Thomas Monck’s Apologia: A General Baptist Use of Reformed Orthodoxy to Defend the Trinity
Historian Ernest Gordon Rupp said of Thomas Monck’s Cure for the Cankering Error of the New Eutychians (1673), “No high churchman, no orthodox Anglican, not Daniel Waterland himself produced an abler defence of catholic doctrine.”[1] Monck’s Cure was a biblical and theological polemic against the rising tide of anti-Trinitarianism in England and the emergence of heretical Christology within his own denomination. Rupp’s assessment is...
Samuel Richardson’s Use of John Murton and Roger Williams on Religious Liberty
In the past couple of years, a great deal of discussion has occurred regarding Baptist political theology. It has often focused on what Baptists in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries taught on religious liberty and how Baptists today should approach religious liberty in post-Christian America. Some self-professed Baptists have even advocated for forms of Magisterial Protestantism, which is at odds with Baptist political theology...
The Beginnings of Baptist Ecclesiology: A Review
When people think of Thomas Helwys, they often think of religious liberty, and rightfully so. Yet Helwys’s writings address far more than religious liberty. Marvin Jones seeks to demonstrate this in his recent monograph The Beginnings of Baptist Ecclesiology: The Foundational Contributions of Thomas Helwys.[1] Jones contends that while many scholars have considered Helwys’s Mystery of Iniquity to be a work focused primarily on...
Is Grandpa Turning in His Grave? Exhortations for Free Will Baptists from Our Own Heritage
by Derek Cominskie Over the last several weeks, the HSF’s articles have focused on major moments or times of impact in Free Will Baptist history. In this article, I’d like to look to the future and contemplate what might lie ahead. In fact, someone suggested that I write on this topic; because, in his words, I have “seen the denomination from a couple different angles,” having transferred from Gateway Christian College to Welch...
When General Baptists Became Particular Baptists
What happened in May 1755, significantly altered the early years of what would become southern Free Will Baptists, and nearly dealt their churches a lethal blow. Prior to the events that will be discussed below, Free Will Baptists were one of the most successful Protestant groups in the southern United States. That certainly changed in the following years. In May of 1755, Calvinist John Gano arrived at the General Baptist church near...
Recent Comments