Works of Alexander Campbell, Barton W. Stone (restoration preachers)

Matthew C Jones said:

Since Campbell based all of his arguments on the Bible it would be very useful to have this in Libronix format for comparative studies.

I agree. Not that I afree with Stone orCampbell, but when they came out with SDA resources, I went ahead and bought it.

A couple of reasons, first, many cults practically ripped off Barton-Stone on restorationism.

In fact, I would like to see Logos publish more works from actual cults such as Mormons and JW's. The reason why because there are some people like me whom have an interest in studying aberrant groups and cults, meaning having access to their materials and source documents is important for research reasons.

On the other hand, there is a so called"Cult" that I learn from quite a bit in my own spirituality. The Local Church of Witness Lee and Watchman Nee.

Of course, I do not think they are a cult and for the most part, taking a portion of one work on the Trinity that emphasizes the onenss of the Trinity and then not approach any other work from Nee or Lee or Living Streams(the publishing arm) where they affirm the orthodox understandng og the Trinity.

Often times, people fail to realize, the standard, orthodox definition of the Trinity includes an element of the Trinity being one, yet three seperate entities.

It is only controversial because they happen to sue orginazations which publish them as cults and yet do not want to enter into a discourse about their beliefs openly.

I went to a Local Church while in the Army in Takoma, researched what everyone said about them about being a cult and did not even approach much of what was stated because I even noticed how people were intentionally warping their views. On the Trinity and other things, I was allowed to freely ask any elder in public, even if I happened to disagree. I just never saw them as a cult. I took the time to actually find out and recievedmany blessings from that assembly.

Yes, they are also a bit restorational and disagree with that, but they never had a problem with my disagreement.

Yet, we can buy SDA and now Roman Catholic resources(which I really do not have a problem with), but when something else is considered contreversial-we are not going to see them on Logos.

Roman Catholicism not controversial? I think many martyrs will disgree. Ellen G White's writings not controversial? Only because some in Christianity took them off their cult list.

 

Matthew:

I know that it is not exactly what you are asking for, but I am in the process of producing PBB's of documents from the Stone-Campbell movement. Currently, I have

• "The Christian System" and "The Sermon on the Law" by Alexander Campbell;
• "Declaration and Address" by Thomas Campbell;
• "Treatise on the Eldership" by J.W. McGarvey (his "Fourfold Gospel" and "Commentary on Acts" are already available from Logos);
• "Our Position" by Isaac Errett;
• "Address to the Churches in KY, OH & KY"; "Observations on Church Government to Which Has been Added the Last Will & Testament of the Springfield Presbytery" by Barton W. Stone;
•  "Breakup of a Movement: The Sand Creek Documents"(the original "Sand Creek Declaration" and subsequent documents which led to the non-instrumental churches of Christ separating from the rest of the movement) by Daniel Sommers;
• and I have selected works from the 1909 Centennial Convention Report. This one is a massive undertaking and I probably will only put into PBB format those articles that seem to have contemporary relevance. (Some are financial reports and lists of committee persons). 

You can find these for free download on my website: www.calhabig.com under the PBB page. (You have to have the PBB key to read them, but it is available in almost all of the Liibronix collections).

I am also still working on:"The Atonement: The Substance of Two Letters Written to a Friend," by Barton W. Stone and "The Works of Barton W. Stone"; J.W. McGarvey's "Commentary on Thessalonians, Corinthians, Galatians and Romans"; "Treatise on the Elder's Office" by William Ballentine. 

So many resources,so little time.  If you have thoughts or suggestions, leave them and I'll check back.   Or drop me a note at cal.habig@gmail.com

All the best.  

(Interesting discussion.  Sydney Rigdon's taking Restoration principles to Joseph Smith is well known and well documented, but the tie with JW's was news to me.)

The word "cult" has lost all meaning in our day and age. Anyone who disagrees with us is considered in a cult now. People who are King James Only are cult members, people who hold to the modern text and textual criticism are cult members. The Baptists who are Calvinists are in a cult. ect, ect, ect. The word is only used to inflame. It is intended to insult others so as soon as you use the word cult you are offending people because that is what the word is meant to do in our day.

Some quotes:

"...if you believe in it, it is a religion or perhaps 'the' religion;
and if you do not care one way or another about it, it is a sect;
but if you fear and hate it, it is a cult." Leo Pfeffer. A humorous quotation, but one that is uncomfortably close to reality.

"Cults are claimed to be deceitful. They are claimed to be harmful to their members. They are claimed to be undermining American values. Cults are claimed to be just about every bad thing in the book these days, and with the pervasive images of Manson and Jim Jones hanging over us, any group that is called a cult is immediately associated with those two people." J. Gordon Melton.

"My working definition of a cult is a group that you don't like, and I say that somewhat facetiously, but at the same time, in fact, that is my working definition of a cult. It is a group that somebody doesn't like. It is a derogatory term, and I have never seen it redeemed from the derogatory connotations that it picked up in the sociological literature in the 1930s." J. Gordon Melton.

"A cult is a church down the street from your church." Anon

http://www.religioustolerance.org/cults.htm

So your definition rests on the identity of Jesus and nothing else? So for you Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Presbyterians, churches of Christ, Calvinists, King James Only folks, ect. Are not considered cult groups?

The problem is that everyone has a different definition for the word “cult” so you might mean it in one way but when you say or write it others have a different concept in mind and usually a very negative one.

JimDean said:

James Chaisson said:

So your definition rests on the identity of Jesus and nothing else?

...  (the confusion of a cult) revolves around WHO Jesus is, or WHAT He did and is doing for us, or both.

 

Small correction to prior post ... your phrase "the identity of Jesus and nothing else" is not what I was trying to describe ... it's part of it, though.  The other, just as important part, is WHAT HE DID, WHAT HE IS DOING, and WHAT HE WILL DO.  Those aspects are also essential parts of "my definition".  FWIW.

Matthew C Jones said:

JimDean said:

I think it's fair to say that most groups that are "commonly labelled" as "cults" are ones that deny or supplant or replace or warp significant aspects of the truth about Jesus the Christ and King.

 

Your definition of a "cult"  is the best functional definition I've see to date for my semantics. Your whole post above is right on target, clearly spoken, succinctly stated. That is why I said whether we call them cults or just denominations. Not that MY label matters but what they define themselves by.   "Who do YOU say that I am?"

 

I'm glad that it was helpful to you, and I agree that we get TOO hung up in labelling people and groups nowadays, and too often we "define ourselves" by some of those labels ... whether they be the church we attend or the particular collection of "isms" we are comfortable with.

It's not about man's views or words, but God's.  His, only.

It's about God-awareness:  1) aware of Him, who He is, and our relationship with Him;  2) aware of how He views everything that we encounter and live with, unfiltered by the veils of Satan's kosmos-system.

And that's all thru and unto JESUS.

As a minister in the Christian Church (Restoration Movement) and graduate of a Restoration Bible college (now a University...Cincinnati Christian University), in other words one who has heard a lot about Campbell and Stone and one who grew up in KY (a hot bed of the Restoration Movement) I will say I am not offended at the cult comments.

In all fairness though, every (which is not a word anyone used) "Christian-themed" cult out there copied an aspect from Jesus and His disciples. Campbell (both of them) and Stone (along with many others) were not the originators of their ideas of restorationism.

I would love to see a Restoration Movement collection...history, doctrine, old school published debates, journals, papers...even the new stuff out there.

all about Christ,
David Buckham

That should have been "so we DON'T duplicate efforts"!

Brad-it totally depends what you want to do.  If all you want to do is download and read them, then you likely already have that capability.  All packaged sets (Scholars, Gold, Silver, etc). come with what is called a PBB key.  You don't have to do anything.  You can go to the various sites where PBB (Personal Book Builder) resources are located, download them and read them.  The rule that Logos places on those of who who create them is that can't be sold.  They HAVE to be free...and that's great in my book!

Now, if you want to CREATE them, that's a different ballgame. There is a two-part program you need to buy (why it is two-part I never could figure out).  Libronix also has an excellent video tutorial that they sell.  The whole package of PBB creation program, video tutoral and annual licence will propbably set you back around $300.  [Check the site-http://www.logos.com/products/details/2463] You can also get a piece of freeware called something like Builder Builder--John McComb, one of the guys of the forum created it--and it comes with a written tutorial. But (pardon me, must be my fault) I have created quite a few PBB's now and I still can figure out the written tutorial.  It is available at StillTruth.com.  Recently several folks have had some trouble getting it to work, according to the newfeeds.  I just use Dreamweaver.   (I've just confused you, I know: you have to create the document in .html format (that's what Dreamweaver or the PBBand then the PBB program converts it into a Libronix useable resource.)

That is how it works from my experience.  So you may already have all you need if you have one of the boxed sets.  Download one either from my site or from StillTruth.com and just see if you can open it. IT IS CRITICAL, howwever, that you put the PBBs into a directory that Libronix searches to find resources.  What most do is make a PBB subdirectory under your resources directory and group them all together there.  There is also ANOTHER program, that will organize them for you (PBB Updater).  But that's WAY more than you asked.

If you have further questions, just ask.

Blessings,

Cal H

 

Calvin Habig said:

Now, if you want to CREATE them, that's a different ballgame. There is a two-part program you need to buy (why it is two-part I never could figure out).  Libronix also has an excellent video tutorial that they sell.  The whole package of PBB creation program, video tutoral and annual licence will propbably set you back around $300.  [Check the site-http://www.logos.com/products/details/2463] You can also get a piece of freeware called something like Builder Builder--John McComb, one of the guys of the forum created it--and it comes with a written tutorial. But (pardon me, must be my fault) I have created quite a few PBB's now and I still can figure out the written tutorial.

Sorry about that. That walk-through was created a very long time ago when I first posted the program. It was just kind of thrown together quickly to help guide some ot the people who were initially trying it out. Half the features that are in there now didn't even exist at that time. My to do list includes the line, "create some help files or a proper tutorial or something you twonk". Eventually. I promise.

Calvin Habig said:

It is available at StillTruth.com.  Recently several folks have had
some trouble getting it to work, according to the newfeeds.  

It works. The complaints are about program crashes. I was never able to figure that out. I always suspected it had something to do with the Windows 2000 compile running on an XP os but who knows? The dumps that were being sent to me always lead me into la la land. They didn't make any sense. I suspect that I got the source of the final released compile mixed up with one of the other project folders (I had something like 25 Builder Builder project folders saved at one point because I'm too chicken to discard any old code no matter how much redundancy I have lying around).

Anyway, I've been working on it again. It all started when I began collecting pbb tips and hints posts from the news groups to archive on my site. An old post by one of the Logos employees promising a Unicode aware version of the compiler compelled me to check and, sure enough, it turns out that PBB can now handle Unicode source. So I upgraded the program to save in either unicode or ascii with HTML ampersand encoding (users option) and also to display either/or in the source editor window. While I was in the middle of that my computer went pop so I had to build a new one. Now my OS is XP Pro, so if that was the source of whatever troubles some people were having it should go away now. I won't post it for a while because it's still got a couple of little bugs to iron out and I've got about six things going on a once here. At least this one will have a crash report exe that sends the reports to the right email address. The one the old version sends crash reports to hasn't existed for quite a while now. Come to think of it, that StillTruth download you mentioned is just a link to a web page that doesn't exist any more. My web site is now at www.jcmc.ca.

While I was upgrading everything I also installed the trial version of Visual Studio 2008 to give that a try (I have also had a suspicion that the crashes might be related to this poor version of VS that I have. This is all guesswork you know. I've never experienced any crashes and I use the program all the time). I can't compile Builder Builder with that version though because I'm missing a bit of source I used to create an important DLL. I can still compile it with VC7 because I still have the dll kicking around but you need to create a new dll with VC9 to get Builder Builder to link in VC9. I can recreate that source but it's a job. It was hard to do the first time and it was a long time ago so I'll have to start from scratch. Well, not entirely from scratch. I've still got the header file of course. That's all on my to do list. I'll try to get on with it before my trial period runs out. If all works out well then I think I've got a lead on a deal for VS 2008 standard that's at least semi affordable.Then maybe I can post a version that won't crash on anybody's computer.

Yours in Christ

John

Wow. It's amazing to find out what's been right under one's nose all along. I just downloaded "The Treatise on the Eldership" to try it out. I'm impressed.

Thanks! [C]

Brad

 

Brad Fry said:

Am I imagining this or do I correctly remember reading something about the licenses of PBB resources expiring?

No, the resources don't expire. The ability to create books with the PBB compiler expires each year. To continue to have the ability to create PBB resources you need to renew your license every year for a small fee.

This is a policy I hate but I continue to renew my license anyway even though I pretty well compiled all the books I was interested in building the first year I owned the tool. That's because the fee is very small and I am interested in PBB in general. I continue to experiment in spite of the tact that I don't really have any projects I want to build. Besides, I have my own PBB tools that I support and update from time to time.

Yours in Christ

John

In 1976, Dr. Knofel Staton, who at the time was teaching at Ozark Bible College (now Ozark Christian College) in Joplin, MO, published a paraphrase of Thomas Campbell's Declaration and Address. The document is available online (HTML) at http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/tcampbell/etc/DA-KS.HTM.

I have been wanting to try my hand at the Personal Book Builder, so as my first project, I compiled this document. I did it for my own personal use. This afternoon, I spoke with Dr. Staton, to get his permission to distribute it through this forum.

Thanks to Cal Habig for the many documents produced and made available here. Here is my small contribution.7217.Knofel Staton's Paraphrase (1976) of Thomas Campbell's Declaration and Address.zip