David S. Dockery

Even before the canonization of the sacred texts, importance was attached to the prophetic and apostolic writings. Moses wrote “all the words of the Lord” in the “covenant scroll.” Joshua’s farewell address was written “in the book of the law of God.”

FORT WORTH, Texas (BP) – Perhaps in recent weeks you have been given the opportunity to sing “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” one of Charles Wesley’s great Christmas carols. The angels sing, “Glory to the newborn King: peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled.” Nowhere is the theme of reconciliation better pictured than in 2 Corinthians 5:11-21, which has been called one of the apostle Paul’s charters of Christian ministry.

J.I. Packer exemplified the best of the Christian intellectual tradition, David Dockery says. He pointed beyond mere rhetoric or pragmatism. He called us to think and live Christianly in all aspects of life.

David Dockery remembers his mentor James Leo Garrett Jr., whom he calls "a scholar of the first order ... a man of deep and genuine piety, kind and considerate toward others, a faithful churchman, and a devoted follower of Christ."

"What I found in Darold Morgan was a person with an authentic walk with God and commitment to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, expressed in genuine kindness and care for others," David Dockery says of his friend.

Though shaped by the Reformation, Baptists developed key distinctives in such areas as believer's baptism, religious liberty and global missions, David Dockery writes in the third of a three-part series.

The Reformation's convictions on Scripture and salvation by grace became key elements of Baptist doctrine, David Dockery writes in the second of a three-part series.

Many Baptist core convictions have been influenced or shaped by the 16th-century Reformation sparked by Martin Luther, David Dockery writes in the first of a three-part series.

"Thomas C. Oden was one of the most prolific and influential theologians of this generation," David Dockery writes. Not only was Thomas, who died Dec. 8, one of the most prolific and influential Christian thinkers of our time, Dockery notes, but his theological journey was also certainly one of the most interesting.

David S. Dockery describes the late Charles Ryrie, longtime Dallas Theological Seminary faculty member and member of First Baptist Church in Dallas, as "a thoughtful theologian, a stalwart defender of the truthfulness of the Bible and faithful follower of Jesus Christ."