Calvin's legacy: asking forgiveness from the Anabaptists

Over the last few days I have been thinking much about Calvin’s legacy: so much theological brilliance and so much to thank God for…but we who embrace his soteriological legacy also must ask forgiveness from our Anabaptist brothers. And why? Simply because of his advocacy of the sword as a curb on heresy, esp. his support of the repression of Anabaptism in both its heretical and orthodox forms. Reading Eamon Duffy’s recent revisionist history of the reign of Bloody Mary (Fires of Faith)—which I bought in Cork, S. Ireland when there a few weeks ago—has convinced me that some of my Protestant and Calvinist forebears erred greatly when they were willing to use the sword to repress error. Like our 18th c. forebears who were slave owners, they are flawed models. In so far as they followed Christ soteriologically they are safe guides. But with regard to the use of the state to repress error, we need to understand their views of church & state as an outcropping of the medieval Constantinian model.

The bottom line is still this: I am sorry that some of my Calvinist forebears ever used the sword against their—and my—Anabaptist brothers.

Praise for In God We Trust? from John MacArthur and Phil Johnson

In God We Trust"Michael Haykin puts today's financial uncertainties in perspective with a helpful blend of historical and biblical  insight.  This is a tremendous word of encouragement for anyone seeking a sure anchor in these tumultuous times." John MacArthur "Difficult financial times remind us that we need to seek the true, eternal wealth that can't be corrupted by moth or rust - and doesn't evaporate when Wall Street has a setback. Michael Haykin points the way in this wonderfully encouraging, informative, and easy-to-read booklet." Phil Johnson

In God We Trust? is available from Audubon Press for $2.79 (30% off retail).  You can order online or call toll-free 800-405-3788 (M-F 9:00-5:00).

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

Dr. Haykin Interviewed About PRTS Conference on John Calvin on Moody Radio

Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin was recently interviewed by Paul Butler on Moody Radio's Prime Time America about the “Calvin for the 21st Century Conference” sponsored by the Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, MI, August 27th – 29th.  The part with Dr. Haykin begins at about the 1:50 mark.

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

A son graduates

My son Nigel graduated this evening from Highland High School in Dundas, Ontario. What a privilege to have such a son. What changes he has gone through in the past couple of years. I praise the Lord for giving me such a son.

Pray for him: he is a Christian and will be studying history and classics next year at McMaster University, following in the same academic pathway that his sister Victoria has trod.

Though he told me a year ago that the history of the eighteenth century was quite boring—he preferred Roman history at the time—he is currently fascinated with British imperialism, especially the American Revolution, Banastre Tarleton and James Cook.

Rejoicing in the ministry of others: John Bell and his ministry in Toronto's gay village

One of the most poignant historical reflections that I have ever heard came from a dear friend named Bob Shaker, literary enthusiast extraordinaire and a one-time deacon of Jarvis Street Baptist Church. Bob happened to visit his pastor, T.T. Shields—who, though married twice, never had any physical children—in 1949, when many of those whom Shields had mentored and taught—great future Canadian Baptist leaders like Jack Scott, Hal MacBain, Arnold Dallimore, and Tom Carson (D.A. Carson’s father)—took a different ecclesiological position than Shields and a cleavage occurred between Shields and them. Without a doubt Shields contributed to the resulting division between these brothers in Christ, but he told Shaker sadly, “All of my children are leaving me.” How utterly sad! On the flip side, though, there are those words of the aged Apostle John in 3 John 4: “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.” It was with these Johannine words ringing in my ears that I read the following post by Baptist pastor John Bell, whom I have had the incredible privilege of teaching at Toronto Baptist Seminary (though I would never presume to think of Pastor Bell as a son in Christ--but I was so encouraged to read this): “Sharing the Gospel in the Gay Village” on Tim Challies’ blog.

A reading plan for the works of Andrew Fuller

I was recently asked by a dear Irish brother for a plan of reading when it came to the works of Andrew Fuller. The following is what I suggested.

 

Without being self-serving, I hope, begin with the Armies of the Lamb. There is nothing like getting into a figure by reading his letters.

 

Then I would suggest his circular letters, those written for the Northants Association, in chronological order. These give you some idea of Fuller the churchman in the midst of connectional links and associational network of friends and fellow pastors.

 

Then read some of his sermons, esp. the ones on the ministry, justification, and soteriological issues.

 

His Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation is his most important controversial work. After it, read his Letters on Sandemanianism.

 

Finally, read his Memoirs of Pearce. What he includes in that work says so much about his piety.

Kirk Wellum on preaching and pastoring

There are a few blogs I read regularly: most of them are listed on my old site of Historia ecclesiastica. One of them is Kirk Wellum’s Redeeming the Time. In part, I read Redeeming the Time because Kirk is a dear friend. But it is also because he has a sharp theological mind that I deeply appreciate. I said a hearty amen, for instance, to this recent post on “Preaching and Beyond” (June 16, 2009).

Win a Free Set of Profiles in Reformed Spirituality at Challies.com

Dr. Haykin serves as co-editor, along with Joel Beeke, of the Reformation Heritage Book series "Profiles in Reformed Spirituality".  The newest volume in the series is by Thabiti Anyabwile and focuses on the piety of Lemuel Haynes.  To promote this volume and the series of which it is a part, Reformation Heritage Books is randomly giving away five free sets today to those who sign up at Challies.com.

This is a great set.  The volumes are multifunctional. That is, they are the perfect, non-intimidating introductions to people, doctrine, and practice of the reformed tradition. They make excellent short readings for stimulating thought and devotion. They are also good for class texts for giving students an affordable entry point into a given person and time period both primary and secondary treatments in one small book.

If you don't win the set, You can order the complete set or individual volumes at Reformation Heritage Books.

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

Michael Haykin Reviews Iain Murray's Heroes

Dr. Michael Haykin has reviewed the new book Heroes by Iain Murray.

In this new book from a veteran Reformed biographer and historian, Murray looks at the faith, lives, and thought of a number of well-known figures like Jonathan Edwards and Charles H. Spurgeon, as well as some lesser-known persons like Robert Kalley and William Hewitson (both of whom had a tremendous ministry on the island of Madeira among Portuguese Roman Catholics).

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

Study Guide of Mahaney's Humility Now Complete

Dr. Haykin has just completed leading a reading circle group through C.J. Mahaney’s Humility: True Greatness.  I had previously posted the study questions for chapters 1 & 2 and for chapters 3-6.  I have just posted the final set of questions for chapters 7-12.  These will be available continually on the Books & Papers page, under Study Guides.

Study Guide for C.J. Mahaney Humility: True Greatness (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Publishers, 2005).

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-6

Chapters 7-12

You may purchase the book upon which this study guide is based here.

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

Early Registration for AFCBS Conference Ends Sunday at Midnight

Each year the Andrew Fuller Center sponsors a major conference devoted to some aspect of Baptist thought and life.  This year’s conference is scheduled for August 24-25 and has for its theme “Baptist Spirituality:  Historical Perspectives.”  This conference is marked by great speakers, great fellowship, and several free books provided by the graciousness of publishers who sponsor the event.

Featured plenary speakers in 2009 will include: Crawford Gribben, Robert Strivens, Greg Thornbury, Kevin Smith, Tom Nettles, Greg Wills, Gerald Priest, Jason Lee, and Malcolm Yarnell. Other established Baptist History scholars, as well as several Ph.D. students will be presenting papers on the conference theme during the parallel sessions.

Until May 31st, a special rate of $75.00 for regular attendees and $45.00 for students (use code 09303108 when registering) will be available.  You will still be able to register up until the week before the conference, but it will cost $10.00 more.  You can register now by clicking here.  For more information about the conference, including lodging information, click here.

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

New Title on Manlys "Soldiers of Christ" Available for Order

Soldiers of Christ:  Selections from the Writings of Basil Manly, Sr. & Basil Manly, Jr. was edited by Southern Seminary professor Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin, in conjunction with Dr. Roger D. Duke and Dr. A. James Fuller.  Soldiers of Christ focuses on the writings on the father and son duo without whom, as current SBTS President R. Albert Mohler, Jr. notes in his Foreward, Southern Seminary would not exist.  This work was published by Founders Press and is available from order now from Reformation Heritage Books. FROM THE BACK COVER:

Basil Manly, Sr. and his son Basil Manly, Jr. played vital roles in shaping a number of the central institutions of the Southern Baptist community in its formative years in the nineteenth century, including the influential Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Undergirding their churchmanship was a vigorous Calvinistic Baptist piety that was expressed in sermons and tracts, hymns and confessional statements, letters and diaries, all of which are represented in this timely volume of selections from their writings. Here we have a wonderful window onto the vista of nineteenth-century Southern Baptist life with all of its glorious strengths as well as its clear failings.

COMMENDATIONS:

"The introductory and biographical essays on the lives of Basil Manly, Sr., and Basil Manly, Jr., as well as the carefully selected collections from their writings found in this volume are wonderful and much-welcomed additions to Baptist studies. I am quite pleased to recommend Soldiers of Christ.” — David S. Dockery, President, Union University

“The publication of these writings is long overdue and is most welcome, and the editors have done their work well.” — Gregory A. Wills, Professor of Church History, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“Michael Haykin, James Fuller, and Roger Duke have done us a service by introducing the Manlys to a new generation.” — Nathan Finn, Assistant Professor of Church History, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary

“A fascinating, moving, and shocking look at piety among Southern Baptists in the middle two-thirds of the nineteenth century.” —Tom J. Nettles, Professor of Historical Theology, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“A superb collection of well-edited primary sources by two of the most formative shapers of Southern Baptist life in the nineteenth century.” —Timothy George, Senior Editor of Christianity Today

FROM THE FOREWARD BY R. ALBERT MOHLER, JR.

"Humanly speaking, the formula is easy: no Manlys, no Southern Seminary. This year, as The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary celebrates its sesquicentennial, our indebtedness to the Manlys of South Carolina is increasingly clear. As an institution, our history is inextricably tied to the lives and ministries of Basil Manly, Sr. and Basil Manly, Jr."

PUBLICATION DETAILS

Published by Founders Press.  240 pages.  Paperback.  2009.

Order here from RHB for $18.00 $12.00 (34% off)

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

Warfield on the utter folly of Darwinian evolution

I would venture to assert that the greatest theologian of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is B.B. Warfield. As time goes on, I am more and more impressed by him. Here he is on Darwinian evolution—simply brilliant:

"Aimless movement in time will produce an ordered world! You might as well suppose that if you stir up a mass of type with a stick long enough, the letters will be found to have arranged themselves in the order in which they stand on the printed pages of Dante’s Inferno. It will never happen — though you stir for an eternity. And the reason is that such effects do not happen, but are produced only by a cause adequate to them and directed to the end in view. . . . Assuredly, what chance cannot begin to produce in a moment, chance cannot complete the production of in an eternity. . . . What is needed is not time, but cause.”

HT: Fred Zaspel

A new malady: "le Calvinite"

There is undoubtedly a rash of conferences on John Calvin this year (we had our own one at Southern in April), as it is the quincentenary of his birth. The eminent French evangelical theologian and historian Sébastien Fath has noted that there is a term for this passionate interest in Calvin: “Calvinite,” which he identifies as a masculine noun in French and of which the definition runs as follows: “maladie commémorative focalisé sur tout ce qui touche à Jean Calvin. Pic épidémiologique en 2009.”

Well, there is no doubt that 2009 is the crucial year for this "illness"! Though, what a joyous illness it is!

See post here.

But how to translate the word into English? Any suggestions? Calvinomania?

HT: Jeff Walters

Last Week for Early Registration for AFCBS Conference

Each year the Andrew Fuller Center sponsors a major conference devoted to some aspect of Baptist thought and life.  This year’s conference is scheduled for August 24-25 and has for its theme “Baptist Spirituality:  Historical Perspectives.”  This conference is marked by great speakers, great fellowship, and several free books provided by the graciousness of publishers who sponsor the event.

Featured plenary speakers in 2009 will include: Crawford Gribben, Robert Strivens, Greg Thornbury, Kevin Smith, Tom Nettles, Greg Wills, Gerald Priest, Jason Lee, and Malcolm Yarnell. Other established Baptist History scholars, as well as several Ph.D. students will be presenting papers on the conference theme during the parallel sessions.

Until May 31st, a special rate of $75.00 for regular attendees and $45.00 for students (use code 09303108 when registering) will be available.  You will still be able to register up until the week before the conference, but it will cost $10.00 more.  You can register now by clicking here.  For more information about the conference, including lodging information and a schedule of the plenary sessions, click here.

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

Living in a Canadian cultural contradiction

What a contradictory culture we live in. Militant about protecting young children from possible sexual abuse and physical harm (there is such a case going on right now in southern Ontario)—and rightly so—but also adamant about the right to slay unborn children—and yes, they are children too—in the womb. It is blatant hypocrisy. Does not such government-condoned slaughter of utterly helpless babes here in Canada undermine any right we have to feel moral superiority to the Nazi regime in their treatment of the Jews or the slaveholders of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? For all our purported concern for the helpless and disenfranchised, is it not sheer hypocrisy when we will not extend that concern to the enwombed?

Audio from Conference on Holy Spirit Now Online

On Saturday, Dr. Michael Haykin led a conference on the Holy Spirit on Saturday on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit at Farmdale Baptist Church in Frankfort, KY.  The MP3s of the conference sessions and Q & A session are 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.

Moody Interview with Haykin on The Christian Lover

Dr. Haykin was recently interviewed on Moody Radio by Paul Butler about his latest book, The Christian Lover: The Sweetness of Love and Marriage in the Letters of Believers (published by Reformation Trust).  The complete audio feature is available online here.  The interview lasts about seven and a half minutes.

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

Discount Registration for 2009 Conference Until May 31st

Each year the Andrew Fuller Center sponsors a major conference devoted to some aspect of Baptist thought and life.  This year's conference is scheduled for August 24-25 and has for its theme "Baptist Spirituality:  Historical Perspectives."  This conference is marked by great speakers, great fellowship, and several free books provided by the graciousness of publishers who sponsor the event.

Featured plenary speakers in 2009 will include: Crawford Gribben, Robert Strivens, Greg Thornbury, Kevin Smith, Tom Nettles, Greg Wills, Gerald Priest, Jason Lee, and Malcolm Yarnell. Other established Baptist History scholars, as well as several Ph.D. students will be presenting papers on the conference theme during the parallel sessions.

Until May 31st, a special rate of $75.00 for regular attendees and $45.00 for students (use code 09303108 when registering) will be available.  You will still be able to register up until the week before the conference, but it will cost $10.00 more.  You can register now by clicking here.  For more information about the conference, including lodging information and a schedule of the plenary sessions, click here.

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

New Booklet from Michael Haykin on Current Financial Crisis

The current financial crunch has shaken and rattled the West to a depth that has not been seen since the 1930s. This financial collapse is affecting far more than America. Much of the world has been similarly impacted, with failing banks and the disappearance of financial liquidity. What is God saying in the midst of it? How has God worked during previous crises? Perhaps it is only now that we begin to ask profound questions that many of us tend to ignore in daily life. Why did this happen? What does it all mean? What is God saying in the midst of this financial mess? In whom do we trust? This new booklet from Michael Haykin provides a timely perspective amidst our financial chaos.  Scheduled to be released at the F.I.R.E. Conference in Indianapolis, IN in a couple of weeks, it can be pre-ordered now at a 50% savings from Audubon Press.  That's only $1.99 each.  This offer is good through May 20th.  You can also order by calling toll-free 800-405-3788 M-F 9:00-5:00 CST.

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