Archive for October, 2009

To blog or to tweet? That is the question with which I have been debating for about a week or two now. Some would say, do both, and I wish I had the time to be able to indulge, but I really do not.

Now that I have begun to see that I cannot adequately do both, I have decided to focus on blogging, which is a lot more personally satisfying (arguments can be developed and points made at length, etc ), while much in the world of Twitter still seems to me to be very juvenile.

I shall still keep my Twitter open but enter Tweets from my computer when I have time.

Why do I love the Puritans? Well, it is because of their robust soteriology that is faithful to the Word of God, their awesome biblical piety, and their keen ecclesiology. And after all, my seventeenth-century Baptist forebears were Puritans. But, and this is why we study history, they and their age are not the standard by which we measure biblical fidelity. That belongs to one source: the very one that they loved and sought to uphold—Holy Scripture. It alone is the canon and rule of faith.

So, there are some things in which I do not hesitate not to follow the Puritans. In the big picture, they are small things, but they illustrate that for me Scripture alone can bind my conscience. I wear a wedding ring on my left hand’s ring finger—the Puritans rejected the use of such because of the pagan origins of wedding rings. I do not dispute the historicity of those origins. But it is more important for me to bear witness to the permanence and desirability of marriage in our neo-pagan environment than protest against Norse paganism!

Or with regard to the keeping of days, I find it odd that in a world that is increasingly out of sync with the Gospel story and is utterly ignorant of some of the key events of that story that some of our churches, who would regard themselves as modelling Puritanism for the twenty-first century, fail to take advantage of the traditional church year that recalls Advent, Palm Sunday, Pentecost or Trinity Sunday. Would I re-introduce these days of remembrance into Baptist life? Yes, I would, for they help to remind us of critical aspects of the Gospel. Trinity Sunday, for example, would be an excellent antidote to Baptist churches in which the Trinity is never the subject of a sermon, year in, year out. And Pentecost would help some Baptists overcome their fear of the Holy Spirit!

Baptist Press has posted a story about a new book by Dr. Ray Coppenger, A Messenger of Grace: A Study of the Life and Thought of Abraham Booth, which was recently released by Joshua Press.  This book can be ordered on Amazon.com.

In his day, and for many years after his death, Abraham Booth was regarded as one of the leading Baptist theologians and thinkers of the eighteenth century.  Relatively little, though, has been done, to explore his theological contribution to Baptist life and thought. This work by Dr. Ray Coppenger provides what amounts to a primer on Booth’s ministry and theology.

“Booth’s theological perspectives, particularly with regard to ecclesiology and soteriology, need to be studied afresh at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and I can think of no better place to begin the study of this mentor than this book by Dr. Coppenger.”
Michael A.G. Haykin—Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Raymond Arthur Coppenger was born in 1909 near the small town of Tellico Plains in the mountains of East Tennessee. Sensing a call to ministry in his twenties, he went to The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, from which he graduated with a Th.M. in 1936. After seminary, he served as associate pastor of First Baptist Church, Newport, Tennessee, and then as pastor of churches in Butler, Tennessee, and Pennington Gap, Virginia. After World War II, he went to Edinburgh, Scotland, for doctoral studies. He received his Ph.D. from Edinburgh University for his work on Abraham Booth in 1953. Subsequently, he taught philosophy and religion at Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tennessee, Belmont College in Nashville, Tennessee, and Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. An emeritus professor since 1974, Coppenger continues to supply-preach and join in the ministry of his local church—and he does his best to keep up with his five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren!

Posted by Steve Weaver, Research and Administrative Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin.