Andrew Fuller

Last night at the annual Desiring God Pastors' Conference, John Piper gave a biographical address on Andrew Fuller:

Holy Faith, Worthy Gospel, World Vision: Andrew Fuller’s Broadsides Against Sandemanianism, Hyper-Calvinism, and Global Unbelief.(audio)

(The manuscript is here.)

Here are some other projects on Fuller in the works:

The Andrew Fuller Works Project is underway. "The aim of this project is to publish a modern critical edition of the entire corpus of Andrew Fuller’s published and unpublished works. It is expected that this edition will comprise at least twelve volumes and take eight to ten years to publish." Volume 1 (pictured to the left) is available from Amazon.com.

Michael Haykin announced last fall that a conference on “Andrew Fuller the Reader” will be held at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, August 27-28, 2007. Topics and speakers include: “The Contemporary significance of Andrew Fuller” (Russell Moore); “Andrew Fuller: Heir of the Reformation” (Jeff Jue); “John Owen’s Influence on Andrew Fuller” (Carl Trueman); and “Jonathan Edwards—Theological Mentor to Andrew Fuller” (Tom Nettles).

The Elephant of Kettering: "This blog serves to increase people's knowledge of one of the greatest Baptist theologians of all time. Andrew Fuller (1754-1815) was an able pastor, theologian, missionary statesman, and godly follower of Jesus Christ. Posts will be made that offer a contribution to the life and thought of Andrew Fuller. This will also be a site dedicated to promoting books, articles, conferences, etc. on Andrew Fuller."

Below are some quotes from Piper's ms:
"The reason I said at the beginning that it is totally possible that Andrew Fuller’s impact on history, by the time Jesus returns, will be far greater and different than it is now, is that there are three volumes of his writings still in print, and he was an unusually brilliant theologian. So quite apart from his influence on the rise of modern missions, his biblical insights may have an impact for good on future generations all out of proportion to his obscure place in the small town of Kettering, England. We will see some of his theological genius as we work our way backward from effect to cause—from his engagement with the new missionary movement to the spiritual life and theology that set it in motion."

"What I will try to do is show how his engagement with Sandemanianism recovered and preserved a kind of vital faith that is essential for missions, and his engagement with Hyper-Calvinism (or what he more often called High Calvinism) recovered and preserved a kind of preaching that is essential for missions. And in both cases, the battle was distinctly exegetical and doctrinal even though the all-important outcomes were deeply experiential and globally practical."

"By his own testimony, John Owen ranks first in his esteem of all the writers that influenced him. “I never met with anything of importance in his writings on which I saw any reason to animadvert; so far from it, that I know of no writer for whom I have so great an esteem. But even if he esteems Owen above all others, almost everyone who studies Fuller’s works agree that Jonathan Edwards was the most decisively influential in helping him break free from his Hyper-Calvinistic roots.”

"The sum of the matter is that Fuller had one great enemy he wanted to defeat—global unbelief in Jesus Christ. He believed that the kingdom of Christ would triumph, and he meant to be an instrument in the conquering of unbelief in India and to the ends of the earth. Standing in the way of that triumph in his generation were false views of justifying faith and false views of gospel preaching. Sandemanianism had ripped the life and power out of faith so that it was powerless in worship and missions. Hyper-Calvinism had muzzled the gospel cry of the Bride (“The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price,” Revelation 22:17). For the sake of the life of the church and the salvation of the nations, Fuller took up the battle for truth."