Austin Robert Walker granted a D.D. by Toronto Baptist Seminary

Below is the text that was read by Pastor Carl Muller immediately prior to the formal granting of the degree of D.D. to Pastor Austin Walker

Austin Robert Walker had an Honours B.A. degree in Geography from the University of Aberystwyth, Wales, and a Post-Graduate Certificate of Education, from the same university when he made the decision in 1968 to cross the Atlantic to study for a Bachelor of Divinity degree (now equivalent to a Masters of Theology) at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. At Westminster, Austin studied under some of the foremost Reformed scholars of the day—a veritable powerhouse of biblical and orthodox scholarship: Edmund Clowney, who was the president, Cornelius van Til who taught taught apologetics and systematic theology, Richard B. Gaffin Jr., who taught New Testament studies, and Paul Woolley, the professor of church history.

Upon his return to England in 1971, he was a geography and history teacher for a year at Warden Park School, Cuckfield, Sussex, and then, from 1972 to 1978, he taught at Holy Trinity Church of England Comprehensive School, in Crawley, Sussex. It was during this time as a geography teacher that he also began planting Crawley Reformed Baptist Church.

He was set apart as an elder in 1975 when the church was duly constituted, and four years later he was called to be the church’s fulltime pastor. In the 1990s the church relocated within Crawley and became known as Maidenbower Baptist Church, Crawley. And from 2004 onwards, Austin co-pastored with his son, Jeremy Walker. In March of 2018, he retired and relocated to Derby where he is currently a member of Castlefields Church, Derby. It needs to be stressed that Austin’s dear wife Mai, who regretfully cannot be with him this evening, has been an essential helper alongside him throughout all of these spheres of ministry.

In the late 1990s, Austin began working on what has become the definitive biography of the leading Particular, that is, Calvinistic, Baptist theologian of the late seventeenth century, namely, Benjamin Keach. Despite Keach’s utterly vital importance as the theologian of the Calvinistic Baptist community in the British Isles from the 1680s till his death in 1704, there was no real biography of his life. Austin’s biography, The Excellent Benjamin Keach, the first edition of which appeared in the three-hundredth anniversary year of Keach’s death, namely 2004, filled this void fabulously. It was based on a robust examination of Keach’s entire corpus of written work as well as an extensive study of Keach’s seventeenth-century world. A second, fully revised edition from Joshua Press (now H&E Publishing) appeared in 2015, and a Spanish translation came out last year. Subsequent to this biography, Austin went on to write a number of academic articles on Keach as well as a new study of this Baptist leader entitled Hot Water: the dispute between William Burkitt and Benjamin Keach and the relevance of believers’ baptism for today that just came out this year from Broken Wharfe press.

Also appearing this year has been Austin’s study of the celebrity Baptist preacher Robert Hall, Jr. Entitled The Theology of Robert Hall Jr.: The Undermining of Calvinism among the English Particular Baptists, the work is solidly grounded upon Austin’s detailed reading of Hall’s sermonic corpus and his correspondence. This important monograph, which has been published by H&E Academic, demonstrates the way that Hall, as celebrated in his day as C.H. Spurgeon would later be in his, was a key player in the decline of Calvinism in the mid- nineteenth-century Particular Baptist churches of England.

On the basis of this first-class academic work over the past twenty years, Toronto Baptist Seminary is pleased to award Austin Robert Walker the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity.