Fuller’s “Lively Faith”

By Evan D. Burns

In 1799, Andrew Fuller wrote, “The Importance of a Lively Faith, Especially in Missionary Undertakings.”  He illustrated the dangers of disobeying the Great Commission because of our disbelief in God’s promises to deliver us through adversity in our Great Commission labors.  He called for a “lively faith” in missionaries to enter the nations, believing in God’s promises despite seemingly insurmountable hardships and opposition, just as Joshua and Caleb did.  And, whereas the Israelites were to engage the nations with a mission of justice, armed with swords, missionaries ought to engage the nations with a mission of mercy, equipped with the sword of the Spirit.  Here is a great excerpt from what Fuller wrote:

When Israel went out of Egypt, they greatly rejoiced on the shores of the Red Sea; but the greater part of them entered not into the Promised Land, and that on account of their unbelief. The resemblance between their case and ours has struck my mind with considerable force. The grand object of their undertaking was to root out idolatry, and to establish the knowledge and worship of the one living and true God; and such also is ours. The authority on which they acted was the sovereign command of Heaven; and ours is the same. “Go preach the gospel to every creature.” The ground on which they were to rest their hope of success was the Divine promise. It was by relying on this alone that they were enabled to surmount difficulties, and to encounter their gigantic enemies. Those among them who believed, like Joshua and Caleb, felt themselves well able to go up; but they that distrusted the promise turned their backs in the hour of danger. Such also is the ground of our hope. He who hath commissioned us to “teach all nations” hath added, “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.” The heathen nations are given to our Redeemer for an inheritance, as much as Canaan was given to the seed of Abraham; and it is our business, as it was theirs, to go up and possess the land. We should lay our account with difficulties as well as they; but, according to our faith in the Divine promises, we may expect these mountains to become a plain. If the Lord delight in us, he will bring us into the land; but if, like the unbelieving Israelites, we make light of the promised good, or magnify the difficulties in the way of obtaining it, and so relax our efforts, we may expect to die as it were in the wilderness.[1]

Would that we, in our day, preserve such a lively faith that lays hold of the Divine promises in obedience to the Great Commission, lest we be like the unbelieving Israelites who died in the wilderness.

[1] Andrew Gunton Fuller, The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, Volume 3: Expositions—Miscellaneous, ed. Joseph Belcher (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), 826.

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Evan D. Burns (Ph.D. Candidate, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is on faculty at Asia Biblical Theological Seminary, and he lives in Thailand with his wife and twin sons.  They are missionaries with Training Leaders International.

 

The Domestic Benefits of “A Right Spirit”

By Dustin Bruce

With the recent birth of my daughter, I have given much thought to Paul’s command to “bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). I’ve read page after page on the importance of family worship, catechetical instruction, consistent discipline, and more. Andrew Fuller joined a chorus of helpful voices in offering a bit of heart piercing counsel.

Fuller, in a 1798 sermon at Ipswich, gave a sermon on David’s request that God “renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10). Surprisingly, Fuller elaborated on the familial benefits of possessing a right spirit in relation to God. According to Fuller, David was never more a sinner than when he dealt with Uriah, but he was never more a saint than when, in true repentance, he penned the 51st Psalm. He goes on to speak of a right spirit as signifying true religion, which he defines as follows:

A right spirit is a spirit of love to God, and love to our neighbour, and a right disposition to ourselves. A right spirit towards God is a spirit of love to him, a spirit of faith in God, a spirit of gratitude to God, a spirit of submission to God, a spirit of obedience to God, and so of every grace of the Spirit of God. A right spirit is not that of him who has experienced right feelings at a distant period only, but of one who habitually lives in the exercise of them: a constant spirit, as expressed in the margin. The term right has respect to some rule; this rule is the law of God, which is a right rule—the rule by which the Spirit of God works in the conversion of a sinner: hence he has said, “I will write the law in their hearts;” and as this is the rule by which God works, so it is the rule by which Christians ought to walk.[1]

The personal consequences to losing a right spirit are devastating. However, failure to maintain such a spirit affects one’s family as well. First, the loss of a right spirit makes us ineffective Christians at home. As Fuller explains,

We can do no good in our families. When a person has lost his right spirit, he commonly lives in the neglect of his duties, and too often in the commission of some small sins, neither of which seem to affect his conscience, so that religion appears of little consequence in the eyes of those around him. As he has not a savour of religion in his own mind, he cannot communicate it to others. As he has no love to God, no zeal for God, he cannot enkindle the flame of them in others. And it is mostly found when a person is in such a state, when he attempts to perform duties, he does it in such a manner, that, instead of exciting lively emotions in the lives of others, makes them burdensome, and so become disgustful. Sin unrepented of will spoil our usefulness. Guilt will chain our minds, and keep us from the discharge of what we know to be our duty. In this state we cannot with freedom or pleasure engage in it, and so give it up. Thus it appears we can do no good during this state of mind in our families.[2]

Second, we cannot rightly enjoy our families without a right spirit. Fuller goes on,

It is essentially necessary that we should possess this right spirit, rightly to enjoy what is good in this life. There is no good to be enjoyed in our families, nor good done, without it. The domestic comforts of life are no comforts without it; nor are our relatives a support to us. We may rove among our connexions from object to object, seeking relief, but all will be in vain. The great defect is in ourselves; wanting the right spirit which gives a relish to our comforts, we want the great essential of all.

As the consequence of this, instead of the cheerfulness which infuses a savour into the comforts of social life, and which ought to be seen on our countenances by our domestics, there is nothing but gloom and sullen despair. [3]

In typical fashion, Fuller penetrates to the heart of domestic piety. The great responsibility of bringing up children, as well as the great joy associated with it, are both dependent on the possessing of a right spirit. Family worship may go wrong more than it goes right and children may forget catechisms. But they will never forget growing up in a home with parents who maintained a right spirit of love toward God. May we join David in praying, “Create in me a clean heart, oh God; and renew a right spirit within me.”

[1] Andrew Gunton Fuller, The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, Volume 3: Expositions—Miscellaneous, ed. Joseph Belcher (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), 837.

[2] Andrew Gunton Fuller, The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, Volume 3: Expositions—Miscellaneous, ed. Joseph Belcher (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), 839.

[3] Andrew Gunton Fuller, The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, Volume 3: Expositions—Miscellaneous, ed. Joseph Belcher (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), 840.

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Dustin Bruce lives in Louisville, KY where he is pursuing a PhD in Biblical Spirituality at Southern Seminary. He is a graduate of Auburn University and Southwestern Seminary. Dustin and his wife, Whitney, originally hail from Alabama.

Adoniram Judson “Deeply Impressed” by an Unnamed Pious Man

By Evan D. Burns

Adoniram Judson (1788-1850), the first American missionary, was a man marked by inimitable missionary devotion and theological grit.  Many biographies, indeed some hagiographies, have retold his remarkable story over and over again.  Though many biographies exclusively portray him as a martyr-like hero, he was no island.  He had friends, companions, and co-laborers who died as hard as he did, whose biographies only the historians of heaven have written.  Moreover, there was an anonymous man in his life who never went with him to Burma and never knew him personally, whose name history has left unrecorded, and yet, God used this unknown man to impress God-centered piety upon Judson’s soul.

After going to school in Providence, Judson set out, surging with wanderlust, to explore the Northern States in pursuit of adventure and inspiration.  He had wished to go write for the theater in New York and to also brave the untamed wilderness.  His worldly aspirations broke his pious parents’ hearts.  He went to visit his uncle Ephraim in the wilderness, but God appointed another man to meet him there instead.  Judson’s biographer, Francis Wayland, records:

Before setting out upon his tour he had unfolded his infidel sentiments to his father, and had been treated with the severity natural to a masculine mind that has never doubted, and to a parent, who, after having made innumerable sacrifices for the son of his pride and love, sees him rush recklessly on his own destruction.  His mother also, was no less distressed, and she wept, and prayed, and expostulated.  He knew his superiority to his father in argument; but he had nothing to oppose to his mother’s tears and warnings, and they followed him now wherever he went.  He knew he was on the verge of such a life as he despised.  For the world he would not see a young brother in his perilous position; but “I,” he thought, “am in no danger.  I am only seeing the world—the dark side of it, as well as the bright; and I have too much self-respect to do any thing mean or vicious.”  After seeing what he wished of New York, he returned to Sheffield for his horse, intending to pursue his journey westward.  His uncle, Rev. Ephraim Judson, was absent, and a very pious young man occupied his place.  His conversation was characterized by godly sincerity, a solemn but gentle earnestness, which addressed itself to the heart, and Judson went away deeply impressed.[1]

Not long after meeting this pious man, Judson surrendered his life to his Lord.  How many well-known men in history have been impressed by the warm-hearted piety of unknown saints?  Let us never underestimate the historical impact we could have in a conversation “characterized by godly sincerity, a solemn but gentle earnestness,” that addresses the heart and leaves an indelible impression.  May God be pleased to “deeply impress” future missionaries through our God-enamored piety, even in the most inadvertent conversations.

 [1]Francis Wayland, A Memoir of the Life and Labors of the Rev. Adoniram Judson, D.D. (Boston: Philips, Sampson, and Company, 1853), 1:23-24.

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Evan D. Burns (Ph.D. Candidate, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is on faculty at Asia Biblical Theological Seminary, and he lives in Thailand with his wife and twin sons.  They are missionaries with Training Leaders International.

The ideal home

By Michael A.G. Haykin

Of modern 20th-century novelists, J.R.R. Tolkien is, in my opinion, undoubtedly the best. And I agree wholeheartedly with those surveys done in the UK at the turn of this century that placed him way out in front of modernist novelists. Now, in The Hobbit, there is a great description of the elf-lord Elrond’s house in Rivendell: “His house was perfect, whether you liked food, or sleep, or work, or story-telling, or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all. Evil things did not come into that valley” (The Hobbit [Rev. ed.; New York: Ballantine Books, 1966), 61—this Ballantine edition is the one that I first read in the late 1960s). The description is repeated in The Lord of the Rings, Part I, where it is described as “the Last Homely House east of the Sea” and the description from The Hobbit cited (see the quotation marks) and elaborated on:

“That house was…‘a perfect house, whether you like food or sleep or story-telling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all.’ Merely to be there was a cure for weariness, fear and sadness.” (The Fellowship of the Ring [The Lord of the Rings, Part I; 2nd ed,; London/Sydney: Unwin Hyman, 1966], 237).

One can see the changes at a glance. But my interest is elsewhere. Surely, in this description, Tolkien has captured the western tradition’s thinking about the ideal home.

When my wife and I had our first child, Victoria, I remember hearing in a public address from one of our friends, Anna Pikkert, a description of her home when she was growing up—it was, she said, a place of security (see Tolkien’s statement in The Hobbit, “evil things did not come into that valley”). I thought to myself: that is what I want my home to be. Well, we live in a fallen world, and that dream was never fully realized. And things turn out differently from what we hope for. But Tolkien’s vision of home, encapsulated in these two descriptions, has ever been my dream. Maybe it was that Tolkien’s words, read numerous times, lingered on in my mind. Whatever the case, is this not the sort of home we want: “merely to be there was a cure for weariness, fear and sadness.”

And this, I submit, is the biblical understanding of home. Now this is something worth striving for.

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Michael A.G. Haykin is the director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. He also serves as Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Haykin and his wife Alison have two grown children, Victoria and Nigel.

The First Abolitionist: Gregory of Nyssa on Slavery

By Dustin Bruce

Though it rubs against our modern sensibilities, Christians in the ancient world generally accepted slavery as a normal, albeit unfortunate, aspect of human reality. One expert has summarized, “In antiquity, only the rare Christian perceived the gospel to be incompatible with the institution of slavery.”[1] Gregory of Nyssa (A.D. 330–395), the youngest of the Cappadocian Fathers, was just such a rare Christian.

Gregory, in what is considered “the most scathing critique of slaveholding in all of antiquity,” attacked the institution as incompatible with humanity’s creation in the image of God.[2] Gregory’s remarkable diatribe against the practice of slavery may be found in his fourth homily on Ecclesiastes, specifically addressing 2:7, “I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem” (ESV).

Of all the Preacher’s boasting, this statement stands as the worst affront to Gregory and in his mind, God.[3] He asks, “Do any of the things listed here…suggest as much arrogance as the man’s idea that he as a man can be master over his fellows?”[4] Such a declaration of slaveholding reveals the “vast extent of his boastfulness.”[5] Gregory states sharply, “Such a voice as his is raised in open defiance against God.”[6]

For Gregory, slavery violates the characteristics of man as created in the image of God. The following portions are a mere sampling of his powerful argument:

‘I acquired slaves and slave girls.’ What is that you say? You condemn a person to slavery whose nature is free and independent, and in doing so you lay down a law in opposition to God, overturning the natural law established by him. For you subject to the yoke of slavery one who was created precisely to be a master of the earth, and who was ordained to rule by the creator, as if you were deliberately attacking and fighting against the divine command.[7]

What price did you put on reason? How many obols did you pay as a fair price for the image of God? For how many staters have you sold the nature specially formed by God? ‘God said, “Let us make man in our image and likeness.”’[8]

Gregory of Nyssa holds a unique place among the Fathers as the singular opponent of the existence of slavery in any form. With comments reminiscent of a William Wilberforce speech or a Frederick Douglass discourse, Gregory sharply denounces the practice of enslaving a person who bears the image of God as immoral and contrary to God’s intentions for humanity. Not only is Gregory’s condemnation of slavery unique, it is also instructive. With millions of modern day slaves, all bearing the image of God, existing in a state of tortuous bondage throughout the globe, may all God’s people be as bold as Gregory in asking, “who can buy a man, who can sell him, when he is made in the likeness of God.”[9]

[1]Jennifer A. Glancy, Slavery as Moral Problem: In the Early Church and Today (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011), 78.

[2]Glancy, Slavery as Moral Problem, 97.

[3]It is interesting to note that Gregory understands the Preacher to be offering a public confession for his sins in this portion of Ecclesiastes. Daniel F. Stramara Jr., “Gregory of Nyssa: An Ardent Abolitionist,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 41, no. 1 (1997): 43.

[4]Translation taken from Trevor Dennis, “Man Beyond Price: Gregory of Nyssa and Slavery,” in Heaven and Earth : Essex Essays in Theology and Ethics (Worthington, West Sussex: Churchman, 1986), 130. Also, an English translation may be found in Stuart George Hall and Rachel Moriarty, eds., Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on Ecclesiastes (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1993), 74–75.

[5]Dennis, “Man Beyond Price,” 135.

[6]Dennis, “Man Beyond Price,” 135.

[7]Dennis, “Man Beyond Price,” 135.

[8]Dennis, “Man Beyond Price,” 136.

[9]Dennis, “Man Beyond Price,” 136.

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Dustin Bruce lives in Louisville, KY where he is pursuing a PhD in Biblical Spirituality at Southern Seminary. He is a graduate of Auburn University and Southwestern Seminary. Dustin and his wife, Whitney, originally hail from Alabama.

Evangelical Preaching: “The End Dominates the Action”

By Evan D. Burns

In his “Concluding Reflections” of The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, Andrew Fuller wrote “On the Duty of Ministers in Dealing with the Unconverted.”  In his arguments, he warned against engaging in ministry without preaching the gospel as the “leading theme of our ministrations.”[1]  Fuller also warned against preaching the gospel and promising only blessings of religion “to the neglect of exhortations, calls, and warnings.”[2]  He argued that both Jesus and the Apostles implored sinners to repent, believe, and be reconciled to God.  Arguing against those hyper-Calvinists who said that such indiscriminate gospel calls are cruel to the non-elect, Fuller said that it is not cruel because such people have no desire for God in their hearts.  They choose according the prevailing disposition of their hearts, which is always darkness.

After this, he concluded his plea for evangelical gospel preaching by contending for the use of the law to wound the conscience in order that the gospel might heal it.  He had no toleration for soft preaching that entertained and made false promises of blessings with no call for repentance and submission to Christ’s lordship.  The gospel call demands compliance.  He said:

…enforcing the duties of religion, either on sinners or saints, is by some called preaching the law. If it were so, it is enough for us that such was the preaching of Christ and his apostles. It is folly and presumption to affect to be more evangelical than they were. All practical preaching, however, is not preaching the law. That only, I apprehend, ought to be censured as preaching the law, in which our acceptance with God is, in some way or other, placed to the account of our obedience to its precepts. When eternal life is represented as the reward of repentance, faith, and sincere obedience, (as it too frequently is, and that under the complaisant form of being “through the merits of Christ,”) this is preaching the law, and not the gospel. But the precepts of the law may be illustrated and enforced for evangelical purposes; as tending to vindicate the Divine character and government; to convince of sin; to show the necessity of a Saviour, with the freeness of salvation; to ascertain the nature of true religion; and to point out the rule of Christian conduct. …

If the foregoing principles be just, it is the duty of ministers not only to exhort their carnal auditors to believe in Jesus Christ for the salvation of their souls; but it is at our peril to exhort them to any thing short of it, or which does not involve or imply it… We have sunk into such a compromising way of dealing with the unconverted as to have well nigh lost the spirit of the primitive preachers; and hence it is that sinners of every description can sit so quietly as they do, year after year, in our places of worship. It was not so with the hearers of Peter and Paul. They were either “pricked in the heart” in one way, or “cut to the heart” in another. Their preaching commended itself to “every man’s conscience in the sight of God.” How shall we account for this difference? Is there not some important error or defect in our ministrations? … I conceive there is scarcely a minister amongst us whose preaching has not been more or less influenced by the lethargic systems of the age.[3]

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[1] The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, Volume 2: Controversial Publications, ed. Joseph Belcher (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), 386.

[2]Works, II, 386.

[3]Works, II, 386–387.

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Evan D. Burns (Ph.D. Candidate, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is on faculty at Asia Biblical Theological Seminary, and he lives in Thailand with his wife and twin sons.  They are missionaries with Training Leaders International.

Unfolding the Word of God

By Evan D. Burns

Andrew Fuller loved to stare long and hard at Scripture in deep meditation and study.  His pastoral methods were marked by providing good food for his flock and by protecting them from contaminated food.  Fuller despised false doctrine, and he was quick to engage those who promoted such error.  One way he protected his flock from confusion and uncertainty was by expounding difficult and seemingly contradictory passages in Scripture.  In a large section in the first volume of his Works called “Passages Apparently Contradictory,” Fuller would take a couple of verses with ostensible contradictions and clarify their coherence having considered each of their historical, literary, and theological contexts.  As he did this for his people, he modeled how ministers today can help their flocks have more confidence in the Word of God and more certainty in its inerrancy, infallibility, and sufficiency.  The Serpent loves to ask, “did God really say….?”  If we, like Fuller, would not rest till we had a satisfactory understanding of how the hard texts fit together, those entrusted to our care would have their eyes opened to wonderful things in God’s law.  “The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple” (Ps 119:130).  The first two conflicting texts in his “Passages Apparently Contradictory” are:

“And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.”—John 5:40.

“No man can come to me except the Father, who hath sent me, draw him….  It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me”

“Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not: and he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father.”—John 6:44, 45, 64, 65.

The following points demonstrate Fuller’s durable cogitation of difficult texts and how he could plainly harmonize without being too complex or too simplistic:

First, There is no way of obtaining eternal life but by Jesus Christ….  Secondly, They that enjoy eternal life must come to Christ for it….  Thirdly, It is the revealed will of Christ that everyone who hears the gospel should come to him for life….  Fourthly, The depravity of human nature is such that no man, of his own accord, will come to Christ for life….  Fifthly, The degree of this depravity is such as that, figuratively speaking, men cannot come to Christ for life….  Sixthly, A conviction of the righteousness of God’s government, of the spirituality and goodness of his law, the evil of sin, our lost condition by nature, and the justice of our condemnation, is necessary in order to our coming to Christ….  Lastly, There is absolute necessity of a special Divine agency in order to our coming to Christ….  Upon the whole, we see from these passages taken together, first, if any man is lost, whom he has to blame for it—himself; secondly, if any man is saved, whom he has to praise for it—God.[1]

[1]Andrew Gunton Fuller, The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, Volume 1: Memoirs, Sermons, Etc., ed. Joseph Belcher (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), 667-69.

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Evan D. Burns (Ph.D. Candidate, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is on faculty at Asia Biblical Theological Seminary, and he lives in Thailand with his wife and twin sons.  They are missionaries with Training Leaders International.

The Eye of True Wisdom

By Evan D. Burns

In a sermon on Proverbs 14:8, Andrew Fuller looked long and hard at the virtue of godly wisdom.  He extracted many helpful principles from this verse, and one of the most insightful comments he made was how to use the Word of God in getting wisdom.  He says that the Word functions in two main ways in teaching us wisdom.  It shows us what the destructive end will be of folly, from which wisdom deters us.  Moreover, he makes an amazing observation about wisdom—the eye of wisdom should not chiefly look to the negative consequence of folly in order to avoid it; rather, the eye of wisdom should zealously fix its sight on Christ who is worthy of its gaze.  Such Christ-enamored wisdom is cultivated through meditation and prayer.

We shall read the oracles of God: the doctrines for belief, and the precepts for practice; and shall thus learn to cleanse our way by taking heed thereto, according to God’s word. It will moreover induce us to guard against the dangers of the way. We shall not be ignorant of Satan’s devices, nor of the numerous temptations to which our age, times, circumstances, and propensities expose us. It will influence us to keep our eye upon the end of the way. A foolish man will go that way in which he finds most company, or can go most at his ease; but wisdom will ask, “What shall I do in the end thereof?” To understand the end of the wrong way will deter; but to keep our eye upon that of the right will attract. Christ himself kept sight of the joy that was set before him. Finally, as holy wisdom possesses the soul with a sense of propriety at all times, and upon all occasions, it is therefore our highest interest to obtain this wisdom, and to cultivate it by reading, meditation, prayer, and every appointed means.[1]

 [1]Andrew Gunton Fuller, The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, Volume 1: Memoirs, Sermons, Etc., ed. Joseph Belcher (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), 465-66.

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Evan D. Burns (Ph.D. Candidate, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is on faculty at Asia Biblical Theological Seminary, and he lives in Thailand with his wife and twin sons.  They are missionaries with Training Leaders International.

The Recruiting Pastor

By Ryan Patrick Hoselton

Christians implore the help of their pastor for a range of reasons—at a range of hours of the night. I know this not because I’m a pastor but because I’m a Christian. But how many requests for help does the average pastor make of his congregation? He likely won’t get many, so he better choose his petitions wisely.

Andrew Fuller (1754-1815) requested the help of his congregation in evangelism. In 1806, he wrote a letter to believers entitled, The Pastor’s Address to His Christian Hearers, Entreating Their Assistance In Promoting the Interest of Christ.[1] He asked for help to promote the gospel, and pastors today can learn from his recruiting methods.

First, he aimed to convince his congregation that evangelism was their mission too, “There is an important difference between Christian ministers and the Christian ministry. The former…exist for your sakes…but the latter, as being the chosen means of extending the Redeemer’s kingdom, is that for which both we and you exist (345-46).” Sharing the gospel is the job description of every Christian. As Nehemiah and Ezra enlisted the help of the Israelites to construct the temple, argued Fuller, so pastors today need believers to build the church (346).

Secondly, Fuller made his congregants aware that their involvement in the Christian mission was necessary for the continuation of churches. People are more willing to participate when they know that they are needed. God uses means to save unbelievers, and the “ordinary way in which the knowledge of God is spread in the world is, by every man saying to his neighbour and to his brother, ‘Know the Lord’ (351).”

Thirdly, Fuller not only entreated their assistance for the mission but he also equipped them for it. Perhaps the reason why many think that their sole duty in evangelism “consisted in sending the [unbelieving] party to the minister” is because they’ve never been trained in evangelism (348). Fuller would not allow his congregants to make this excuse. The chief rule in evangelism, Fuller instructed, was to “point them directly to the Saviour” (349). Merely sharing truths about Christianity without directing the unbeliever to Christ will only mislead him or her to “a resting place short of him (350).” Thus, it is crucial for every believer to “be skilful in the word of righteousness; else you administer false consolation (349).”

To put these principles to use, Fuller suggested three accessible opportunities. First, parents can assist the pastor in evangelism by dialoging with their children about the sermon. Second, Christians should invite their unbelieving friends to the preaching of the Word and discuss it with them. Thirdly, believers’ lives must be walking testimonies to the fruit of the gospel before their neighbors. “Enable us to use strong language when recommending the gospel by its holy and happy effects,” Fuller begged (351).

[1] This appeal was a circular letter for the Northamptonshire Baptist Association. Andrew Fuller, “The Pastor’s Address to His Christian Hearers, Entreating Their Assistance In Promoting the Interest of Christ,” in The Complete Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller with a Memoir of His Life by Andrew Gunton Fuller, 3 Vols., ed. Joseph Belcher (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1845. Repr., Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle, 1988), 3:345-351.

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Ryan Patrick Hoselton is pursuing a ThM at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He lives in Louisville, KY with his wife Jaclyn, and they are expecting their first child in August.

 

Gordon Wood on the Threat of Presentism in Historical Studies

By Nathan A. Finn

A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure of reading Gordon Wood’s fine book The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History (Penguin, 2008). The book is a collection of Wood’s published review essays of significant historical books written by others, most of which deal with American history during the Colonial Era and the Early Republic. It is a gem of a book.

In his introduction, Wood warns against the temptation toward presentism that is so common among so many historians.

But the present should not be the criterion for what we find in the past. Our perceptions and explanations of the past should not be directly shaped by the issues and problems of our own time. The best and most serious historians have come to know that, even when their original impulse to write history came from a pressing present problem. The best and most sophisticated histories of slavery and the best and most sophisticated histories of women soon broke loose from the immediate demands of the present and have sought to portray the past in its own context with all its complexity.

The more we study the events and situations in the past, the more complicated and complex we find them to be. The impulse of the best historians is always to penetrate ever more deeply into the circumstances of the past and to explain the complicated context of past events. The past in the hands of expert historians becomes a different world, a complicated world that requires considerable historical imagination to recover with any degree of accuracy. The complexity that we find in that different world comes with the realization that the participants were limited by forces that they did not understand or were even aware of—forces such as demographic movements, economic developments, or large-scale cultural patterns. The drama, indeed the tragedy, of history comes from our understanding the tension that existed between the conscious wills and intentions of the participants in the past and the underlying conditions that constrained their actions and shaped their future.

See Gordon S. Wood, The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History (Penguin, 2008), pp. 10–11.

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Nathan A. Finn is associate professor of historical theology and Baptist Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also an elder at First Baptist Church of Durham, NC and a senior fellow of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies.

A Family History of Sabbatarianism

By Dustin Bruce

Hearing bits of anecdotal family history is one of the most interesting parts of holiday gatherings. When aspects of family history intersect with theological concepts, I find them even more fascinating. Recently I enjoyed learning of the Sabbatarian practices my grandparents experienced as children in the early twentieth-century rural south.

Growing up in a devout Baptist family, my grandfather was not allowed to work or attend any worldly amusements on the Lord’s Day. Slight exceptions were made to allow for some cooking and feeding of animals. Work was not allowed, but the Sabbath was not to be spent frivolously. Fishing and hunting, common pastimes in rural Alabama, were simply out of the question. 

It is interesting to note how quickly the practice of keeping the Lord’s Day has faded from the church culture. Area churches that would have encouraged Sabbath keeping just 70 years ago likely have no current members who give the concept much thought. The shift away from Sabbatarianism has been so swift and decisive that my grandfather’s childhood experience in this area more closely resembles that of Andrew Fuller’s than my own.

In an 1805 letter to a friend, Fuller defends the practice of keeping the Lord’s Day. Responding to doubts as to its observance, Fuller asks, “If the keeping of a Sabbath to God were not in all ages binding, why is it introduced in the moral law, and founded upon God’s resting from his works. If it were merely a Jewish ceremonial, why do we read of time being divided by weeks before the law?”[1]Fuller possessed a theological conviction that compelled him to set apart the Sabbath as a holy day to the Lord. He instructs, “The first day then ought to be kept as the Lord’s own day, and we ought not to think our own thoughts, converse on our own affairs, nor follow our own business on it.”

One wonders if Fuller first learned this Sabbatarian practice as a child growing up in the home of Particular Baptist parents. Like my grandfather’s mother, Fuller’s mother may have prevented him from hunting or fishing or attending to other worldly amusements, setting an early example of keeping the Lord’s Day.

Anecdotal family history is interesting, but should also be instructive. Like other types of history, learning of the religious beliefs and practices of those who form my family tree should cause me to reflect on whether I am being more or less faithful in my Christian walk. Feel free to share any interesting examples of your family’s religious history in the comments below.

[1] Andrew Gunton Fuller, The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, Volume 3: Expositions—Miscellaneous, ed. Joseph Belcher (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), 828.

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Dustin Bruce lives in Louisville, KY where he is pursuing a ThM in Church History at Southern Seminary. He is a graduate of Auburn University and Southwestern Seminary. Dustin and his wife, Whitney, originally hail from Alabama.

I'm a Historian, Not a Prophet

 By Nathan A. Finn

Historians are often asked to be prophets. In my classes at Southeastern Seminary, hardly a week goes by that one or more students don’t ask me to speculate about how the past might influence the future. This phenomenon is even more pronounced when I teach on church history in local churches. It is most common, both in class and in the church, when I teach on Baptist history. Many folks suppose that being relatively learned in Baptist history means that one is able to discern what will happen in the future. That might be true of Michael Haykin or Lloyd Harsch or Jason Duesing or Jim Patterson, but not this historian.

Recently, I was reading George Nash’s fine book Reappraising the Right: The Past and Future of American Conservatism (ISI Books, 2009). Nash has spent his career studying the conservative intellectual movement in modern America (see his landmark monograph on this topic). Apparently, historians of conservative intellectual history are similar to historians of Christian thought when it comes to requests for one don the prophetic mantle. I like what Nash writes in the introduction to Reappraising the Right.

“Historians are not necessarily good prognosticators, but by deliberately taking a longer view we can try to liberate our readers from the provincialism of the present” (p. xviii).

Now we’re talking. I have no idea if the Cooperative Program will go the way of the buffalo, if the SBC will divide on account of soteriological debates, if the Convention will become less southern and southwestern in its cultural ethos over the next generation, or who will be the next president of such-and-such theological seminary or mission board or other denominational agency (to mention but a few of the questions about which I’m regularly asked to prophesy). I’m a historian, not a prophet.

However, I do know that history reminds us to take the long view on each of these issues. The Cooperative Program has only been around for about half of Southern Baptist history and took a generation to catch on after its inception. Though critically important and worthy of our generous support, the CP is not intrinsic to our identity. The relative center of Southern Baptist soteriology has shifted over time because of a variety of factors, some of them non-theological in nature. Besides, its rather difficult to tell to what degree grassroots Southern Baptists have been in step with the relatively small handful of SBC leaders writing on soteriology at any given point in SBC history. The contemporary SBC is far less southern and southwestern (and Caucasian) than it was two generations ago, even if this isn’t entirely clear at the SBC Annual Meeting. But then the Convention is also more age diverse than is evident at the SBC Annual Meeting. As for denominational ministry presidents and other leaders, you simply never know when someone might retire (or not) and who will arise as a good candidate in such kairos moments. Nobody would have guessed in 1975 that Paige Patterson would become the president of not one but two SBC seminaries, to give but one example.

Historians aren’t prophets, and they shouldn’t pretend to be. But historians have something to offer our students and ministry colleagues as we ponder the great questions of our day. That something isn’t some infallible or even possible future, but rather historical perspective. And maybe, just maybe, if we inject a bit more historical perspective into our discussions of said great questions, such conversations might prove to be more profitable (though not prophet-able) than they so often are.

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Nathan A. Finn is associate professor of historical theology and Baptist Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also an elder at First Baptist Church of Durham, NC and a senior fellow of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies.

Summarizing the Life of Robert Hall Sr. (1728–1791)

By Nathan A. Finn

Robert Hall Sr. is hardly a household name among contemporary Baptists, but I think he ought to be. He played a critical role in pushing back against the hyper-Calvinism that deadened much of Particular Baptist life during the middle decades of the eighteenth century. He also significantly influenced a group of younger pastors who later succeeded him in fame and influence, including Andrew Fuller, John Ryland Jr., and William Carey.

One of Hall’s early biographers was J.W. Morris, who also wrote a biography of Fuller. Morris wrote a paragraph in his biography that I believe perfectly summarizes the life and influence of Robert Hall Sr.

With Hall originated the disposition to examine into the inordinate pretensions of Hypercalvinism [sic], which had long passed as the undoubted test of orthodoxy, particularly in the baptist [sic] connection, where [John] Gill and [John] Brine had been considered as the true conservators of the doctrines of grace. The rural pastor at Arnsby broke the spell, and awakening a spirit of enquiry, which gradually effected the revival of those primitive principles, which gave new life and energy to the ministry of his brethren, and prepared the way for the Mission to the East. He gathered around him all the talent that existed in the neighbourhood, gave an impulse and a direction to religious sentiment and feeling, and a distinguished eminence to that part of the denomination to which he more immediately belonged. Others moved in a wider sphere, and were engaged in more active services, but wisdom and prudence dwelt with him, and all their activities were stimulated and guided by his counsels.

See J.W. Morris, “Memoir of the Rev. Robert Hall, Arnsby, Leicestershire,” in The Complete Works of the Late Rev. Robert Hall, ed. J.W. Morris (London: W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1828), p. 38.

I’m on a mission to re-acquaint contemporary Baptists with Robert Hall Sr. If you want to know more about him, check out the audio from my lecture “Robert Hall Sr.: Andrew Fuller’s Mentor,” which I delivered at the 2012 annual conference of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. If you want to read Hall’s most important writing, check out the new edition of Help to Zion’s Travellers (BorderStone, 2011), which I edited and for which I wrote an introductory essay. Help to Zion’s Travellers was an early broadside against hyper-Calvinism and a key document in helping to pave the way for the evangelical renewal of the Particular Baptists in the waning years of the eighteenth century.

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Nathan A. Finn is associate professor of historical theology and Baptist Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also an elder at First Baptist Church of Durham, NC and a senior fellow of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies.

Thomas Doolittle on eyeing Eternity

By Dustin Bruce

Gospel preachers are prone to developing a lazy eye when it comes to viewing the present in light of eternity. In a sermon entitled, “How We Should Eye Eternity, That It May Influence Us In All We Do,” the Puritan pastor, Thomas Doolittle (1630­–1707) offers a special word to ministers:

When we are to preach to people that must live forever in heaven or hell, with God or devils; and our very preaching is the means appointed by God to fit men for an everlasting state: when we stand and view some hundreds of persons before us, and think, “All these are going to eternity: now we see them, and they see us; but after a little while they shall see us no more in our pulpits, nor we them in their pews… It may be, some of these are hearing their last sermon, making their last public prayers, keeping their last Sabbath; and before we come to preach again, might be gone into another world:” if we had but a firm belief of eternity ourselves, and a real lively sense of the mortality of their bodies and our own…how pathetically should we plead with them, plentifully weep over them, fervently pray for them; that our words, or rather the word of the eternal God, might have effectual operation on their hearts!

Doolittle mentions several ways maintaining an eye on eternity impacts a gospel minister:

First, eyeing eternity leads preachers to be “painful and diligent” in sermon preparation. He elaborates, “Idleness in a shop-keeper is a sin, but much more in a minister; in a trader, much more in a preacher.”

Second, eyeing eternity provokes preachers “into declaring the whole counsel of God.” Doolittle means that preachers should not hesitate to tell men of their sin and evils for fear of offense. Preachers with an eye upon eternity provoke the consciences of men for the gospel so as to say with Paul, “I am pure from the blood of all men.”

Third, eyeing eternity leads preachers to “be plain in speech.” A minister of the gospel must avoid starving those he pretends to feed by the use of lofty expressions. What a tragedy to have some condemned for eternity “because the learned preacher would not stoop to speak…of eternal matters in language that they might have understood.”

Finally, eyeing eternity leads pastors to raise up a new generation of gospel ministers. Doolittle emphasizes, “Those that are now engaged in the work, will shortly be all silenced by death and dust; and how desirable is it that your children and posterity should see and hear others preaching in their room!”

Eyeing eternity carries “influence in all we do.” While this is true for all believers, perhaps it is doubly so for the minister. Preacher, “do ye, while ye are in time, eye eternity in all you do?”

Note: Thomas Doolittle was born in Kidderminster, Worcestershire and experienced conversion under the preaching of Richard Baxter. The actual sermon series used for Doolittle’s conversion would later be published as The Saints Everlasting (1653). Doolittle graduated from Pembroke Hall, Camdridge with a B.A. (1653) and Master’s (1656) and became a noted pastor to St. Alfege, London Wall, until his ejection from the Church of England in 1662. Doolittle then founded the Pioneer Noncomformist Academy, which operated for 35 years and influenced hundreds of students, including Matthew Henry and Edmund Calamy. The resilient nonconformist faced a lifetime of persecution and became the final ejected minister to enter into glory (Joel R. Beeke and Randall J. Pederson, Meet the Puritans [Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2006], 180–183).

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Dustin Bruce lives in Louisville, KY where he is pursuing a ThM in Church History at Southern Seminary. He is a graduate of Auburn University and Southwestern Seminary. Dustin and his wife, Whitney, originally hail from Alabama.

Politics and Christianity: oxymoronic?

I am a firm believer in the fact that Christians should be involved in the political realm. Not the Church per se, but individual believers. One of the reasons Christian shun this realm—though do they not often mightily complain about it?—is because of the stumbling-blocks in the whole sphere of politics. This is nothing new.

Here is a letter from the Welsh Baptist Benjamin Davies, the one-time Principal of Canada Baptist College in Montreal, writing from London, England, in the 1840s  to his good friend John Gilmour, the Scottish Baptist then resident in Canada, and who was such a force for good on the Canadian scene.

Davies has been complaining about the British political scene of his day—1845—and then he observes:

“Is it vain for us to expect honest and sterling principle in political men? It seems a desperate case, at least in the present day.”

Not much has changed in this regard, it seems. Oh, for politicians who truly love justice and right and righteousness—and not adulation and power.

Samuel Davies on friendship

In his State of Religion among The Protestant Dissenters in Virginia (Boston, 1751), Samuel Davies helps us understand what friendship meant for some eighteenth-century Evangelicals. He is talking about the aim of this tract, and what he will and will not communicate to his readers. He notes: “I have always tho’t it an Instance of Imprudence pregnant with mischievous Consequences, when Persons in such Cases unbosom themselves to Mankind in general, with the unguarded liberties of intimate Friendship.” (p.4). How did Samuel Davies understand friendship? It was a context in which “intimate” friends could share completely and fully with one another—unbosoming themselves to one another with complete liberty. But such was not for public consumption. It occurs to me that, there is wisdom here for how one ought to conduct oneself with regard to social media.

William Carey and William Ward, and being indebted to the Moravians

At time it appears that the debate about whether or not William Carey is rightly called the Father of the modern missionary movement is a seemingly endless palaver: of course, anybody who has read anything about the eighteenth-century awakening knows the Moravians were there first. But it was Carey’s name that was remembered through the long century that followed. Yet, it should never be forgot—though one fears many of the Victorian admirers of the English Baptist did forget—that Carey and his colleagues knew the extent of their debt to the Moravians. As William Ward exclaimed in 1801, after reading some Moravian missionary journals: “Thank you, Moravians! Ye have done me good. If I am ever a missionary worth a straw, I shall owe it to you, under our Saviour.” (Periodical Accounts, 2 [Clipstone, 1801], no.VII, 5).

Fuller's memoirs of Pearce a demonstration of an Edwardsean principle

If, as Jonathan Edwards maintained in his Religious Affections (1746), “the essence of all true religion lies in holy love,” then Andrew Fuller’s Memoirs of the Rev. Samuel Pearce, A.M. (1800) is a biographical demonstration of this proposition, for, as Fuller asserted, “the governing principle in Mr. Pearce, beyond all doubt, was holy love.”