‘Great Quotes’ Category

By Evan D. Burns

Andrew Fuller loved to stare long and hard at Scripture in deep meditation and study.  His pastoral methods were marked by providing good food for his flock and by protecting them from contaminated food.  Fuller despised false doctrine, and he was quick to engage those who promoted such error.  One way he protected his flock from confusion and uncertainty was by expounding difficult and seemingly contradictory passages in Scripture.  In a large section in the first volume of his Works called “Passages Apparently Contradictory,” Fuller would take a couple of verses with ostensible contradictions and clarify their coherence having considered each of their historical, literary, and theological contexts.  As he did this for his people, he modeled how ministers today can help their flocks have more confidence in the Word of God and more certainty in its inerrancy, infallibility, and sufficiency.  The Serpent loves to ask, “did God really say….?”  If we, like Fuller, would not rest till we had a satisfactory understanding of how the hard texts fit together, those entrusted to our care would have their eyes opened to wonderful things in God’s law.  “The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple” (Ps 119:130).  The first two conflicting texts in his “Passages Apparently Contradictory” are:

“And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.”—John 5:40.

“No man can come to me except the Father, who hath sent me, draw him….  It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me”

“Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not: and he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father.”—John 6:44, 45, 64, 65.

The following points demonstrate Fuller’s durable cogitation of difficult texts and how he could plainly harmonize without being too complex or too simplistic:

First, There is no way of obtaining eternal life but by Jesus Christ….  Secondly, They that enjoy eternal life must come to Christ for it….  Thirdly, It is the revealed will of Christ that everyone who hears the gospel should come to him for life….  Fourthly, The depravity of human nature is such that no man, of his own accord, will come to Christ for life….  Fifthly, The degree of this depravity is such as that, figuratively speaking, men cannot come to Christ for life….  Sixthly, A conviction of the righteousness of God’s government, of the spirituality and goodness of his law, the evil of sin, our lost condition by nature, and the justice of our condemnation, is necessary in order to our coming to Christ….  Lastly, There is absolute necessity of a special Divine agency in order to our coming to Christ….  Upon the whole, we see from these passages taken together, first, if any man is lost, whom he has to blame for it—himself; secondly, if any man is saved, whom he has to praise for it—God.^[1]

By Evan D. Burns

In a sermon on Proverbs 14:8, Andrew Fuller looked long and hard at the virtue of godly wisdom.  He extracted many helpful principles from this verse, and one of the most insightful comments he made was how to use the Word of God in getting wisdom.  He says that the Word functions in two main ways in teaching us wisdom.  It shows us what the destructive end will be of folly, from which wisdom deters us.  Moreover, he makes an amazing observation about wisdom—the eye of wisdom should not chiefly look to the negative consequence of folly in order to avoid it; rather, the eye of wisdom should zealously fix its sight on Christ who is worthy of its gaze.  Such Christ-enamored wisdom is cultivated through meditation and prayer.

We shall read the oracles of God: the doctrines for belief, and the precepts for practice; and shall thus learn to cleanse our way by taking heed thereto, according to God’s word. It will moreover induce us to guard against the dangers of the way. We shall not be ignorant of Satan’s devices, nor of the numerous temptations to which our age, times, circumstances, and propensities expose us. It will influence us to keep our eye upon the end of the way. A foolish man will go that way in which he finds most company, or can go most at his ease; but wisdom will ask, “What shall I do in the end thereof?” To understand the end of the wrong way will deter; but to keep our eye upon that of the right will attract. Christ himself kept sight of the joy that was set before him. Finally, as holy wisdom possesses the soul with a sense of propriety at all times, and upon all occasions, it is therefore our highest interest to obtain this wisdom, and to cultivate it by reading, meditation, prayer, and every appointed means.^[1]

By Ryan Patrick Hoselton

Christians implore the help of their pastor for a range of reasons—at a range of hours of the night. I know this not because I’m a pastor but because I’m a Christian. But how many requests for help does the average pastor make of his congregation? He likely won’t get many, so he better choose his petitions wisely.

Andrew Fuller (1754-1815) requested the help of his congregation in evangelism. In 1806, he wrote a letter to believers entitled, The Pastor’s Address to His Christian Hearers, Entreating Their Assistance In Promoting the Interest of Christ.[1] He asked for help to promote the gospel, and pastors today can learn from his recruiting methods.

First, he aimed to convince his congregation that evangelism was their mission too, “There is an important difference between Christian ministers and the Christian ministry. The former…exist for your sakes…but the latter, as being the chosen means of extending the Redeemer’s kingdom, is that for which both we and you exist (345-46).” Sharing the gospel is the job description of every Christian. As Nehemiah and Ezra enlisted the help of the Israelites to construct the temple, argued Fuller, so pastors today need believers to build the church (346).

Secondly, Fuller made his congregants aware that their involvement in the Christian mission was necessary for the continuation of churches. People are more willing to participate when they know that they are needed. God uses means to save unbelievers, and the “ordinary way in which the knowledge of God is spread in the world is, by every man saying to his neighbour and to his brother, ‘Know the Lord’ (351).”

Thirdly, Fuller not only entreated their assistance for the mission but he also equipped them for it. Perhaps the reason why many think that their sole duty in evangelism “consisted in sending the [unbelieving] party to the minister” is because they’ve never been trained in evangelism (348). Fuller would not allow his congregants to make this excuse. The chief rule in evangelism, Fuller instructed, was to “point them directly to the Saviour” (349). Merely sharing truths about Christianity without directing the unbeliever to Christ will only mislead him or her to “a resting place short of him (350).” Thus, it is crucial for every believer to “be skilful in the word of righteousness; else you administer false consolation (349).”

To put these principles to use, Fuller suggested three accessible opportunities. First, parents can assist the pastor in evangelism by dialoging with their children about the sermon. Second, Christians should invite their unbelieving friends to the preaching of the Word and discuss it with them. Thirdly, believers’ lives must be walking testimonies to the fruit of the gospel before their neighbors. “Enable us to use strong language when recommending the gospel by its holy and happy effects,” Fuller begged (351).

By Nathan A. Finn

A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure of reading Gordon Wood’s fine book The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History (Penguin, 2008). The book is a collection of Wood’s published review essays of significant historical books written by others, most of which deal with American history during the Colonial Era and the Early Republic. It is a gem of a book.

In his introduction, Wood warns against the temptation toward presentism that is so common among so many historians.

But the present should not be the criterion for what we find in the past. Our perceptions and explanations of the past should not be directly shaped by the issues and problems of our own time. The best and most serious historians have come to know that, even when their original impulse to write history came from a pressing present problem. The best and most sophisticated histories of slavery and the best and most sophisticated histories of women soon broke loose from the immediate demands of the present and have sought to portray the past in its own context with all its complexity.

The more we study the events and situations in the past, the more complicated and complex we find them to be. The impulse of the best historians is always to penetrate ever more deeply into the circumstances of the past and to explain the complicated context of past events. The past in the hands of expert historians becomes a different world, a complicated world that requires considerable historical imagination to recover with any degree of accuracy. The complexity that we find in that different world comes with the realization that the participants were limited by forces that they did not understand or were even aware of—forces such as demographic movements, economic developments, or large-scale cultural patterns. The drama, indeed the tragedy, of history comes from our understanding the tension that existed between the conscious wills and intentions of the participants in the past and the underlying conditions that constrained their actions and shaped their future.

See Gordon S. Wood, The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History (Penguin, 2008), pp. 10–11.

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Nathan A. Finn is associate professor of historical theology and Baptist Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also an elder at First Baptist Church of Durham, NC and a senior fellow of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies.

By Dustin Bruce

Hearing bits of anecdotal family history is one of the most interesting parts of holiday gatherings. When aspects of family history intersect with theological concepts, I find them even more fascinating. Recently I enjoyed learning of the Sabbatarian practices my grandparents experienced as children in the early twentieth-century rural south.

Growing up in a devout Baptist family, my grandfather was not allowed to work or attend any worldly amusements on the Lord’s Day. Slight exceptions were made to allow for some cooking and feeding of animals. Work was not allowed, but the Sabbath was not to be spent frivolously. Fishing and hunting, common pastimes in rural Alabama, were simply out of the question. 

It is interesting to note how quickly the practice of keeping the Lord’s Day has faded from the church culture. Area churches that would have encouraged Sabbath keeping just 70 years ago likely have no current members who give the concept much thought. The shift away from Sabbatarianism has been so swift and decisive that my grandfather’s childhood experience in this area more closely resembles that of Andrew Fuller’s than my own.

In an 1805 letter to a friend, Fuller defends the practice of keeping the Lord’s Day. Responding to doubts as to its observance, Fuller asks, “If the keeping of a Sabbath to God were not in all ages binding, why is it introduced in the moral law, and founded upon God’s resting from his works. If it were merely a Jewish ceremonial, why do we read of time being divided by weeks before the law?”^[1]Fuller possessed a theological conviction that compelled him to set apart the Sabbath as a holy day to the Lord. He instructs, “The first day then ought to be kept as the Lord’s own day, and we ought not to think our own thoughts, converse on our own affairs, nor follow our own business on it.^”

One wonders if Fuller first learned this Sabbatarian practice as a child growing up in the home of Particular Baptist parents. Like my grandfather’s mother, Fuller’s mother may have prevented him from hunting or fishing or attending to other worldly amusements, setting an early example of keeping the Lord’s Day.

Anecdotal family history is interesting, but should also be instructive. Like other types of history, learning of the religious beliefs and practices of those who form my family tree should cause me to reflect on whether I am being more or less faithful in my Christian walk. Feel free to share any interesting examples of your family’s religious history in the comments below.

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Dustin Bruce lives in Louisville, KY where he is pursuing a ThM in Church History at Southern Seminary. He is a graduate of Auburn University and Southwestern Seminary. Dustin and his wife, Whitney, originally hail from Alabama.

 By Nathan A. Finn

Historians are often asked to be prophets. In my classes at Southeastern Seminary, hardly a week goes by that one or more students don’t ask me to speculate about how the past might influence the future. This phenomenon is even more pronounced when I teach on church history in local churches. It is most common, both in class and in the church, when I teach on Baptist history. Many folks suppose that being relatively learned in Baptist history means that one is able to discern what will happen in the future. That might be true of Michael Haykin or Lloyd Harsch or Jason Duesing or Jim Patterson, but not this historian.

Recently, I was reading George Nash’s fine book Reappraising the Right: The Past and Future of American Conservatism (ISI Books, 2009). Nash has spent his career studying the conservative intellectual movement in modern America (see his landmark monograph on this topic). Apparently, historians of conservative intellectual history are similar to historians of Christian thought when it comes to requests for one don the prophetic mantle. I like what Nash writes in the introduction to Reappraising the Right.

“Historians are not necessarily good prognosticators, but by deliberately taking a longer view we can try to liberate our readers from the provincialism of the present” (p. xviii).

Now we’re talking. I have no idea if the Cooperative Program will go the way of the buffalo, if the SBC will divide on account of soteriological debates, if the Convention will become less southern and southwestern in its cultural ethos over the next generation, or who will be the next president of such-and-such theological seminary or mission board or other denominational agency (to mention but a few of the questions about which I’m regularly asked to prophesy). I’m a historian, not a prophet.

However, I do know that history reminds us to take the long view on each of these issues. The Cooperative Program has only been around for about half of Southern Baptist history and took a generation to catch on after its inception. Though critically important and worthy of our generous support, the CP is not intrinsic to our identity. The relative center of Southern Baptist soteriology has shifted over time because of a variety of factors, some of them non-theological in nature. Besides, its rather difficult to tell to what degree grassroots Southern Baptists have been in step with the relatively small handful of SBC leaders writing on soteriology at any given point in SBC history. The contemporary SBC is far less southern and southwestern (and Caucasian) than it was two generations ago, even if this isn’t entirely clear at the SBC Annual Meeting. But then the Convention is also more age diverse than is evident at the SBC Annual Meeting. As for denominational ministry presidents and other leaders, you simply never know when someone might retire (or not) and who will arise as a good candidate in such kairos moments. Nobody would have guessed in 1975 that Paige Patterson would become the president of not one but two SBC seminaries, to give but one example.

Historians aren’t prophets, and they shouldn’t pretend to be. But historians have something to offer our students and ministry colleagues as we ponder the great questions of our day. That something isn’t some infallible or even possible future, but rather historical perspective. And maybe, just maybe, if we inject a bit more historical perspective into our discussions of said great questions, such conversations might prove to be more profitable (though not prophet-able) than they so often are.

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Nathan A. Finn is associate professor of historical theology and Baptist Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also an elder at First Baptist Church of Durham, NC and a senior fellow of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies.

By Nathan A. Finn

Robert Hall Sr. is hardly a household name among contemporary Baptists, but I think he ought to be. He played a critical role in pushing back against the hyper-Calvinism that deadened much of Particular Baptist life during the middle decades of the eighteenth century. He also significantly influenced a group of younger pastors who later succeeded him in fame and influence, including Andrew Fuller, John Ryland Jr., and William Carey.

One of Hall’s early biographers was J.W. Morris, who also wrote a biography of Fuller. Morris wrote a paragraph in his biography that I believe perfectly summarizes the life and influence of Robert Hall Sr.

With Hall originated the disposition to examine into the inordinate pretensions of Hypercalvinism [sic], which had long passed as the undoubted test of orthodoxy, particularly in the baptist [sic] connection, where [John] Gill and [John] Brine had been considered as the true conservators of the doctrines of grace. The rural pastor at Arnsby broke the spell, and awakening a spirit of enquiry, which gradually effected the revival of those primitive principles, which gave new life and energy to the ministry of his brethren, and prepared the way for the Mission to the East. He gathered around him all the talent that existed in the neighbourhood, gave an impulse and a direction to religious sentiment and feeling, and a distinguished eminence to that part of the denomination to which he more immediately belonged. Others moved in a wider sphere, and were engaged in more active services, but wisdom and prudence dwelt with him, and all their activities were stimulated and guided by his counsels.

See J.W. Morris, “Memoir of the Rev. Robert Hall, Arnsby, Leicestershire,” in The Complete Works of the Late Rev. Robert Hall, ed. J.W. Morris (London: W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1828), p. 38.

I’m on a mission to re-acquaint contemporary Baptists with Robert Hall Sr. If you want to know more about him, check out the audio from my lecture “Robert Hall Sr.: Andrew Fuller’s Mentor,” which I delivered at the 2012 annual conference of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. If you want to read Hall’s most important writing, check out the new edition of Help to Zion’s Travellers (BorderStone, 2011), which I edited and for which I wrote an introductory essay. Help to Zion’s Travellers was an early broadside against hyper-Calvinism and a key document in helping to pave the way for the evangelical renewal of the Particular Baptists in the waning years of the eighteenth century.

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Nathan A. Finn is associate professor of historical theology and Baptist Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also an elder at First Baptist Church of Durham, NC and a senior fellow of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies.

By Dustin Bruce

Gospel preachers are prone to developing a lazy eye when it comes to viewing the present in light of eternity. In a sermon entitled, “How We Should Eye Eternity, That It May Influence Us In All We Do,” the Puritan pastor, Thomas Doolittle (1630­–1707) offers a special word to ministers:

When we are to preach to people that must live forever in heaven or hell, with God or devils; and our very preaching is the means appointed by God to fit men for an everlasting state: when we stand and view some hundreds of persons before us, and think, “All these are going to eternity: now we see them, and they see us; but after a little while they shall see us no more in our pulpits, nor we them in their pews… It may be, some of these are hearing their last sermon, making their last public prayers, keeping their last Sabbath; and before we come to preach again, might be gone into another world:” if we had but a firm belief of eternity ourselves, and a real lively sense of the mortality of their bodies and our own…how pathetically should we plead with them, plentifully weep over them, fervently pray for them; that our words, or rather the word of the eternal God, might have effectual operation on their hearts!

Doolittle mentions several ways maintaining an eye on eternity impacts a gospel minister:

First, eyeing eternity leads preachers to be “painful and diligent” in sermon preparation. He elaborates, “Idleness in a shop-keeper is a sin, but much more in a minister; in a trader, much more in a preacher.”

Second, eyeing eternity provokes preachers “into declaring the whole counsel of God.” Doolittle means that preachers should not hesitate to tell men of their sin and evils for fear of offense. Preachers with an eye upon eternity provoke the consciences of men for the gospel so as to say with Paul, “I am pure from the blood of all men.”

Third, eyeing eternity leads preachers to “be plain in speech.” A minister of the gospel must avoid starving those he pretends to feed by the use of lofty expressions. What a tragedy to have some condemned for eternity “because the learned preacher would not stoop to speak…of eternal matters in language that they might have understood.”

Finally, eyeing eternity leads pastors to raise up a new generation of gospel ministers. Doolittle emphasizes, “Those that are now engaged in the work, will shortly be all silenced by death and dust; and how desirable is it that your children and posterity should see and hear others preaching in their room!”

Eyeing eternity carries “influence in all we do.” While this is true for all believers, perhaps it is doubly so for the minister. Preacher, “do ye, while ye are in time, eye eternity in all you do?”

Note: Thomas Doolittle was born in Kidderminster, Worcestershire and experienced conversion under the preaching of Richard Baxter. The actual sermon series used for Doolittle’s conversion would later be published as The Saints Everlasting (1653). Doolittle graduated from Pembroke Hall, Camdridge with a B.A. (1653) and Master’s (1656) and became a noted pastor to St. Alfege, London Wall, until his ejection from the Church of England in 1662. Doolittle then founded the Pioneer Noncomformist Academy, which operated for 35 years and influenced hundreds of students, including Matthew Henry and Edmund Calamy. The resilient nonconformist faced a lifetime of persecution and became the final ejected minister to enter into glory (Joel R. Beeke and Randall J. Pederson, Meet the Puritans [Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2006], 180–183).

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Dustin Bruce lives in Louisville, KY where he is pursuing a ThM in Church History at Southern Seminary. He is a graduate of Auburn University and Southwestern Seminary. Dustin and his wife, Whitney, originally hail from Alabama.

I am a firm believer in the fact that Christians should be involved in the political realm. Not the Church per se, but individual believers.

One of the reasons Christian shun this realm—though do they not often mightily complain about it?—is because of the stumbling-blocks in the whole sphere of politics. This is nothing new.

Here is a letter from the Welsh Baptist Benjamin Davies, the one-time Principal of Canada Baptist College in Montreal, writing from London, England, in the 1840s  to his good friend John Gilmour, the Scottish Baptist then resident in Canada, and who was such a force for good on the Canadian scene.

Davies has been complaining about the British political scene of his day—1845—and then he observes:

“Is it vain for us to expect honest and sterling principle in political men? It seems a desperate case, at least in the present day.”

Not much has changed in this regard, it seems. Oh, for politicians who truly love justice and right and righteousness—and not adulation and power.

In his State of Religion among The Protestant Dissenters in Virginia (Boston, 1751), Samuel Davies helps us understand what friendship meant for some eighteenth-century Evangelicals. He is talking about the aim of this tract, and what he will and will not communicate to his readers. He notes: “I have always tho’t it an Instance of Imprudence pregnant with mischievous Consequences, when Persons in such Cases unbosom themselves to Mankind in general, with the unguarded liberties of intimate Friendship.” (p.4). How did Samuel Davies understand friendship? It was a context in which “intimate” friends could share completely and fully with one another—unbosoming themselves to one another with complete liberty. But such was not for public consumption.

It occurs to me that, there is wisdom here for how one ought to conduct oneself with regard to social media.