John Okwudiri Obineche. University of Port Harcourt. Jansenism is a seventh-century religious movement within the Roman Catholic Church, named after a Dutch theologian Cornelius Jansen, whose work Augustinus reviewed the major thoughts of Augustine's theology.
Jansenist teachings were associated with harsh moral rigorism against the Jesuits' Molinist thoughts. It was first condemned by Pope Innocent X in , and finally in with many French migrants finding refuge in Holland from persecution. However, having retained traces of its teachings in the same Catholic Church that condemned them, Jansenist thoughts have found flourishing ground in the modern churches of Africa, especially among the African indigenous Pentecostal denominations in Nigeria.
This indigenous Pentecostal tradition comprises the African Independent Churches, the Aladura movement, and the African Pentecostal movement, whose belief and practices are in line with the five pillars of Jansenism.
This work, therefore, proposes that the reality of history lies with the future; whose interpretation of the past is proved by modern reality, and not by the ancient traditions. In the view of modern church historians, church history can also be re-written as a chronicle of reforms.
This is because-in the history of the church-there has never been a century when genuine reformist ideas ever ceased the struggle to prevail Tillich , It would be out of the question to attempt in a single volume, let alone in an article, a detailed description or account of the various kinds of reforms that have been advocated and executed in the course of over two thousand years of Christianity.
