How should Christians disagree?

At the outset of his invasion of Scotland in the summer of 1650, Oliver Cromwell remarked that theological disagreements (and surely he is thinking in part of the differences among the English and Scottish Puritans that had led them to war) are endemic to the life of the church in a world marred by sin.

Disagreements are a sad reality with which Christians have to contend. Nonetheless, Christians can control the way that they participate in such disputes.

Disagreeing over the cross

Jump forward now to the close of the next century and one such disagreement between Abraham Booth and Andrew Fuller – the two most important English Baptist theologians between 1770 and the late-19th century – about the vital matter of the atonement and its extent.