Charles Spurgeon identified a lack of education as a singular obstacle among young men within his London Metropolitan Tabernacle congregation who desired to preach the gospel. Yet Spurgeon also held firm to a narrow set of requirements for admission to the Pastors’ College he formed. Spurgeon expected that candidates for admission display true conversion, articulate … Read more
As the Church commemorates the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed, this paper explores the dynamic nature of ecclesial identity, especially given Luther’s penetrating insight, “Thank God, a seven-year-old child knows what the Church is, namely, the holy believers and lambs who hear the voice of their Shepherd.” The investigation delves into ecclesial identity through … Read more
Samuel Taylor Coleridge once wrote that John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress was ‘incomparably the best SUMMA THEOLOGIÆ Evangelicæ’ (1980, 802) Hailed as a spiritual classic and distributed widely in evangelical Christian education, formation, and missions, The Pilgrim’s Progress has been a deeply influential text for the cultural imagination, particularly for Nonconformist and liturgically non-creedal baptistic … Read more
Though individuals can undoubtedly possess Christian conviction without metaphysics, it is much more controversial whether theology can stand alone. The history of Christian thinking, especially in theology proper, has often been intertwined with philosophical views of reality and being. As the 20th century dawned, metaphysical questions were broached based on the opposition of logical positivism, … Read more
There are a number of contributions which probe the philosophical meanings and mechanics of the two natures union in Edwards’s Christology. Representative examples are: Robert W. Caldwell III, Communion in the Spirit; Seng-Kong Tan, Fullness Received and Returned; W. Ross Hastings, Jonathan Edwards and the Life of God; Steven M. Studebaker, Jonathan Edwards’ Social Augustinian … Read more
This paper will examine the theology of George Whitefield, the colonial revivalist and humanitarian. Much has been written about Whitefield in terms of his biography, the history of the Great Awakening period, and his contributions to Methodism and Evangelicalism. However, little has been written about the content of his sermons and his theology. The paper … Read more
In 1807, William Ward (1769–1823) and the Serampore Press published a Persian pamphlet to share the gospel with Muslims. This short pamphlet almost derailed the developing Baptist mission. In the aftermath of the revolt of Muslim and Hindu soldiers in the Vellore Mutiny (1806), the East India Company (EIC) sought to maintain religious peace. When … Read more
By his own admission, George Whitefield was not a theologian – at least, not a theologian of the conventional sort. Indeed, he never aspired to be one. Instead, in much the same way that his Methodist field-preaching compatriot John Wesley has been famously dubbed a “folk-theologian”—a practical theologian as opposed to a systematic theologian—Whitefield might … Read more
In 1784, the composer George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) was commemorated in London through a series of concerts. According to Charles Burney’s account (1785), the two performances of Messiah at Westminster Abbey during the event were both “magnificent to the sights, and … mellifluous and grateful to the ear.” Yet, amongst leading figures in the British … Read more
More than a century before John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) first introduced his dispensational arrangement in the French language, the prominent French mystic and Christian philosopher Pierre Poiret Naudé (1646-1719) produced a complete systematic theology in six volumes. Historians and theologians have cited Poiret as an early dispensationally-minded predecessor to Darby. However, no analysis of the … Read more