Southern Baptist Theology in the Late Twentieth Century
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 54, No. 2 – Spring 2012
Managing Editor: Malcolm B. Yarnell III
By Raymond Arthur Coppenger. Ontario: Joshua, 2009. 180 pages. Paperback, $19.99.
Due to the prominence of Baptists like Andrew Fuller and William Carey, the legacy of Particular Baptist Abraham Booth (1734–1806) has gone practically unnoticed. However, Raymond Coppenger’s work on Booth rightly draws attention to a man who changed Baptist life, whether it be on issues of slavery, Calvinism, the Lord’s Supper, or denominational affairs. As Coppenger demonstrates, no Baptists can be compared to Booth when it comes to the influence he had in contributing to the spiritual awakening of England.
As the title of Coppenger’s work reveals, Booth’s life fell within the context of the debates between the General and Particular Baptists. Booth began as a General Baptist and his early Arminian convictions came to fruition in his first publication, On Absolute Predestination, where he defended the doctrine of universal redemption. Nevertheless, Booth would later come to call his work theologically despicable and detestable, “an impotent attack on the honour of divine grace” and a “bold opposition to the sovereignty of God” (26). Booth’s change of doctrinal conviction from Arminianism to Calvinism manifested itself most famously in his work The Reign of Grace (1768). As a Calvinist Booth accepted a call to pastor Little Prescott Street Baptist Church, which was the oldest and strongest Particular Baptist church in the world during Booth’s lifetime. As a pastor, Booth not only dedicated himself to the affairs of his church and denomination—as exemplified in his opposition to open communion advocates Robert Hall, Daniel Turner, and John Ryland,—but Booth also concerned himself with social problems, most importantly the abolition of slavery. Though the eradication of the slave trade was slow, Booth and his congregation took tremendous strides to abolish the slave trade by making generous donations towards the expenses needed to petition Parliament. Not only was Booth on the forefront of the abolition of the slave trade, but he was a major supporter of Baptist mission endeavors, particularly that of Andrew Fuller and William Carey. As Coppenger observes, it was Booth who first supported the Baptist Missionary Society in London. Perhaps one of Booth’s most unexpected influences on Baptist foreign missions came when Adoniram Judson read Booth’s Paedobaptism Examined on his way to the mission field and became America’s first Baptist foreign missionary. In the end, Booth’s impact on foreign missions is immeasurable and is yet another example of the harmony that exists between Calvinism and evangelistic zeal for the lost.
One of the strengths of Coppenger’s work is the emphasis he puts on Booth’s passionate affirmation of the “doctrines of grace.” In The Reign of Grace, Booth seeks to demonstrate from the Scriptures the sovereignty of God in salvation. Yet, Booth did not fall prey to the errors of hyper-Calvinism and the Antinomianism that so often accompanied it. Nevertheless, Booth was a moderate Calvinist, for as Coppenger explains, Booth and Fuller disagreed on the precise application of grace. “Booth went so far as to say that if regeneration precedes believing, men would be in a safe state without coming to Christ” (82). Fuller, however, believed Booth to have confused the warrant to come to Christ with the act of actually coming. “Fuller held that a sinner may have a warrant to come to Christ, but if he is unwilling to exercise it, he cannot receive eternal life in his state of unwillingness” (83). Such fine distinctions became manifested on the issue of the extent of the atonement as well. Nonetheless, though Booth and Fuller disagreed, they remained in general agreement on the basic tenents of Calvinism that held the Particular Baptists together.
If there is one weakness to Coppenger’s work, it is the haziness in which he defines hyper-Calvinism. Coppenger observes that Booth was supralapsarian (the decree of election is logically prior to the decree to permit the fall) and Coppenger concludes from this that Booth gave way to hyper-Calvinism (91). However, historically and theologically, supralapsarianism is not synonymous with hyper-Calvinism, nor does the latter necessarily follow from the former. Hyper-Calvinism has typically been characterized by those who accept fatalism and consequently see no reason to evangelize for God will save whom he will save anyway. However, historically Calvinists of the supralapsarian type have rejected fatalism and wholeheartedly affirmed evangelism and missions as God’s foreordained means to his predestined ends. Coppenger errs in defining hyper-Calvinism as über-Calvinism instead of a pseudo-Calvinism which draws the inference from God’s sovereignty that there is no need for missions. Therefore, to equate the two is neither historically nor theologically accurate.
Coppenger has provided contemporary Baptists with an outstanding treatment of the life and theology of Abraham Booth. Booth’s theology was not only staunchly orthodox but characterized by Calvinism’s emphasis on the sovereignty of grace. Thanks to Booth the “grace of God, the doctrine proclaimed so ably by Abraham Booth, is reigning again in modern theological thought” (133).
