Cross. Review of Davis.The Moral Theology of Roger Williams (original) (raw)

Roger Williams, Natural Law, and Religious Liberty

Journal of Church and State , 2021

The seventeenth-century colonial Puritan Roger Williams remains a celebrated advocate for religious liberty. The copious number of texts devoted to Williams testifies to his longstanding legacy throughout history and to the idea of religious freedom. Roger Williams’s doctrine for religious liberty did not arise from the auspices of a religious zealot’s imagination. Instead, he discovered this pre-political liberty as founded in a biblical–theological paradigm and attested to through natural law. His biblical and theological justification for religious liberty has a home in a vast array of articles and books. Few, however, have asserted Williams as a natural lawyer. Williams’s use of natural law revealed the nonsubjective nature of religious liberty—that the natural law attested to the goodness, virtue, and moral imperative of religious freedom. Indeed, what made Williams’s idea for religious liberty enduring was that he understood religious liberty not as foundational but derivative—religious freedom derived from transcendent realities, which made religious liberty a pre-political liberty.

'TO HOPE, AND TO WAIT': ROGER WILLIAMS AND THE ESCHATOLOGICAL ROOTS OF TOLERATION (2022)

History of Political Thought, 2022

Despite a recent renewed focus on the historical and theological justifications for toleration, few scholars have examined the positive uses of eschatological rhetoric in fueling a commitment to religious liberty. The early modern thinker Roger Williams, however, advanced a distinctly eschatological conception of church-state relations to defend the practice of religious toleration in Rhode Island. Drawing on works by Thomas Helwys and John Murton, Williams articulates a millenarian ethos of toleration characterized by patience and hope. This important, though neglected, dimension of Williams's political theology sheds light on the relationship between apocalypticism, eschatology, and religious toleration.

A Brief Biography of Roger Williams: Father of Religious Liberty in America

A Brief Biography of Roger Williams: Father of Religious Liberty in America, 2022

is one of the most important persons in American history. It did not appear that way during his 80 years (1603-1683), because he was despised by his peers in New England. However, because of his stance on religious liberty, he is now one of the most written about persons in American history. Roger Williams can be identified with one of the two experiments of what the fathers of America thought would be the ideal society to create in the new world. On one side, you have the Puritans, led by John Winthrop, with a vision of a pure theocracy. On the other hand, is Roger Williams, also a Puritan with a vision of a society where the state is separate from the church. The story of Roger Williams is the story of the conflict between these two ideals. Rhode Island versus New England; John Winthrop and John Cotton versus Roger Williams. History declares Roger Williams and the Rhode Island experiment the winners. Though despised by his contemporaries, Roger William's ideas became the foundation upon which republicanism of America is built. John Winthrop thought that Puritan theocracy would be the experiment for the glorious future that he imagined. However, it would be this "gentle radical" called Roger Williams, who would become the hero of American democracy. It is the Rhode Island experiment that would be immortalized. This is Roger William's story in brief. In this brief biography, I will cover his early years, his life and conflicts in colonial America, his relationship with the Indians, and his religious liberty legacy.

The Lively Experiment: Roger Williams, Rhode Island, and Religious Liberty

2021

for reading my thesis and participating in my defense. I have learned so much from my time at Sam Houston, the thesis process, and my committee members that I will cherish and take with me as I move forward. I would also like to thank Dr. Richard Edwards for graciously assisting in my research by allowing me access to Baylor University's extensive theological collection on Roger Williams. Additionally, I am very appreciative of the librarians who are a part of Sam Houston's Newton Gresham Library. They were tremendously helpful to me during my research. I am also sincerely grateful for the encouragement and guidance of Professor Jeremy Lehman, whose evident passion for teaching and the field of history inspired me to pursue this path. Lastly, to my family and friends, I am so thankful for the constant encouragement and support that I received from all of you. On the days where I did not feel like I quite measured up to the task, you pushed me to see this project through to the end. I will always look back on this portion of my educational journey with the greatest sense of gratitude and joy due to the many extraordinary people who chose to invest their time, talents, and energy into me. v PREFACE Roger Williams had an extraordinary way with words. He was very passionate about Rhode Island and the liberation of the religiously persecuted. This fervent passion was very evident in his writings, especially in his treatise The Bloudy Tenent. In order to get his passionate point across, however, his works often contained bold statements, capitalized declarations, punctuation for emphasis, and non-traditional usage of words. His liberal writing style, in conjunction with the antiquated spelling of the 1600's, makes some his works difficult to follow. However, I have largely chosen to leave the original spelling and grammar intact. I really wanted to accurately portray the original source material and allow readers to experience the passion that I feel comes through in his writing. I have combatted some of the possible confusion by breaking up his statements, explicating them, and placing them in the correct context. Williams was truly a master at argumentative writing, and the extra flourishes he added (while not grammatically sound), were a deliberate choice and an important aspect of his unique style. To fully update his words would be to strip his writing of its distinct character and historical significance. vi

The Love of God in Time and Eternity: Accounting for Particularity in Reformed Soteriology

2009

In this paper we examine how reformed soteriology accounts for particularity, with particular reference to the concept of limited atonement. We begin with Calvin's correct observation that any attempt to account for particularity is a statement about how the eternal act of God in election relates to the temporal outworking of his will in the economy. Therefore it is a statement about Christ, since the incarnate Word is the one who straddles time and eternity for our sake.

Always Already Loved: Recovering the Doctrine of Justification from Eternity

Journal of European Baptist Studies, 2018

Quite a few Baptists before the 19th century defended a peculiar understanding of justification often known as ‘justification from eternity’. This doctrine played a central role for English Particular Baptists such as Samuel Richardson and John Gill, who held a radical monergism, where the elect are efficiently justified by the work of God even before coming to faith. As this minimizes the role of the law and repentance in justification, the doctrine is often criticized for leading to anti-nomianism and for reducing history to a mere mirror of eternal truths. If justification is from eternity, there is no motivation for evangelizing, critics argue. The article considers these objections, and argues for a reconstruction of the doctrine using an understanding of eternity and time, that does not assume the metaphysics of classical theism. The doctrine might further be developed in a non-particularistic framework, allowing a greater emphasis on evangelization ‘here in time’.