Baptist Theology: A Four-Century Study (James N. Griffith Endowed Series in Baptist Studies)

by James Leo Garrett Jr.

Publisher:

Mercer University Press

, 2019

Overview

Embracing in one common trajectory the major Baptist confessions of faith, the major Baptist theologians, and the principal Baptist theological movements and controversies, this book spans four centuries of Baptist doctrinal history. Acknowledging first the pre-1609 roots (patristic, medieval, Reformational) of Baptist theology, it examines the Arminian versus Calvinist issues that the General and the Particular Baptists first expressed. These issues dominated English and American Baptist theology during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from Helwys and Smyth and from Bunyan and Kiffin to Gill, Fuller, Backus, and Boyce and were quickened by the awakenings and the missionary movement. Concurrently, the Baptist defended distinctives vis-à-vis the pedobaptist world and the unfolding of a strong Baptist confessional tradition. Then during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the liberal versus evangelical issues became dominant with Hovey, Strong, Rauschenbusch, and Henry in the North and Mullins, Conner, Hobbs, and Criswell in the South even as a distinctive Baptist Landmarkism developed, the discipline of biblical theology was practiced and a structured ecumenism was pursued. Missiology both impacted Baptist theology and took it to all the continents, where it became increasingly indigenous. Conscious that Baptists belong to the free churches and to the believers' churches, a new generation of Baptist theologians at the advent of the twenty-first century was somewhat more Calvinist than Arminian and decidedly more evangelical than liberal.

• Spans four centuries of Baptist doctrinal history.
• Exposes theology during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from Helwys and Smyth.
• Explains how missiology both impacted Baptist theology and took it to all the continents.

Product Details

• Title: Baptist Theology: A Four-Century Study
• Author: James Leo Garrett Jr.
• Publisher: Mercer University Press
• Print Publication Date: 2019
• Pages: 774
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• ISBNs: 9780881467079, 0881467073
• Resource ID: LLS:BPTSTTHFRCNTRST
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-10-28T17:05:54Z

About James Leo Garrett Jr.

James Leo Garrett Jr. is distinguished professor of theology emeritus at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. He earned his ThM from Princeton Theological Seminary (1949), ThD from Southwestern Baptist Seminary (1954), and PhD from Harvard University (1966). He has also studied at the Catholic University of America, the University of Oxford, St. John’s University, and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He has also taught at Baylor University and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, as well as serving as a visiting professor at the Hong Kong Baptist Theological Seminary. He has also written Baptist Theology: A Four-Century Study, and contributed to Perspectives on Church Government: Five Views on Church Polity. He also edited The Concept of the Believers’ Church: Addresses from the 1967 Louisville Conference.