Calvin Vs Arminius

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Calvin vs. Arminius

I have attended Spirit of Hope United Methodist Church for all of my life. One day following communion I noticed a trend. We always used Welch's grape juice for our communion. Why was that? Was that just always the cheapest juice? I asked my pastor, I needed answers. It turned out Welch's was a Methodist company, and the juice itself was made for a non-alcoholic Methodist communion. For some reason I thought that this was so interesting. I then thought to myself "I am sure that our long tradition is ripe with interesting facts. Maybe I should check out this Wesley guy."

So I started my journey and off to the Methodist library I went. I read a summation of the history of the Methodist church. It was moderately interesting, but not what I was looking for. I decided instead of reading biographical information on Wesley I wanted to hear what he had to say. He was an avid writer and his sermons and magazines are very well documented. This is where another trend was discovered. The name Arminius kept on surfacing. The title of one piece of literature was named "How to make good Armenians". Later Wesley created the "Arminian magazine", a periodical devoted to the concepts of Arminius. Interestingly enough, John Wesley never actually quoted Arminius once in any of the issues that bare his own name. So in thinking, "As a Methodist I should to be a good Arminian" I came to the conclusion that I needed to find out who Jacobus Arminius was.

In the paradigm of Newtonian physics, Christianity in America today can be separated into two main theological camps. These camps originated from two great scholars John Calvin and Jacobus (James) Arminius. The two main ideological groups that spawned from these men were Calvinism and Arminianism respectively. Other major theories exist such as the post-modern open theorists, or the new quantum physic philosophy, but do not nearly have the following as Arminians and Calvinists. I decided to refine my search. I was going to find the roots of these camps and then assess where their core ideology played into both my church and my spiritual life.

John Calvin was born in 1509 a French Catholic. He later converted to Presbyterian and served as the great protestant systemizer. He wrote volumes in the "Institute for Christian religion" which laid out a protestant foundation.

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