Shortly after Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the Wittenberg
church door there arose a rift between two factions among the newly hatched “Protestants”: Some followed the more staid, traditional Calvinist reformers and others followed the more radical Ana-Baptist posture which eventually gave rise to the Baptist, Mennonite, and Quaker branches of the Protestant Reformation. The Christian Church grew from two or three forms into well over 200 branches.
Slowly these differences found their way into an increasingly diverse range of Protestant church groups, all the way from the Church of England, which spawned the Methodists, to the Baptists, who stressed the absolute importance of baptism by immersion, and the Quakers who minimized everything except the call of the Inner Spirit. Around the turn of the 20th Century the Pentecostal emphasis joined the ranks with their emphasis on the healing and gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Within the Protestant groups there initially arose a difference of opinion over whether God is in complete control of both world events and individual beliefs and actions or whether individual persons play an active and decisive part in determining both their own destiny and that of the world. The more extreme of the former groups, those who followed John Calvin, especially those who became Presbyterians, and those who followed the thinking of Jacob Arminius, namely those who had become Baptists and Anabaptists, along with some Methodists.
By and large Baptists believe that a person must be baptized in order to be a part of God’s community. Anabaptists were those who believe that only adults should be baptized, thus children who had already been baptized must be “re” baptized (‘ana’ from the Greek term for “again”). The Amish and Mennonites fall into this group. By and large members of these “left-wing” Christian groups eventually separated from the more traditional groups and developed their own beliefs following such leaders as Menno Simons and Jacob Arminius.
The Calvinists, mostly Presbyterians, the Church of England, and some Baptists stressed God’s will as being the determinate factor in the events of human life, both socially and individually. Calvin and his followers maintained that God is totally sovereign in the universe, and even more deterministically, that God decides which individuals will be saved and which will not. In fairness, Most Presbyterians today do not share such a hardline, literalist perspective.
Over against this hardline Calvinist perspective stood that of the Arminian approach, which stresses the absolute power and responsibility of each person to choose their own fate, whether to follow God’s way or not. Jacob Arminius used the Gospel stories of those whom Jesus sought to help. It is the logic of both human and divine interaction that both parties must be free to play a crucial role in the outcome. It makes little sense for God’s will to overpower that of each individual person. Then God would be simply playing a game with his created toys.
In the end, each person must have the power to reject God’s love or not. Otherwise, the person is simply a puppet in the hands of God’s absolute power. These tow points of view, then, dominated the theology of the Christians of the Reformation period. By and large each of these schools of thought, and the denominations which follow them, are much less well-defined in modern times than they were at their inception. Most people who join any of the respective churches mentioned herein know very little about these sorts of controversies.
Nonetheless, it seems to me that it is important for individuals, Christian or not, to think through and discuss these issues today. The thought process is itself well worth the effort. Moreover, the quality of one’s life may well depend on how we approach the above issues. A person’s beliefs, or lack thereof, should make a difference in how she or he lives. Generally speaking, our actions are based on our beliefs. Otherwise we run the risk of being shallow or even empty.

In 1950 Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky published his book Worlds in Collision and set off a worldwide controversy in scientific and intellectual circles. Not only did his ideas about the solar system raise serious issues concerning how the latter had been formed, but they called into question the very processes by which scientific truth was to be established. The scientific establishment rose up in arms against Velikovsky’s claims about how our solar system had been formed and even sparked a serious debate about how scientific truth is to be determined.
The central claim of Velikovsky’s book is that between the 15th and 8th centuries BCE the earth experienced a series of violent catastrophes. Parts of the surface were heated to such a degree that they became molten and great streams of lava welled out, the sea boiled and largely evaporated, some mountain ranges collapsed while others rose up, continents were raised causing great floods, and a pall of darkness shrouded the earth, followed by huge fires. Moreover, Velikovsky claimed that these events had been recorded in the literature of the ancient cultures of the Hebrews, the Hindus, and the Greeks.
Moreover, Velikovsky claimed that numerous collisions between planets had occurred in the recorded history of humanity. Further, he claimed that the paths of many comets flew around in our solar system with one of them colliding with Mars, losing its tail and becoming the planet Venus. Thus, Mars shifted its course and nearly collided with earth, causing the latter to shift its orbit and our moon to completely change its orbit as well. Perhaps the most astounding claim made by Velikovsky was that many if not most of these catastrophes took place within the centuries of recorded history and were documented by ancient scholars of Egypt, Greece, Mesopotamia and detailed as well by the events of the Old Testament.
Needless to say, the scientific and scholarly worlds were scandalized by these claims. Nonetheless, several of Velikovsky’s cosmological claims were later substantiated by modern astronomical physics. For example, scientists had always claimed that Venus is a cold planet, but when they finally were able to check its temperature, it turned out to be extremely hot, thus corroborating Velikovsky’s
Idea that it had been formed recently. There proved to be many more such solid verifications of Velikovsky’s theories.
Nevertheless, the scientific community continued to attack his views, basically ostracizing both him and his books. Lawsuits were threatened and even some attempts to silence him completely were put into practice. The entire drama of Velikovsky’s attempt to contravene much of modern astronomical theory and the efforts of the scientific community to ban him and his ideas is documented in a book by Alfred DeGrazia titled The Velikovsky Affair. Velikovsky continued his battle seeking to get a fair hearing from the scientific community for his main book titled Worlds in Collision. There is another book by Velikovsky titled Ages of Chaos in which he traces out the historical implications of his cosmic theory. He consistently sought to exonerate himself to the established scientific community, but never really accomplished this task.
While I was studying at Duke University in 1965 the university invited Dr. Velikovsky to speak and explain his main ideas. The two main things I remember from his talk were (1) the fact that several of his key predictions he had made about both astronomical and geological had been corroborated, and (2) the genuine humility he showed in sharing his ideas with the audience in spite of the negative treatment he had received nationwide from the so-called “scientific” community.
It will be interesting, indeed exciting, to see if the new Webb Telescope turns up any information that might bear on the Velikovsky affair. Both the astrophysical and the socio-political dimensions of this issue will be worth tracking. To adapt from Hamlet’s remarks to Horatio: “There is more to be known about the so-called “facts” than that contained in our various theories.”