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 Andrew
Fuller was born on February 5, 1754 in Wicken,
Cambridgeshire, England. He was the son of poor Baptist farmers.
Because Fuller ministered during the same era as George
Whitefield and the Wesley brothers it would be easy for
his name to get lost in their giant shadows. He pastored two
congregations during his life at Soham (1775-1782) and at
Kettering (1782-1806). Christianity in England was in a generally
depressed condition at the time to which Fuller was born.
Particular Baptists had fallen into a hyper-Calvinism that
denied the need to evangelize the lost or even to offer salvation
to anyone
Arminianism,
represented by General Baptists and the Wesleys, had relegated
God to a secondary position behind man’s free will. Needless
to say missions to foreign lands did not exist as a result.
After a false profession, Fuller finally came to saving faith
in Christ as a young man. Like Jonathan
Edwards, whom he read deeply, Fuller was a Calvinists
who believed in an experiential religion. His salvation was
very real in his life and faith. Writing many years after
his conversion, he recalled his first real encounter with
grace as though it had happened the day before:
"I now
found rest for my troubled soul.. When I thought of the
gospel way of salvation, I drank it in as cold water is
imbibed by a thirsty man. My heart felt one with Christ,
and dead to every other object around me ... I now knew
experimentally what it was to be dead to the world by the
cross of Christ..."1
Like
Spurgeon, Andrew Fuller was a Biblical
theologian driven by a pastor’s heart. His study into the
nature of salvation and the Gospel call was fueled by his
dealings with people in his congregation rather than by cold
academic considerations. As a young pastor Fuller began to
question the hyper-Calvinistic view of his day which rejected
any gospel invitation to the lost. At his first church Fuller
wrote:
"With
respect to the system of doctrine which I had used to hear
from youth, it was in the hyper-Calvinistic strain ... Abstinence
from gross evils might be enforced. But nothing was said
to them from the pulpit in the way of warning them to flee
from the wrath to come, or inviting them to apply to Christ
for salvation ... I began to doubt whether I had got the
truth respecting this subject ... " 2
While
never straying from the doctrines of Grace, Fuller came to
see that such doctrines did not preclude offering the gospel
to all men. He saw this offer of salvation in the writing
of such a diverse group of men as Jonathan
Edwards, John Owen, John Bunyan,
and David Brainerd. Beyond such men, Fuller saw in Scripture
itself a firm insistence on freely preaching the gospel of
Jesus Christ to all men. Gilbert Laws notes that on moving
away from hyper-Calvinism: "Fuller had followed what he found
for himself in the Scriptures. He had dared to preach as John
the Baptist preached and as the Master Himself had preached,
and as the apostles preached, inviting and beseeching sinners
to believe and live." 3
Andrew
Fuller’s greatest work is The
Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation. "It is the single
merit of Andrew Fuller ... that he demonstrated that a man
can be both a Calvinist and an Evangelical."4
Contrary to many modern arguments, holding to the Doctrines
of Grace does not kill evangelism but rather grounds it solidly
in Scripture. This work presented clearly Fuller’s belief
that one could hold both to the sovereignty of God and the
responsibility of man at the same time. A good example of
Fuller's beliefs on the subject of salvation can be found
in his sermon, The
Great Question Answered.
Perhaps
Fuller’s greatest contribution to Christianity was to free
us from the shackles of philosophical theology. Because many
could not see any consistency between God’s sovereignty and
man’s responsibility they rejected one or the other. Fuller
on the other hand, concluded that any lack of logic in such
thinking was due to his own lacking, not God’s.
"The
truth is, there are but two ways for us to take: one is
to reject them both, and the Bible with them, on account
of its inconsistencies; the other is to embrace them both,
concluding that, as they are both revealed in Scriptures,
they are both true and both consistent, and that is owing
to the darkness of our understandings, that they do not
appear so to us." 5
Andrew
Fuller in no way rejected what could be called Calvinism.
He tenaciously held to a sovereign work of God in calling
those whom He alone elected. Fuller also reminded fellow Baptists
and all Christians that regeneration precedes faith not vice-a-versa.
"Man’s
response to the invitation to repent and to come to Christ
is not simply a wise human decision, a balancing of the
arguments for and against, and thinking that those for are
more cogent. The decision is itself a work of grace."6
Fuller’s
theology was never relegated to the confines of sermons or
books. Instead, he lived out his beliefs in the real world.
No where is this better seen than in Fuller’s friendship with
William Carrey, the first of modern-day
foreign missionaries. Most Particular Baptist pastors had
rejected Carrey’s call to missions but not Fuller. Carrey
found in Fuller, the theological foundation for his own leaning
toward missions. Fuller became, as Carrey called him, the
rope holder. Carrey would go to India but Fuller and others
would hold the other end of the rope that supported Carrey
in England. The modern missions movement was thus grounded
in the solid moorings of God’s grace:
"Andrew
Fuller not only championed the cause of foreign missions
but strongly defended the Doctrines of Grace. The modern
foreign-mission movement was founded upon thoroughgoing
commitment to the absolute sovereignty of God, coupled with
uncompromising insistence upon the full responsibility of
man. "7
"Andrew
Fuller’s work … made perhaps the most notable contribution
towards providing a missionary theology and incentive for
world evangelism in the midst of a people both Calvinistic
and church oriented. He helped to link the earlier Baptists,
whose chief concern was the establishment of ideal New Testament
congregations, with those in the nineteenth century driven
to make the gospel known worldwide. His contribution helped
to guarantee that many of the leading Baptists of the 1800s
would typify evangelism and world missions. Charles Spurgeon
and J.P. Boyce would be fervent evangelical Calvinists …"
8
The
two previous quotes mark what makes Andrew Fuller so very
important. He proved to his peers and Baptists to come that
solid theology and evangelism go hand in hand. For that alone,
we owe him a great debt!
Read
Andrew Fuller and the Sandemanians by Michael Haykin
Hear
a Message by Michael Maykin
on The Gospel Worthy of Acceptation
Return
to Portraits Page
1 Andrew Fuller by Gilbert
Laws, DD., Carney Press: London, 1942, pp. 20-21.
2
ibid., pp. 27-28.
3
ibid., p. 34.
4
The
Baptist Quarterly 15:195-202, 1954, p. 95.
5
Works,
by Andrew Fuller, p. 168.
6
ibid., p. 506.
7 By His Grace and For
His Glory by Thomas J. Nettles, Baker Book House: Grand Rapids,
1986, p. 129.
8
Baptist
Theologians by Timothy George and David S. Dockery, Broadman
Press: Nashville, TN, 1990, pp. 132-133.
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