Mostrando resultados por autor "Guillermo Santamaria" en Todas las categorías

The question before us is not whether repentance matters. Scripture commands repentance, godly sorrow is real, and the believer’s life includes ongoing humbling before God. The question is where repentance and confession are allowed to sit in the structure of the gospel. When repentance becomes a hinge that turns forgiveness on and off—when confession is treated as the mechanism by which pardon is obtained or regained—then even evangelical language can drift into a practical re-legalization of the Christian life. This is precisely the danger Old School Baptists repeatedly resisted, ...

In broad strokes, the document shows that “eternal vital union” among Old School Baptists is not a random oddity but a specific way of talking about how Christ and his people are related in eternity, and how that relation intersects with Adam, the fall, and time-bound regeneration. At its core, eternal vital union is the claim that the elect are not merely decreed or foreseen in Christ, but that they truly stand to him as children to a Head in an eternal, living relation before the world began. In Gilbert Beebe’s pieces, that union is pushed very far: the elect are an “eternal seed,...

In Greek, the root of “heretic” is αἱρέω / αἵρεσις, originally meaning “to choose” and then a choice, school, or party—a neutral term for a philosophical camp. Hellenistic Jews (like Josephus) use αἵρεσις for religious sects such as Pharisees and Sadducees. In the New Testament the word shifts: in Acts it can still mean “sect,” but in Paul’s lists it means factions that tear the church, and αἱρετικός (Titus 3:10) is the factious man who insists on his own line. In the 2nd–4th centuries, as the church confronts Gnostics, Marcionites, Arians, ...

The book Conflicts Among the Tentacles of the Monster is a compact sociology-of-reform case study: it argues that the antebellum “benevolent empire” (Bible, tract, missions, temperance, abolition, education, etc.) projected a saintly public face while internally generating predictable power-struggles—because once a “cause” becomes an institution, it must fund itself, defend itself, and govern itself, and those needs incubate the same sins reformers claim to oppose. It maps the movement’s internal conflicts into recurring fault-lines. First is authority: church courts and local ...

Summary Biblicism vs. Christ: The danger of elevating the Bible above Christ Himself. Scripture is the record; Christ is the living Word and the only true Teacher. Bible before the KJV: From scrolls in ancient Israel, to the Septuagint, the Latin Vulgate, Reformation vernaculars, and Geneva Bible. KJV (1611) emerged as a majestic, public-reading Bible. Puritans & Baptists: Many Puritans resisted the KJV, preferring Geneva. Critics like Hugh Broughton and John Canne saw it as too “episcopal” and lacking helpful notes. Baptists sometimes used Geneva notes against infant baptism. Old ...

Infant Baptism; Family; and Covenant Status: Overview The document surveys the theological debate over infant baptism, family inclusion, and covenant membership, contrasting Presbyterian and Baptist (especially Old School Baptist) views. It covers biblical foundations, historical controversies, and practical issues like youth rebellion, church discipline, and the Halfway Covenant. Key Themes Infant Baptism and Covenant Status Presbyterians see baptism as a covenant sign, applied to the children of believers much like circumcision in Israel. Baptized infants are not presumed regenerate but ...

In the New Testament, the normal sequence is simple: people believe, are baptized, and are added to a local church. Baptism isn’t a free-floating rite; it’s the public doorway into a community that teaches, communes, and practices accountability. Paul treats baptism as incorporation into Christ’s body. Practically, that means “baptized but permanently unjoined” doesn’t fit his framework. Baptism signals belonging that’s meant to be lived out in a real congregation. The famous edge case (the Ethiopian eunuch) shows the order still holds even when geography is awkward: faith →...

This essay by Guillermo Santamaria is both a theological reflection and a historical commentary on how Christians—especially Old School Baptists—view sacred places, church buildings, and denominational division. The work opens by denying that meetinghouses are “sacred” in themselves. The title “Ebenezers in Wood and Brick” symbolizes old church buildings as memorials of divine help, not as holy objects. Santamaria traces the biblical story of sacred places—from patriarchal altars to the temple, and finally to Christ, in whom sacred presence shifts from place to people. After ...

The phrase “rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15) has a long interpretive history. The original Greek word orthotomeō means “to cut straight,” as in building a road. The Septuagint uses it for “making paths straight” (Prov. 3:6; 11:5). Early Fathers like Chrysostom read it as teaching faithfully, not partitioning scripture. Jerome’s Vulgate gave “rightly handling,” and Wycliffe, Tyndale, and the Geneva Bible transmitted it into English, with the KJV fixing the phrase “rightly dividing.” In the 19th century, Darby and Scofield redefined it as a command to ...

“The missionary, instead of going into such neighborhoods as Christ’s ministers used to visit, where they would be most likely to have an opportunity of administering food to the poor of the flock, seeks the more populous villages and towns, where he can attract the most attention, and do the most to promote the cause of missions and other popular institutions. His leading motive, judging from his movements, is not love to souls, but love of fame; hence his anxiety to have something to publish of what he has done, and hence his anxiety to constitute churches, even taking disaffected, ...

Puts Luther (1525), Jonathan Edwards (1754), and Old School Baptists—Absoluter wing into one frame to compare “free will,” predestination, and lapsarian order. Moves from definitions → doctrine → exegesis → pastoral use, then closes with a source-based Beebe section. Big theses Luther: After the Fall the will is in bondage; conversion is monergistic (God alone). Scripture’s revealed will guides preaching; the hidden will is adored, not dissected. Emphasis: Law/Gospel and assurance. Edwards: Compatibilism—we always choose according to the strongest present motive; sinners ...

Acts 17 is presented as Luke’s “stress-test” chapter for the gospel: Paul reasons from Scripture in Thessalonica, is vetted by Berean Scripture-testing, and then collides with pagan intellectual culture in Athens. That blend explains why the chapter repeatedly becomes a battleground for apologetics, natural theology, contextualization, repentance, judgment, and resurrection. The interpretive history is traced along recurring fault lines: whether Paul’s Creator/providence argument is “natural theology” or a prosecutorial indictment of idolatry; whether the “unknown god” altar...

Eternal Vital Union: Beebe vs. Gill & the Reformers The live issue is timing. “Eternal vital union” (EVU) claims a real, life-giving union of Christ and His church from eternity, so that regeneration merely manifests what already is. Gill and the classic Reformed insist vital union begins in time, when the Spirit actually grafts a sinner into the living Christ. Beebe (EVU). Union is both eternal and vital. New birth does not start life in Christ; it reveals it. Beebe leans on Col 3:3–4 (“your life is hidden with Christ in God”) as real-but-veiled, and on Rom 5 (two Adams): as we ...

This book does something most discussions of “the rabbis and Jesus” don’t do: it refuses to skip the boring-but-essential part where you learn what rabbinic literature actually is, how it’s built, and why that structure matters for interpretation. Instead of throwing readers straight into spicy quotations, it starts by mapping the ecosystem—Mishnah, Tosefta, the two Talmuds, midrash, targumim, codes, responsa, and the commentary tradition—so that when “Yeshu/Yeshu ha-Notzri” shows up, you can tell whether you’re reading law, polemic, homily, or later editorial memory. That...

THE BIBLE AND THE APOCRYPHA is a guided tour through the most misunderstood “extra books” in the biblical world—written for readers who want clarity without propaganda. “Apocrypha” is a slippery word: Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, and scholars often mean different shelves when they say it. This book begins by untangling the vocabulary and then maps the terrain as it actually exists: overlapping libraries, layered traditions, and a long, complicated history of use, dispute, and reception. From there, it walks you through the real story behind the canon debate—Second Temple ...

Shall We Know Our Loved Ones in Heaven? is a biblical and pastoral study of one of the tenderest questions a grieving heart can ask: whether the saints of God will recognize and know one another in the world to come. Rather than leaning on sentiment or speculation, the book builds its case from Scripture, tracing the Bible’s teaching on continued personal identity after death, reunion, resurrection, and the communion of saints. It moves from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to the Old Testament language of being “gathered” to one’s people, to David’s hope regarding his child,...

The opening chapters sketch Blake as a rare hybrid: poet, artist, printer-inventor, and lifelong visionary, saturated with biblical language but hostile to what he saw as dead moralism and soul-crushing systems. You’re introduced to his big themes—innocence vs. experience as spiritual conditions, “Imagination” as a truth-seeing faculty (not mere daydreaming), and the symbolic cast of his prophetic books (figures like Urizen, Los, and Albion). That context matters because it frames “Jerusalem” not as a quaint patriotic song, but as a serious spiritual and social critique. The ...

What did Paul really mean in 1 Corinthians 11? Was the head covering a temporary custom, a permanent ordinance, or something far deeper than modern readers often assume? Women and Head Coverings is a bold and reverent examination of one of the most neglected and uncomfortable subjects in Christian worship. Refusing both modern mockery and empty traditionalism, this book digs into the biblical text itself—tracing Paul’s argument through headship, creation, glory, shame, nature, and the presence of angels. It wrestles honestly with the strongest arguments on both sides and asks whether ...

The book“UNIDENTIFIED DEMONIC PHENOMENA (UDPs)” sets out a Christian, Christ-centered framework for thinking about UAP reports without collapsing into either gullibility or reflexive scoffing. It opens by insisting on clear presuppositions and then treats “UAP” as a broad catch-all category that naturally produces multiple interpretive “schools,” many of which can overlap because the dataset itself is mixed—ranging from ordinary objects and misperceptions to unresolved incidents that remain unresolved largely because the data are thin. It then lays out the main interpretive ...

This document outlines the theory that our universe may be a simulated reality, akin to a computer program. It references philosopher Nick Bostrom’s Simulation Argument, along with comparisons to theological concepts such as God’s sovereignty. The document contrasts secular simulation theory with Christian doctrines of divine control, and includes mentions of thinkers like Sabine Hossenfelder, Karl Popper, Descartes, and George Berkeley, as well as the film Dark City as a metaphorical illustration.