Raised to Life: A Seventeenth-Century Baptism Miracle
In my previous post, I noted the remarkable prayer for healing that Baptist theologian Hanserd Knollys made on behalf of his gravely ill friend, Benjamin Keach. Praying in the vein of Hezekiah as recorded in 2 Kings 20, Knollys received what he asked. Keach was restored to full health and lived fifteen additional years. Was […]
A Baptist Faith-Healing?
What is a Baptist understanding of miracles in the church? While Calvinistic Baptists have been associated with cessationism—the belief that the miraculous events such as those found in the book of Acts ceased after the first century—the tradition’s past holds a few surprises. Baptists emerged as a distinct group in the early seventeenth-century, a tumultuous […]
Red on the Door: Revenge or Redemption
The Supreme Court landmark ruling on Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and consequent overturning of Roe v. Wade on June 24th is six months behind us. The leaked memo which disclosed the court’s majority opinion in early May left a sense of foreboding across the country. Concerns were not unfounded, as the thwarted attempt […]
Manichean Echoes
It’s a truism that every heresy in the history of the church can be found during its first four centuries. Ebionism, for example, an early heresy which denied the divinity of Jesus, is taught (in a modern form) from the pulpits of mainline liberal churches and religion departments in academic institutions today. Gnosticism, being notoriously […]
Original Sin: American, Political, Theological
U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield made headlines recently when she testified at the National Action Network’s virtual conference that “the original sin of slavery weaved white supremacy into our founding documents.” Whether that claim is true or not—and/or to what extent—is not the point of this article. Of present interest is why original sin as a […]