One chap who comes to our church is Ray de Havilland. Apart from his ministry of encouragement, which is great enough, Ray has an online ministry publishing Evangelical Tracts. The site is an excellent resource containing a large collection of short evangelical (in the original sense), puritan and reformed writings from the likes of Luther down to Boettner. Definitely worth exploring.
4 thoughts on “Evangelical Tracts”
Comments are closed.
Doggie's Breakfast 
You are serious. So, I invite you to
1) identify yourself. I take a dim view of hostile anonymous posters.
2) explain why Ray’s site is “Fundamentalist garbage”
Otherwise I will remove your comments since they just silly as they stand.
Well, let me explain to you why I use the term fundamentalist…according to definitions fundamentalist means anti-modernist movements in various religions. Browsing through Evangelical Tracts I realised the term applies perfectly to this site as there are no modern writings on there. Now to me, it is all well and good to go scan in and publish a bunch of old tracts from the 18th Century or so but what real purpose does this serve.
“His ministry of encouragement and what ministry of encouragement has he had???”
Why are my comments ‘silly as they stand’ i am intiled of my opion are we not or are u a fundamentalist too?
Dear Anonymous,
Thanks for your response. I appreciate it. Let me tackle some of the things you said, and rephrase the parts of the questions I asked which you did not answer.
‘Fundamentalist’ is a term that can have a variety of meanings depending on the circumstances. So, it can be used in a good way or a bad way. In the press it is a pejorative term. A ‘fundamantalist’ is someone who approves of terrorist-like activity. So if someone asked me if I was a fundamentalist like this, I would say ‘no’, as you might expect.
I am an evangelical, which means that God’s word (the Bible) is my authority, because it is given by the God who is, and through which he reveals himself in the power of the Holy Spirit. As an evangelical, I suppose I could be called a fundamentalist. It depends what you mean.
It is true that a evangelical is anti-modernist in one sense, but not in another. If by ‘modernist’ you mean that the ultimate reality is Human Reason and Experience (i.e. all truth is defined and validated by this) then, yes, evangelicals are against modernism. Evangelicals know that God is the ultimate reality, not reason and experience. That is not to say that evangelicals discount r & e as some people think. Rather r & e are servants in knowing God, not masters to which God must submit. All this means is that an evangelical is not anti-modernist in another sense – evangelicals can and should know and contribute to the development of science, maths, the arts etc etc. They just do so from a different starting point.
Why was your comment ‘silly’? Simply because it does not add anything to anything. You are anonymous, and you seem to want to remain so. You want to be a non-person. Also, I know that there are plenty of people who think the puritans are “fundamentalist garbage”. You are just another noisy voice ‘out there’. You have not added anything. What was the point of your original comment? Making no meaningful contribution while using words is silly. I accept you have a right to your opinion. Opine away. However, not all opinions are equally useful. They have to be weighed. Weight is added when there are facts and reasoning. Your comment was weightless. You can have no useful contribution to make with such bald statements as “fundamentalist garbage” unless you also answer the question “why?”
Are you still reading? I’ll get to the end soon!
Publishing tracts from the past is extremely useful. It means that not only are our current discussions on theology useful, but the conversation can include the voices of dead blokes who once said useful things. The church must gather all the wisdom of the ages gleaned from the Bible and benefit from it. To forget it is to repeat errors.
Finally, I know Ray personally. As a friend he has been a model of encouragement – a real Barnabas – to me. That is a matter of fact in my own experience and is not up for debate, I’m afraid.
Now, you have still to
1) Identify yourself. Have the courage of your convictions! Are you embarrassed by your own viewpoint? 😉
2) Why is Ray’s site full of “garbage”? Have you read any of it? How are you going to show that the content is “garbage”?
Dear Anonymous,
I have removed your comment.
Let me make something clear. On this blog I am happy for people to rationally criticise what other people have written, whether here, other internet sites, books etc. This is a valuable process.
However, I will not tolerate personal attacks on third parties on this blog. Your comments were completely unacceptable and unwelcome.