Theopedia

Andrew Fuller

Overview

Andrew Fuller (1754-1815) was an English Particular Baptist pastor known for his advocacy of the gospel’s free offer to every hearer, against the eighteenth century’s hyper-Calvinism.1 His central argument, developed most fully in The Gospel of Christ Worthy of All Acceptation (1785), held that the gospel obligates its hearers to believe it even though it is not itself a law, against both hyper-Calvinist and Arminian accounts of that obligation. The resulting position, later called Fullerism, was carried forward against a renewed hyper-Calvinism by Charles Spurgeon in the nineteenth century.2

Life and Ministry

Fuller was a Particular Baptist pastor in England from the 1770s until his death in 1815.1 He compiled a memoir of the Baptist minister Samuel Pearce, gathering Pearce’s own letters and writings for publication after Pearce’s death.3

Theological Contribution

Fuller’s defining work is The Gospel of Christ Worthy of All Acceptation: or, the Obligations of Men Fully to Credit, and Cordially to Approve, Whatever God Makes Known (1785).4 There he argued that although the gospel is not technically a law, it still “virtually requires” obedience: he compared it to an embassy that requires rebels to lay down their arms, and appealed to New Testament texts that speak of obeying the gospel (Rom. 1:6).5

The Baptist minister William Button objected that this made the gospel a conditional offer rather than an accomplished peace already settled in the eternal covenant between the Father and the Son.6 Fuller replied that he did not deny the eternal covenant, only that it removed the need for peace to be entered into in time: “I rejoice with him in the doctrines of everlasting love, and the eternal settlements of grace… But as the covenant between the Father and the Son before time does not supersede a believer’s actually covenanting with God in time; so neither… does peace being made by the blood of Christ’s cross, supersede a peace taking place between God and us on our believing.”7

Fuller pressed the same point directly against hyper-Calvinism. In his own description, hyper-Calvinists of his day argued, “It is absurd and cruel to require of any man what is beyond his power to perform,” concluding from texts like John 6:44 that the unregenerate sinner is under no obligation to believe the gospel.8 He located a matching error in Arminianism from the opposite direction: “They are agreed in making the grace of God necessary to the accountableness of sinners with regard to spiritual obedience. The one [hyper-Calvinism] pleads for graceless sinners being free from obligation, the other [Arminianism] admits of obligation but founds it on the notion of universal grace. Both are agreed that where there is no grace there is no duty. But if grace be the ground of obligation, it is no more grace, but debt.”9

Historical Significance

Matthew Barrett credits Fuller with refuting eighteenth-century hyper-Calvinism in his own generation, and describes Spurgeon’s later opposition to a renewed hyper-Calvinism (represented by James Wells) as itself “the Fullerism of Charles H. Spurgeon.”2

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Daniel David Scheiderer, “John Gill: Continuing Baptist Affirmation of the Eternal Covenant,” in “Eternal Covenant: The Trinitarian Shape of an Historic Baptist Doctrine” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2022), 77. ↩ ↩2

  2. Matthew Michael Barrett, “The Scriptural Affirmation of Effectual Calling,” in “Reclaiming Monergism: The Case for Sovereign Grace in Effectual Calling and Regeneration” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011), 129. ↩ ↩2

  3. Scheiderer, “John Gill,” 75. ↩

  4. Andrew Fuller, The Gospel of Christ Worthy of All Acceptation: or, the Obligations of Men Fully to Credit, and Cordially to Approve, Whatever God Makes Known (Northampton, England: printed by T. Dicey, 1785), 57-58, quoted in Scheiderer, “John Gill,” 78. ↩

  5. Scheiderer, “John Gill,” 78. ↩

  6. William Button, Remarks on a Treatise, Entitled, the Gospel of Christ Worthy of All Acceptation… By Andrew Fuller (Printed for J. Buckland, W. Ash, J. Dermer, and J. James, 1785), 49-50, quoted in Scheiderer, “John Gill,” 78. ↩

  7. Andrew Fuller, A Defence of a Treatise, Entitled, The Gospel of Christ Worthy of All Acceptation; Containing a Reply to Mr. Button’s Remarks, and the Observations of Philanthropos (printed by T. Dicey, 1787), 35, quoted in Scheiderer, “John Gill,” 78-79. ↩

  8. Andrew Fuller, The Complete Works of the Reverend Andrew Fuller, ed. Joseph Belcher (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle, 1988), 1:360, 376, quoted in Barrett, “Scriptural Affirmation of Effectual Calling,” 129n153. ↩

  9. Fuller, Works, 2:379, quoted in Barrett, “Scriptural Affirmation of Effectual Calling,” 131n163. ↩