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

This book argues that Paul’s phrase “the elemental spirits of the world” (ta stoicheia tou kosmou) in Colossians and Galatians refers to a blend of hostile spiritual powers and the basic religious “ABC’s”—rules, rituals, and philosophies—through which those powers enslave people before Christ. 1. What stoicheia meant in the ancient world In classical Greek, stoicheia usually means elements or building blocks: letters of the alphabet, basic principles, or the four elements (earth, air, fire, water). In Jewish and Greco-Roman thought, these “elements” and the stars could ...

This book is trying to rescue two overused words—“holiness” and “sanctification”—from becoming religious fog. Its method is stubbornly biblical: don’t start with slogans, start with the words themselves (and how they function in sentences), because a lot of theological confusion is really just grammatical carelessness dressed up as “depth.” In the Old Testament, the argument is that holiness and sanctification belong to the same Hebrew family built on the root קדשׁ (q-d-š), but they wear different “grammatical clothing.” Holiness shows up mainly as adjective/noun ...

This bookt is essentially a compact “case file” arguing that the phrase “common grace” is a later theological label that often blurs biblical categories, and that Old School Baptists should reject the label while still affirming God’s real providence in the world. It starts by defining “common grace” the way Reformed writers typically do: God’s non-saving kindness and restraint broadly experienced by humanity (sun/rain, civic order, gifts, restraint of evil), sharply distinguished from saving grace in Christ. Then it notes the Old School Baptist objection: call those ...

The document argues that “advancing the kingdom of God” is a slippery modern phrase: it can be used in a biblically faithful way (meaning the kingdom becomes more visible and confessed through gospel proclamation, church gathering/edification, and Spirit-wrought fruit), or it can become a slogan that quietly makes the kingdom feel like a human-managed project pushed forward by technique, money, and institutional “machinery.” It insists the biblical “grammar” should stay straight: God advances His reign; we witness to it, announce it, and live as its citizens, rather than ...

This short booklet, “BAPTISM FOR THE DEAD?”, is a tightly focused study built around one stubborn text—1 Corinthians 15:29—and it argues that Paul’s line about people being “baptized for the dead” is best handled as a rhetorical weapon in his resurrection defense, not as a permission slip for post-mortem rites. The foreword sets the tone: the church is repeatedly tempted to take an obscure phrase, detach it from the whole counsel of God, and construct a “machine” out of it—something impressive and even emotionally appealing, but ultimately replacing Christ and truth with...

The book argues that calling God “a person” must be defined carefully: not “a human being,” but a living “who” who speaks, wills, loves, covenants, judges, and relates. It then applies that to Scripture’s presentation of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as personal agents—God is not an impersonal force, and the gospel itself assumes personal communion and reconciliation with God rather than alignment with an abstract principle. From an Old School Baptist angle, it compares Trott and Beebe as sharing the same core confession—one God truly revealed as Father, Son, and Spirit—...

This book is a thesis-driven evaluation of John T. Christian’s A History of the Baptists (especially his baptism material), written to help you use Christian profitably without being hypnotized by his conclusions. It opens by framing Christian’s project as history-as-argument: he wants to show Baptists (defined by a cluster of “Baptist principles”) have existed from Christ onward, even when names change and records are hostile or missing. The evaluation treats that as the book’s animating engine—and warns that the engine can run on “family resemblance = family tree” if the ...

This bookt treats Roger Williams as a case study in an authority crisis: a man who can affirm Christ’s ordinances (especially baptism) yet conclude that, in his age, they cannot be administered with clear, valid authority—pushing him toward Seeker territory and placing him historically near (but not identical to) the Ranter eruption. The foreword frames two overreactions to church corruption: Seekerism: “lay down all” ordinances until God restores them through a fresh sending (“new apostles”)—pious-sounding but liable to become paralysis. Ranter impulse: contempt for outward ...

Here’s the gist of the book in a tight, usable nutshell: “Against God’s will” passages usually use will in the sense of God’s commands / delights (what ought to be), not God’s eternal purpose (what must be). So no one ever “beats” God’s decree, but men constantly violate God’s commandments. The preceptive vs. decretive labels are used as guardrails: Preceptive = God’s precepts (commands, duty, what pleases Him morally). Decretive = God’s decree (purpose/counsel that certainly comes to pass). Without some distinction you either (a) turn sin into “God’s will” the...

“PROGRESSIVE GLORIFICATION?” booklet is a compact polemic + study-aid that does three things in order: Puts the phrase “progressive glorification” on trial. The foreword argues that the phrase can sound like gospel brightness while functioning as a ladder that turns the Christian life into “climb higher, shine brighter, prove more,” shifting assurance from Christ to my progress. It insists 2 Cor. 3:18 is a window (behold Christ) rather than a scoreboard (measure yourself). Presents Charles Leiter’s “Law of Christ” material, then critiques it from an Old School Baptist ...

According to a book from 2020, “non-causative predestination” is basically a modern guardrail phrase: it tries to protect two claims the author insists Scripture teaches plainly—God’s sovereignty over all events and God’s holiness as “not the moral author of sin”—without letting human “logic” bully the Bible into choosing only one of them. The Foreword’s core complaint is that many controversies come from confusing mystery with contradiction. A contradiction would be God being holy and unholy “in the same sense.” Mystery is God being “sovereign over all events”...

This book argues that Greek and Roman rhetoric is less a museum piece than the durable “engineering logic” of public persuasion—ethos, logos, and pathos—developed through Greek democratic courts and assemblies, sharpened by the Sophists and critiqued by Plato, systematized by Aristotle, and then pragmatically refined by Rome through Cicero’s canons and Quintilian’s moral program for forming a speaker. It then traces how this rhetorical bloodstream flowed into Christian preaching—most directly in the Latin West through Cicero → Augustine → later homiletics, and in the Greek...

From an Old School Baptist (Absoluter) perspective, everything in your document is one diagnosis with several symptoms: modern evangelicalism keeps inventing parallel religious machinery—voluntary societies in the 19th century, then the “benevolent empire,” and now parachurch pipelines—and those machines inevitably develop their own authority (boards, payroll, metrics, brand logic) while remaining outside the accountability of a local congregation. The deepest objection is not “doing good” or “reaching youth,” but rival governance: a second center of gravity forms beside the...

The book traces the Nicene Creed from its fourth-century origins into its later reception among Old School Baptists, using both patristic history and Trott/Beebe as lenses. It begins by outlining what the Creed is in its 381 (Niceno-Constantinopolitan) form: a compact confession of one God the Father, one Lord Jesus Christ “true God from true God” and “of one substance with the Father,” the Holy Spirit as “Lord and giver of life” worshiped with Father and Son, and one holy catholic and apostolic Church, one baptism, and the hope of resurrection. It situates this formula within ...

This study argues that nineteenth-century “ministerial education” must be interpreted as a central organ of the broader evangelical “benevolent empire,” not as a neutral aid to piety or a simple upgrade in clerical literacy. The opening chapters trace how an interlocking network of voluntary societies (Bible, tract, missions, Sunday school, reform, educational) generated a logic of holy efficiency—identifying religious “needs,” raising funds, building institutions, and standardizing personnel—within which seminaries functioned as the system’s nervous system: they existed ...

Chapter 22 of the Second London Confession (“Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day”) is treated with caution and partial acceptance. Old School Baptists shared many doctrines with their seventeenth-century forebears, but they eventually rejected the prescriptive and Puritan frame of that chapter because it became, in their judgment, a platform for ecclesiastical formalism and programmatic worship—precisely the tendencies the Black Rock Address later condemned. 1. On Regulated Worship Old School Baptists agree that worship must rest on explicit Scriptural warrant—a “Thus saith ...

This book is a compact, historically anchored argument that treats Sunday School less as a neutral “church activity” and more as a modern institution with a theology baked into its machinery. It opens with a brief foreword framing the piece as a continuation of (and response to) ongoing criticism of the Old School Baptist position. In the first movement, Sunday School is defined in its modern, recognizable form—an age-graded, volunteer-run “learning hour”—but its origins are located in late–late-18th-century social conditions: industrial poverty, child labor, and a push for ...

In Scripture, “witness” and “testimony” are truth-terms, not technique-terms. A witness gives honest attestation to reality—Christ’s person and work—and the believer’s life is meant to function as corroborating evidence, not as a staged performance. Modern usage often drifts: “witnessing” becomes a program (“going witnessing”) and slides into scripts, pressure tactics, and “closing the deal,” while “testimony” can become a stylized personal story that subtly shifts the center from Christ to the speaker. Harris’s The Witnessing Church (1837) represents an ...

The book argues that high-church pageantry (vestments, incense, processions, chant) and evangelical worship bands (lights, platforms, curated song-sets) are really two styles of the same thing: religious theater. Both center a visible “front” team, run on rehearsed scripts, and use aesthetics (sound, light, movement, space) to create a sense of “the holy,” often turning the congregation into an audience and quietly treating atmosphere as a quasi-sacrament or “means” of producing spiritual effect. Historically, it traces religious theater from ancient ritual-as-drama (pagan and ...

The book argues that “try-hard Christianity” misunderstands both holiness and the function of biblical exhortations by turning the Christian life into a cooperative project in which our effort helps make us holier before God. In contrast, the Absoluter wing of Old School Baptists insists that all the elect are equally and immutably holy in Christ: sanctification, as to standing, is eternal in election, accomplished once-for-all in Christ’s offering, and applied by the Spirit in regeneration, not a moral ladder the believer climbs. New School / Missionary Baptists maintain a classic ...