Book Review: Fuller and the Search for a Faith Worthy of All Acceptation (The Baptist Quarterly)

This book review was submitted to The Baptist Quarterly.

Andrew Fuller and the Search for a Faith Worthy of All Acceptation: Exploring Fuller’s Soteriology in Its Historical Context by David Mark Rathel, London, T&T CLARK, 2024 179pp., £85 (hb), ISBN 978-0-5677-1361-2

As one of the most influential Baptist leaders in the eighteenth century, Andrew Fuller was pivotal in changing the evangelical temperature of Particular Baptist churches and providing theological impetus for the modern missionary movement. As result, he has unsurprisingly received a recent resurgence of academic interest. This book by David Mark Rathel plays a key role in this theological retrieval, helping us to assess Fuller in his true historical context.

Rathel carefully considers the theological background to The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation. In this work, Fuller sought to distinguish his Evangelical Calvinism from the Hyper Calvinism that was present in many non-conformist churches. There has previously been little research into the nature of this prevailing Hyper Calvinism, or the nuances that existed between its many proponents. By investigating these issues in this new book, based on his PhD work at the University of St Andrews, Rathel identifies the specific system that Fuller opposed and explains why he argued as he did against it.

Throughout the book, Rathel demonstrates Hyper Calvinism to be a complex movement that developed in various streams during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For example, Rathel shows how Tobias Crisp influenced both John Gill and Joseph Hussey to reformulate the eternal covenant and embrace eternal justification. This led them to reject the form of evangelism known as ‘the free offer’. However, a different stream of thought emerged during the Modern Question controversy. According to men like Lewis Wayman, John Brine, and John Johnson, the free offer was instead to be rejected based on their theology of human inability. It was this second stream that Fuller addressed, which explains why he focused on the issue of human ability, and could even quote Gill against the Hyper Calvinists!

This more nuanced understanding not only sheds crucial light on Fuller’s work, but it also lays important groundwork for the retrieval of other key figures. Most notably, Rathel reveals the context for Gill’s theological development. He shows how we must simultaneously connect him with, and yet still distinguish him from, other Hyper Calvinists. As a result, Rathel’s work is certain to play an important role in stoking the slowly developing interest in Gill as well.

Rathel certainly achieves a great deal. However, he also shows how much work is still needed. While he uncovers crucial nuances in the movement’s historical development, there remains little clarity over its true theological boundaries. There is no accepted definition of Hyper Calvinist theology, and Rathel concludes that the state of research in this area is ‘dire’. His survey of current academic work shows that there is significant confusion over what identifies someone as a Hyper Calvinist, with proposals ranging from subscribing to supralapsarianism, believing in eternal justification, rejecting duty faith, and opposing certain evangelistic techniques. Until someone builds on Rathel’s historical work to address this overarching theological ambiguity, there is always the danger that some Evangelical Calvinists will be misunderstood and wrongly associated with the system of ‘False Calvinism’ that Fuller so fiercely opposed.