Experience Regrace: What The Shocking Beliefs Of The Great Christians Can Teach Us Today Presented By Frank Viola Exhibited In Leaflet

beliefs, yep almost as bad as your own! The real kicker here is what do we do with the disjointed affair we all are having within Christendom tearing each other apart over far lesser indulgences.
How many heretics do you know Or do you really know what it means to be a heretic You may be surprised at who qualifies, and don't rule your self out.
Viola has a message we need to hear in this age of agree with me or youre a heretic or agree with me or youre a bigot.
From the book, its possible to walk hand in hand without seeing eye to eye, Relationship doesnt require complete agreement, but love, The church is tired of seeing Christians act ungraciously toward one another when they disagree, Social media has added to the carnage, Christians routinely block each other on Facebook because of doctrinal disagreements, The world watches the bloodletting, and the Christian witness is tarnished,

But what if every Christian discovered that their favorite teacher in church history had blind spots and held to some falseand even shockingviews

Bestselling author Frank Viola argues that this simple awareness will soften Christians when they interact with each other in the face of theological disagreements.
In ReGrace, he uncovers some of the shocking beliefs held by faith giants like C.
S. Lewis, Luther, Calvin, Moody, Spurgeon, Wesley, Graham, and Augustinenot to downgrade or dismiss them, but to show that even "the greats" in church history didn't get everything right.
Knowing that the heroes of our faith sometimes got it wrong will empower us to treat our fellow Christians with grace rather than disdain whenever we disagree over theology.
Viola started with an interesting premise and makes some excellent points, but the book is clearly a series of blog posts in book format.
It got repetitive pretty quickly, and some of the "chapters" felt unnecessary, I might read his blog, but I won't be picking up any of his books in the future.
I appreciated Frank Viola's compilation of Christian leaders that might shock some of their followers,
His purpose was to point out some main Christian voices that have influenced Christianity for centuries, yet have some off the path beliefs or views: Lewis, Wesley, Graham, Calvin, Luther, Moody, etc.

The interesting thing is that many Christians who often view some of these voices as influential in their own belief while calling others heretics would be shocked and hopefully humbled by the views of some of their Christian mentors.
That was Viola's point. REGRACE the idea of using grace on them, . . and others and ourselves.
The book was a compilation of several blog posts, The second half includes short chapters on how to treat other Christians, how to avoid unnecessary conflict, the core of Christian orthodoxy and one of the better chapters a balanced understanding of 'heretic' from the New Testament.

I'd encourage any serious minded Christian to read or least skim this book, especially if they want to.
grow in humility of their own convictions,, get a glimpse small of historic Christianity, and, grow in their posture towards other Christians/Leaders in their church or the larger church who have different views.

Quicker read, easy to get through,
Grateful for the opportunity to review this book from GrafMartin Communications, Think the most important thing about Christians is that we all agree theologically Think again,

In this quick and accessible book, Viola gives us something noteworthy and neededa moment to pause and consider that we might be wrong, and what that means for how we treat other people, based on their beliefs.


As long as there have been Christian writers expressing theological ideas, there have been theological disagreements and controversies.
In certain places and times these disagreements have resulted in violence, Its easy to think that we today are far too civilized for all of that, Think again.

The internet has opened the door for noisy theological factions to engage in all new kinds of condemnation, censure and character assassination.
The attacks and eExcommunications roll down in crushing waveswith the sole effect of demonstrating to the watching world that Christians are mostly concerned with being right, and are incapable of treating each other let alone outsiders with grace and kindness.


The main portion of the book is a survey of a number of significant “heroes of the faith,” people who were influential in their time, and who have left an indelible mark on Christianity.
Many of these people are “patron saints” of a one particular theological group or other, For each one, Viola recounts a number of beliefs these luminaries held that would be considered peculiar, perhaps unorthodox, or even “shocking.
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Many, if not most Christians today are unfortunately very poorly educated on theological history, and assume with the help of their local church pastors that the theology taught in their local congregation is notefornote the same as held by the apostles inst century Palestine.
So, it will come as a surprise for many to learn that these theologiansevery one considered an orthodox defenders of the faithheld beliefs that might get them kicked out of their local church.


Why take the time to point out that these great influencers held to beliefs that are unorthodox

In order to make this important point: If we are capable of honoring and listening to the theological contribution of these leaders whose beliefs had blind spots, inaccuracies, or perhaps were just plain wrong, then maybe we can relate respectfully to others we disagree with.


The small remainder of the book includes several short chapters addressing related topics like how we speak to one another, the nature of heresy, the true purpose of the creed, and how church unity is not primarily built on doctrinal uniformity.


In an age where anyone can leave an excoriating public comment on Facebook or as a review, or can write a vicious condemnatory blog post, we need Violas reminder.
Read this little book to learn something new about a handful of the most influential Christian thinkers

in history, but also and more importantly to catch a vision of a different kind of church unity.


What unifies us is not perfect doctrinal agreement, Our calling is not forcing others to agree with us, The standard we are ultimately measured by is not our perfect agreement with the creed, It was Jesus himself who said that the particular quality that we would be known by was our love.
And how else is love seen, if not in the charitable way we treat peopleespecially people we disagree with I thoroughly enjoyed Frank's latest work.
Elements of biography and history combine without having to do a biographical deep dive with grace and wit to produce a work that calls each of us to calm down and focus on the main things.
Highly recommended. This is a good and useful book to be read by anyone, myself included, While I dont particularly like the authors blog style of writing, it was done on purpose perhaps to reach a larger selection of people.
For this reason, I can be supportive, The book is in two sections, The first section is a list of famous Christians and some of their beliefs that would not necessarily be embraced by most Christians today.
The second section was a series of short articles to encourage Christians to actually pay attention to what Jesus taught and said especially those many statements about loving each other.
This part of the book is largely a repeat of what this author writes elsewhere, but I would agree with him that it needs to be repeated, again and again.
I know that I repeat these same things when I speak, This is the type of book that I do wish every Christian would read, If they did, the world may well be in a better place, sitelink blogspot. com/ I may have decided to pick this one up just because I wanted to read up on the subversive views of Lewis but this book offers much more than the simple satisfaction of my curiosity.
This book is a book of common sense, The common sense among Christians to be gracious towards one another despite theological disagreements, You wonder why someone would have to write a book on a message so obvious but living in the age of the internet, you only need to look as far as your facebook page to see that we find ourselves to be severely lacking in that regard look even further back and you'll be greeted by stakes and guillotines depressingly gory stuff.

I find that I really liked the way Viola went about with his argument I mean who doesn't like getting some dirt on the Christian greats, just kidding, 'twas a very humbling read.
It's also interesting seeing him go off on his perspective as a prolific blogger and author of a book with a rather controversial sounding title Pagan Christianity.
He really does write from experience and has the mindset and heart of wanting to sow a Christlike change in this age.

To lightly rip off Lewis' metaphor and putting it into another context
When coming across those who may disagree, let's not make a spectacle of them but as a pair of spectacles by which you try to understand their point of view by.
Even if you come out of it shaking your head and declare those spectacles to be faulty and cracked, you would have learned far more than the bully who simply crushes it underfoot.
Very interesting book. I found many of his statements to be thought provoking, I liked his definition of "jerk" as it motivated me to pull down a Facebook post I had written.

I understood many of his points due to his excellent writing, I agreed with very few of them because of his stated theology, I also doubt that two of his bastions of Christianity were Christian at all because of their theology.

I would definitely recommend this book, It is a comfortable read and very insightful, You don't have to agree with everything he writes to give him credit for a well written thesis.
An interesting look at Christian criticism and how it can be much more harm than good, Enjoyed the unique look at the "secret beliefs" of the protestant giants, Just Okay

There were no real surprises, Perhaps some of what is here is shocking to extreme right fundamentalists, but probably not very shocking to even middle of the road evangelicals.
There is a lot of repetition, His intent is noble in trying to help us appreciate one another across our differences Such a timely book in an age where its easy to take sound bites and excerpts from preachers and label them false, wolf, heretical, etc.


If you consider yourself a defender of the faith, If orthodoxy and correct doctrine is critical to you, this is a very important book for you to read!

To think critically is critical.
Its even more critical that we guard our heart from having a critical spirit, I found the book interesting and learned things about celebrated Christian historical figures that I didn't know before reading it.
The author has guts for writing this as he shows some serious faults in the actions, thinking and theology of people held in very high regard, but does so to prove a very important point no one, not even icons of the Faith is perfect and, sadly, many today are swift to assign saintlike status to people who were really no more righteous than anyone else.
Critics will decry the author's criticisms as another of his written wrecking balls swinging within the walls of Christendom on the heels of his controversial "Pagan Christianity", but all the author is doing here is to point out how flawed people were clearly used by God to advance the cause of Christ, which means anyone can be.
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