Today marks the 198th anniversary of Andrew Fuller’s death. Though
largely unknown to contemporary evangelicals, Fuller was a Particular
Baptist pastor and one of the leading theologians during the final
decades of the so-called Long Eighteenth Century (1689–1815). He was a
tireless promoter of missions at home and abroad, and widely published
polemical theologian, defending the biblical gospel against two key
errors in his day: High Calvinism and Sandemanianism.
High Calvinism, Edwardsian Theology, and Missions
Many parishes in the Church of England had experienced significant
spiritual renewal from 1730 to 1760, but most English Nonconformists,
including Particular Baptists, remained largely untouched by the
Evangelical Awakening. Many Particular Baptists were suspicious of the
revivals on account of Wesleyan Arminianism. However, others, especially
in London, also advocated a form of High Calvinism (or hyper-Calvinism)
that was suspicious of “promiscuous” evangelistic preaching and
frequently advocated an antinomian understanding of God’s moral law.
Fuller was raised in this context, though in the early years of his
pastoral ministry he rejected High Calvinism for evangelical Calvinism.
Fuller found many guides along his path to evangelicalism. He learned
that the seventeenth-century Puritans and their Particular Baptist
cousins affirmed God’s sovereignty in salvation and were dedicated to
intentional evangelism. But by far Fuller’s most influential guide was
the New England pastor-theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758). By the
1770s, several pastors in the Northamptonshire Association were reading
the writings of Edwards, especially The Freedom of the Will
(1755). In that work, Edwards argues that men are naturally able to
believe the gospel, but are morally unable to do so. While any man can
believe, no man will believe without receiving the Holy Spirit’s
effectual calling that frees his will from its moral captivity, thus
enabling saving faith. Continue at Nathan A. Finn
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