Abstract of Systematic Theology

This past year Founders Press made available one of the best Baptist systematic theology texts ever written, the Abstract of Systematic Theology by James P. Boyce. Boyce was the founding president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He first published his Systematic Theology text in 1887, and it has been one of the best examples of Reformed Baptist theology ever since.

This work has been very helpful and influential in my own theological development, and I want to share it with the blogs readers. In fact, you can also download an earlier public domain version of this work for e-Sword at my personal website, PastorThroop.com, under the category "e-Sword-Theology."

Here is a partial description of the book from the publishers website:

A concise systematic theology by the principle founder of the first Southern Baptist seminary. Appendices include: "A Brief Catechism of Bible Doctrine," Abstract of Principles and a Scripture Index.

The doctrinal stream in which Boyce's views are found can rightly be called Calvinistic or Reformed. He, like most early Southern Baptist leaders, was clearly convinced of the doctrines of sovereign grace. John Broadus, Boyce's friend and colleague, made this observation about what he called "that exalted system of Pauline truth" expounded in Boyce's Abstract:

The people who sneer at what is called Calvinism, might as well sneer at Mont Blanc. We are not bound in the least to defend all of Calvin's opinions or actions, but I do not see how any one who really understands the Greek of the Apostle Paul or the Latin of Calvin or Turretin can fail to see that these latter did but interpret and formulate substantially what the former teaches.

May the Lord use this book from the pen of one of the greatest Southern Baptists ever to live to promote reformation and revival throughout churches everywhere.

--from the Publisher's Introduction

I also hope and pray that the Lord will use this book in the lives of this blog's readers as He has used it in the lives of myself and so many others, that they be be firmly established in the faith.

Soli Deo Gloria