A hundred years seems like a long time, but there was an amazing amount of revolution crammed into a single century. If you think I'm writing about our century, you've got good reasons. But actually, I mean the 18th century. Think about it: the Industrial Revolution began in 1760's Great Britain and swept the world. The American Revolution started a tsunami in geopolitics; the traditional balance of power was upset, accelerating the shift from monarchies to democracies. The French Revolution followed in its wake, beginning in 1787. Added to the technological, econonomic and political revolutions that took place, we covered the spiritual revolution called the First Great Awakening (1730-1755) last month. There was an additional, Second Great Awakening from 1790-1840. Taken together, you can see how so many of the old, familiar things about the Western world were suddenly tipped over, broken up and reassembled in surprising ways. The Baptist movement was in the middle of all that flux, contributing to it and being transformed by it.
Simply gaining the freedom to meet and worship according to their Biblical convictions was a grueling, ongoing battle; we've covered some of this in previous months. But as their churches multiplied and enjoyed more relative peace, Baptists were able to shift their focus from survival to mission. The first step was to lay some theological groundwork: a compelling, scriptural challenge to take up Christ’s mandate for world missions.
English pastor, Andrew Fuller (1754-1815) was one of the most important theologians in Baptist history. In fact, the famous preacher Charles Spurgeon called him the greatest theologian of the 18th century. Fuller is important for this discussion because his clear, reasonable exposition of Scripture helped English Baptists move past some of the hyper-Calvinistic teachings from earlier theologians.
For example, John Gill (1697-1771) was a great theological leader of the previous generation. He published a series of Scripture commentaries that most Baptist preachers used in their study. Many preachers today still benefit from his work. As a rock-ribbed Calvinist, however, Gill held forth the determinative sovereignty of God in salvation: that He has elected some people for salvation while destining others for condemnation. A corollary of this thinking is that Christ's sacrifice on the cross is only meant for the elect. The non-chosen (the reprobate) do not have access to Christ's finished work.
This type of thinking leads to some troubling applications for evangelism. If God has already elected a certain group to salvation, and if the grace God extends to them is irresistible (another Calvinist precept), then there is no use for a preacher to urge the unbelievers in his congregation to come to Christ for salvation. The elect won't need any urging, and the reprobate can't be saved, anyway. Christ didn't die for them, only for the elect. Andrew Fuller had grown up under preaching very much in the John Gill model, by a man named John Eve. According to Fuller, Eve “had little or nothing to say to the unconverted.” Nevertheless, the Holy Spirit undertook a direct work on Fuller’s heart, and he fell under a strong conviction of his own sin. Baptized in 1770 and maturing quickly as a Christian, the church recognized that God had definitely given him gifts for ministry. In 1771 Eve left for another church and Fuller was called to be their new pastor until 1782. He was then called on to pastor the Baptist church in Kettering, Northamptonshire. Kettering was the town in which John Gill had been born.
When Fuller started his preaching ministry, he too practiced along the lines of Gill and Eve. However, he’d always felt unsettled by the fact that there had been no appeal to him or other unbelievers to come to Christ. He decided to do a deep study of some of the major Calvinist theologians, including Jonathan Edwards, John Gill, John Owen, and John Bunyan. (One wonders if it was required to be named “John” in order to be a theologian in those days!) Comparing these authors on salvation, he noted that both John Bunyan and John Owen urged preachers to extend a free offer of salvation to all people. John Gill was opposed. He came to conclude that his former style of preaching, emulating Gill, was “anti-scriptural and defective in many respects.” He decided to make his stand that Christ had come to die for the sins of “whosoever will,” to put it in the way of John 3:16. The atoning work of Christ was offered to the entire world, and would only be applied to those who would repent and believe. The culmination of his study was to publish his first work, The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, published in 1785. The book’s major theme is that “Faith in Christ is the duty of all men who hear, or have opportunity to hear, the gospel.”
Fuller’s works helped to foster a more moderate Calvinistic belief that still upheld a version of divine election, but left open the door for all unbelievers to hear and receive the benefits of the Gospel. And once the theological impetus was established, Baptists began to experience a deep passion to see the Gospel spread to the whole world. Fuller himself was a co-founder of the Baptist Missionary Society in 1792. It was a voluntary association of Baptist churches to contribute resources and equip missionaries. Fuller made a continuous circuit of Britain between 1798 and 1813 to fire up Baptist believers and raise funds for missionaries. During this time he was away from his home about three months out of the year. The Baptist Missionary Society basically launched the Baptist missionary movement around the world. Cooperative missions is a major pillar of who Baptists are today.
When we resume our survey next month, we’ll look at Fuller’s deep friendship with, and the Baptist Missionary Society’s support of one of our first Baptist missionaries: William Carey.
Source: The Baptist Story: From English Sect to Global Movement, by Anthony L. Chute, Nathan A. Finn and Michael A.G. Haykin. Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2015.
