Showing results by author "Guillermo Santamaria" in All Categories

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 ...

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 bookt frames Edwards, Hopkins, and Fuller as one “Edwardsian ecosystem” expressed in different church habitats—Congregational New England (Hopkins) and Particular Baptist England (Fuller)—and it does so explicitly through Old School Baptist eyes, i.e., with the controlling suspicion that this whole line (however brilliant) proved practically corrosive to “sound Baptist doctrine.” The thesis is clean: Edwards supplies the conceptual machinery, Hopkins systematizes and weaponizes it into an activist ethical program, and Fuller translates Edwards into an anti–Hyper-Calvinist...

Your book argues—pretty coherently—that the “methods” of interpretation are real tools, but the decisive issue is spiritual epistemology: who makes the Word living to the hearer? The thesis is that grammatical-historical constraints (grammar, genre, historical setting) are valuable as guards against interpretive acrobatics, yet they remain insufficient to produce saving understanding. The foreword frames this with the central contrast: method can dissect; only the Spirit can vivify—illumination being defined not as new revelation, but as the Spirit opening the reader to perceive, ...

“The Old School Baptists in the Northeast” is a detailed historical and statistical survey of Old School/Primitive Baptist churches across the northeastern United States. Here’s a concise scholarly summary: Scope: Covers Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York (city and upstate), New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, D.C., and Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Draws on association records, obituaries, preservation archives, and local histories. Findings: Total churches documented (19th century Northeast): 41. Still active in 2025: 5 congregations (≈12.2%). These include Black ...

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 ...

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 book is essentially a field guide to Conditional Time-Salvation Primitive Baptist vocabulary—a “dictionary” that tries to use terms Conditionalists actually use, and then document them with examples from their own published wording and common reference points. What’s in it A foreword written from an Absoluter, non-means Old School Baptist voice—polemical, forceful, and intentionally suspicious of “two-story” systems where eternal salvation is all of God but time blessings become conditional wages. It attacks the idea that conditional frameworks subtly “edit God” and ...

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 ...

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 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 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.

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,...

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 ...

If you’ve ever heard a too-neat story about how immersion “obviously” arrived among English Baptists, this booklet is a welcome corrective. It treats the “Polish Brethren” label with the caution it deserves, traces the plausible relay through the Dutch world (including the Rijnsburg Collegiants), and handles the Kiffin/Jessey–Richard Blunt “Holland mission” tradition without turning it into a fairy tale. Best of all, it puts Hanserd Knollys where the timeline actually places him: significant downstream, not magically upstream. Clear, skeptical, and genuinely useful for ...

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 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...

Israel did not live in a spiritual vacuum. The name of YHWH was planted in the middle of a world already thick with names—names spoken over altars, carved into stones, invoked at city gates, and trusted for rain, fertility, victory, healing, and protection. The Bible’s warfare against idolatry wasn’t fought in theory; it was fought in public, in homes, in kings’ courts, and—at Israel’s worst moments—even beside the worship of YHWH Himself. The Gods That Surrounded Israel is not a collection of exotic trivia. It is a clear, readable map of the rival deities, cults, and ...

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—...