Tracks and Traces

This is a comprehensive, yet unusual, book on the faith and life of Baptist Christians. It explores a Baptist understanding of the church, ministry, sacraments, and mission from a thoroughly theological perspective. In a series of interlinked essays, the author relates Baptist identity to a theology of covenant, and to participation in the communion of the triune God. The book thus surveys the ""tracks"" of heritage, giving a solid historical background to each of the major themes, while at the same time offering ""traces"" of possible paths for the future, based on a tracing out of a vision of God. ""This is a rich and erudite volume. In the growing corpus of writings on Baptist identity it will sound new notes and bring new insights. It succeeds in being faithfully Baptist and profoundly Catholic at the same time. All Christians might benefit from this careful and imaginative work."" --Nigel G. Wright, Spurgeon's College, London ""Replete with solid historical scholarship, astute theological discernment, and keen insight into the contemporary context, the refreshing and exhilarating treatment of central Baptist commitments set forth in Tracks and Traces indicates why Paul Fiddes is one of today's foremost and most respected expositors of the Baptist vision of the faith."" --Stanley J. Grenz, Carey Theological College, Vancouver, British Columbia ""The author has quite remarkably achieved what he sets out as his aim: the fashioning of 'a coherent Baptist vision of the Christian church in its faith and practice.' The language of its main themes whets the appetite of those who are searching for a recovery of the high churchmanship of our Puritan forebears in the faith, albeit set not within the sectarian frame of mind of the seventeenth century but the ecumenical temper of the twenty-first. The approach is fresh and challenging, not least for twenty-first century Baptists, who in their proper concern to be missionary-minded, are sometimes in danger of losing sight of that other fundamental, the need to express solidarity with the historic traditions of Christendom embraced within the ongoing endeavour to be church."" --John H. Y. Briggs, Centre for Baptist History and Heritage, Regent's Park College, Oxford, UK Paul S. Fiddes is Professor of Systematic Theology in the University of Oxford, and Principal of Regent's Park College, Oxford. He is a minister ordained in the Baptist Union of Great Britain. Among his many previous books are The Creative Suffering of God (1988), Past Event and Present Salvation (1989), Freedom and Limit (1991), The Promised End (2000) and Participating in God (2000).