
From these texts, they taught conditional security: salvation can be lost through persistent unbelief or rebellion. While many embraced this call to sincere discipleship, others feared it caused anxiety about losing salvation and undermined assurance. Seen as dangerously radical for rejecting inherited faith and the church-state system, Anabaptists were persecuted by both Catholics and other Protestants. Yet their emphasis on personal faith inspired later groups like Baptists and Mennonites.
John Calvin and Reformed Scholasticism
By the mid-1500s, Europe was fractured by wars and revolts as the Reformation split communities. In France, where John Calvin (1509–1564) was born, Protestants faced brutal persecution, forcing Calvin to flee first to Basel and then Geneva. Cities like Geneva were breaking from feudal bishops and craved moral order but feared society would collapse without spiritual guidance. Meanwhile, conflicting teachings—Lutheran, Zwinglian, Anabaptist, Catholic—left people spiritually confused and desperate for certainty.
Calvin, a trained lawyer, didn’t invent ideas like predestination or God’s sovereignty; those came from Augustine centuries earlier, but he systematically developed them to answer his era’s crises. The main questions he addressed were:
- Why do some accept the gospel while others reject it?
- How can believers find certainty in salvation amid spiritual confusion?
- How can society maintain moral order after traditional authorities collapse?
In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin taught that God, in His sovereign grace, predestined some for salvation (the elect) and passed over others. He supported this with passages like
Ephesians 1:4–5: “He chose us in him before the foundation of the world.”
He emphasized humans cannot choose God on their own (total depravity), and God’s irresistible grace ensures the elect will believe, offering deep reassurance in uncertain times.
Central to Calvin’s teaching was double predestination, the belief God not only chose some for salvation but actively determined others (the reprobate) would face eternal punishment, fixing everyone’s destiny before birth. Calvin cited
Romans 9:13: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated,” and
Romans 9:18: “God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.”
For Calvin and his followers, this offered assurance that salvation depended entirely on God, freeing believers from relying on church rituals. Yet others found double predestination troubling, arguing it made God seem arbitrary or unjust.
Calvin also taught perseverance of the saints, the belief those God has chosen will remain faithful to the end, forming the basis for what many later traditions called “once saved, always saved.” This doctrine assured believers that salvation, grounded in God’s sovereign will, could not be lost through human weakness.
After Calvin’s death, Theodore Beza (1519–1605) expanded these doctrines into high Calvinism, sharpening double predestination and defining Reformed orthodoxy. During this period, Protestant states also worked to unify around clear doctrines in a process historians call confessionalization, using Calvin’s theology to establish distinct Reformed identities separate from Catholic and Lutheran communities.
While Calvin’s precise theology offered stability and clarity in a chaotic time, many worried it made God seem unjust. These debates split Protestant churches into Reformed and non-Reformed camps, laying the foundations for traditions like Presbyterians and Congregationalists. Calvin’s ideas spread through Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, and Scotland, deeply shaping Protestant theology and providing a model for church discipline in an age longing for certainty and moral order.
How did the social and cultural conditions of each period shape the way people understood salvation, and what can we learn from their struggles to make sure our own beliefs about salvation are rooted in Christ rather than shaped by the pressures of our time?
C-J: If you really look at the history and progression, you can see how it influenced politics, belief systems, and how disease and war shaped our understanding of God—whether we see God as blessing us or punishing us. This evolution happened when we finally had a common denominator, the Bible, that everyone could access. That changed things profoundly, and we’re still working through those questions today.
Who am I in my belief system? Where do I belong? Did I choose it, or did God choose me? How do I practice my faith—privately or congregationally? Do I have to agree with everything in the church I attend, or can I have a private relationship with God and still be in community? Because we share many common denominators, whatever those may be, and it reinforces our faith and gives us a sense of safety, especially in times of uncertainty—disease, COVID, war, financial instability. We lean into God, and we see that pattern throughout the Bible and in our own lives.
Whenever and however we came into this world, no matter what age we are, we can look back and consider whether we were blessed or whether we came into war and famine. For me, this was a reaffirmation of my own journey: how I went from a basic “Jesus loves me, this I know,” to who I am today. People sometimes say I don’t land anywhere, that I’m open to everything, but I have landed. This group has helped me build the footings under what I truly believe. It’s not about doctrine—it’s about our relationship with this divine entity that doesn’t have a face, doesn’t have a building we go to. It’s about our relationship with this spiritual being and with each other.
David: If the divinity doesn’t have a face or a building, does it even have a church? I look back and wonder why theologians became so convoluted and contorted in their thinking. If you simply look at the Gospels and ask, Where was the church in Jesus’ time?—there was no church. It didn’t exist.
But Jesus came with a mission. You’d think a mission like that would involve a lot of planning and organization. Where was it? There was none. And yet, Jesus accomplished his mission. He did what he set out to do—He came and He saved us. So I have to ask: why have people agonized and twisted themselves into knots, murdered and tortured, done all sorts of unspeakable things, trying to justify a church? It still leaves me perplexed and somewhat angry.
C-J: I think the church served many functions. Speaking of Jesus’ time, Rome had come in and really didn’t provide a safety net for the most disenfranchised. So this early church became a home and a hospital. It distributed resources—those who were wealthy gave to the poor. It was like a co-op. They journeyed together, found hidden places to gather. It was an outright battle but also a quiet one. They were just trying to survive and preserve their identity as Jews, but also to live out this new revelation of what Jesus had told them. You see that repeated throughout history, even today.
Look at the church: there was a time when the streets closed on Saturday nights at six o’clock. We had blue laws. We all went to church, and everything centered around it. You went to work, you paid your tithe, and that was life. Today, we are so disjointed. I think that’s part of what we saw in this last political election—these fundamentalist Christians really believed it was the end time, and they wanted control. They wanted to be in the right lane. Because of that, they lost sight of the history you’ve brought to us.
It looks a little different now, but it behaves the same way. It’s self-protective, exclusive, repeated in a mantra: This is the time, Jesus is coming again. They think of it literally. But really, we’re organic material. It’s a narrative and an idea, but the relationship with the divine is spiritual. I believe we are spirit beings, and our spirit returns to this energy. For people who follow strict catechism, that provides certainty, and that certainty covers uncertainty with something that gives hope. Without hope, we are not very good creatures. We need community.
Carolyn: I just want to ask one question about predestination. Today, I think I heard you say where it came in, but I’ve always heard the Bible verse that God is the same today, tomorrow, and forever—He never changes. Then there’s this idea you mentioned about loving one better than the other, and God is love. He is just. I’m just not sure where predestination came in and how it became so influential for so many people I’ve talked to.
Kiran: So I kind of missed the last part, but basically you’re asking: if God is never changing in His love, where did this idea of predestination and God’s partiality toward one person over another come from, right?
It’s a good question. I don’t know. But you can find both ideas in the Bible. When Calvin came up with predestination, he didn’t invent it out of nothing. He looked at some Bible verses and thought, This is how it is. But others looked at it and said, No, we have free will. That’s what I’m trying to understand.
C-J: I think people latch onto those verses—I knew you before you were in your mother’s womb, or I know the good things I have planned for you. I do believe there are people God chooses to be His voice and revelation for each generation—people who ask, Where is God here today for me? What is my role? I know many would disagree with that.
When I think about Judas, people say, Oh, he’s going to hell—he hung himself. But I think Judas played a very important role as a servant to God. He decided that if indeed Jesus was the Christ, then He would rise from the dead. And if one dies for the many, it would be worth it. It would dispel all doubt about who this man was, and that His word brings life everlasting.
That was a profound concept for people who had a very ritualistic belief system—sacrifice, obedience, alms, and the hierarchy of political and religious leaders in Jewish culture. Judas took a huge risk. What if he was wrong?
But I think he landed on believing: I do think He is the Christ, and I do believe He will rise again, so no one should question who this man is or His purpose. That purpose was to show that God is love and that we are to care for all people. We are all sinners saved by grace.
It was a huge thing. I don’t see it as a failing. I use him as an example because we want to categorize people. But every person born is a player on the stage that God ordained, so when we look at that person, we learn compassion. When we look at violence, we learn what it produces and perpetuates.
We are always being taught by God in the natural world. As Jesus said, or as the Old Testament says, birds don’t worry about what they will eat or wear. They live in the moment, for they are creatures of the moment, as are we.
We don’t know who our parents will be, how we will die, or what our lives will look like. But what we do know, as practicing Christians, is that if we try to follow the Ten Commandments and not be selfish, there is a blessing. There is this energy that goes forth and produces good fruit, and Jesus talks about that all the time.
None of us will get it right. All we can do is move toward what Jesus calls the light: I am the light. I am the door. I am the path. It is me. I am with you always. Fear not. Whether you are in the furnace or at the bottom of the pit being sold into slavery, I am with you.
It is the hardest thing to do—to rest in God—but that is the message. Don’t lean on your neighbor, or on who your friends are, or who you married, or where you live, or how much money is in your bank. Those things are superficial.
God is always calling us to ask: Who am I, and what is our relationship?
If I focused on all those other things, I was always floundering: Am I in the right place? Should I know this person? What are the rules here? Whether it was a job, a church, a new relationship—I was always asking what was expected of me.
God says, The only thing I expect is that you trust, love, and, to the best of your ability, lean in and understand this relationship.
I believe that relationship is unconditional love. And out of that love, obedience isn’t work—it’s a joy. You just feel full.
Michael: Did Luther have the same understanding of grace we have here in this class? Where did his teachings fall short—why does the Lutheran church today not have nearly the emphasis on grace that we do? Where was the evolution or the failure of grace? We humans always tend to drift.
Kiran: Adventists talk about salvation as both justification and sanctification, but Luther never talked about sanctification. He only talked about justification. He said that once you accept Christ as your personal Savior, you are forever saved, and God will make sure you remain saved. The good works you do are a natural outcome of accepting grace, but they have no bearing on your salvation.
He spoke strongly against any idea of personal piety or personal works. That was where he stood. He also said you don’t need to define salvation precisely, because the moment you accept Christ, it works. That was his perspective.
But of course, there were consequences. When this teaching spread—think about people who were accustomed to the church keeping tabs on them—suddenly the church was gone, and they were free to do whatever they wanted. Then Luther was saying, Once you accept Christ, you’re saved, and God will make sure you’ll be fine.
People abused that idea of grace. It led to immorality and morally lax behavior in society. To push back against that, others came up with new theories. For example, sanctification was introduced, where they said, No, no, no, you have to have ongoing participation with God. That’s where Wesley came up with the idea that Edwin described.
So again, works came back into the picture. If you just say grace is enough, some people start behaving badly, and society asks, Why is this person in the church acting this way? Wesley responded with the doctrine of sanctification.
I’m still trying to understand it fully. There are verses where Paul says, Those whom God justified, He also sanctified.That sounds like both happen at once. But Wesley said no, sanctification is a continuous process that happens throughout a lifetime. Where did these beliefs come from? Why did they develop? That’s what I’m trying to figure out.
What I understood from Luther is that it doesn’t matter. Dr. Weaver said once that it doesn’t matter whether you understand grace—grace does its job. So I guess at the end of the day, if you have faith in Christ—which, even that faith is given to you as a measure—you’re fine.
Don: I’m struck by the fact that we would rather be wrong than be uncertain. If we don’t understand something, we’ll make something up to help ourselves feel like we do. When we make our religion about ourselves—about what we believe and what we do in terms of sacraments—we dishonor God. We must get back to the understanding that our faith is centered around Jesus and what He has done, not what we do.
As long as our faith is centered around ourselves, around what we believe and how we practice, there will always be questions: Is it this, or is it that? But the gospel of grace centers everything on what Jesus did. That takes away all the uncertainty about whether I’m in the right lane. It doesn’t matter, because it’s not about what I believe or how I practice religion. It’s about accepting the free gift of grace that Jesus has given through His sacrifice.
As I said, we’d rather be wrong than be uncertain. So we make things up, and we write things down that make sense to us at the time. But as time changes, so does our thinking. I think that’s something you’ve pointed out these last few weeks—that there is an evolution in our thinking, our believing, and in how we practice our religious behavior. And that, I think, is where we often miss the mark.
C-J: Religion is about relationship.
When I was growing up, my mother had no voice—it was whatever my father said. It was a trickle-down model: Did you hear what I said? I make this decision. Today, we understand that relationship means everybody has a voice. We’re all part of this matrix. We have to live together and help each other grow, both as individuals and as a community. I think that’s what God was doing with the new church.
We come from all over the world. At that time, Jerusalem was the center of this hub where Rome was taking over, using it as a marketplace. All roads led to Rome. They were destroying the mixture of Greek and Roman culture, while the Jewish faith was trying to remain pure, though even it contained fractions of other beliefs.
We only grow when we ask those big questions, and our relationship with God deepens. Like a child who asks, Daddy, why? Or like an adult who goes to the Father and says, I’d like to talk with You about this. It’s a very different conversation, and it’s really the bridge to higher-order thinking—executive thinking, responsible thinking. I believe God is always growing us: as individuals, as adults, as people with roles in our culture, society, religious communities, and biological families. God is always growing us.
David: The notion that we all want certainty is very culture-bound. It’s a very Western thing. If you look to the East, their religions tend to be much more mystical, much more based on uncertainty than certainty. There is an acceptance—especially in Daoism—where right up front it says, You don’t know. The way you think you know is not the way. It focuses on uncertainty, on the fact that life is uncertain, but that there is still a way that will guide you through it.
Also, in most Oriental religions, there isn’t even the notion of salvation, which is what we’ve been discussing here. That’s the main topic of Kiran’s discussion—salvation. It seems to me that’s a particularly Western concept, a Western cultural phenomenon—not really a global issue at all. I don’t know.
Kiran: In Hinduism, definitely, there is salvation. It takes two different forms.
One is that when you die, you go to a purgatory called Yamaloka. The king there is Yama, who upholds the law. He has a balance and weighs you. If you’re good, you go to heaven. If you’re bad, you go to hell and burn. In some cases, if your good deeds outweigh your bad, you spend some time in hell for the bad deeds, and then you go to heaven. That’s one concept.
The other is reincarnation. You have karma—sort of like sin—and you accumulate bad karma. If you do, you’re reborn as a lower life form. For example, if you’re a Brahmin of the highest caste, you might be reborn as an untouchable. If you keep committing sins, you’re reborn as a dog, a snake, or a pig, and you pay for those debts before coming back.
But if your good karma is so great, you escape the cycle altogether and reach a state called Nirvana, where your soul merges with the divine. In that view, the body is a prison holding you—similar to how the Gnostics in Europe thought.
There’s another group whose perspective is that we’re nothing but matter and don’t matter at all. They live in cemeteries, cover themselves in ashes, use their own excrement. Their message is: At the end of the day, we are dust. Don’t make a big deal about life.
There are many other views, of course. But in Hinduism, salvation is definitely important. We call it moksha. Going to swargam—heaven—is very important. People are highly motivated by it.
In Buddhism, I think it’s different. You escape the cycle by reaching Nirvana, but I’m not sure how it is in far Eastern traditions—China and Japan. In India, though, salvation is central. But you don’t have grace like we understand it. You have mercy, but not grace.
I’m also thinking about the structure. When Jesus came, there was a well-established Jewish religious system—synagogues, Pharisees, the Law, the Levites. When Christianity emerged, they weren’t allowed in that system, so they formed their own.
C-J: It was so corrupt for the peasants and the people in the outer courts. The percentage of the elite was very small, while the rest of the people were just trying to survive—poverty, war, oppression, living in the natural world. I think it was critical that Jesus addressed that. He talked about the quality of the soil and the seed, about tending the vine. He spoke of sacrifice in terms of taking care of your families and making provisions. He talked about obligations to family and community outside of the church.
He said, Don’t forget the tithe, but the new church didn’t tithe in the same way—it was communal: What’s mine is yours. Whoever has a need, take my cloak; God will provide another. It was a completely different way of seeing the world. They had been under these large government systems. For the Romans—with their pantheon of gods—and their hierarchy, it was oppressive. But the Jewish hierarchy was oppressive too. People were ready. I’m in. Let’s go. What does that look like?
Jesus was talking about a faith, a relationship, something that didn’t require ritual but solitude, self-examination, trust, love. If someone strikes you, turn the other cheek. If someone cuts you down, don’t worry about it. This time is temporary. Go on and do the work. The work is love and forgiveness, generosity of spirit, just as you have been given. It was a whole different metric. It was difficult because you didn’t see it demonstrated—you had to find your way in the dark.
When you saw people on stakes along the Roman road to show the power of Rome, it put a different kind of fear in you. But when you came into relationship with God, it brought a peace with it. It was a different paradigm.
Reinhard: It’s interesting to see the history of Christianity. If we look back to Jesus’ time, He commissioned His church. In Matthew—I think chapter 16, verse 18—Jesus told the disciples, especially Peter, On this rock I will build my church. Jesus commissioned it.
Through history, after the Council of Nicaea, there was basically only one church—the Catholic Church, both general and Orthodox—for over a thousand years. Then in the 15th and 16th centuries, the Reformers came and started defending the faith. Before that, most people didn’t have Bibles. The King James Version came in the early 17th century—1611, I believe—and people finally began to learn about the Bible themselves.
Christianity had been very small in number. Only a few leaders in the Catholic Church really understood doctrine, and everyone else just listened to them. Then, moving to the United States, when the country was founded—on July 4—I was reading an article about it. The founding fathers were devoted Christians. At the beginning of the country, even the entire nation fasted together—Washington declared a day of fasting. That could never happen now.
After the United States was established, we saw an explosion of evangelicals and new denominations. I think God led this country. If you look at Western religion, it was largely led by the U.S., spreading across the world from the 18th and 19th centuries onward. That was the work of the Holy Spirit.
As Christians, we know the true religion. I don’t care about the Eastern religions—we’ve learned about them. The Bible is the Holy Scripture—the Word of God. That’s why we are here, through the Israelites, through Jewish teaching, which was right for them. That’s why Jesus came—to straighten out what the love of God meant for His people.
Today, we have more resources than ever to learn about our faith, Christianity, doctrine. This kind of discussion teaches us, opens our eyes to learn more, to know more about God’s love. It shows us how to be humble, to be obedient, to turn the other cheek.
The advancement of this country and the world—Christianity brought something to it. In Western Europe now, I believe less than 50% worship God, compared to this country. I believe God has a purpose for the United States. It’s a leading country that has spread Christianity around the world, and God blessed it for embracing this belief.
About predestination and free will—free will was given to us by God. Because God is omnipotent, He knows people from birth to death. He knows what will happen. So to me, there’s no contradiction between free will and predestination—God simply knows. If He knows that in your life you’ll end up embracing faith and being faithful to Him, then you will be saved.
Kiran mentioned Calvinism, the teaching that once you are saved, you are always saved. Some people accept Jesus and then later run away or live opposite to the Bible.
I just want to say that, from all we’ve discussed, we should continue to live by faith in God and hold on to what we know.
Rimon: I’d just like to read a passage from a work by Eckhart Tolle, who often links grace to the ego, suggesting that the ego resists what is and prevents grace from operating:
When someone is identified with the ego, they are caught up in a cycle of suffering and struggle. Grace emerges when one transcends the ego and its limitations. What I’m thinking is that we spend too much time trying to understand grace with our minds. That’s what causes all the debate—whether, when you accept grace, you are still under the law or not. Accepting grace goes far beyond intellect. That’s why we call it a gift from God. You accept everything as it is. Your struggle is no longer a struggle. Your suffering no longer feels like suffering because you realize—not with your mind, because our minds can’t comprehend it—but you realize grace is a gift. Our minds always go back to analyzing and overthinking, but when you have that awakening and accept grace, it can’t be through intellect. It’s a gift beyond mental understanding. When you reach that place—when you’re awakened—you see everything as perfect. Even your suffering doesn’t feel like suffering anymore. You see it as a gift from God, not as a punishment but as grace. It’s hard to explain in words. You just find that everything is right with this world.
C-J: Legalism demands accountability. But with Christ, the accountability is covered—as long as we are in right relationship. If our eyes are fixed on God and we can say, I am imperfect, but I desire You all the days of my life, that I might not sin against You, then our relationship is deeper and ever-changing.
To Rimon’s point—that place where you trust God in all things—whether you live or die doesn’t matter, as long as it glorifies God. That’s a big lift, but it’s not our lift. It’s God doing the work, a witness and testimony to those who see it and say, I could never do that.
You’re right—not me, but God. So they might know the revelation you described, that peace that’s everlasting, whether I am here or in the presence of my God. God is with me always. It is a gift.
Don: Thank you all for joining.
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