Andrew Fuller's significance in the history of Christianity

The Andrew Fulller Center is named after the leading Baptist theologian of the latter half of the long eighteenth century. Why? Well,  Fuller’s importance for the history of Christianity in general lies in five areas (the very fact that there is the term “Fullerism” in English, I think, says something about his importance. But I leave that to one side).

a.       First, in his apologetic work with regard to two key religious options that developed out of the Enlightenment, namely Deism and Socinianism/Unitarianism, Fuller pens the key Baptist eighteenth century defence of the Trinity and deity of Christ. So good, in fact, is his response to Unitarianism that it is highly used by Thomas Chalmers, the leading Scottish Presbyterian theologian of the first half of the nineteenth century. Fuller shows us a key way classical confessional Christianity sought to respond to the challenges of the Enlightenment. His response to Socinianism is of great importance for it heavily draws upon the theology of virtue and thus connects Fuller to centuries of classical pagan and Christian thought with regard to virtue theory.

b.   Second, Fuller is the central conduit in the first half of the nineteenth century in the British Isles for the transmission of the theological heritage of Jonathan Edwards (1703–58), Ewardseanism, especially this heritage’s discussion of the relationship between “sense and sensibility,” that is, reason and the affections. Fuller’s embrace of the Edwardsean emphasis on the affections as the key to Christian conversion and sanctification anticipates the reaction of Romanticism to the ideals of the Enlightenment.

c.   Third, Fuller’s rebuttal of Hyper-Calvinism prepares the way for his theology of preaching to be the mainspring for William Carey, the Baptist mission to India, and the founding of other missionary societies in Britain, and America at the turn of the nineteenth century. Thus, Fuller is a central figure in the springing up of the modern missionary movement and the development of global Christianity. In addition to being a theologian of mission, he was also an ardent practitioner, serving as the Secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society from 1792 till his death in 1815.

d.    He was a mentor to Robert Hall (1764–1831), the leading preaching celebrity of the Regency era, and, while he would not have agreed with all of Hall’s theological nuances, he did have an indirect influence on the sort of theology Hall preached. It is noteworthy that Charles Spurgeon (1834–92), the Victorian preaching celebrity, regarded Fuller as the most important Baptist theologian of his era.

e.   Finally, as an heir of seventeenth-century Reformed orthodoxy, typified by men like John Owen (1616–83) and Herman Witsius (1636–1708), Fuller carries on a tradition of anti-Arminianism, though not without certain modifications.

Being baptized: do what is right!

 The following anecdote comes from the Memoir of Eustace Carey. On a certain occasion, a lady said to William Carey, “Mr. Carey, I see adult baptism to be quite right, and yet I cannot make up my mind to submit to it. I am very unhappy about it sometimes; I suppose you would advise me still to pray about it, sir?” Said Mr. Carey, “I tell you what I advise, madam; go and do what you know to be right, and pray afterwards. Your prayers will then be likely to give you more pleasure.”

[cited “Religious Intelligence”, The Gospel Herald,  35 (Ipswich, 1857) 206].

Trinity Sunday & Fathers Day, 2011

Today is Trinity Sunday and I am amazed that gospel-centred Christians are more ga-ga over the feast-day of a secular culture—it also happens to be Fathers’ Day today—rather than a key Christian feast. If we are going to celebrate days (and I know that there is no Scriptural injunction here) would it not be best to remember Pentecost & Trinity Sunday, along with Christmas & Easter instead of the schmaltziness of Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day?

I think the Puritans would be amazed at the doings of their descendants: the latter following many of the former in the junking of special days like Pentecost and Trinity Sunday, but instead following the lead of their culture and doing all sorts of things to celebrate mums and dads even to the point of centring their preaching on mothers and fathers. To be sure, even the Puritans were not always consistent: they had their Guy Fawkes Day (Nov 5)! But all things in their proper place.

 

1949 and Ontario Baptist roots

Warning: read with generosity, that essential attribute of all good history-writing. And read with Christian love, for I am sure this will annoy some. Roots: historians and quasi-historians are deeply interested in roots. And not without good reason: the past has shaped us and without a history and memory of the past, we have no idea who we are or where we are going. As an Ontario Baptist I have spent much time thinking about my roots in this province. Those thoughts were rekindled when I read a recent ad for Heritage College & Seminary, where I taught in the 1990s and which was the successor to Central Baptist Seminary, where I taught from 1982 to 1993. In the ad, it was stated that Heritage had “roots in Ontario dating back to 1949” [Options (Fall 2010), 42].

1949: a fateful year for Baptists in Ontario.

When I first taught Baptist History at Central Baptist Seminary, Toronto, in the mid-1980s, I realized that my roots as a Baptist had to have a deeper stretch than the origins of the school where I was serving. That school had been formed in 1949 in a break in fellowship between a number of prominent of evangelical Baptists, primarily T.T. Shields (1873–1955) and some of his key lieutenants, men like W. Gordon Brown (1904–75). These men had stood shoulder to shoulder in the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy in Baptist circles in Ontario in the 1920s, standing for key truths of the Gospel, but twenty years later they parted company.

The reasons for the break were complex as all such schisms are and involved ecclesiological differences as well as personality clashes and issues of power and that old bugbear of human existence, sin—and not just on one side! It may well have been a necessary break, but it was very regrettable and left me, as I researched it, with a bad taste in the mouth. Honestly, I felt our roots had to be more positive than this quarrel.

I loved, and still do, the Baptist body, the Fellowship of Evangelical Baptist Churches in Canada—formed in 1953 as a result of the fallout between Shields and his lieutenants—in which my Christian faith had been nurtured and given room to flourish. But I came to see that my roots had a deeper reach, well beyond the frost of controversy. In Ontario they went back to the Old Baptist Convention and remarkable Christians like John Gilmour, William Fraser, Daniel McPhail—the Elijah of the Ottawa Valley—R.A. Fyfe, Henrietta Feller, A.V. Timpany, Benjamin D. Thomas (or "Thomas of Toronto" as he is known in Carmathenshire, South Wales), and D.A. McGregor. Does anyone remember these saints?

But even with such Canadian Baptist pioneers, I had not yet gotten to the foundation of my Baptist faith (which, from a biblical standpoint, is, of course, Holy Scripture—but I was looking for the recent historical manifestation of those convictions). It was in the mid-1980s that I discovered the Baptist saints of the 17th century, men like William Kiffin and Hanserd Knollys and Benjamin Keach, and to my lifelong delight, that 18th century band of brothers that were Andrew Fuller, John Ryland, John Sutcliff, William Carey, Samuel Pearce, and their contemporaries, believers like Benjamin Beddome, Benjamin Francis, William Steadman, Joseph Kinghorn, the Stennetts, Coxe Feary, John Fawcett, Anne Steele and Anne Dutton—time would fail me to write of others.

I shall ever be thankful to God for that three-volume 1845 set of Fuller’s works that I pulled off the shelf of the library in the Jonesville Crescent campus of Central Baptist Seminary in 1985 or thereabouts. I had found my roots. Fuller et al. were not perfect, but what a remarkable group of men: truly heroes à la Hebrews 13:7.

1949? No, I am sorry, too shallow for this Baptist who longed for greater depth. 1949? No, I am sorry, too compromised with sin for this romantic! (And, please, I mean no offence to the tremendous leaders who founded the Fellowship).

Now, this is ressourcement.

Ressourcement: a definition

Here is an excellent definition of ressourcement by the French poet and Catholic essayist Charles Péguy (1873–1914): it is a movement “from a less perfect tradition to a more perfect tradition, a call from a shallower tradition to a deeper tradition, an overtaking of depth, an investigation into deeper sources, a return to the source in the literal sense.” Cited Nicholas J. Healy, Jr., “Evangelical Ressourcement”, First Things 213 (May 2011), 56.

Andrew Fuller's three examples of a pious, learned ministry

“A Pearce, a Francis, or a Beddome”: I find it very instructive that when Andrew Fuller thought of the combination of theological learning and spirituality—what he called “personal religion”—three names came to mind: Samuel Pearce (1766–99), Benjamin Francis (1734–99), and Benjamin Beddome (1717–1795), from three different generations of Particular Baptists in the eighteenth century (The Young Minister exhorted to make full proof of his Ministry in The Complete Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller [Repr. Harrisonburg, Virginia: Sprinkle Publications, 1988], I, 520). This fall I have the unspeakable privilege of teaching a PhD course on Benjamin Beddome’s life, thought, and ministry: please pray that those who take it will learn the lesson Fuller found in his life—the blessing that personal holiness gives to a learned ministry.

Words heard by William Carey and his church at Moulton when he was ordained

Yesterday evening I received from my friend Chisso Wang, who is working with me on a book on William Carey, the covenant that Carey drew up for his first church at Moulton (more on this anon). Around the time of the writing of this covenant, Andrew Fuller spoke to this church on the occasion of Carey’s ordination on August 1, 1787. Fuller took as his text Psalm 68:18: “Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive: thou hast received gifts for men; yea for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them.” Fuller rightly drew attention to the fulfillment of this text in Christ’s ascension according to Ephesians 4:8, and said: “If you love Christ, you will make much of your minister, on account of his being his gift. A gift designed to supply Christ’s absence in a sort. He is gone, (“ascended,”) but he gives you his servants.” (Importance of Christian Ministers considered as the Gift of Christ [The Complete Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller (Repr. Harrisonburg, Virginia: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), I, 521]. And the goal of Christ’s giving such ministers is that “the Lord God might dwell among them [i.e. his people].” Here Fuller discerned a difference between the old and new covenants: “God had not dwelt with the world, nor in it, while sin bore the rule; but Christ’s mediation was for the bringing it about. “Will God indeed dwell with men?” He will; and how? It is by the means of ordinance and ministers. A church of Christ is God’s house, and where anyone builds a house it is a token he means to dwell there. What a blessing to a village, a country, for God to build a house in it. It is by this that we may hope for a blessing upon the means to the conversion of our family and friends, and for the edification of believers.” (Importance of Christian Ministers [Complete Works, I, 522]). This entire passage is quite intriguing.

Andrew Fuller's self-understanding

Dominating my academic thinking for a number of years now has been the Andrew Fuller Works project, which seeks to produce a critical edition of all of the works of Andrew Fuller. At the heart of it is Fuller’s self-understanding as an English Christian, a Baptist, and an Anglo-American Reformed pastor-theologian. Understanding Fuller is a central key to understanding the Anglo-American Baptist scene in the nineteenth century. By no means the only key, but a central hermeneutic. Witness the admiration of such theologians as Jesse Mercer, the Manlys and James Petigru Boyce, Christmas Evans, and CH Spurgeon for Fuller, not to mention men like Thomas Chalmers and Archibald Alexander.

Why should I write?

There are workshops aplenty on learning how to write. And occasionally I have been asked about developing writing skills. But a much more important question is this: why should I write? Here is a nugget of wisdom from my early Particular Baptist forebears on why they wrote their tracts and their confessions.

In a word, they said, it was “the honor of God, the love of his Truth, zeal for his Name, and…the saving of souls from death” that motivated their writing [Heart-Bleedings for Professors Abominations (London, 1650), 15]. Worthy motives—indeed the very best.

PS Among those who took responsibility for these words were John Spilsbury, William Kiffin, Henry Forty, Thomas Patient (Heart-Bleedings, 16). Anyone writing on these men today has a lot of hard work to do: so many ephemeral pamphlets and broadsheets went abroad under their names in those halcyon days for the Baptist cause. Seventeenth-century scholarship is, I think, a lot more difficult in this regard than the study of the eighteenth.

Speaking the truth in love in a day of theological declension

In one of his books, Francis Schaeffer depicts the two problems that can afflict those desiring to be true to the Christian Faith in days when biblical truth is under attack. On the one hand, some become hard and brittle in their response to errorists and develop low tolerance levels. Such men and women become schismatics and dare to break fellowship over secondary, even tertiary, issues. The history of the Church in North America in the twentieth century is strewn with such. But there is another danger. In such times, the desire to be balanced and to act in love can lead to a latitudinarianism that has lost any geographical sense of where the boundaries of orthodoxy lie. Such people, albeit, I trust, acting out of good motives, become so tolerant that they do not realize they are no longer faithful gatekeepers. They fail in affirming the boundaries that guard the core of biblical Christianity and thus betray what has been entrusted to them. As Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., has rightly noted, “A word that can mean anything means nothing. If ‘evangelical identity’ means drawing no boundaries, then we really have no center, no matter what we may claim.” [“Reformist Evangelicalism: A Center without a Circumference,” in A Confessing Theology for Postmodern Times, ed. Michael S. Horton (Wheaton: Crossway, 2000), 146].

I have never forgotten being told by one who was entrusted with an important charge that as he got older in the Christian life, there was more and more that was simply grey and unclear. I am thoroughly convinced now that at work in such a life was a loss of biblical priorities and imperatives and the emergence of an unhealthy latitudinarianism.

For the past thirty years or so Evangelicalism has found herself increasingly embattled within as she is being forced to engage with what are concessions to the spirit of the age that imperil the gospel. And no surprise, we are seeing the emergence of a latitudinarian spirit that is deeply disturbing. Let us guard the gospel and affirm the clear boundaries of the Faith—and let us do so with love. “Speaking the truth with love”: both are needed.

Transactions of the Baptist Historical Society available online

Just accessed the entire series of the Transactions of the Baptist Historical Society volumes from 1908–1921 at BiblicalStudies.org.uk. You can work with the individual articles or download the entirety as a .zip file containing all of the .pdfs and an index. The download is big (65 MB) but worth the time and effort. For Baptist historians it is like gold as it contains a lot of primary sources docs. Thanks to Rob Bradshaw for doing this.

HT: Sean Winter.

Why I do theology

Many years ago, when I made the decision to go to Wycliffe College and study for a ThD there, my father, who was doing extremely well as an electrical engineer, was asked by one of his friends, who was a believer, about what I was doing. My father told him and then added, "there is no money in theology"! About three years ago, this man to whom my father said those remarks, conveyed them to me when I was teaching at Muskoka Baptist Conference one summer's night. From the point of view of my father then, I could have done much better for myself in another field. Recently, someone whom I love dearly (not my wife!) said much the same to me: I should have gone into a university setting where I could have made the double the amount of money. This was my response then and still is now: I was called in February of 1974 by the Lord Jesus to serve his people and he has yet to rescind that call. And I love the Lord Jesus Christ more than anything this world has to offer--and its offers are very attractive--but he is sweeter than all of his creation and it affords the deepest joy to live for him. 

More recently I have thought of Paul's statement in 2 Cor 11:28-9, a word that has been much with me in recent days: when an apostolic prayer/burden like that is given, it cannot, without serious spiritual risk, be ignored.

A word to the wise from the Ancient Greeks for the use of our social media

The description of Facebook and Twitter as social media is somewhat deceptive. Do they get people in touch? Oh yes, and sometimes long lost buddies re-connect, which is for the good. But, as vehicles of significant social interaction, do they qualify as social media? Not really. Some people seem to think they do and they use them to air all kinds of things best left unsaid in even as liquid a medium as the digital. Simply put: Facebook is not the place for some of the rant and rave that I have seen. In the final analysis, there is nothing like the face to face discussion. Maybe Plato and the Greeks were not all wrong in their complaints about the written word in the social medium of their day--the letter and the book: it is a dead word, cannot speak, cannot respond, can never serve in the stead of the spoken word. Of course, as a Christian who lives on the the written Word of God, I do not buy this. But the point they are making does seem to fit our day's social media: they appear to be responsive, but in reality they do not meet the heart's needs for love and companionship.

The fallout of Montanism: looking to canon, creed, and bishop (overseer/elder)

While I do not always agree with Jaroslav Pelikan, he is without doubt the doyen of 20th century church historians. Here is his reflection on the fallout of the Montanist controversy. Pelikan is noting that as a result of the controversy, the church rightly judged Montanism to be obsolete for she "looked increasingly not to the future, illumined by the Lord's return, nor to the present, illumined by the Spirit's extraordinary gifts, but to the past, illumined by the composition of the apostolic canon, the creation of the apostolic creed, and the establishment of the apostolic episcopate." [The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) (The Christian Tradition, vol. 1; Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1971), 107].

Very true as an historical reality--its biblical validity is another question. And here I am thinking of the episcopate. The New Testament clearly supports both the looking to canon and creed. But does it support the idea of the historic episcopate?

New "A few acres of snow" post: Math and the Future of Religion

Dr. Haykin has written a new piece for the "A few acres of snow" feature. The newest post analyzes a recent article on the decline of religion in Canada by Daniela Syrovy. Check out "Math and the Future of Religion" and feel free to interact with the post in the comments section below.

Posted by Steve Weaver, Research and Administrative Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin.

Free PDF Lecture on St. Patrick

Dr. Haykin recently lectured in one of his classes about the life and ministry of St. Patrick.  On this St. Patrick's Day, he is offering his notes for this lecture for free download.  He has titled the lecture for this occasion:  "Remembering Patrick and His Confession on March 17, 2011."  We hope you enjoy this survey of Patrick's life.  It will be available in the future on the Papers page of this website.

Posted by Steve Weaver, Research and Administrative Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin.

Archibald Alexander on Andrew Fuller

Andrew Fuller’s writings were widely read in America throughout the nineteenth century. As Archibald Alexander (1772–1851) remarked of his influence in a book review of the standard print copy of the Fuller corpus: “Few men of the last age, have left a deeper impression of their labours on the public mind, than Andrew Fuller.”[1]

[1] “The complete works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, with a Memoir of his life”, The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, 18, no.4 (1846), 547.

A reflection on a quote by George Smeaton

My dear friend Stephen Yuille recently posted a statement by George Smeaton (1814–89), who studied at Edinburgh University and was part of the group of friends which included Robert Murray McCheyne and the Bonar brothers, and whom I best know as the author of a fine book on the Holy Spirit. See here for more details on Smeaton: Catherine Dickie, “Rev Prof George Smeaton”, ninetysix and ten (http://ninetysixandten.wordpress.com/books/rev-prof-george-smeaton/). This is the quote Stephen posted on FB: “To convert one sinner from his way is an event of greater importance than the deliverance of a whole kingdom from temporal evil.” See https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1915445931773&id=1410695512.

Of course, there is a truth in this that escapes the modern who thinks only of this world.

But, I wonder if the whole idea is framed wrongly. In Micah 6:8 the prophet says, “what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” The Smeaton quote seems to leave no room for what the prophet sees as the Christian walk—for surely, this is fulfilled in the followers of the Christ. Are we not to do both: seek the conversion of sinners and see temporal justice done?

I fear that it was the sort of thinking in the Smeaton quote that allowed both the Presbyterians and Baptists to argue for the “spirituality” of the Church in the 19th century and leave undone those things in the social realm that ought to have been done. C.H. Spurgeon, so often a great guide, and here he does not fail us, would have none of it, and refused to sit down to the Lord’s Supper with a slave owner!

Put the Smeaton quote in context thus and see the problems with it: “To convert one sinner from his way is an event of greater importance than to end the abomination of slavery or to end the murder of all of the babies being aborted.” Put like that, we see the problems with the quote: it has set up a false dichotomy. Better to do both, as Micah says: “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with…God.”