The Protestant Reformation, Christianity in America, and Christianity Meets Modernity
Note: for this exam you may bring to class a half-sheet of paper (half of an 8½ x 11 sheet) which you may fill in with notes in whatever manner you choose (front and back).
a. The Protestant Reformation
1. What does “excommunication” mean? What Christian practice becomes forbidden?
2. What is an indulgence? Why did it become the issue that sparked the Protestant Reformation?
3. In what century did the Protestant Reformation begin?
4. What 1520’s edict by the Holy Roman Emperor was reaffirmed first in the Peace of Augsburg (1555) and then again in the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) at the end of the Hundred Years War?
5. What Protestant Reformer super-stressed the sovereignty of God?
6. What does justification by faith mean (a theme in Romans 3)?
7. What is double predestination?
b. Christianity Meets Modernity & the Americas
1. What did the 16th century theologian Bartolome de Las Casas contribute to Catholic Christianity in the Americas?
2. Who are Juan Diego and the Virgin of Guadalupe, and why were they significant for indigenous Catholics in Mexico?
3. What became the basis of authority in the 18th-century Enlightenment period (the birth of modernity)? What form of religious authority came under attack?
4. What is deism?
5. What is pietism?
6. What is millennialism?
7. Who founded Methodism?
8. What three Arminian beliefs (held by Methodists and some Baptists) are heretical for Protestants in the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition (like Scottish Presbyterians and many Puritans)?
9. What is ‘higher criticism’ of the Bible?
10. What are some ways that Christian liberals reconcile the Bible and evolutionary theory?
11. What are the five fundamentals of fundamentalism?
12. How is evangelicalism different from fundamentalism?
13. What is THE characteristic defining experience of Pentecostalism? Why is that experience so important to Pentecostals?
14. What Christian denomination held Vatican II, and in what years? List a few of the changes which accompanied Vatican II.
You will be asked to write on two of the following questions—so be prepared to answer each of them (1.5 points each).
1. What are some of the non-religious factors (i.e., political, technological, etc.) that made possible the Protestant Reformation? (lecture, Wilson)
2. Describe the Catholic sacramental system and some of the ways which Protestant Reformers challenged and transformed it.
3. What are Luther’s two types of righteousness? What is the relationship between them? WHY does Luther describe two kinds of righteousness at all?
4. Discuss each of the following themes or events of 18th & 19th century American evangelicalism:
a) the chief features and dates of the two Great Awakenings in the US
b) Jarena Lee’s arguments for women’s ordination
c) some of the chief features (including distinctive theological beliefs) of any one of the following: Mormonism, 7th-Day Adventism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or Christian Science. Be sure to explain the meaning of the NAME of the group you choose.
You will be asked to write on one of the following questions (so be prepared to discuss each of them). In your answers, draw on the course readings!
1. Discuss specific theological arguments for and against slavery as they were put forth by 19th-century Christians.
2. Discuss specific contemporary theological arguments for and against a Christian blessing of same-sex relationships.