Description

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Towards Baptist Catholicity: Essays on Tradition and the Baptist Vision contends that the reconstruction of the Baptist vision in the wake of modernity's dissolution requires a retrieval of the ancient ecumenical tradition that forms Christian identity through liturgical rehearsal and ecclesial practice. Themes explored include catholic identity as an emerging trend in Baptist theology, tradition as a theological category in Baptist perspective, the relationship between Baptist confessions of faith and the patristic tradition, the importance of Trinitarian catholicity for Baptist faith and practice, catholicity in biblical interpretation, Karl Barth as a paradigm for a Baptist and evangelical retrieval of the patristic theological tradition, worship as a principal bearer of tradition, and the role of Baptist higher education in shaping the Christian vision. This book submits that the proposed movement towards catholicity is neither a betrayal of cherished Baptist principles nor the introduction of alien elements into the Baptist tradition. Rather, the envisioned retrieval of catholicity in the liturgy, theology, and catechesis of Baptist churches is rooted in a recovery of the surprisingly catholic ecclesial outlook of the earliest Baptists, an outlook that has become obscured by more recent modern reinterpretations of the Baptist vision and that provides Baptist precedent of a more intentional movement towards Baptist catholicity today.

About the Author

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A Baptist ecumenical theologian, Steven R. Harmon is the author of Baptist Identity and the Ecumenical Future: Story, Tradition, and the Recovery of Community (Baylor University Press, 2016), Ecumenism Means You, Too: Ordinary Christians and the Quest for Christian Unity (Cascade Books, 2010), Towards Baptist Catholicity: Essays on Tradition and the Baptist Vision (Paternoster/Wipf & Stock, 2006), and Every Knee Should Bow: Biblical Rationales for Universal Salvation in Early Christian Thought (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), along with numerous chapters contributed to other books, journal articles, reviews, and general readership publications. He has represented the Baptist World Alliance in international ecumenical dialogues with the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, in pre-conversations with representatives of the Eastern Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate, and as a member of the plenary Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches. Dr. Harmon is Visiting Associate Professor of Historical Theology at Gardner-Webb University School of Divinity in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, USA and previously served on the faculties of Samford University's Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama (2008-2010) and Campbell University Divinity School in Buies Creek, North Carolina (1998-2008), as Visiting Professor at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina (2007), and as Adjunct Professor of Ecumenical Theology at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary in Columbia, South Carolina (2012).