One of my regular reads about the Middle East and what is happening there is the Middle East Forum (www.meforum.org) with knowledgeable commentators who come from the region and do not have the blinders of far too many occidental commentators.

This article on the utter blunders of the recent Iran War is a really important read:

https://www.meforum.org/mef-online/anatomy-of-a-gamble

Evangelical support that helped secure the election of the current administration of the United States has turned out to have a bizarre twist.

In the peace agreement between the US and Iran, the promise of 300 billion USD to the wicked regime of the mullahs and the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) will enable them to reinforce their hold on Iran and suppress both the gospel and liberty (matters that go to the heart of what I believe as a Christian evangelical) as well as to continue to export violence and terror in the Middle East and indeed worldwide.

It is indeed horrifying to think that my fellow evangelical brothers and sisters who voted for this administration have unwittingly played a critical role in enabling this bizarre turn of affairs that will further the persecution and torture and execution of our brothers and sisters in Iran.

What a mess the world of politics is—as one of my Baptist heroes, Andrew Fuller well knew—see here:

Exciting news regarding a discovery of two new sermons by Augustine in a monastic library in Poland.

The sermons are based on the Old Testament story of the Witch of Endor from the I Samuel.

See here for the story: https://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/news-and-events/einblick/single/news/two-new-sermons-augustine-discovered/

HT: Zak Tharp

I have been teaching at Southern Seminary now since 2002, and full-time since January 2008.

When I first began teaching in the Church History dept. along with Biblical Spirituality, I was surrounded by a cadre of remarkable scholars and colleagues: Tom Nettles, Don Whitney, Greg Wills, Shawn Wright, and David Puckett. In terms of the range of church history, we covered every era of the church except the medieval world: Dr Nettles was a specialist in Baptist history (though he constantly amazed me at his breadth & depth of knowledge in many areas where had never written or published); Dr Wills, who also is an expert in American Baptist history and American church history in general, and is one of the smartest men I know (his article on John Gill’s spirituality that appeared in a collection of articles in a book for the tercentennial of Gill’s birth in 1697 is a tour de force); David Puckett was a Reformation scholar; and Shawn Wright was an expert on the Genevan Reformation but was moving into Puritan studies and is now becoming a leading expert on John Owen; and I was teaching on the Fathers and also English Baptists in the long eighteenth century.

Over the years, we have seen retirements (Dr Nettles and Dr Puckett and Dr Whitney who is now at MBTS), but have added such remarkable scholars as John Wilsey, who is rapidly becoming one of the nation’s leading scholars in studies of American political theology as well as having an expertise in American church history in general; Berry Driver, who is also our head librarian and who teaches our introductory church history courses and Baptist history with southern charm and intellect; Stephen Presley, a fabulous expert in patristics, especially the second and third centuries, but is also able to teach early medieval history; Eric Smith, who is an amazing author of American Baptist biography; Dustin Bruce, whose expertise lies in eighteenth-century Baptist studies and with whom I am working on two volumes of John Owen for the series with Crossway that Shawn Wright is expertly editing with Lee Gatiss; Tyler Flatt, who is at Boyce, but a superb Neo-Latinist and mediavelist; and in Spirituality, what a joy to work with Joe Harrod and Matt Haste, both experts on eighteenth-century piety. Joe has done some tremendous editing in the series of the complete works of Andrew Fuller being published by De Gruyter Brill and Matt has published some really fine work in Baptist marital thought in the eighteenth century as well as a recent volume on Anne Dutton.

Why I have I gone into all of this detail? Because I am convinced that Southern has assembled, under the leadership of Dr Mohler, the finest faculty in church history in the United States, one that covers the entire gamut of church history (one area that we do lack is church history in the Majority World, though having Ayman S. Ibrahim on faculty with his great knowledge of the church in the Islamic world is a tremendous boon and more than adequately fills that area of church history).

To my mind, if you are thinking of doing a PhD in church history in a confessional environment, there is no choice: it is Southern.

PS Of course, I am biased :) But also quite serious. There is no finer PhD in church history in North America than at Southern.

I am a bundle of contradictions. Or should I say a bundle of paradoxes.

I love the monarchy but believe the Irish (my culture through my mother) were right to demand their autonomy in the early 20th century. English involvement in Ireland has been a double-edged sword (no pun intended) with possibly more negative consequences than positive ones. But I am deeply thankful I was born in England under the rule of a queen like Elizabeth II. And yet, I see myself culturally as an Irishman.

I love rock n’roll, but cannot stand worship bands in churches. I much prefer classical congregational singing with but one instrument (the piano) or even acapella. I frequently listen to the Doors, the Stones, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, Cream and Blind Faith (the best band ever) and more modern singers like Natalie Merchant and Samantha Fish, but want limited amounts of modern music in our worship services: why the latter? Because most of what passes for contemporary worship music is drivel. Time till tell: ten, fifteen years from now, 90% of it will be forgotten. How do I know that? Well, 95% of the modern songs that I sang at the beginning of my Christian pilgrimage nobody under the age of 35 knows today or has ever heard. Why not sing what has stood the test of time with a few modern songs?

I am thrilled to be a Canadian, but cannot stand hockey and increasingly dislike our winters. I would not dream of moving anywhere else (unless it were Ireland). I love Canadian parliamentary democracy, but think all of our political parties to be morally bankrupt!

I would love to be a vegetarian because the idea of killing animals for food is disturbing to me. The suffering of animals is a deep concern to me (and I think, also for God: Jonah 4:11 and Romans 8:20-22). Yet, I must admit that I love Chick-fil-A!

I am not ashamed to be a Calvinist and a closed-communion Baptist and a complementarian, but think with such heroes of the Faith as Andrew Fuller, John Ryland, Jr., and Samuel Pearce that I must endeavour with all of my soul to love all who love the Lord Jesus.

I am unequivocally a Baptist, but believe that the Anglican model of worship as embedded in the Book of Common Prayer, generally speaking with a need for various tweaks here and there, to be an ideal pattern of worship. It was a sad day when, in the seventeenth century, the state Church of England weaponized the Book of Common Prayer and alienated Baptists from using such a gem in worship.

I believe Abraham Kuyper was right when he said famously that there is not one square inch of the universe that does not belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. But I think it is a fundamental mistake for pastors to make politics their bread and butter (see my previous posts on Andrew Fuller & political theology).

Yes, I know that there are ways of working all of these issues out, but I feel like a person conflicted: a man of contradictions, to be sure!

In a recent post I cited a remarkable text from a 1798 letter from Andrew Fuller to William Carey—see here:

This text raises some uncomfortable questions for modern proponents that the Church should become a major player in the political world:

1. While admitting that there are times when Christian leaders ought to speak out about political matters—speaking “plain and faithful language to rulers”—speaking prophectically, as it were—is Fuller right or wrong when he says “political changes are matters from wh[ich] it becomes good men in general to stand aloof”? Does he have NT precedent to support this claim?

2. He provides an instance of Huguenot ministers in France getting embroiled in the early days of the French Revolution and then being guillotined during the Terror. He concludes thus: “A body of people under such influence will proceed to measure wh[at] no thinking conscientious mind can keep pace with, however he might approve at the outset. But if he once begin to hesitate & wish to stop, he will be pushed down & may expect to fall a sacrifice.” Is he not saying here, that once you throw your lot in with a political regime, you eventually begin to approve of questionable positions that you would never have countenanced at the beginning of your political involvement” Is he right here both as to the moral compromises that inevitably come with political involvement and that eventually issue in one’s [spiritual or actual] destruction? Why or why not?

3. Is it true that “the far greater number of those who take the lead in great political changes are wicked men” who are using the “colour of patriotism” for “selfish ends”? One will notice here that Fuller did not differentiate between the two major political parties of his day, the Tories and the Whigs. He lumps them all together under the one banner.

4. Is he correct that “the modelling and shaping of a mass of corruption is [not] worth a good man’s time (unless called to it by this country from some other civil post) and much less worth his blood’? The “mass of corruption” is obviously the political and social culture of the UK in Fuller’s day. Why or why not is he right?

5. Fuller was a post-millennialist (see his commentary on Revelation below), yet he could still say, “Time is short.” Too short for a pastor to involve himself deeply in politics. Is this right or wrong? Why or why not?

6. At the close, Fuller appeals to our Lord’s ministry: “Jesus spent his in accomplish[ing] a moral revolution in the hearts of men.” Is he right on this? Should ministers follow our Lord’s example, if he is? Why or why not?

It has come to pass in North America that one can rightly say that not all PhDs are the same. The PhD at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary is true to the model of what a PhD should be: utterly rigorous in a chosen field of specialized study.

Reflect on these essential components of a PhD in Church History at Southern, for example:

• Eight seminars in the chosen field: this is totally necessary since few people entering the PhD (usually with an MDiv) have the academic depth in one given field of research

• The necessity of showing reading competence in two research languages beyond Greek and Hebrew, the latter having been attained in the MDiv—e.g., to do a PhD in Patristics, one needs also Latin and/or Syriac, as well as German and French (this is the minimum in my mind); or in the Reformation, you need Latin, German, and French; etc.

• Four colloquia: where you engage with the key texts, both primary and secondary, in the tradition of the Church

• In turn, these colloquia prepare you for the comprehensive exams, which ought to be extensive enough to adequately test one’s knowledge, both base and advanced, and determine whether or not one can proceed to the thesis stage

• The thesis proposal and then the writing of the thesis, which is to be a distinct contribution to the given field of study.

• Most importantly, you are studying with a cadre of remarkable Christian scholars.

This course of study is not for the faint of heart nor for intellectual dilettantes. It is both an intellectual and spiritual journey that involves training a person for the highest formal academic achievement in the Church’s culture and world. And it is a distinct calling by the Spirit of God.

See this recent promo video on the Southern PhD:

During the months when Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) was making his rise to power in France and before he staged the coup that secured his control of the French government, Andrew Fuller (1754-1815) wrote a detailed letter in January 1798 to William Carey (1761-1834) of the political events transpiring in Europe. It is amazing letter, full of insight into what was happening on the Continent.

He then added the following remarks, which not only capture his views about the nature of politics and how ministers of the gospel need to relate to the political realm, but also sum up the views of most of his contemporaries and indeed the Particular Baptist tradition in the long eighteenth century:

I am more and more convinced that political changes are matters from wh[ich] it becomes good men in general to stand aloof. There may be instances in which they may be required to throw in their weight; instances also in wh[ich] it may be their duty to speak plain and faithful language to rulers; and in all cases where they are called to take sides it ought to be the side of right; but the political world is [a] tumultuous ocean; let those who launch deeply into it take heed lest they be drowned in it. I often feel a painful regret when I think of those Protestant ministers, who left their flocks for a post in the National Convention of France, & fell a sacrifice in the days of Robespierre. Oh, had they but died for Christ! The far greater number of those who take the lead in great political changes are wicked men, and who act under colour of patriotism, but have selfish ends to answer. A body of people under such influence will proceed to measure wh[at] no thinking conscientious mind can keep pace with, however he might approve at the outset. But if he once begin to hesitate & wish to stop, he will be pushed down & may expect to fall a sacrifice. To this I may add, I don’t think that the modelling and shaping of a mass of corruption is worth a good man’s time (unless called to it by this country from some other civil post) and much less worth his blood. Time is short. Jesus spent his in accomplish[ing] a moral revolution in the hearts of men.

This is an incredible text in so many ways and could be fruitfully exegeted along a number of lines.

HT: to Daniel Walessa for drawing my attention to this text.

In this important new work that builds upon and takes stock of Mark Noll’s famous The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, Noll has this to say regarding one characteristic of the modern Evangelical scene:

“We do live in a world where the masters of social media tend to be partisan, populist, conspiracy mongers for whom scholarship, particularly disinterested scholarship, is a dirty word.”

This is so true. And one of the aims of “The Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies” is to offer a better alternative: better both in terms of biblical fidelity and in terms of scholarship.

Personally, I have been long convinced that so many of the elite pundits in universities and the media who essentially decry the West as the worst of all places and guilty of a thousand crimes have it totally wrong when it comes to the perspective of the rest of the world.

If the West is such a moral hell-hole, why are hundreds of thousands of people desperately trying to find asylum on our Western shores?

I have begun reading Maggie O’Farrell’s latest novel, Land. It is tremendous so far, but I am only in the first chapter!

She has a quote from a Gaelic dictionary that serves as a motto, I am guessing for the book: it is the definition of seanchaí, which is Irish Gaelic for “a custodian of tradition” or what we might call “an historian.”

Reading that definition was a reminder to me of my own calling for the Church.

Being a church historian, has never been, for me, simply being a purveyor of interesting historical facts and details that happen to have religious significance. In other words, I have never envisioned my calling to be that of a professor in a religious studies department.

Rather, it is a calling in service to Christ and one that seeks to help Christians know their identity in Christ, for our identity is deeply bound up with the past.

Remembering what the murderous regime of the Chinese Communist Party did in Tiananmen Square in June 1989.

All that these people wanted was liberty:

This banner reads “Liberty of death:”

And the Chinese government gave them death:

“An eyewitness description of seeing six student protesters’ bloodied bodies in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the early morning of June 4, 1989.”

It thus boggles my mind that our Canadian PM and his cabinet approve of doing business with the murderous dictatorship in China.

Karen Swallow Prior’s recent essay on the loss of her dog, “Goodbye Ruby Tuesday,” is both poignant and profound—and one with which I totally agree and empathize!

See here:

The Priory

Goodbye Ruby Tuesday

We said goodbye to our beloved Ruby on Tuesday…

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23 days ago · 39 likes · 8 comments · Karen Swallow Prior

I was not born in this country. I was born in England and grew up there, loving its rich history.

Neither of my parents were born in Canada—nor, for that matter, in England. My father was Kurdish but passed on absolutely nothing of his heritage to me, which has been a matter of some sadness to me. My mother was Irish, and gave me a rich heritage of Irish life and lore. So much so, that my patterns of thought and ethos are quite Irish. So my heritage is Irish with more than a dash of Englishness!

We came to Canada because my father took a position at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He taught there for his whole academic career.

When I first came to Canada, I hated it: the seeming lack of history, the winters, the food (it seemed so sweet compared to that of the UK). If I had known the remarks of Voltaire in Candide (1759) I would have readily endorsed them. There he comments on the Seven Years War between his homeland and the British Empire:

Vous savez que ces deux nations sont en guerre pour quelques arpents de neige vers le Canada, et qu’elles dépensent pour cette belle guerre beaucoup plus que tout le Canada ne vaut.

A few years earlier, in his Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations, his remarks were even more disparaging (and racist to boot):

Le Canada, pays couvert de neiges et de glaces huit mois de l’année, habité par des barbares, des ours et des castors.

Over time, though, I came to love this country with its unique Parliamentary democracy and its Governors General (I am currently reading the book by John Fraser below and relishing it), its unique history (yes, we have a history, a rich one at that) that has intertwined three founding peoples (the First Peoples—though this has not always been a happy story), the French and the British (actually mostly Scots).

And we are not Americans. Once, when we were part of the British Empire—an Empire whose reach and extent were massive—we were part of an imperial project. But, in my opinion, I am thankful that that part of our history is no more. Canada is not an imperial state. And I hope has no pretensions to become one.

Empires are not necessarily bad things, but they do breed hubris—and what we need is humilitas. Living in the shadow of the American Empire, the challenges of imperium are very evident. For me, my Irish roots (which flourished despite living in the shadow of Britain) help me understand what it means to live on the margins of an imperial regime.

And though I love the USA in many ways, I would not give up being Canadian for the world. Indeed, if I were to move anywhere permanently, it would be back to Ireland—again, a life on the margins. I can sympathize with those Celtic monks who lived on places like Skellig Michael!

It thus pains me to hear Albertans talking about separating from this great country. Of course, many of us have issues with this Dominion (a great term!) of Canada, but we are stronger together than withdrawing off into our own little corners.

Here are five short videos I have recorded on the history of friendship in Christianity:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBYvo-sgZFiX3dpVZbvyvTRX7HZRQ8IQo

Of John Thomas (1757‒1801), who accompanied William Carey (1761‒1834) as a missionary to India in 1793, the Baptist historian Ernest Payne once said: “no stranger figure can ever have played an influential role in missionary history.” His friends, like Carey and Andrew Fuller (1754‒1815), noted, both during Thomas’ life and after his death, that his character had a number of glaring faults—he was prone to extreme mood swings, was sometimes easily angered, had little money-sense and was given to impatience.

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Shawn Wilhite’s work on Cyril of Alexandria, which he did for a second PhD at Durham under Lewis Ayres, is about to appear. It is a fabulous study.

Of all of the major Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Cyril was the only one to not have a volume devoted to him in the classic NPNF series.

In the nineteenth century, when that series was conceived and executed, there was a deep bias against Cyril due to his links to the murder of Hypatia. I am sure that that was a key reason why there was not a volume of his selected works.

An historical form of '“cancellation culture.”

Above: Lyn and Erroll Hulse

I have been deeply privileged to know and have as friends some remarkable Christian saints, most of whom are unknown to the wider Evangelical world: Bob Holmes, Bob Shaker, Gary Long, Terry Wolever, Jerry Polach, Eric Lindsay, Bruce Woods, Jacques Alexanian.

But one dear brother who was a dear friend is known worldwide, Erroll Hulse. He played an instrumental role in my writing One heart and one soul as well as Kiffin, Knollys, and Keach.

In an open letter, one that is regularly sent out, the Welsh Gospel minister, Geoffrey Thomas, has this word about Erroll:

Some men have the ability to draw men together, e.g. how brilliant was our dear Erroll Hulse in that grace and under his influence the Yorkshire Fraternal once flourished. How I miss him.

Amen and Amen!

O how we need such men!

One of the most valuable sources for understanding the life and the thought of the British Particular Baptist community during the final decade of the eighteenth century is The Baptist Annual Register that was edited by the London Baptist pastor, John Rippon (1751‒1836), and that eventually comprised four volumes that cover the entire 1790s. These volumes are a potpourri of statistics of Baptists in the British Isles, America, and Europe, various lists of then-recent publications, biographies and obituaries, news items about ordinations, along with sermons preached on those occasions, missionary endeavours, and the circular letters printed annually by various Baptist associations. Rippon especially treasured the circular letters since one of the goals of his volumes was to help Baptists become better acquainted with one another. As he noted with regard to the Baptists in his home county of Devonshire: “We spend half a century, and know not in Devonshire a single circumstance of the churches in Lancashire, nor in Somersetshire or any thing that passes among our connections in Yorkshire.”[1] At least, though, churches within the same association had some knowledge of one another. As he went on to comment: “Indeed, the churches in England, belonging to the same association, obtain a partial knowledge of each other from their annual meetings, which have frequently been crowned, with remarkable tokens of the divine presence; and from their printed letters.” But even then, Rippon was quick to note, “multitudes of our members” only knew about the churches in their particular association.[2] Rippon hoped to rectify all of this ignorance through his Baptist Annual Register. To what degree, he succeeded is beyond the scope of this essay to determine. But what is patent is his appreciation of the local Baptist associations, for he reprinted a score of their annual letters in each volume.

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