Transactions of the Baptist Historical Society now online

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I was asked last year by Professor John Briggs, Chairman of the Baptist Historical Society, if I could assist them by digitising and hosting the Transactions of the Baptist Historical Society (1908-1921) and the Baptist Quarterly (1922-present). I quickly learned – through my contacts at the Baptist training colleges – that the Transactions represent a unique historical record valuable not just to Baptists, but to church historians, theologians and missiologists across the denominations. These old volumes are currently on restricted access in those few colleges that have paper copies.

The Baptist Quarterly will take me most of this year to complete, but the Transactions of the Baptist Historical Society are now available on-line. To further assist colleges I have provided a link at the top of the page to a compressed archive that contains all the PDF files and a separate table of contents (total file size around 65MB). These can be placed on College servers at no charge as the entire collection is now Public Domain.

Rob Bell and Universalism – some resources

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There have been a number of detailed reviews published of Rob Bell’s latest book. Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived (HarperOne, 2011). I do not intend to repeat their contents here, though I think that two are worth mentioning. Kevin DeYoung’s review is the most helpful covering in some detail problems with Bell’s exegesis, understanding of history and eschatology [a pdf version of the review can be found here]. I have to agree strongly with his statement that:

This is a book for people like Bell, people who grew up in an evangelical environment and don’t want to leave it completely, but want to change it, grow up out of it, and transcend it. The emerging church is not an evangelistic strategy. It is the last rung for evangelicals falling off the ladder into liberalism or unbelief.

This brings me the second review by Albert Mohler. Mohler concentrates on the similarities between Bell’s theology and that of Nineteenth Century Liberalism. For Mohler, Bell is simply Schleiermacher redivivus.

Now, to my main purpose in writing. Here are some on-line resources that might be of help. I have extensive bibliographies on both Hell and Universalism. From these these articles might be of most interest:

Graham Keith, “Patristic Views on Hell – Part 1,” The Evangelical Quarterly 71.3 (1999): 217-232.

Graham Keith, “Patristic Views on Hell – Part 2,” The Evangelical Quarterly 71.4 (1999): 291-310.

Richard Bauckham, “Universalism: a historical survey,” Themelios 4.2 (September 1978): 47-54.

Timothy K. Beougher, “Are All Doomed to Be Saved? The Rise of Modern Universalism,” The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 2.2 (Summer 1998): 6-24.

Website Year End Review 2010

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2010 has been an extremely busy year for the Theology on the Web websites, with a noticeable development from placing individual articles online to placing whole journals online as well. The following journals are now avialable on-line for the first time. The current  incompleteness of some of these journals is an indication of how difficult it is proving for me to get hold of copies in the UK to scan.

Australian Biblical Review
Caribbean Journal of Evangelical Theology
Indian Journal of Theology

There has also been a shift from digitising western journals to making available those from the Far East. Given the increasing numbers of visitors from this region and the sites purpose in making good theological resources to those in the Two Thirds World this is a very welcome development.

New Tables of Contents

The following journals is available online, but I have added a tables of contents for it on biblicalstudies.org.uk in order to make access.
New website launched
On the 1st November I launched biblicalarchaeology.org.uk, which will provide resources on the vast field of Biblical Archaeology. Much work needs to be done to make the site the comprehensive resource I hope it will become.
Future Additions
This year I also registered two more domains: reformationchurch.org.uk and gospelstudies.org.uk. reformationchurch.org.uk follows on chronological, of course, from medievalchurch.org.uk  The subject matter of this period of Church History is immense and complex, so development is expected to take several years.

gospelstudies.org.uk was registered in case it becomes necessary to increase the amount of material on the 4 Gospels beyond that which would easily fit into the structure of BiblicalStudies.org.uk comfortably. I have no timescale as yet for the development of this site.

Early in the Near Year I am hoping to start work on the digitisation of the Transactions of the Baptist Historical Society and its successor Baptist Quarterly. I expect that these will take a considerable time to complete.

And Finally…

2011 marks the 10th Anniversary of BiblicalStudies.org.uk. A partial history of its development can be found on Archive.org’s WayBack Machine.

I would like to thank all of my visitors for their encouragement and assistance over the years. Without your ongoing support this milestone could not have been reached.