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This book fuses the Church's traditional doctrine of the Communion of Saints and Baptists' theology of salvation and discipleship--charting how Baptists can speak of a communion of saints here and now. Paul Fiddes and his coauthors emphasize that this communion is only possible within the fellowship of the triune God who covenants with and for believers. Reframing communion within a theology of covenant enables the affirmation of the practice of prayer and mutual support with all faithful disciples, both alive and dead. Such a covenantal understanding of communion avoids an unhealthy obsession with communication with those who have died. Baptists and the Communion of Saints thus makes a significant and practical difference in the way Baptists understand the nature of the church, prepare their worship, care for the dying and the bereaved, go on spiritual journeys, and celebrate baptism and the Lord's Supper.
This book is a follow-up to a previous volume by the same three authors, Baptists and the Communion of Saints: A Theology of Covenanted Disciples, though it does not require familiarity with the first study. The present book offers new perspectives on belief in the “communion of saints” by interpreting it through the idea of “covenant,” with its two dimensions of relations with God and with each other. Giving attention to the creative arts of painting, music, poetry, and story writing, the authors explore “indications” of a hidden “communion of saints” through embodiment, memory, and connectivity. Included are studies of the work of visual artists Paul Nash and Mark Rothko; musicians John Tavener, Elgar, and Brahms; and writers Thomas Hardy, T. S. Eliot, and James Joyce. Theological reflection on these hints of communion offers a vision of an ongoing communion of prayer with the saints, alive and dead, which does not depend on a dualistic idea of a disembodied soul existing after death but which affirms the Christian tradition of the resurrection of the body. Communion, covenant, and creativity are thus linked to develop a Christian aesthetics based on a mutual indwelling between the triune God and the world.
This book re-examines Baptist theology and practice in the light of contemporary biblical, theological, ecumenical, and missiological perspectives. It is not a study in denominationalism, but rather attempts to revision historical insights from the believers' church tradition, seeking to re-appropriate forgotten emphasis, bringing them together in a revised ecclesiology.
The record is clear that Baptists, historically, have prioritized conversion, Jesus, and God. Equally clear is that Baptists have never known what to do with the Holy Spirit. In Baptists and the Holy Spirit, Baptist historian C. Douglas Weaver traces the way Baptists have engaged--and, at times, embraced--the Holiness, Pentecostal, and charismatic movements. Chronicling the interactions between Baptists and these Spirit-filled movements reveals the historical context for the development of Baptists' theology of the Spirit. Baptists and the Holy Spirit provides the first in-depth interpretation of Baptist involvement with the Holiness, Pentecostal, and charismatic movements that have found a prominent place in America's religious landscape. Weaver reads these traditions through the nuanced lens of Baptist identity, as well as the frames of gender, race, and class. He shows that, while most Baptists reacted against all three Spirit-focused groups, each movement flourished among a Baptist minority who were attracted by the post-conversion experience of the "baptism of the Holy Spirit." Weaver also explores the overlap between Baptist and Pentecostal efforts to restore and embody the practices and experiences of the New Testament church. The diversity of Baptists--Southern Baptist, American Baptist, African American Baptist--leads to an equally diverse understanding of the Spirit. Even those who strongly opposed charismatic expressions of the Spirit still acknowledged a connection between the Holy Spirit and a holy life. If, historically, Baptists were suspicious of Roman Catholics' ecclesial hierarchy, then Baptists were equally wary of free church pneumatology. However, as Weaver shows, Baptist interactions with the Holiness, Pentecostal, and charismatic movements and their vibrant experience with the Spirit were key in shaping Baptist identity and theology.