Some of the early responses to Calvinism have, in a friendly way, wondered why I excluded Baptists like Andrew Fuller, John Gill, and Charles Spurgeon from the narrative — even airbrushing them from the history of Calvinism. I understand some of this complaint since Calvinism is an expansive word that establishes long queues (at venues like the Gospel Coalition) in ways that Lutheranism and Anglicanism do not. A better title would have been Reformed Protestantism: A History but that would have been like calling a book about beer, India Pale Ale, when Budweiser is much more likely to draw a crowd. I admit my book is not about ideas as much as institutions, and specifically which institutions transmitted Calvinist ideas and practices. In that case, the Reformed and Presbyterian (with some room for Puritans and Congregationalists) get the nod. Baptists don’t. Sorry.
At the same time, Baptists should take comfort in the recent global history of Baptist churches by Robert E. Johnson. In fact, because that book was already in print, I felt at more liberty to narrow the field of scrutiny (not to mention that the publisher did not want five volumes but one modestly sized book). There Baptists will find (just checking the search engine at Amazon) references to Spurgeon, Fuller, and Gill, and none to Thomas Chalmers, Abraham Kuyper, Karl Barth, and J. Gresham Machen.
Seems fair and balanced to me.
Old Life 
Tru(eman)ism:
“It is doubtless true that baptists have made very little theological or ecclesiological contribution to Calvinism, being content by and large to plunder the Egyptians (aka Presbyterians and Congregationalists) for their doctrines, their confessions and their church orders”
Meaning they’re posers, cherry pickers, and bandwagon jumpers. And light travelers, theologically speaking.
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CW:It is doubtless true that baptists have made very little theological or ecclesiological contribution to Calvinism,
I thought it was because the Fundies deliberately stopped trying to engage outside their tent, and the Evangelicals tried to play nice-nice with the liberals in the Ivory Tower (and got steamrolled in the process, with a very few exceptions…)
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If anything more is to be said of Andrew Fuller, it should be about the great harm Fuller did to the cause of the gospel (and of “Calvinism”, and baptists). In reaction to Gill’s notion of “eternal justification”, Andrew Fuller denied the legal reality of imputation. Indeed, Fuller ended up in an even worse “realist-union” place than Jonathan Edwards, the Torrances and the Gaffin-Evans-Garcia folk.. Andrew Fuller explicitly denied that the sins of the elect were legally credited to Christ.
Romans 3:25–”Christ Jesus, whom God put forth as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith…”
Andrew Fuller (Works 2, p 499) —: “There would be no propriety in saying of Christ that He is set forth to be an expiatory sacrifice THROUGH FAITH IN HIS BLOOD, because He was a sacrifice for sin prior to the consideration of our believing in Him. The text does not express what Christ WAS as laying down His life , but what He IS in consequence of it.”
Though Andrew Fuller affirmed a definite atonement in a certain sense– that Christ’s death will procure faith for only the elect–Fuller was not willing to say that Christ was only the propitiation for the elect alone. Instead of saying that Christ either already died for all the sins of a sinner or already had not, Andrew Fuller wanted to say instead that Christ died for all sinners in some sense.
Fuller insisted that Christ loved all sinners, but that this love was in many cases ineffectual. (Perhaps it was “covenantal administrative” love but not “substantial” love!)
Fuller denied that Christ propitiated God the Trinity for the sins of any specific person. Rather, Andrew Fuller taught not only that Christ died to make an offer of propitiation to every sinner, but also that Christ loved every sinner.
Conditional sufficiency is subtle doctrine, but Andrew Fuller was a sneaky and subtle man, much like John Wesley, using words like “imputation” in ways designed to confuse baptists who had been taught a different meaning for the word “imputation”.
What does Andrew Fuller accomplish by shifting from what Christ DID back then over there to who Christ Is and what He can do here and now (if the Spirit helps a sinner to take up the offer)?
Andrew Fuller changes the meaning of the propitiatory death of Christ. Thus he ends up with a gospel in common with that of the Arminians. Fuller made Christ’s propitiation to be dependent on the sinner having faith, and then added a “Calvinist” emphasis on the Spirit giving faith by means of regeneration.
With the Socinians, Andrew Fuller ended up putting the emphasis on grace as opposed to justice. The idea that God has already been justly propitiated for a sinner (or not) was no longer to be mention in the “gospel” Fuller wanted preached..
Even though Fuller argued that the only way to be consistent in teaching a definite propitiation (what Christ WAS as laying down his life) is to teach an eternal justification, where the elect only subjectively find out that they were always justified, most of the baptists (for example, Abraham Booth) clearly taught that the elect were not justified apart from faith in the gospel. They taught that the elect (even as children) were born condemned, needing to be justified.
Those who praise Andrew Fuller today are the very same ones who want to skip over the five points and get to something else (“sacrament” or “spirituality”). I myself would be quick to say that there is more to know and to believe than the five points. But not less.
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The best discussion in print on historical (read, dead) baptists’ contribution to theology is by Tom Nettles. The book is entitled By His Grace and For His glory.
Two quick quotations from two of these baptists:
From Booth’s Divine Justice Essential to the Divine Character ( 3:60):
“While cheerfully admitting the sufficiency of Immanuel’s death to have redeemed all mankind, had all the sins of the whole human species been equally imputed to Him, we cannot perceive any solid reason to conclude that his propitiatory sufferings are sufficient for the expiation of sins which he did not bear, or for the redemption of sinners whom he did not represent. For the substitution of Christ, and the imputation of sin to him, are essential to the scriptural doctrine of redemption by our adorable Jesus…
Dagg, (Manual of Theology, p 330): “Some have maintained that, if the atonement of Christ is not general, no sinner can be under obligation to believe in Christ, until he is assured that he is one of the elect. This implies that no sinner is bound to believe what God says, unless he knows that God designs to save him…
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Next they’ll want you to mention New School Presbyterians…
This is how things get out of hand.
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Sounds refreshing! I am currently reading Calvin and the Reformed Tradition by Muller, when I am finished your book is next up. Thanks in advance.
Ginger
.
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I find it disturbing that so many Reformed people do not include Baptists. Especially “reformed” or “Particular” Baptists who have contributed quite a bit to passing on the Reformed faith to subsequent generations. To call us “posers, light jumpers, and cherry pickers” is unkind and ungracious. That said, we don’t have near the contribution that our Presbyterian and Reformed brothers have contributed. Although there has been a recent post by Luke Stamps on John Owen the Baptist? Do take a look. As well as the book by Pascal Denault on the Distinctiveness of Baptist Covenant Theology. I’m not saying John Owen was a baptist because he was a committed Congregationalist. We see his exposition of Hebrews as more in line with the 2nd London Baptists of London’s formulation of Old Covenant (of works) and New Covenant (of grace). The Baptists were already there in 1644/46, they just wanted to echo how they agreed and were indebted to the Westminster divines.
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JD, your name is a dead giveaway. On behalf of all southern presbys I’d like to thank your tribe for perfecting the fried chicken. And I mean that.
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“JD, your name is a dead giveaway. On behalf of all southern presbys I’d like to thank your tribe for perfecting the fried chicken. And I mean that.”
– Classic – Comment of the year.
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Hey, Ginger! Calvin and the Reformed Tradition by Muller… excellent read! I’m now reading Darryl’s book and, I haven’t fallen asleep yet… 😉
Hope all is well with you guys. Cheers!
Jack
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Darryl:
Recommendation: Can you add a “share button” beneath your posts, as a standard feature? This will enable us to “pass the football down field.”
It would help.
You’re right, there are no long queues in the American Anglican world with an interest in Calvinism. The days ofFoxe, Coverdale, Parker, Grindal, Whitgift, Bancroft and Abbot are over, but a few of us in this near-wise extinct species still exist…but it’s lonely. But, who the heck cares? Who gives a rip? It was lonely for Daniel too.
Regards,
Donald Philip Veitch
Camp Lejeune, Jacksonville, NC
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I’d read “India Pale Ale.”
I’d rather drink it.
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Jack, I agree that there is much of value in Muller’s Calvin and the Reformed tradition. But I would urge you to (if possible) read Jonathan Rainbow’s The Will of God and the Cross: An Historical and Theological Study of John Calvin’s Doctrine of Limited Redemption. I don’t think Muller fully understands Rainbow’s thesis about Calvin and the extent/nature debate. It’s not that Rainbow doesn’t understand what the “sufficiency” consensus says. Rather, Rainbow argues that the traditional formula does not address the problem.
Check it out for yourself, Jack. I like how Muller agrees that he was in times past too much influenced by the Barthians (the Torrances, the Calvin vs the Calvinists, etc). I don’t think Rainbow’s reading of history is as marginal as Muller reports. If guilt is “transmitted” to humans by immediate imputation, then in parallel fashion the guilt of elect sinners was imputed to Christ. But the “sufficiency” language does not get to that yes or no…..
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If the engine of Calvinism is soteriology (and not ecclesiology, or its view of paedobaptism or the Supper), the Baptists mentioned in your piece were certainly hard at work in the boiler-room and in this sense handed on Calvinism, ‘doctrinal Calvinism’ as it used to be called. Gill is routinely underestimated, in my experience, it being enough in the eyes of many to dismiss him as a ‘hyper-Calvinist’. I presume that a hyper-x is an x.
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JD, so why are so many Baptists not Calvinistic? That’s one answer that I seldom hear particular Baptists address. It does seem that Calvinism is not essential to being Baptist for most of the people who call themselves Baptist. Granted, Reformed and Presbyterians have instances of members who aren’t Calvinistic. But we have a name for them. Liberal.
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Russian River is one of the best I have imbibed. One rival is Smutty Nose out of New Hampshire.
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Young men warned away from aging curmudgeon DGH by the ‘Manster:
How does one judge that one is growing old? In Britain, it is typically thought to be when the policemen start to look younger. Over here, I have a sneaking suspicion that it is when you read cigar aficionado D. G.Hart and find yourself nodding in agreement. Like admiring Simon Heffer, it is one of those things a young person should never, ever do.
http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2013/08/cigar-smoke-and-mirrors-and-tr.php
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DGH,
We Baptists do separate ourselves theologically. Reformed or Particular Baptists, General Baptists. Free Will Baptists, etc. Much like Reformed & Presbyterian churches, we have our fair share of splinter groups when it comes to theological interpretation. Many Particular Baptists would be of the opinion that any other Baptist is not following a sound interpretation of the Bible nor do they have a firm understanding of Baptist history.
BTW, even if Reformed and Presbyterians won’t let us at the table I am happy, as a Reformed Baptists, to sit on the floor and get some solid scraps from you brothers.
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Sounds like you Baptists need an infallible interpreter.
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Erik,
I would like to think the 2LBCF would help us Baptists sort things out, but a lot of Baptists could care less about what they believe and tend to be hyper-moralists or the lowest common denominator in beliefs.
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dgh: so why are so many Baptists not Calvinistic? That’s one answer that I seldom hear particular Baptists address. It does seem that Calvinism is not essential to being Baptist for most of the people who call themselves Baptist. Granted, Reformed and Presbyterians have instances of members who aren’t Calvinistic. But we have a name for them. Liberal.
mark: It’s mainly for the same reason that so many “Reformed” famous people (elders who have subscribed to the WCF) don’t ever talk about only the sins of the unconditional elect having been imputed to Christ. The reason is that they believe another gospel, which is one conditioned on what God does in the sinner.
To say that “Reformed” people have “instances” is a huge understatement. First, if you count the numbers, most of those who call themselves Reformed are also people you would call “liberals”. Second, even most of the “conservative” folks among the Reformed who believe in the supernatural in the way described by Machen (and liberalism) and Warfield (Plan of Salvation) are not at all committed to the wonderful doctrine of effectual definite atonement. A good deal of these “conservative” folks among the Reformed are also not committed to the idea that water and Supper are God’s sacramental actions. Even less of them are willing to deny that God “wants” to save everybody.
So what does this mean? 1. I am glad when Reformed people don’t attempt to speak for baptists, and when baptists don’t attempt to speak for the Reformed. Most on both sides have not actually read Andrew Fuller, but have been told that he was the good guy to Gill. 2. It seems to me that the most basic difference between the Reformed and the baptists is the southern convention, which has a reputation for being “conservative”, In other words, conservative baptists are Arminians (though they reject the word because of “eternal security”) And the contrast is supposed to be that non-liberal Reformed are truly “Calvinists”.
But I would deconstruct that difference–not only because “believing in” Fox News does not make the SBC “conservative” when it comes to experience vs doctrine, but also because the “non-liberal” Reformed are more open to the Federal Vision than they are to any attempt to think of “covenant” by means of “election”. (Who among you is willing to take the Protestant Reformed seriously?)
But, there is an important difference between Baptists and Reformed, and it’s HISTORY. The Reformed can look back at the Synod of Dordt (1619) and see the clear antithesis stated. Sure, most of them now don’t ever insist on the soteriological antithesis, but it IS back there. It was a good beginning (except for some parts not reformed away). With the Baptists, it’s true that some of them (particular baptists) did not really get their start from the radical reformation. They went from separatist congregationalism to 1642 and 1689, and upgraded along the way with borrowing from the Savoy and WCF.
But anyway you look at it, the “anabaptist confessions” (Dordrect, 1632, for example) are NOT a good beginning. They begin by denying the imputation of Adam’s sin to humanity. I can name several “conservative” Reformed theologians now who do the same (look at Blocher on Original Sin), but when Reformed folks do that they are retreating from a time when they had it right. The anabaptists never had the gospel right.
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John Gill: “internal holiness can never be reckoned the whole righteousness of the law: and though it is a fruit of Christ’s death, it is the work of the Spirit, and is neither the whole, NOR ANY PART OF our justification:Romans 8:4 is to be understood of the righteousness of the law fulfilled by Christ, and imputed to us; Christ has fulfilled the whole righteousness of the law, all the requirements of it; this he has done in the room and stead of his people; and is imputed to them, by virtue of a federal union between him and them, he being the head, and they his members; and the law being fulfilled by him, it is reckoned to them; and hence they are personally, perfectly, and legally justified; and this is the end of Christ’s being sent, of sin being laid on him, and condemned in him. The descriptive character of the persons in Roman 8:4 is the same with that in Romans 8:1.”
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Darryl,
How do you draw the line between “Calvinism” and “Liberalism” (PCUSA, UCC, etc.)?
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White House officials asked Dr. Keller to deliver the sermon at an ecumenical prayer and remembrance service yesterday evening at St. Paul´s Chapel in Lower Manhattan for family members of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks. President Bush and his wife, Laura, would be attending.
The invitation came as a surprise to Dr. Keller, who is pastor of one of the city´s largest Protestant churches but seldom preaches outside his own church. After hesitating because it would mean missing his church´s two Sunday evening services, he accepted. He decided to burrow anew into the difficult question “Why?”
The question is impossible to answer completely, he said in his brief sermon. “We don´t know the reason that God ALLOWS evil and suffering to continue,” he said. “But we know what the reason isn´t. We know what the reason can´t be. It can´t be that God doesn´t love us. Keller cited a passage from the last book of “The Lord of the Rings,” when a character, Sam, awakes thinking all is lost but then sees his friend Gandalf. In his joy, he asks him, “is everything sad going to come untrue?” The answer, Dr. Keller said, is “Yes.”
WCF 3: “God from all eternity did by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will freely ordain whatever comes to pass…By the decree of God, for the manifestation of His glory, some men and angels are predestined unto everlasting life and others foreordained to everlasting death.”
Romans 9:22– “God, desiring to show His wrath and to make known His power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of His glory for vessels of mercy, which He has prepared beforehand for glory.”
Are “new school” Calvinists “liberals”?
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@DanH I had heard that the term liberal as applied to protestant theologians referred to whether a theologian’s exegesis was bound by the confessions. Insofar as one is willing to unilaterally cast off this constraint, one is a liberal (as opposed to a confessionalist). This would make the non-confessional radical reformers “liberal”. This came up in a different context, so I looked around a bit to see where I may have gotten it from without any success. DGH, is there anything to this as far as you know?
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sdb, by that standard the better term might actually be evangelical, as in the opposing spirit to confessionalism is evangelicalism (not liberalism). See “The Lost Soul of American Protestantism.”
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Zrim, yes, I think evangelicalism is a form of theological liberalism – while it may land on orthodox conclusions in some instances, it is by no means guaranteed. I was thinking more in the context of late 18th/early 19th century European theology though. The distinguishing characteristic of liberalism in my estimation is not necessarily (o)rthodoxy, but rather the centrality of fidelity to the confessions and the approach to altering those confessions.
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sdb, when I think Protestant liberalism I think something like Fountain Street Church here in Little Geneva:
http://fountainstreet.org/content/view/2/9/
So when something like the CRC is accused of being liberal, and after spending the last 15 years there and watching the collective shrug given the confessional tradition yet nothing like a full-on embrace of Fountain type liberalism, I think it’s more accurate to say it’s on a trajectory toward broad evangelicalism, which may be a form of liberalism but maybe only in the same sense that Baptists are Reformed, which is to say kind of in some loose sense but not really in any serious way.
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What is “liberalism”?
It has something to do with the idea of progress, that things are better now, but might not stay that way if we don’t….
keep on doing what we are used to doing? !!!
use your free/dumb
see Asad’s the Formation of the Secular
what is “liberalism”?
It is to put ourselves at the mercy of our own decisions.
Stan H—the story that there is no story except the one in which you have to decide….
what is “liberalism”?
joining our church will only cost you money and time, but you can disagree with our confessions all you want
But does being a member of a church with a non-memorialized view of the Supper in reality make people less “liberal”? Since our confession has this theory of “sacrament” with “the church” as a mediator of grace, the people in our church are not “liberal” in the way that baptists are???
I don’t think so.
I agree that “disciple baptism” is also a theory. Baptists mostly don’t have any real gate-keeping. But I have seen enough of Reformed reality to know that a document saying that God does “sacrament” doesn’t really make members of Reformed churches anymore submitted to the law of Christ.
The “Enlightenment” resulted in religion being excluded to what’s “private” It also resulted in modern nation-states replacing the “one true visible church”. To understand Magisterial Reformation churches , one needs to study the boundaries of post-Enlightenment nation-states. No more wars of “religion”, because nationalism is not a “religion’?
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baptist charles stanley on the w bush war: “Loving enemies only applies to individuals. If Saddam Hussein had personally slapped you, you should turn the other cheek. But he has slapped America, and so God is not against war.”
baptist jerry falwell: “You have got to kill the terrorists before the killing stops and I am for the president, chase them all over the world, even if it takes ten years, and blow them all away in the name of name of the Lord.”
baptist mark driscoll: “Jesus is a guy with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make somebody bleed. This is a guy I can worship. I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.”
These baptists were NOT transmitting Calvinism. They DID display an idolatrous love of their country. None have yet been excommunicated ….
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McMark, right. History rules. Reformed and Presbyterians have clearer historical bearings than Baptists (and we didn’t even have a pope — just councils).
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Dan H., you follow the councils. We have conservative councils and liberal councils (sort of like the difference between Pius X and Francis).
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McMark, yes (Jacob I loved, Esau I hated — word).
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Perhaps of interest to readers this thread, is something I just stumbled on. Machen’s review of “Christianity at the Crossroads,” by a prominent Baptist of the time. The article by Machen is entitled, “The Relation of Religion to Science and Philosophy.” I’m still reading, but finding it worth more of my time.
http://journals.ptsem.edu/id/BR1926241/dmd003
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Thanks, AB.
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Continental Reformed, British Reformed, American Reformed.
Ishmael has now been excluded from this magisterial dominion..
I don’t understand why Carl Trueman worries so much about how the world is going.(maybe he has become an old dude.) Chaplain Keller has reassured us that it’s all going to work out and that God loves the world.
“It is not in any sense strange that the world is secular. This is simply to say that the world is the world. It was always secular. There is no greater error than to imagine that this was not the case in the much vaunted Middle Ages.” Karl Barth, CD 4:2, p 668
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Mike – I would like to think the 2LBCF would help us Baptists sort things out, but a lot of Baptists could care less about what they believe and tend to be hyper-moralists or the lowest common denominator in beliefs.
Erik – Most of the Baptists I hang around these days (and I’m surrounded by them) are very much mainstream evangelicals. Ambivalent on election. Upwardly mobile socially. I don’t interact with any cranky or socially marginal Baptists. Most of the Baptists I know will even drink a beer and don’t have “Baptist” in their church names.
http://literatecomments.com/2012/10/05/a-baptist-megachurch-on-the-doctrine-of-election/
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Erik, do you have any literate comments on Tim Keller’s doctrine of election? I mean, he’s not a baptist.
According to Doug Wilson, at least some infants are not at the mercy of their decisions. But then again, these same infants can become non-elect because of failure to obey. Covenant curses are somehow worse than simply being under the wrath of God. Again, not a baptist. And not even a “liberal”, except when it comes to the WCF.
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Mar,
Nope. I’ve never heard or read Keller, although I think I have one of his books somewhere.
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Keller’s apologetic stuff is a bad combination of c.s. lewis and n.t. wright.
m e mcculley
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D.G. Hart
If I may respectfully say, your blog post does not answer any of the valid questions raised by men who deserve a response, but only speaks to those whom you know take your part
without being informed concerning and seriously considering the matter.
The rest of you,
I read through more of what you all have to say than I could bear.
If those of you who tout Calvinism as though it were something which made you more
than you truly are before God, had read more of Calvin, and after having done that
read others more qualified than yourselves to understand him, you’d have that much
less time to banter about compare theological views as you talk about beer or sports.
Thovmas
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Thovmas, if you question is how to spell Thomas or Tom, there’s your answer.
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Wovw Thovmas,
I was unaware that Calvin wrote with such invective. Most of us have read him, but thank you for cutting to the heart of his truve authorial intent. It must really feel good to respond the way you have, being untouched by the depravity of which Calvin wrote.
BTW, how bout them Cubs?
Sincerely,
Unimpressed, now pass me a beer.
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Thomvas, don’t forget the egg in mine and fetch my slippers. Then you can start on your chores.
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Thovmas Van Dyke?
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Erik, not TVD. I checked the ip address. Different location unless Tom is driving across the greatest nation on God’ green earth.
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