Modern Hadith Studies: Continued Debates and New Approaches

Abstract

is a narrative with a carefully constructed frame that screens out many of the other strands of Christianity and cultural answers to the crisis of objective authority that could have also been explored. There are times that one wonders how the wider world of contemporary theological neighbors are dealing with these questions. Even so, the specificity of this delimitation allows for a helpful level of granular detail. It is a history of a theological understanding of an experience, which cannot hope to be comprehensive. It does, however, connect the dots between the past and present for this particular Christian line in a way that has explanatory power. On balance, Inward Baptism is rather Puritan-centric, but not in an unjustified way. Tipson has a wonderful ability to pull nuance out of theological positions in a precise manner and explain them with clarity. In the long history of Christian debates over the necessity of sacraments, infant baptism, predestination, and assurance of salvation, much of this theological ground has been burned over many, many times. Yet the particular questions Inward Baptism asks about how this flow of Christianity moved from a dependence on external baptism to an inward sense of salvation makes those sources and arguments come alive again. Inward Baptism is a worthwhile and well-supported work that adds to the conversations around the history of theology.