I just saw this awesome post about including mobility aids in fantasy writing, and I do not want to create a tangent but I *do* want to share some things I learned about disability in ancient Greece when I was researching that paper I wrote on the Philoctetes, so I am making my own post.

Philoctetes is a mythical figure who was one of the Greek heroes going to the Trojan war. Before they got there, he suffered a wound in the foot which would not heal. The other Greek leaders were unwilling to have the noise of his screams and the stench of the infected wound in their camp, so they abandoned him on a deserted island with only his famous weapon, the Bow of Heracles. He survived there for ten years. Now the war is almost over, Troy has almost fallen, but the Greeks have heard a prophecy: they cannot win until they have the Bow of Heracles. So wily Odysseus and young Neoptolemus (the son of the recently dead Achilles) go to the island where Philoctetes is still living, still dealing with his injury. Philoctetes is eager to escape the island, but can he trust the community that abandoned him ten years ago? Can they ever make right what they did to him?

Now that’s the type of story that someone might very well point to who was arguing that disabled people have to be neglected and excluded in a “historically accurate” story. And it’s definitely not an example of casual inclusion. But what that person would be missing is that Philoctetes’ abandonment and isolation in this play was intended to be shocking to its Athenian audience. The audience is invited to identify with Philoctetes and to be horrified at how he does not receive the support from his community that real-world people with similar disabilities did receive, as we can tell from both textual and archaeological evidence.

Martha L. Rose’s book The Staff of Oedipus: Transforming Disability in Ancient Greece emphasizes this. Look, here’s what I wrote in my paper, why should I rewrite it:

Rose approaches her material “though the lens of disability studies, which approaches the phenomenon of disability by assuming that there is nothing inherently wrong with the disabled body and that the reaction of a society to the disabled body is neither predictable nor immutable” (1). In other words, it is necessary to see what attitudes and assumptions about disabilities are actually recorded, rather than projecting any of our own assumptions. ...

Also unlike today, Greek concepts of disability were not medicalized. “Permanent physical disability,” writes Rose, “was not the concern of doctors in antiquity beyond recognition of incurability” (11). This does not mean that disabled people had no resources or were simply left to perish, of course. Rather, they were often cared for within their households and their communities (28), which means that both Philoctetes’ abandonment and isolation form a shocking exception to the norm. The importance of community support suggests that Philoctetes’ joy at being reunited with humanity comes from practical as well as emotional needs. At the same time, the wide range of tasks and trades in the Greek economy meant that many disabled people were far from economically dependent (think of [the god] Hephaestus the lame smith), so that “[a] physically handicapped person earning a living would not have been a remarkable sight” (39). People unable to walk at all rode donkeys or were carried in litters, while those who walked with difficulty used a staff or a crutch (24-26).

So for writers: the ancient Greeks didn’t invent the wheelchair--but they had the wheel technology (I suspect the issue may have been with roads and pavements instead), so your Greek-inspired fantasy world totally can (which was the point of that earlier post). Or maybe your protagonist goes on their adventures with a faithful donkey sidekick that helps them get around. Maybe they are respected for their skill in a craft, making their home and workshop a lively meeting-place for customers. If you’re writing fantasy, you could be inspired by one of the myths of Hephaestus, in which he creates metal automatons--basically, magic robots--that not only support him as he walks, they also act as assistants in his workshop!

Anyway, the point of this post is basically just that I agree with the other post about including mobility aids in fantasy and I had some relevant knowledge in the back of my head. And also that you should read the Philoctetes. Look, here’s a recent free modern English verse translation: https://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/sophocles/philocteteshtml.html

Oh, and if you would like to see my term paper or the relevant section from The Staff of Oedipus, message me, I will share them.

Chapter 36: Burning Riddles

Becoming The Mask

It was weird, seeing Mr Strickler in Trollmarket.

Darci got that he was secretly a troll as well, like Jim or Not Enrique. But she was so used to only seeing him at school, and so used to not seeing other (supposed) humans in Trollmarket, that this felt like that time in second grade when she'd first seen a teacher at the grocery store. Or like seeing a lifeguard wearing clothes instead of a swimsuit.

"The Triumbric Stones," he said, unknowingly reiterating what Blinky had told them before Strickler arrived, "refer to three stones magically intertwined with Gunmar's life force. They can supposedly be forged together into the only weapon capable of slaying him. A troll scholar by the name of Bodus –"

"The Dishonorable Bodus," Blinky corrected. Strickler gave him the same look he gave students who interrupted him in class. Blinky, to whom Strickler could not assign detention, seemed unphased.

"The Dishonorable Bodus, then, discovered where these stones had been hidden. Naturally Gunmar's forces hunted down Bodus and his pupils and destroyed any copies we could find of his work. But here is where the scholar proved himself to be particularly clever. Rather than writing down the path to the Triumbric Stones directly, or even in cipher, he magically concealed a message within his Final Testament … a message which reveals itself when the book is burned."

Blinky and Jim both gasped, with very different facial expressions.

"Like how The Book of Ga-Huel can update itself?" Jim asked.

"Not quite. The Final Testament of Bodus is completely destroyed in the process, not merely altered. The message embeds itself into whichever surface on which the burning occurs."

"And how do you know this?" demanded Blinky, clutching a book to his chest with all four hands. "You stood idly by and allowed knowledge to be desecrated?"

"Obviously I was the one ordered to destroy the books. Only a deeply foolish Changeling would risk accusations of treason by reporting to a superior that they'd seen a way to destroy Gunmar."

Strickler and Jim both looked at the petrified severed head Toby had been poking at earlier. Darci wasn't sure if Strickler shuddered or he was just shaking himself to get back on topic.

"Defiler!" Blinky roard. Even AAARRRGGHH's gentle hug – oh, he was lifting Blinky right into the air, maybe he was actually holding him back from attacking – didn't calm him down. "Book burner! You – this is a grave injustice! A loss perhaps on par with the Library of Alexandria!"

It was not an appropriate moment to laugh. Darci, Mary, Claire, Toby, and Jim all made sounds of amusement anyway. Mr Strickler drew himself up and began the same speech he'd given them at the start of their unit on the Crusades.

"The loss of a centralized bastion of knowledge such as Alexandria was considerable. It was not as extreme as popularly portrayed. The majority of collected volumes were copies of books that existed elsewhere. The libraries of Islamic nations were vital in preserving ancient knowledge over the centuries –"

Jim cleared his throat. Blinky had settled, and AAARRRGGHH had set the smaller troll back on his feet. Strickler deflated.

"I took no pleasure in it, I assure you. Fortunately, the method of concealment meant it was not a security risk to transcribe the text into an unenchanted volume before destroying the originals."

"And the secret message?" said Mary. "I'm guessing that would've been a security risk to keep around."

"Indeed. But as it was thoughtfully composed in rhyme, it was a simple matter to memorize it." Strickler and Jim held weirdly-significant-feeling eye contact. "Entirely as a precaution. In the event that someone else found another copy, we would need to know what they learned."

"Of course," his fellow Changeling agreed.

"So what's the rhyme?" pressed Claire.

"In darkest tide, when daylight darest wane," Strickler recited, "the Myrddin Wylt obscured a shadow's bane. Three forces elemental thou must seek, in marshland, caverns deep, and mountain's peak. Where worthy perish, ye'll prevail in night, and eclipse all who quarry with thy might."

"Okay, I have several questions," said Toby. "One, after all that, it's still a riddle? Two, what's a medi-fred wench? Three, anyone else a little freaked out by this 'evil parish' we're forming?"

"That's not what he said, Tobes."

"Myrddin was one of the earlier recorded names of Merlin," said Strickler. "There has since been some speculation as to whether it was in fact a title, akin to, say, Archbishop, raising the possibility that the legends actually refer to several different men. After the Norman conquest of Britain in 1066, the nobility spoke French, and Merlin was renamed after the species of falcon. It was presumably difficult to take seriously a figure whose name was a false cognate of the invective merde."

Darci would not call herself fluent in French, but before and during her family's trip to Paris, she had learned enough of the language to laugh now. She hastily muffled it behind her hand, so all that got out was "Pffthmmhm!"

"Daylight probably refers to Jim's sword," said Claire. "Or, well, the Trollhunter's sword. You said that couldn't hurt him," speaking half to Jim, half to Blinky.

"Using fading sunlight symbolise loss of hope is more of a human thing," Jim agreed.

"And the next couplet, that's where the stones are hidden." Claire was starting to grin. "In marshland, caverns deep, and mountain's peak."

"So we just need to find out which marsh, cave and mountain these stones are in?" Darci hated to rain on Claire's parade, but … "Simple enough. That's only, oh, about a third of the world to search."

"We already have one, which means we can skip the caverns." Mr Strickler took his favourite pen out of his jacket and toyed with it. "The Janus Order … recovered Gunmar's Eye, some centuries ago."

For some reason he was looking over Blinky's shoulder at AAARRRGGHH. Was he scared of him? AAARRRGGHH could be intimidating if you didn't know what a sweetie he was. But Strickler hadn't seemed at all concerned when AAARRRGGHH escorted him into the library, and they'd been alone together then. Plus, AAARRRGGHH has been the one to hold Blinky back when Blinky was yelling at Strickler.

"We haven't been able to retrieve the Killstone or Birthstone, but I'm reasonably confident that the marshland Bodus refers to is the swamps of the Quagawumps. Gunmar unintentionally created the Killstone when he shattered their beloved Wumpa King – a sorcerer of great power."

"Like how Voldemort accidentally gave Harry the power to defeat him!" gasped Toby.

"This sounds more like a revenge curse," said Jim. "That explains a little. I mean, it's the one Triumbric Stone that was never physically part of him. Unless Gunmar ate the body and, uh, I'm gonna stop talking now."

Everyone grimaced.

"We should talk to Glug," said Mary. "She's a Quagawump, and she has family visit from the swamp sometimes. She might know if they have it. Or if she doesn't, she might know who to ask."

"I'm all for getting an insider crash-course in swamp troll etiquette before we actually go there," said Darci.

"The Quagawumps are indeed reputed to be unfriendly to outsiders," Blinky agreed. "An insider might be our best chance of getting in and out alive."

That was like a splash of ice water. Darci shivered.

"… If I frame it as avenging their Shattered King," said Jim, paging through the book on the Triumbric Stones that had been left open on the table, "and promise to give it back once Gunmar's dead, they'll probably agree to lend me the Killstone without making any other demands."

"You're gonna build a super-weapon and give part of it back?" Toby shook his head and clicked his tongue. "Jimbo, Jimbo, Jimbo."

"It's an artifact of historical, cultural, and possibly religious significance to the Quagawumps, and it's a body part from a possibly-vengeful dead sorcerer. Yes, I'm going to give it back."

Previous Chapter (The ‘Quest for Triumbric Stones’ storyline begins)

Table of Contents

Next Chapter (Jim and Barbara meet again)

Blinky learns most of what he knows about other troll cultures from the books in his library rather than talking to other trolls around the market. This is my justification for why Glug, Trollmarket's resident Quagawump, was not introduced until Season Three when she would've been really useful to have around in that one episode of Season Two. Luckily, in this timeline, the kids are in the habit of wandering Trollmarket and gossiping with the locals.

I know Toby actually asks if the others are also "a little freaked out by this 'evil perish' poem", but I misheard him saying "evil parish we're forming" the first time I watched it and decided to throw it into the fic.

Darci mentions in Season Three that her family has been to Paris.

A cognate is a word that sounds similar enough in multiple languages (usually because it traces back to a common root) that it can be understood by a person who only speaks one of the languages; like how 'idiot' in English and 'idiota' in Spanish are very obviously the same word. A false cognate is a word that sounds like something completely different in another language; like how 'embarazada' in Spanish sounds like it should translate to 'embarrassed' in English, but actually translates to 'pregnant'.

'Merde' is French for 'crap/shit'.

Horrible Histories – a series of books intended to get kids interested in history by presenting data in easily-read, entertaining format, and leaving in some of the gross parts – has a volume on Arthurian legends, which was where I got the bit about Merlin's name being speculated to have actually been a title held by a few different guys, and that the French were the ones to change it.

The book actually said the change was made by medieval French troubadours, who were also the ones to add in the Lancelot/Guinevere thing, but I decided that Strickler, as a history teacher, needed to date-drop the bit about William the Conqueror and the influence that using Norman French at court had on the English language.

It's got a lot of other cool stuff, like there being nine sisters who co-rule Avalon (Morgan and possibly Nimuë among them, other seven names unrecorded); and how Morgan le Fay got conflated with Morgause, the youngest of Arthur's three half-sisters; or the possibility that Guinevere marrying Arthur was actually what let him have the crown, due to how Celtic politics worked, and the scandal later in their marriage (Lancelot wasn't invented yet, but the Queen had other lovers) was because Arthur refused to step down for a younger, stronger warrior when Guinevere decided to pick a new king (as was her right), which got hushed up in Medieval times because it didn't fit the Catholic church's view of how marriage worked; or that the scabbard that came with Exalibur, when the Lady of the Lake gave it to Arthur, was enchanted so its wearer would never bleed, but the scabbard was later stolen.

The richest athlete of all time did nothing with his wealth and vanished into history

Over the course of his chariot racing career, Gaius Appuleius Diocles won almost 60,000 lbs of gold. What did he do with it? Who knows

It might have gone a little like ... this:

Gaius Appuleius Diocles knew his job. He didn’t need to win; he just had to survive. Seven laps. Twelve competitors. That was it. Whatever happened next could determine whether he would race another day, or lose his life.

The Circus Maximus was dizzying like that.

Gaius Appuleius Diocles entered the arena from an underground holding area. He’d made this walk dozens of times before, but it never got easier. It was easy to get lost in the spectacle of it all. Thousands of screaming fans, dust whipping around the sun-bleached earth, horses grunting in disapproval while assistants tightened ropes and readied equipment. Gaius spotted a young racer to his right, someone he’d never seen before. This kid was lost in the moment, staring in awe at the crowds.

Gaius knew better than to be distracted by the pageantry. A veteran charioteer, he had learned that paying attention to anything but the race itself would mean injury or death. Instead, he placed his faith in his skills, and prayed to Mercury, the god of luck, confident he would watch over him just as he had for hundreds of races before.

Thunderous applause enveloped Diocles as his name was announced and his feet left the ground, climbing onto the unstable platform of his chariot, but the crowd noise barely registered with him. Instead he went through an exhaustive mental checklist. Were his legs pressed against the wooden side rails of the chariot to keep his balance in the turns? Had he set his feet? Were the reins taut? Did the horses look relaxed? Everything felt comfortable, except for a bothersome dull aching in his right arm. That was to be expected after racing five times earlier that day, but it bothered him nonetheless.

The charioteer pushed the worry aside. Unnecessary thoughts had no place here, and before he could concern himself with anything else, the flag dropped in an instant. A plume of dust filled the air as horses gained their traction.

Chariots rushed past him into the first corner, precisely as expected. Quick starts were for the foolish, or those with a death wish, and Gaius was neither. Instead, he hung behind the pack for as long as possible, waiting for the shipwrecks to emerge, mangled amalgams of flesh and wood as chariots lost their balance and crashed into the ground. He leaned hard into the corner, willing his horses to move left with him in the hopes they would avoid a fallen chariot. The force caused the leather reins to dig into the flesh of his hands, enough to make anyone wince in agony — but Diocles knew that any distraction could result in a crash, and did his best to retain his composure.

A distant dust cloud on the straight signified another competitor had fallen. The chariots in front of him swerved, an attempt to get as far away from the wreck as possible. Diocles knew this was a risky move. Attempting a quick change in direction might work, but it would likely spook his horses. If they bucked, or failed to obey his command, he was done for.

Instead he would go right through the dusk.

He closed his eyes for a moment that felt like eternity, saying a quick prayer. Everything went dark. Gaius couldn’t help but wonder if he had perished, and this was his path into Elysium. Before he could fully process what happened, the light of the stadium jarred him back to reality. Gaius realized that he was not only alive, but still racing. Glancing back he saw the young charioteer from the beginning of the race, laying motionless in the dust. Tragic, but expected. Emerging from the dust, he realized there was nobody behind him, and just three chariots to beat. The rest had lost control or retired. It was time to make his move.

Diocles banked inside, passing third with relative ease. First and second jockeyed for position, splinters of wooden wheels whirring past his head. “These two are so absorbed in each other that they don’t even realize we’re on the final straight,” he thought.

Whipping the reins as hard as he could, Gaius willed his horses ahead for one last surge on the inside. The other two didn’t even see him gaining. Gaius steeled his nerves, his muscles aching from the tension he was putting on them. One last push, a few final seconds. He willed his body down the final straight, so focused on the moment he didn’t even register that he’d edged ahead. Gaius teeth clenched until it felt like a blood vessel would erupt, then – release. The charioteer glanced left, then right, realizing he’d crossed the finish line first.

The crowd erupted, chanting Diocles’ name. He was a hero, but all he felt was relief. Another race down; another one survived. It was time to head underground once more. The next race waited for him in a few hours.

In a sport where the average racer would be lucky to win a race or two each season, Gaius Appuleius Diocles racked up 1,462 wins and placed in an additional 1,438 races over the course of his 24-year career.

He also became mind-bogglingly rich. The richest athlete of all time.

At the end of his chariot racing career, Diocles had earned 35,863,120 sesterces, enough money to pay the salaries of 29,885 Roman legionaries for a year. He could have had his own army, if he’d wanted.

Historical accounts state that Diocles earned 26,000 kilograms of raw gold by the time he retired, worth $12.7 billion in today’s money. That’s seven times more than Michael Jordan has earned — and yet, Diocles has largely disappeared from record. How did the richest, most accomplished athlete of all time fail to cement himself in history?

What we know.

Born in 104 A.D., in a region which is now Portugal, Diocles was firmly in the middle class, relatively well off by the standards of your average Roman citizen. It would have been expected for young Gaius to follow his father into the family shipping business, but he instead started racing chariots, competing in his first race at the age of 18. We know that his style of racing was exciting, and this led to rapid provincial success. It wasn’t long before word spread of the captivating young charioteer. in 122 A.D., Diocles was invited to Rome to begin racing at the Circus Maximus, the summit of of charioteering in the empire.

We know that Diocles didn’t experience immediate success upon arriving in Rome. In fact, it would take him two years before he earned his first win in the Roman leagues. The aggressive style that caused him to win in Portugal didn’t lead to success against more accomplished racers. However, at the age of 20, things changed. Diocles altered his style entirely, and with it came wins, a lot of them.

The vast majority of charioteers were slaves, forced into competition much like gladiators. Naturally, this gave Diocles an edge. His social standing allowed him to be well fed, well rested, and better prepared than the majority of his competition — but this wasn’t enough to make it a difference on its own.

There was a definite abundance of talent that he had over most riders. The risks were ever present, though, with most charioteers being injured or killed in a matter of months after their first race. This makes Diocles’ long career even more remarkable. The reason for this high mortality rate among charioteers was innate to chariot racing, but also due to the twist that Romans put on it.

Wearing just simple leather helmets, shin guards and basic chest protectors, it wasn’t uncommon for charioteers to lose their lives during a race when turning a corner or swerving to avoid a competitor. Rather than hold the reins in their hands like the Greeks did when racing, the Romans would tie them around the charioteer’s waists.

This allowed the driver to have free hands to better steer their horses, but also meant that in the event of a crash they would be dragged around the course until they were dead, or the horses became tired. Sometimes both. As a result, drivers carried a curved knife exclusively for the purposes of cutting their reins in the event of a crash, but even then it was routinely known that should a chariot crash, the driver would likely be seriously injured or killed.

The story we know doesn’t answer the big questions

Whether through providence, skill or blind luck, Diocles managed to survive. Little is known of his post-racing career. A statue was erected in his honor at the Circus Maximus, and Diocles settled in the small town of Palestrina, in what is now the Lazio region of Italy, where he raised a family and retired. It’s said he remained extremely popular and wealthy until his death, but little else is known.

It’s remarkable how little information there is on Gaius Appuleius Diocles’ life. This isn’t simply a case where we can wave off the lack of details to the passage of time. We are intimately aware of the private lives of dozens of famous Romans, and yet a stunningly wealthy athlete who captivated an entire empire, making more money in the process than any athlete in history, had almost nothing written about his life away from racing.

We can, however, piece some things together and posit some theories about why Diocles has largely vanished to history.

Maybe Diocles wasn’t as good as the stats show?

There is evidence to support the idea that Diocles wasn’t so much good as he was a survivor.

We know that Diocles won a lot, and historians have told us that his style captivated the empire — but the charioteer might have stumbled upon a way to break the sport in his favor. Accounts of Diocles on the track note that he routinely trailed in races, sometimes lagging in last place, only to surge ahead on the final straight, routinely snatching victory from defeat and ruining everyone else’s day in the process.

This made for incredible drama, which caused crowds to fall in love with him — but Diocles’ racing style also meant he was largely able to avoid the fray in front of him. When everyone else had to deal with wrecked chariots, he had more time to react. What if Diocles wasn’t the most dominant racer every time he took the track, but rather the veteran who simply managed to survive? Fuscus, a famous charioteer, managed to win 53 races by the age of 24, when he died (presumably on the track). It’s believed that Fuscus began racing the same year as his death, and the history books record him as the only charioteer to win his first career race. If we extrapolate out Fuscus’ career to a span of 24 years he would have won 1,272 races — almost on par with Diocles.

We also need to take into account how often Diocles raced.

Chariot racing in the ancient world is most akin to modern Formula 1, but these were exceptionally short races compared to modern sport. Races involved seven one-mile laps around the Circus Maximus, with 12 chariots in each race. Careers and lives hinged on the 10-15 minutes spent on the track. There wasn’t room for error: one mistake and a race would be over for a charioteer.

It was routine for charioteers to race multiple times per week, sometimes in a single day during holidays. Diocles averaged between three and four races a week for the length of his career. Porphyrius the Charioteer, arguably the most decorated charioteer in Roman history, had 374 wins attributed to him. While that’s a far cry from Diocles, he did something Diocles didn’t: Win the diversium. This entailed winning for one team, then changing teams mid-day and winning again, this time racing for the team in last place. It was considered the highest honor in the charioteering world, and Porphyrius was hailed for doing it twice in a single day.

So while Diocles was the most prolific charioteer in history, at least in Rome, he wasn’t regarded as the greatest. Diocles was a volume charioteer, which was difficult in its own right — but didn’t earn the same level of “greatness” ascribed to others.

What happened to all that money?

We have very clear ideas on what someone could spend billions on now: Buying companies, real estate, material goods, vacations — but in the Roman Empire the prospect of spending as much money as Diocles earned was far more difficult. There was the concept of land ownership for sure, but wealth was more of a social status indicator than something to be spent. In order to become a member of the Roman senate during the Imperial era, a prospective senator would, barring intervention from the Emperor, need to be of senatorial class (i.e. be the son of a senator), and have one million sesterces on hand.

Generally speaking, this was the pinnacle of aspirations for a Roman citizen, but unless Diocles somehow managed to find favor with the Emperor, it was out of his grasp despite his wealth. Instead, he largely escaped the public eye after retiring from racing, and retreated into seclusion on his land in Latium.

Why did he disappear from history?

Born into a wealthy family, with no record of siblings, it would have been expected for Diocles to take over his father’s shipping business. This would have been an extremely comfortable life compared to that of the average Roman citizen. Instead, he left for the capital to compete in one of the empire’s most dangerous sporting events.

This isn’t the story of an athlete using sport to improve their station in life. Rather, it reads like someone actively looking to throw their life away for the possibility of glory. Imagine for a moment that Diocles was the family’s black sheep, and it explains many of his motives.

This was a life defined by doing the opposite of societal norms, from competing as a charioteer in the first place, to quietly retiring in the Italian countryside to raise a family, in fairly meager surroundings — leaving very little on the historical record, outside the knowledge that he was the winningest charioteer of all time, and a small memorial at the Circus Maximus, a painting with a small inscription and nothing more.

He apparently didn’t desire a world of high society. He could have funded an army if he wanted to. He could have bought huge tracts of land or been a patron for the arts. He could have commissioned epic poems to be written in his honor. He could have ordered lavish sculptures and statues to cement his place in history and ensure his legacy resonated through the centuries. But he didn’t.

The real story of Gaius Appuleius Diocles is lost to history. Perhaps that was the plan all along.

To Inherit the Future

Mass Effect/Nier: Automata Crossover Fusion

Archive of Our Own Link

Fanfiction Link

Spacebattles Forum Link: (Q/A and related materials in posts)

First part below;

PART 1 -----: “Alright, let’s see if you’re working right. Test 14 of value weighting within cognitive framework. Unit, what is your primary purpose?” -----: “To supply administrative and logistic support so Project Gestalt may be completed.” -----: “Why?” -----: “Project Gestalt will ensure the survival of Mankind.” -----: “Damn it, response unacceptable. That is a definition. Why must Project Gestalt succeed?” -----: “To ensure the survival of Mankind.” -----: “Why must Mankind survive?” -----: “Mankind must survive.” -----: “No! Again, why must Mankind survive?” -----: “Mankind must survive.” -----: “Test cancelled. Another logic loop started.” - Archived Recording, September 5th, 2031. Participants UNKNOWN. Nothing good had ever fallen from the sky. The first such incident brought the apocalypse. The sky cracking open and an abomination that should never have been finding its resting place in a city once called Tokyo. Even dead its decaying flesh carried a profane curse, and the trackless particles of the grotesque creature damned all who inhaled it to death. Or worse. In time that incurable illness would spread across the world. Infecting all who lived and making clear that this was to be the last generation of man. But in their desperation they found an escape from their fate. Hope, however horribly faint and no matter how costly the price, remained. But it would take a long time for their final gambit to return to them a world free of the plague. So they created machines. Artificial beings in their image that would tend for the world while they could not. The androids were to be their loyal caretakers during this millennia of torpor. They would remove the infection, destroy the carriers of the plague… And most important of all; They would ensure that Mankind returned. On this last matter they failed utterly. And in their despair that they had never been meant to feel, they wept tears they should never have been able to cry. They lived on in graveyard cities that would never be reclaimed by their creators and begged for a new purpose. And their unsaid prayers were answered by the second invasion. *** 11945, November 3rd. Six months since the end of the 14th Machine War and Absolute Victory. Even now she still dreamed of war. The wars she had fought, those she had seen, and those she could only have imagined baring witness to. She knew only of the first horrible cataclysm by pieces of historical record. For which she was eternally grateful. It had been hard enough sending her brave soldiers forth do battle and die to preserve the lie of humanity's survival. To see them actually perish, their recorded deaths separated from any aid she could render by ten millennia would have been so much worse. She had seen recordings of the second many times however. The initial confusion as the androids still struggling to preserve what of humanity's legacy they could came under assault by strange merciless invaders from beyond. They hadn't even truly done much to fight off the initial invasion, instead being saved from sudden extermination by other older creations of mankind. By the time the ceaseless wars began the situation had changed and it was now their responsibility to defend the grave of Mankind. Or so she had thought. She knew from what the surviving units had told her that affairs had changed even if she had not witnessed it. Her death came towards the end of what she now understood had supposed to be a war without end. And given the nature of her demise her own secret data backup had been several days behind. To awaken when she did, reconstructed on the surface of Earth at long last free of the machines had been quite a shock. More so to learn that her primary purpose had been rendered quite unnecessary. The fiction of living humans had been corrected, and though the false broadcasts from the lunar server would continue until someone stopped them, the android populace of Earth now knew that it was a lie. And that she had been party to that lie. Perhaps ignorant to the extreme measures that were to be taken to protect it, but she had signed off on numerous deaths to ensure that their deception was maintained. At least one of the surviving YoRHa units had a very good reason to kill her again. "Why did they even bring me back?" the former YoRHa commander White asked herself as she opened her eyes. While she could think of some reasons they might have gone to all the trouble to retrieve backups of the other YoRHa units, her own reactivation remained an enigma. First that the Bunker's systems that had betrayed them had kept safe copies on another server for later use. And second that it had even done so to a non-YoRHa unit such as herself. Not that that was entirely true anymore in a technical sense since her reactivation. Regardless of her slightly altered hardware, here she was. Alive, free to come and go as she wished from their compound. Which they should really settle on naming sometime soon. It was far too large now to be called a mere camp, and the Resistance wasn't much of a resistance as they were the sole intelligence still active on Earth. But for the time being it was just their home. A gradually growing expanse of metal and stone as sturdy utilitarian buildings were constructed in the ruins of one of humanity's once great cities. Nothing like the sterile perfection of the Bunker. But it was theirs at least. White cocked her head slightly to the side as a message came in through the short range network they now had operating. We're having issues with some of the older satellites. Would you still have the codes for them? Standing up she sent a confirmation and left her room. Stepping out into the open air. The night illuminated by rows of glowing electric lights surrounded by insects attracted to the illumination. A painful sense of familiarity came to her for the briefest moments. Some fleeting mix of emotion and memory that did not feel entirely natural. While she didn't have the same anger concerning the secret betrayal of the YoRHa she did share the desire to question those who had started their program. Who had thought it was a good idea to imprint memory data from replicants? Assuming that they hadn't somehow came to possess actual human memories for that purpose. It seemed profane to dishonor their creator’s memories thus. And all in pursuit of objectives she scarcely understood even after being an ignorant participant for centuries. Though most of the rest were far more concerned with the destruction of androids through repeated cycles of refinement caused by the war. That all those deaths had been in service of a lie and to win a battle they had been designed to lose only made the loss more painful. Why then did it not seem to matter as it should? It was clear that the knowledge of humanity's ultimate fate had already been discovered by some other androids which no longer hid their discovery from their fellows. That that revelation had not precipitated panic, disorder, mass chaos, or attempted self-termination by all units exposed to it... Well it left her feeling rather conflicted. Everyone just seemed to accept it and move on. Building a real stable settlement not suited for combat or defense. Others making their distracting hobbies and other interests their new primary focus. She'd seen one offering dance lessons of all things. Part of her just wanted to demand how they could act like this? How could they forget that humanity was gone? That they had failed time and time again to serve their creators? That they hadn't even truly won the war. Not that that had ever been the intention, but it was still grating that everyone seemed to put the past behind them so quickly. Quicker then she could. Perhaps the issue was that her role was no longer necessary. She could no longer command anything. The androids on Earth had long ago created their own personal hierarchies, and while they were officially subordinate to YoRHa there had never been a means of enforcing compliance other than sending an execution unit. And the only one of those nearby to begin with had barely said a word to her in the months since her reactivation. Even as she approached the effective community leader Anemone, 2B had only glanced at her and quickly moved away to one side so as to avoid having to directly speak to her previous commander. Standing by a pair of reactivated operators working to set up the ground based communications and control center. Anemone at least didn't seem to treat her differently than anyone else. "White, I'm glad you came so quickly." "It was no problem. I can only hope that might be able to help." "So do I. We've been trying to get a better satellite network functioning after so many got attacked a few months ago. And 9S mentioned that there were older satellites that had been shunted off but never recovered." "Yes, the earlier ones have likely de-orbited and burned up by now but if they're less than a century or two old we could bring them back online." "That's what I wanted to hear. Having to rely on scouts and aerial spotters has been limiting our efforts. Plus we have lousy communication ranges for the moment too. If you can fix that it would be a great help." "With the proper codes it should be a simple matter." Whitewalked over to the nearest computer terminal and began entering her administrator codes. "I'm surprised you asked me to help though. The systems shouldn't be that strongly encrypted." "Better safe than sorry. I wouldn't want us to have the system lock us out and force us to physically fly up there to fix or replace them if we don't need to." "Yes we don't have many vehicles capable of that anymore,” White said. Focusing more intently on her task as she tried not to think about how she might have died when the Bunker had suddenly opened itself up to enemy infiltration. "For the moment Ma'am. But I've been re-purposing one of the abandoned machine factories to make component parts for more." 9S had come up beside her. He had made more of an effort to put her at ease since her reactivation. Though she couldn't imagine why. How many times had she ordered his death and memory wipe? "That's... good. That's a good idea 9S." "I thought so too. I mean if the machines could use it to construct complicated machinery we should be able to as well." She nodded in response, her attention centered on the problem before her. Her first code had proven incorrect, likely not old enough. And the next had also been wrong, probably removed by a minor security upgrade that she didn't remember. It was considerably harder to do this when she couldn't check against the Bunker's own network. On Earth however there was very little of the constant electric buzz of wireless systems awaiting a response. More than there had been even a few weeks ago, but still a shockingly small number. The public network for the compound and a few others that had been set up for less important uses. Including one that seemed store and to distribute pictures of birds and little else. Some were even password locked and kept private. A gross volition of protocol if Anemone didn't secretly have access. Which she very well might not. Things were so different now. "There. That one was accepted." "Oh! We're getting something," one of the operator units said. Anemone gave White a pat on the shoulder as she stood back up, "Thanks for helping us with that. Now we can hopefully find out how other groups are doing without having to send a messenger to-" "Ah... Commander-Anemone I mean... there's something weird now." Soon the operator was even more flustered, as everyone's attention was focused on her. She turned back to her console and fiddled with the controls. "I mean it's probably nothing... since it really should be nothing now, right? But I'm detecting something and-" "And what? What did you find?" "Well I wasn't sure at first until the second satellite also detected it but... there's something out there." The silence that followed seemed far, far longer than the actual 1.3 seconds. "What do you mean by something?" "It's big... about one hundred and eighty meters long. It's giving off a large amount of thermal radiation and is currently one hundred and fifty thousand kilometers above the Earth's surface." White found herself standing shoulder to shoulder with 2B by necessity as they crowded near the monitor. Using VR imaging would have been preferable but the image they were getting wasn't networked into that system yet. Forcing them all to gaze at the grainy image on the screen as the operator tried to resolve it into something clearer. "That's not one of ours." "I... I don't think we've ever seen a ship like that," 9S said. It was long and narrow, with a soft rounded surface that lacked both the simplicity that machine life tended towards and the angular designs that humanity and androids used. Towards the rear of the vessel where the majority of the heat signature could be seen there were numerous more clearly metallic protrusions about what could only be a colossal engine system. The surface was discolored and pitted in places. Possibly decorative but looking closer to physical damage to the surface structure of the ship. "Is it a machine lifeform?" "... No. There's no sign of their native network signal from it all. If it's one of theirs it's completely dormant." Conversation began to break out among the androids nearby. Though White noticed that 2B had glanced towards Anemone and they had opened a private channel. She swallowed her anger that they would hide their communications from her. Quickly reminding herself that Anemone was the trusted leader here. And that 2B, along with the other surviving YoRHa units were seen as heroes for both freeing the android populace from the threat of the machines and spreading the truth of humanity's fate. She was in no position to demand that they do as she desired. "Oh no..." the operator said, gasping in horror at what she was seeing. "What's happening now?" "It-it's entering the atmosphere. I think it's going to land!" *** "Are you sure about this 2B? We could wait for A2 to come back... or try and reach her again at least. Even if she’s had another unexpected delay she should still be back by tomorrow." "There's no time 9S. The unidentified vessel is going to land in less than an hour," 2B said. Checking over her flight unit as she prepared to leave. "Besides she's in the opposite direction of the estimated landing zone. Someone needs to get there as quickly as possible." "This could be dangerous." "I know. But it's only recon. I don’t intend to engage an unknown alien force on my own." "Then I should go. I'm the Scanner after all." "How's your arm?" 2B asked, turning towards 9S. An unnecessary gesture now that her VR mask was on. "It's... fine. I'm fine." "You're lying. The parts for S units are harder to come by. And the lack of communications between outposts has kept us from getting the necessary materials to fabricate our own replacements." "Even then I should-" "9S. Nines," 2B said. Stepping forward to reassure 9S, half embracing him while hesitating as she noted the uneven damage he had yet to have repaired. "I'll be fine. I have your pod to replace mine for the moment." "We should really go about getting another one of those." "There hasn't really been time to worry about that. And most of the time when we've left the compound it's been in groups of two. It's just bad luck that this happened while A2 was away." "Still..." 9S began to say, clearly trying to find an argument that could be used. Without success. "Good luck 2B. Just stay safe out there." "I intend to." The flight unit rose up into the air, transitioning from bipedal landing mode to long distance flight from and rocketed away. Vanishing over the tops of the ruined skyscrapers as she headed towards the probable landing locations. While 9S quickly headed back towards their now quite active command center. Even if he couldn't join 2B in the field he would at least try and provide support from here. *** "I'm approaching the landing zone now. No signs of the unknown entities yet." "We can't pin down their landing site to a greater level of detail then we already have at the moment. But you should be within a two kilometers,” 9S said over her radio. "Affirmative." 2B continued to fly above the trees of this mountainous forest, skimming not far from the tops. Remaining low and hopefully obscured in case the vessel had some anti-air capability it might reveal at an inopportune moment. Though once she found the ship itself she fully intended to approach on foot. She could at least hope to remain hidden for long enough to identify what had landed. Her flight unit was completely incapable of achieving the same result. "I have visual confirmation of the landing site," 2B said. Magnifying the image and relaying it back through pod 153. The alien ship had landed half a kilometer away on a lightly forested hill. Several trees had broken off from a collision while previously hidden stabilizing legs had extended from the base. It had landed standing up, a great brownish black column. Smoke rose from fires likely started by the enormous heat the ship had been exuding and was only now finally losing in the cold night air. She could also see that the earlier damages were far more severe. Thick armor had been broken off in places and some portions of the ship would have to be exposed to vacuum from the resulting damage. "Well we can definitely say that they didn't get here without a scratch," 9S said over the communication channel as he received her visual data. "I'm landing now for a closer approach." Disembarking from her flight unit, 2B quickly made her way towards the ship. Taking greater and greater precautions as she drew ever closer to the landing site. Eventually darting from one tree to the next to remain out of sight with only her borrowed pod as company hovering close by. Till at last she came near the edge of the trees close to the landing site. The spacecraft looming above her while the fires started slowly burned themselves out among dry grass that had not yet recovered from their long summer. "I... I have visual," "Visual on wh-oh." 2B adjusted her view and magnified the image. Centering on the enormous vaguely insect like creature that had scuttled out of an opening in the ship and climbed to the ground. Mottled brown carapace and four large legs combined with its slightly curved body to give it an appearance somewhere between a shrimp and crab. With another pair of manipulating arms and long whip like tendrils from its back it left her feeling uneasy with the way it moved. Soon it started walking around the ship in a spiral pattern, slowly covering the ground and inspecting it with its antenna. "Could it be one of the aliens?" 2B asked. "The ones that caused the first invasion?" "No. I don't think so. The ships design is too different and there still doesn't appear to be any sign of machine lifeforms." "Maybe they stopped using them after-wait, something's happening." There appeared to be a great deal of activity suddenly. More and more of the aliens were pouring out of the ship. Dozens and dozens till at least a hundred were spread out in the field chittering loudly Or so it had appeared. "Did I count wrong?" 2B thought to herself. Communicating with her pod to get a check on the number of unknown entities. Which only confirmed that some of the ones that had come out of the ship had already vanished. "This isn't good. I need to pull back until we have more information." "2B! We're losing----. They know you're-" 9S’ voice caught off as a static filled the channel until she completely lost all communication ability. She needed to leave now. Her retreat was far quicker, forgoing stealth for speed. Only for her passage to be cut off by others that had somehow sneaked up behind her. And were even now emerging from tunnels in the earth. "They can burrow underground?" *Re-configuring to detect seismic micro-tremors. Warning. Imminent threat.* Responding to the pod's alarm, 2B rolled to one side as she felt the ground under her feet erupt outwards into a thrashing alien monster. Though that was hardly the only one to be charging towards her now. It seemed like every alien in the ship intended chase her down as a swarm. *Hostiles surrounding extraction point. Attempting to corral into close combat engagement. Advise use of long range weaponry.* "I know," 2B said. Still... maybe there was another way? "I don't want to fight you. If you'll ju-" She ducked to one side and rolled away from an ejection of fluid from one of the aliens. Smoke rose from where it impacted and began to burn through the bark of the tree beside her. "That was pointless. Of course we wouldn't share a common language." Another stream of acid narrowly missed her while her pod continued to warn of even more tunneling underneath. "Save for the universal tongue combat."

Today the field of social and best shapewear  behavioral sciences has lost its true meaning under institutional pressure of tenure and promotion clocks. One can no longer feel the palpable energy or the desire to make a difference and the fearlessness about being innovative. Passion is highly lacking in these areas of education. There are the publish or perish dictates and funding agencies that reward hard science practitioners and thus many academics soon become disenchanted.

 The researchers are content is letting themselves do the work they want to do later, and later never arrives so it is very convenient. There are a plethora of traditional methods that are grounded in scientific methodology that suits some and there is no place for art based Maternity Shapewear education. But on the other hand, there are traditional qualitative research methods that create a working space for the others. And there are other methods including the art based education with research conventions that make what once started as passion feel more like a job. The art education researchers are not just discovering new told for they are carving them according to the needs and requirements of the students.Thus, based on the tools they sculpt a space is opened within the education community where passion and rigor can be boldly expressed out in the open. Some researchers have come close to forming methods of art based education as a way of better addressing research question. While there are other art based education methods that openly merge the scholar aspects with the artist self. Thus holistic and integrated perspectives formed as a result of the merging of arts based project with various research based practices. The turn to creative arts in the field of education forms influence of many methodologies.Art washer dryer clearance instructed education and science bear intrinsic similarities in their attempts to highlight the aspect of human condition. Based on exploration, revelation and representation, art based projects and science work towards advancing human understanding. Although the semantics of art related projects has historically separated common thinking about it from scientific enquiry? There is serious investigation regarding the profound relationship between art related instruction and science. There are many books written on cross disciplinary aspects of art related instruction.In recent decades art instructed practices area set off methodological tools that reused qualitative researchers across the various disciplines during all phases of the process of education. The various art based methods of education draw on literary writing, music, performance, dance, visual art, film and other mediums. Some of the representational forms of art based education include poems, novels, dances, documentaries and songs.It is a well known fact that art has a unique power and it has been appliances houston inspiring human beings for centuries now. Art lets the creative eye see a wide variety of possibilities in new ways. It is also the connection between our shared humanity and the fundamental human desire to create and invent. Thus art based education is for those who value art for the sake of art.Art based education is also meant for those who believe that education must be rejuvenating for our society and our lives. Art based education is mainly for the artists who seek art in everything, including that which is relevant and authentically connected to the living experiences of the real world. Thus the art based education is based on the experiences of the makers and its viewers.

It is meant for the practitioners, who value the link between relationships and spaces beyond the classroom and the studio. In literal terms, art based education is meant for those who believe in the power of the arts to touch imagination and evoke possibility and alter lifestyle. According to experts, it is the nature of art that lets one creates opportunities; where one can envision something outside the realm of what really exists for opportunities.It also provides the scope for the artists to car dealerships in houston envision something, outside the limits of what really exists for oneself and one's community and the entire world where anything is possible. Artists and art practitioners attest that art based education is within the free space for creative expression and that people can explore new identities and possibilities for themselves.Thus, based on this type of education it is possible to explore new possibilities and identities for themselves and their communities, moving beyond perceptions of limiting boundaries and circumstances. Today, art based education is being applied in order to promote healthy communities and in order to augment prevention and intervention efforts, in the independent as well as the public sector.In addition art based education changes that emerged as a trend is also used in order to build community and foster change that has emerged as a major trend in the recent decades. Art education programmes are aimed at the youth as art tries to transform, enrich luxury cars houston and save lives. In order to achieve the objectives, the programs address some of the society's greatest challenges and strive to transform the youth. Therefore education that is based on art is also being used to address issues ranging from cultural wars to the environment.In the world of learning, there is a need to measure or assess the programs and the resources. What is being utilized here are the education metrics, which aims to give the instructors as well as the head of the organization to measure the quality, efficiency and the productivity of the learning process in the school.To measure the education performance, you can rely on an indicator. However, you will only be given a limited view about the efficiency of the programs of the institution. This is why you should have a set of indicators that will make up the education metrics. Depending upon the level of organization that the metrics will be Houston SEO Expert applied to, you will be able to obtain the right indicators. This means that the tertiary schools have different indicators from the secondary schools. Most indicators may even be applied to the business sense of the institutions.In order for you to provide your institution with the right educational indicators, you should know about the five important things that are needed for education data. The first one is data liquidity, which is by far the most challenging when it comes to learning information. Many people disregard this though especially the fact that there is a need for the individual data to move along with the person that is being monitored. In this case, there is no need for a particular school to bind themselves with the information system. Instead, the flow of data should be with the individual since this is the fundamental concept.Second is the common definitions in which the data gatherers should know about the terms that are being utilized in the measurement process of the educational system. The ability to understand the words or phrases SEO Company Toronto will enable everyone to fully gauge the performance of the institution as well as with the learning capacity of the students. The third one is the relevance. The data that will be collected should be relevant to the school as well as the time and the learners. This will actually help the organization to know if the teachers are capable in providing knowledge and proper information to the students. Aside from that, you will be able to have a relevant outcome and education metrics that will make your business a part of the competition.Fourth is timeliness, which is also useful in order to keep track of the students that are behind their growth. This is because it will be easy to report data that is timely regarding all the aspects that affect the growth of the institution including the teachers, students, districts and the school itself. The last one is accuracy, which is of course important in order for you to get the what career is right for me underlying data. You will be able to find the clearest path when it comes to the information that you need for the collection of the performance of learning. With these five things in mind, you will be able to have your own set of education metrics that will really work for you and your organization.

Who else is tired - dog tired - of fending off request after request from your children for the newest, hottest, blood-splattering and bone-breaking game? Is anyone else exhausted from explaining why it's okay for a friend's parents to give the thumbs-up to "Gorefest 2 - the Splattering," but it isn't appropriate for our house? Why we choose educational video games for kids, the same reason we don't watch R-rated horror films. Or, to wit: why I'm unfair, why I'm a tyrannical goon, why I'm dead set on business analyst certification destroying his popularity.

Why life is unfair.

There's always second-guessing. Is it unreasonable to deny him a game that, in fact, I'd somewhat like to play? I mean, I'm a gamer as well. I was his age not too horribly long ago, growing up in the infancy of console video games. I can say with little doubt that were the roles switched, were he my old man and I his frustrated son, I'd be begging, cajoling, and manipulating my head off to get the same games he wants. It strikes me as very unfair, honestly, that his friends are allowed to play the games that we don't allow in our home. It's unfortunate that parents don't have some kind of early childhood development secret pact in place to reach a consensus, a common agreement, on what's okay and what gets 86ed.

Initially, his mom and I agreed to limit his gaming time to educational games for kids. And, at first, he was happy with whatever we gave him. Arthur was a common sight on the computer, telling a story, increasing vocabulary, encouraging reading. Mickey showed up now and again as well, jumping on numbers, helping reinforce the basic mathematics he'd been learning. He enjoyed the educational video games for kids because he saw himself as a kid. He was happy being a kid; in fact, we all were happy with his situation. Juice boxes for everyone!

Then, we stretched our rules a bit as he stretched out. He talked me into a baseball video game. He didn't have to work too hard to convince me; as both a huge Mets fan and a at one point shameless video game addict, the idea of playing virtual baseball with my son technical schools near me was an easy concept to buy into. I turned around and sold the idea to mom. That wasn't as easy. Baseball, as fun as it might be, was definitely not an educational video game for kids. I weakly mentioned something about the game teaching mathematics - division and averages and such - but we both saw the weak argument for what it was.

She frowned, shook her head, and turned back to her book.

Slippery slope, she said.

I took that to mean "okay."

She put conditions on it, however. Time limits, an imaginary pie chart showing the allowable time with the baseball as compared to his educational video games for kids. This was the beginning, unfortunately, of my son no longer accepting his role as a "kid" any longer. I don't mean to say that buying him a baseball game caused the change; rather, this was about the time that I noticed him ditching some of the trappings of his kid-dom - the blankey went in the closet, for instance.And though I have some nice memories of beating the pants off his Yankees with my Mets, this was also about the time that he began preferring to play against the computer, rather than his old man. Both in his educational games for kids and A+ certification training otherwise.It wasn't long before he started testing us, asking for games he knew he wouldn't get. Spiriting in a copy of a game he'd been told he wasn't allowed to play, and then throwing a tantrum when he was inevitably caught. He's at the regrettable age where, no matter how entertaining or fun the game is, if it's an educational game for kids, it's rejected out of hand. Where before we could bring home anything from the game store, now we've given up buying any educational games for kids as they end up dusty and forgotten in a pile near the television.We've come to realize we can't control what he does at his friends' houses. We've politely asked other parents, whenever it felt appropriate, to keep the violent games from the consoles when our son visits. Unfortunately, there've been times when he's been ostracized by his friends for our requests; his friends sometimes blamed him for his parents' rules.I'm gladdened by the appearance of more and more Wii and DS titles that incorporate more fun and innovation into their educational video games for kids. It's a nice thing to see plus size shapewear that some of these recently released learning games aren't getting the same stigma that learning games of recent history suffered. It's good that the developers are putting the time and money into making them fun enough to forget that they're learning while they're playing. Cosmos Chaos, "Brain" games, and "Think" games are changing the lay of the land.For now, though, we're stuck in the the trap that makes good parenting so difficult. Violence in video games isn't a problem I'd like to see regulated by government - the ESRB works fine for me. Violence isn't even really a "problem" to most people. It just means that parents continue to hope for a larger stream of fun educational used appliances houston video games for kids, while we watch the river of violent games continue to rage by.

“Sent” based on Isaiah 6:1-8 and John 3:1-17

Rev. Sara E. BaronFirst United Methodist Church of Schenectady603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305Pronouns: she/her/hershttp://fumcschenectady.org/When I was 7, my friend Becca was in a church that focused on “being saved.”  As far as I understood it, “being saved” involved taking a teacher from her Sunday School into the church library, proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and praying a specific prayer.  This, apparently, was not to be done too early or one might not believe it with one’s whole heart, but should be done as soon as possible so as to ensure eternal salvation.

Becca was very excited that she had been saved and frequently asked me if I had been. I always answered no.  This answer always resulted in a long lecture about why I should “be saved.”  The lecture, in turn, irritated me.  One day I had a brilliant revelation… although I had never “been saved” in Becca’s definition, I believed that Jesus loved me just as I was.  I didn’t think that there were specific hoops to jump through in order for God to accept me.  So, the next time Becca asked me if I was saved I said yes!  I wasn’t saved in her world view, but I was in mine.

Becca’s understanding of being saved is a part of our Christian tradition. So was mine.  In the years since, my perspective has gained more knowledge and nuance. I now know that salvation is about God's work towards healing and wholeness in the world.  I've come to believe that God desires “salvation for all of creation” which isn't about afterlife at all, but about the kindom coming to earth.  I've also learned a lot more about how things were in Jesus' day.  Still, as a whole, I'm at a peace with my 7 year old decision to answer as I did.

In the time of Jesus, most people believed that when you died, you ceased to exist – from dust to dust in those days meant no afterlife and no eternal soul.  In the Greeco-Roman religion that was dominate in the lands that surrounded Jesus,  the gods were immortal – and people became immortal only when they were promoted to god-status because of an extraordinary life.  The Sadducees, who were the ruling party in Judaism, utterly denied the possibility of afterlife.  Neither in Jesus’ immediate community nor in his world at large was afterlife considered a real possibility.

Early Christianity was novel in that its followers believed that they could become immortal.  Or, to name it in the Greco-Roman context, the followers of Jesus all became “little gods”. They were immortal, something true only of gods and goddesses.  This was a very strong statement – people who followed Jesus became like the gods of the world that surrounded them!

Today, many people consider heaven and hell to be contrasting opposites.  At that time, the alternative to joyful eternal live was not hell.  It was “perishing.” That is, if you followed Jesus, you gained eternal life.  If you didn’t follow Jesus, you ceased to exist at the end of your life.  That’s where this passage ends… with the well known John 3:16-17.  “‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”  

Thus, the claim is made that those who believe in Jesus will gain eternal life.  My 7-year old friend Becca believed that there were specific rules to guide what constituted “belief in Jesus.” Understandings of afterlife have developed since the time of Jesus, nothing stays stagnant! Early Christianity opened the door to eternal life – instead of saying that only “gods” could live forever, there was an affirmation of common people and our value.  

While are are thinking about that, let's look more closely at the beginning of this text.   Nicodemus is named as a Pharisee, a group that gained most of its power after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 BCE, and a group that was open to afterlife in some form or another. (Not the way people today think of it though.)  Nicodemus, as a Pharisee, being in power at the time of Jesus is exactly the kind of historically questionable stuff that reminds us to take John metaphorically..  Anyway, according to John,  this guy comes to Jesus … at night.  Why at night?  So he couldn’t be seen!  Its really kind of a funny story, even to start out… we have one of the highest ranking officials in Israel sneaking around under the cloak of darkness in order to meet with Jesus.  

He gets to Jesus and starts the conversation by complimenting him. Unfortunately for Nicodemus, he isn’t as smart as he thinks he is. He doesn’t “get it.”  He ALMOST “gets it.”  He wants to learn from Jesus, which is why he has come to Jesus.  But he is still afraid of what others will think of him or do to him, and that’s why he comes at night.  In addition, he bases his faith on “signs.” That is, he thinks Jesus is connected to God because Jesus is able to perform miracles.  Believing in Jesus because of his miracles is a BIG no-no in the Gospel of John.  The faithful are supposed to believe because they believe, not because of the powers that Jesus has to do miracles.  So Nicodemus says, “Teacher, we know that you come from God because of what you can do…”  And right there, as John tells it, Jesus knows that Nicodemus wasn’t convinced to follow him fully, yet.  

Jesus begins to teach… and he says… LISTEN CAREFULLY!…he says “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” And Nicodemus says, “How can anyone be born again after having grown old?”  Did you hear that?

Jesus says “born from above” and Nicodemus says “born again.”  How did he confuse that?  Well, he wasn’t that ridiculous actually… in Greek the word for “again” and “from above” is the same word.  Jesus is talking about the deep meaning of being born from above, which is “from God”1 and Nicodemus is understanding the superficial meaning – born again.  Nicodemus is being presented as foolish, or at least because he didn't have full faith he was too foolish to understand Jesus. The image of a grown man re-entering the womb is meant to be funny. It is meant to be as ridiculous as it sounds, because it is making fun of the misunderstanding.   Being born again is NOT AT ALL what Jesus is talking about.  Being born again is the MISUNDERSTANDING that Nicodemus pulls out.

Being born “from above” is having a spiritual birth.  That could be seen as something that all people have – as all people ahave spirits – or as an eye-opening event that occurs when individuals connect with God.  It would make some sense, given the rest of Jesus' teaching to think of being born “from above” as being connected to God and therefore committed to building the kindom.  Being born from above is to live as God would have a person live, to share love, to exude compassion, to see a better world.  To be born from above, then, is to live the prayer, “your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”

This is a Gospel reading with many opportunities for misunderstanding.  It is one I am tempted to avoid, simply to not have to deal with them. However, being informed about our scriptures and how they has been used to do harm, and what they actually mean is part of what we need to know to bring healing.  Luckily, this passage has a lot of gems as well as a history of being used badly.  Verse 8 reads, The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. There is a double meaning here – the wind is at once the Wind and the Spirit of God.  We do not know the beginning of the wind or of God, but we are able to watch what the Spirit of God does in the world. This is one of my favorite descriptors of the Spirit.  If the Spirit is truly the Spirit of Love (I think that's fair) then it reminds us that the demands of love can take us in rather unexpected directions!Some of the ancients thought of the wind as God's breath.2 I suspect some of us moderns do too, at least in particular moments. It has times when it is a potent metaphor.  

The passage continues though, in a rather weird turn.  As another commentator puts it, “The overlap of crucifixion and exaltation conveyed by v. 14 is crucial to Johannine soteriology because the Fourth Evangelist understands Jesus’s crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension as one continuous event.”3 So, when the metaphor is drawn to “lifting up” it isn't just about Jesus' death but about the end of his life and the beginning of the life of the believers as the Body of Christ. (If you don't know the Moses reference, I promise, you don't want to.  It won't help.)  

Finally, this text turns to one of the more abused verses in the Bible.  It is actually good news, no matter how it has been used to abuse others in Bible bashing.  The good news is:  “God loves the world SO MUCH that God seeks to heal it in every way God can.” In the words of a wise commentator, “what if we are all called to “join in the creation of a community in which God's love was regarded as not being in short supply, open only to those who have seen and confessed Jesus as the Christ, but rather as poured out upon the entire world?”4

Taken in continuity with John 3:17, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him,” while remembering that the first meaning in the Bible of salvation is healing, we get to:  “God loves the world SO MUCH that...that God keeps moving creation to wholeness AND  God pushes and prods us in hope that we'll learn deeper love.  Nothing can separate us from the love of God... because God loves the world THAT much.”

Do you ever wonder what it means to say that “God loves the world”? It is startlingly unequivocal.  It isn't, “God loves the good people.”  Or, “God loves it when things are going right.”  It isn't even, “God loves the world, but hates the brokenness.” John 3:16 claims God loves the world.  God gives gifts to the world. God seeks healing and wholeness for the world.  And the world isn't just humanity, it is all of creation.

God LOVES the world.  

For me, that's a bit of a relief.  It reminds me that God's love isn't contingent on us getting it right, love is already a part of it all. It is a reminder that we can't mess it up.  Love is the starting point of all creation, it has a power nothing else can match.  For me, at least, gratitude for this reality is what motivates me to work with God for the building of the kindom.  But it starts with love. God loves the world.  Unlike my childhood friend, I think there is a full stop there, no conditions.

God loves the world and all the beings in it.  As.  They.  Are. Salvation is a gift God willingly  offers to us all.

Thanks be to God.  Amen

1Ernst Haenchen John 1: A Commentary on the Gospel of John, Chapters 1-6 (Hermeneia: a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible) (Vol 1) (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, January 1, 1988).

2  Raymond E. Brown Gospel According to John. Anchor Bible.  (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966-70.)

3 Gail R.O’Day,   “The Gospel of John: Introduction, Comentary, and Reflections.”  In New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 9.  (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995).

4Ibid.

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

Holy Faith, Worthy Gospel, World Vision

Andrew Fuller’s Broadsides Against Sandemanianism, Hyper-Calvinism, and Global Unbelief

Holy Faith, Worthy Gospel, World Vision

Andrew Fuller’s Broadsides Against Sandemanianism, Hyper-Calvinism, and Global Unbelief

Desiring God 2007 Conference for Pastors

Resource by John Piper

Topic: Biography

A revised and expanded version of this biographical message now appears inAndrew Fuller: Holy Faith, Worthy Gospel, World Mission.

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. My assessment at this point, 192 years after his death, is that his primary impact on history has been the impetus that his life and thought gave to the modern missionary movement, specifically through the sending and supporting of William Carey to India in 1793. That historical moment — the sending of William Carey and his team — marked the opening of the modern missionary movement.

The Unleashing of Modern Missions

Carey was the morning star of modern missions. Between 1793 and 1865, a missionary movement never before seen in the history of the world reached virtually all the coastlands on earth. Then in 1865, Hudson Taylor founded the China Inland Mission, and from 1865 until 1934, another wave of missionary activity was released so that by 1974 virtually all the inlands — all the geographic countries of the world — were reached with the gospel. In 1934, Cameron Townsend founded Wycliffe Bible Translators which focused not on geographic areas or political states but on people groups with distinct languages and dialects and cultures — and gradually the church awakened, especially at the Lausanne Congress in 1974, to the biblical reality of “every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (Revelation 5:9; 7:9) — and the missionary focus of the church shifted from unreached geography and to the unreached peoples of the world.

We are in the midst of this third era of modern missions. Today the great reality, as documented in Philip Jenkins’ The Next Christendom, is that the center of gravity in missions is moving away from Europe and the United States to the South and East. Places we once considered mission fields are now centers of Christian influence and are major missionary sending forces in the world (Andrew Walls would say it a little differently than Jenkins: “While some scholars such as Philip Jenkins emphasize a shift of power from Western churches to those south of the equator, Walls sees instead a new polycentrism: the riches of a hundred places learning from each other.” “Historian Ahead of His Time,” Christianity Today, Vol. 51, No. 2, February 2007, p. 89.).

Andrew Fuller’s Impact

You won’t read it in the secular history books or hear it on the nightly news, but judged by almost any standard, this modern missionary movement — the spread of the Christian faith to every country and almost all the peoples of the world — is the most important historical development in the last two hundred years. Stephen Neill, in the conclusion to his History of Christian Missions, wrote, “The cool and rational eighteenth century [which ended with William Carey’s departure for India] was hardly a promising seed-bed for Christian growth; but out of it came a greater outburst of Christian missionary enterprise than had been seen in all the centuries before” (571).

So how did it come about that the “cool and rational” eighteenth century gave birth to the greatest missionary movement in world history — a movement that continues to this day, which, if you’re willing, you can be a part of? God’s ways are higher than our ways and his judgments are unfathomable and inscrutable (Romans 11:33). More factors led to this great movement than any human can know. All I want to do is document one of them — just one of ten thousand things God did to unleash this great Christ-exalting, gospel-advancing, Church-expanding, evil-confronting, Satan-conquering, culture-transforming soul-saving, hell-robbing, Christian-refreshing, truth-intensifying missionary movement.

I mention the terms Christian-refreshing and truth-intensifying because in Andrew Fuller’s life, there is a reciprocal relationship between spiritual life and biblical truth, on the one hand, and missions, on the other hand. In one direction, spiritual life and biblical truth give rise to missions. And in the other direction, engagement in the missionary enterprise awakens and sustains new levels of spiritual life and sharpens and deepens and intensifies our grasp of biblical truth. We will focus on the first in this message, but here are some glimpses into the effect missions had on Fuller’s life. On July 18, 1794, he wrote the following in his diary:

Within the last year or two, we have formed a missionary society; and have been enabled to send out two of our brethren to the East Indies. My heart has been greatly interested in this work. Surely I never felt more genuine love to God and to his cause in my life. I bless God that this work has been a means of reviving my soul. If nothing else comes of it, I and many others have obtained a spiritual advantage. (Peter Morden, Offering Christ to the World [Waynesboro, Georgia: Paternoster, 2003], p. 167)

Six months earlier he had written to John Ryland, “I have found the more I do for Christ, the better it is with me. I never enjoyed so much the pleasures of religion, as I have within the last two years, since we have engaged in the Mission business. Mr. Whitfield used to say, ‘the more men does for God, the more he may’” (Ibid.).

In one direction, when your love for Christ is enflamed and your grasp of the gospel is clear, a passion for world missions follows. In the other direction, when you are involved in missions—when you are laying down your life to rescue people from perishing—it tends to authenticate your faith, and deepen your assurance, and sweeten your fellowship with Jesus, and heighten your love for people, and sharpen your doctrines of Christ and heaven and hell. In other words, spiritual life and right doctrine are good for missions, and missions is good for spiritual life and right doctrine.

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.

Great Gain and Great Loss

Andrew Fuller died on May 7, 1815, at the age of sixty-one. He had been the pastor of the Baptist Church in Kettering (population, about three thousand) for thirty-two years. Before that, he was the pastor at Soham, and before that, he was a boy growing up on his parents’ farm and getting a simple education. He had no formal theological training but became the leading theological spokesman for the Particular Baptists5 in his day. He began to do occasional preaching in his home church of Soham at age seventeen, and when he was twenty-one, they called him to be the pastor.

The year after he became the pastor at Soham, he married Sarah Gardiner. (The year was 1776 — the year America declared independence from Britain). In the sixteen years before she died, the couple had eleven children, of whom eight died in infancy or early childhood. Sarah died two months before the Baptist Missionary Society was formed in Fuller’s home in October of 1792.

It is often this way in the ministry: the greatest gain and the greatest loss within two months. “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:39). “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). He did marry again. In 1794, he married Ann Coles who outlived him by ten years.

An Overwhelmed Life

During these forty years of pastoral ministry in Soham and Kettering, Fuller tried to do more than one man can do well. He tried to raise a family, pastor a church, engage the destructive doctrinal errors of his day with endless writing, and function as the leader of the Baptist Missionary Society which he and a band of brothers had founded in 1792. He regularly felt overwhelmed. In 1801, he wrote in a letter,

[Samuel] Pierce’s memoirs are now loudly called for [that is, people were calling for him to write the memoirs of his friend, which he did]. I sit down almost in despair. . . . My wife looks at me with a tear ready to drop, and says, “My dear, you have hardly time to speak to me.” My friends at home are kind, but they also say, “You have no time to see us or know us and you will soon be worn out.” Amidst all this there is “Come again to Scotland — come to Portsmouth — come to Plymouth — come to Bristol” (Morden, Offering Christ, pp. 153-154).

A little band of Baptist pastors including William Carey had formed the Baptist Missionary Society on October 2, 1792. Fuller, more than anyone else, felt the burden of what it meant that William Carey and John Thomas (and later others) left everything for India in dependence, under God, on this band of brothers. One of them, John Ryland, recorded the story where the famous “rope holder” image came from. He wrote that Carey said,

Our undertaking to India really appeared to me, on its commencement, to be somewhat like a few men, who were deliberating about the importance of penetrating into a deep mine, which had never before been explored, we had no one to guide us; and while we were thus deliberating, Carey, as it were, said “Well, I will go down, if you will hold the rope.” But before he went down . . . he, as it seemed to me, took an oath from each of us, at the mouth of the pit, to this effect — that “while we lived, we should never let go of the rope.” (Ibid., p. 136.)

Fuller served as the main promoter, thinker, fundraiser, and letter-writer of the Society for over twenty-one years. He held that rope more firmly and with greater conscientiousness than anyone else. When he said above that in all his pastoral labors he hears, “Come again to Scotland — come to Portsmouth — come to Plymouth — come to Bristol,” he meant: Churches were calling him to come and represent the mission. So he traveled continuously speaking to raise support for the mission. He wrote the regular Periodical Accounts. He supplied news to the Baptist Annual Register, the Evangelical Magazine, and the Baptist Magazine. He took the lead role in selecting new missionaries. He wrote regularly to the missionaries on the field and to people at home (See Ibid., pp. 136-137, for a fuller account of his engagements.)

Tireless Pastoral Labors

All this while knowing his pastoral work was suffering. He did not have an assistant at Kettering until 1811 (John Hall), four years before he died. In October of 1794, he lamented in a letter to John Ryland how the mission work was compromising the church work: “I long to visit my congregation that I may know of their spiritual concerns and preach to their cases” (Ibid., p. 111). The love he felt for his people is expressed in a letter he wrote to a wayward member that he was pursuing: “When a parent loses . . . a child nothing but the recovery of that child can heal the wound. If he could have many other children, that would not do it. . . . Thus it is with me towards you. Nothing but your return to God and the Church can heal the wound.”

He pressed on faithfully feeding his flock with faithful expository preaching. “Beginning April 1790, he expounded successively Psalms, Isaiah, Joel, Amos, Hosea, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Daniel, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Genesis, Matthew, Luke, John, Revelation, Acts, Romans, and First Corinthians as far as 4:5” (Tom Nettles in his “Preface to the New Edition: Why Andrew Fuller?” The Complete Works of Reverend Andrew Fuller, Vol. 1, Joseph Belcher, (Harrisonburg, Virginia: Sprinkle Publications, 1988).).

The people did not seem to begrudge their pastor’s wider ministry for the Missionary Society. One young deacon entered in his diary two weeks before Fuller’s death,

What a loss as individuals and as a church we are going to sustain. Him that has so long fed us with the bread of life, that has so affectionately, so faithfully, and so fervently counseled, exhorted, reproved, and animated; by doctrine, by precept, and by example the people of his charge; him who has liv’d so much for others! Shall we know more hear his voice? (Morden, Offering Christ, p. 112.)

And when he was home from his travels, his life was one form of work for another. His second wife Ann once told him that “he allowed himself no time for recreation.” Fuller answered, “O no: all my recreation is a change of work.”13 His son, Gunton Fuller, recorded that even in 1815, just a few months before his death, he was still working at his desk “upwards of twelve hours a day” (Morden, Offering Christ, p. 183.).

Extraordinary Suffering

Woven into all this work, making his perseverance all the more astonishing, is the extraordinary suffering, especially his losses. He lost eight children and his first wife. On July 10, 1792, he wrote, “My family afflictions have almost overwhelmed me, and what is yet before me I know not! For about a month past the affliction of my dear companion has been extremely heavy.” Then on July 25, “Oh my God, my soul is cast down within me! The afflictions of my family seemed too heavy for me. Oh, Lord, I am oppressed, undertake for me!” (The Complete Works of Reverend Andrew Fuller, Vol. I, pp. 58–59.) When his wife died one month later (August 23, 1792), having lost eight of her children, Fuller wrote these lines:

The tender parent wails no more her loss, Nor labors more beneath life’s heavy load; The anxious soul, released from fears and woes, Has found her home, her children, and her God. (Works, Vol. I, pp. 59-61.)

Andrew Fuller, the Thinker

That is the personal, pastoral, missionary context of Fuller’s engagement with the spiritual and doctrinal errors of his day. And for all his activism, it is his controversial and doctrinal writing that served the cause of world missions most. Virtually all the students of Andrew Fuller agree that he was the most influential theologian of the Particular Baptists. “Fuller,” one writes, “was pre-eminently the thinker, and no movement can go far without a thinker” (Morden, Offering Christ, p. 137, citing E. F. Clipsham, who was quoting B. Grey Griffith.)

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.

Enlightenment Contemporaries and Particular Baptists

Of course, Andrew Fuller, the thinker, the theologian, did not arise in a vacuum. Besides the secular rationalism of David Hume (1711–1776) in Britain and Rousseau (1712–1778) in France and Thomas Paine (1737–1809) in America — all contemporaries of Andrew Fuller — there was the Great Awakening in America and the Evangelical Awakening in Britain. Both George Whitefield (1714–1770) and John Wesley (1703–1791) were in their prime when Andrew Fuller was born in 1754.

The Particular Baptists did not like either of these evangelical leaders. Wesley was not a Calvinist, and Whitefield’s Calvinism was suspect, to say the least, because of the kind of evangelistic preaching he did. The Particular Baptists spoke derisively of Whitefield’s “Arminian dialect” (Ibid., p. 20). Fuller grew up in what he called a High Calvinistic — or Hyper-Calvinistic — church. He said later that the minister at the church in Soham (John Eve) had “little or nothing to say to the unconverted” (Ibid., p. 27). Fuller’s greatest theological achievement was to see and defend and spread the truth that historic biblical Calvinism fully embraced the offer of the gospel to all people without exception.

Fuller immersed himself in the Scriptures and in the historic tradition flowing from Augustine through Calvin through the Puritans down to Jonathan Edwards. The Bible was always paramount: “Lord, thou hast given me a determination to take up no principle at second-hand; but to search for everything at the pure fountain of thy word” (Works, Vol. I, p. 20). That is one of the main reasons why it is so profitable to read Fuller to this very day: He is so freshly biblical.

His Great Mentors

But he is wide open about who his great mentors were. And we should know them. He searched both the Scriptures and the history of doctrine to see if he could find this High Calvinism that had so infected and controlled his denomination — the view that opposed offering the gospel to all men and said it could not be the duty of the unregenerate men to believe on Jesus, and therefore, one should not tell them they should do what they have no duty to do. That was the reasoning of Hyper-Calvinism.

The two most influential authors representing High Calvinism — at least the ones who influenced Particular Baptists most — were John Brine (1703–1765) and John Gill (1697–1771). Morden comments that Timothy George and others have made attempts to rehabilitate Gill and to rebut the charge that he was a Hyper-Calvinist, “but attempts to defend him from the charge of high Calvinism are ultimately unconvincing” (Offering Christ, p. 15) A quotation illustrating John Gill’s attitude towards a free offer of the gospel: “That there are universal offers of grace and salvation made to all men, I utterly deny; nay I deny that they are made to any; no not to God’s elect; grace and salvation are provided for them in the everlasting covenant, procured for them by Christ, published and revealed in the gospel and applied by the spirit.” John Gill, Sermons and Tracts, Three Volumes (London: 1778), III, p. 269-270, quoted in Morden, Offering Christ, p. 14. Fuller himself certainly saw Gill as a High Calvinist responsible for much of the evangelistic deadness among his fellow Particular Baptists: “I perceived . . . that the system of Bunyan was not the same as [John Gill’s]; for while he maintained the doctrines of election and predestination, he nevertheless held with the free offer of salvation to sinners without distinction” (Morden, Offering Christ, p. 31).

Fuller came to this conclusion:

Neither Augustine nor Calvin, who each in his today defended predestination, and the other doctrines connected with it, ever appear to have thought of denying it to be the duty of every sinner who has heard the gospel to repent and believe in Jesus Christ. Neither did the other Reformers, nor the Puritans of the 16th century, nor the divines at the Synod of Dort, (who opposed Arminius) nor any of the nonconformists of the 17th century, so far as I have any acquaintance with their writings, ever so much as hesitate upon this subject. (Works, Vol. II, p. 367)

John Calvin played a relatively minor role in shaping Fuller’s thinking directly. He was immersed in the Puritans and quoted more from Charnock, Goodwin, Bunyan, and Owen than from Calvin. He only quotes from Calvin once in the first edition of his most influential book, The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation. Morden concludes, “There is no direct link between Calvin’s writings and The Gospel Worthy” (Morden, Offering Christ, p. 35). In fact, 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” (Works, Vol. I, p. 39. Emphasis added).

The Influence of Jonathan Edwards

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 (Edwards, most agree, was “probably the most powerful and important extra biblical influence” on Fuller. Morden, Offering Christ, p. 49). Fuller admits that, after the Bible itself, it was Edwards who provided the keys that unlocked the door out of Hyper-Calvinist reasoning. We will see that this was true both for the Sandemanian and the Hyper-Calvinist controversies.

David Bebbington says that Jonathan Edwards “stands at the headwaters” of eighteenth-century evangelicalism (David Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), p. 6). That is certainly true for Andrew Fuller. To give you a flavor of the way he felt about Edwards — ten days before Fuller died on May 7, 1815, he dictated a letter to John Ryland, one of the band of brothers who founded the mission together with him. The point of the letter was to defend Jonathan Edwards:

We have heard some, who have been giving out of late that “if Sutcliff and some others had preached more of Christ and less of Jonathan Edwards, they would have been more useful.” If those who talk thus, preached Christ half as much as Jonathan Edwards did, and were half as useful as he was, their usefulness would be double what it is (Works, Vol. I, p. 101.).

Edwards’ Freedom of the Will

Fuller was born in 1754, four years before Jonathan Edwards died, and the year that Edwards published his hugely influential book, The Freedom of the Will. I mention Edwards’ book on the will because in it Fuller found one of the keys that unlocked the unbiblical prison of Hyper-Calvinism.

The Hyper-Calvinist reasoning went like this, in the words of Andrew Fuller:

It is absurd and cruel to require of any man what is beyond his power to perform; and as the Scriptures declare that “No man can come to Christ, except the Father draw him,” and that “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned,” it is concluded that these are things to which the sinner, while unregenerate, is under no obligation. (Ibid., p. 376.)

“It is a kind of maxim with such persons,” Fuller said, “that ‘none can be obliged to act spiritually, but spiritual men’” (Works, Vol. II, p. 360). The practical conclusion that they drew was that faith in Christ is not a duty for the non-elect. It is not a duty for the unregenerate. Therefore, you never call for faith indiscriminately. You never stand before a group of people — whether in Britain or in India — and say, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ!” You never exhort, plead, call, command, urge.

Fuller Against the Hyper-Calvinists

One of Fuller’s critics, John Martin, Pastor at Grafton Street, Westminster wrote,

Sinners in my opinion, are more frequently converted, and believers more commonly edified, by a narrative of facts concerning Jesus Christ, and by a clear, connected statement of the doctrines of grace, and blessings of the gospel, and then by all the expectations and expostulations that were ever invented. (Quoted in Morden, Offering Christ, p. 57.) But in fact, the Hyper-Calvinists were not passionately telling the narrative of the gospel story to the lost and were opposed to the new mission to India. Peter Morden points out that “The prevalence of high Calvinism had led not only to a refusal to ‘offer Christ’ but also to a general suspicion of all human ‘means’, such as ministerial training and associating” (Morden, Offering Christ, p. 45). The effect of this rationalistic distortion of the biblical Calvinism was that the churches were lifeless and the denomination of the Particular Baptists was dying.

One example of the emotional fallout of High Calvinism is seen, first, in the fact that Whitefield and Wesley were accused of “enthusiasm” which was defined vaguely and abusively as any kind of religious excitement, and, second, in the fact that John Gill, in his A Complete Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity, said that spiritual joy “is not to be expressed by those who experience it; it is better experienced than expressed” (Ibid., p. 20).

Fuller, who only knew High Calvinism in his early ministry, said in 1774, “I . . . durst not, for some years, address an invitation to the unconverted to come to Jesus” (Quoted from John Ryland’s biography in Ibid., p. 103.). He went on to say, “I conceive there is scarcely a minister amongst us whose preaching has not been more or less influenced by the lethargic systems of the age” (Works, Vol., II, p. 387.). The price had been huge: in the forty years after 1718; the Particular Baptists declined from 220 congregations to 150 (Morden Offering Christ, p. 8.).

A “Warrant of Faith”?

If you ask: How then did anyone get saved under this system? The answer was that here and there God would give what they called a “warrant of faith.” That is, there would be some token granted by the Holy Spirit to signify that the persons were regenerate and elect and therefore had a “warrant” to believe. For example, one way God did this, they believed, was by forcibly suggesting a Scripture to one’s mind. This happened to Fuller at age thirteen (with Romans 6:14), and he thought for a while that he had been saved. But the experience proved to be abortive (Ibid., p. 28).

What Fuller came to see was that High Calvinism had shifted the meaning of faith from focusing on the objective person and promises of Christ onto the subjective state of our own hearts. In other words, saving faith became faith that I am experiencing the regenerating work of God — faith that I am elect. Or, as Fuller put it, the High Calvinists said that faith is to “believe the goodness of their state.” To this he responded:

If this be saving faith, it must inevitably follow that it is not the duty of unconverted sinners; for they are not interested in Christ [that is, they are not yet united to him], and it cannot possibly be their duty to believe a lie. But if it can be proved that the proper object of saving faith is not our being interested in Christ [that is, our being already united to him], but the glorious gospel of the ever blessed God, (which is true, whether we believe it or not,) a contrary inference must be drawn; for it is admitted, all in all hands, that it is the duty of every man to believe what God reveals (Works, Vol., II, p. 333.).

In fact, Fuller goes on to show that

Nothing can be an object of faith, except what God has revealed in his word; but the interest that any individual has in Christ . . . is not revealed. . . . The Scriptures always represent faith as terminating on something [outside of] us; namely, on Christ, and the truths concerning him. . . . The person, blood, and righteousness of Christ revealed in the Scriptures as the way of a sinner’s acceptance with God, are, properly speaking, the objects of our faith; for without such a revelation it were impossible to believe in them. . . . That for which he ought to have trusted in him was the obtaining of mercy, in case he applied for it. For this there was a complete warrant in the gospel declarations (Ibid., pp. 334, 340, 342.).

In other words, we should not say to unbelievers: Wait until you feel some warrant of faith so that you can trust in that. Rather, we should say, “Christ is the glorious divine Son of God. His death and resurrection are sufficient to cover all your sins.39 He promises to receive everyone who comes to him and he promises to forgive all who trust in him. Therefore, come to him and trust him and you will be saved. If you wonder if you are elect or if you are regenerate, cease wondering and do what Christ has commanded you to do. Receive him, trust in him, cast yourself on him for his promised mercy. And you will prove to be elect and to be regenerate.”

On the extent of the atonement, Fuller found himself again defending the Scripture against High Calvinists and Arminians who both thought that “particular redemption” made the free offer of the gospel to all illogical. His position is that the death of Christ is not to be conceived of “commercially” in the sense that it purchased effectually a limited number such that if more believed they could not be atoned for.

On the other hand, if the atonement of Christ proceed not on the principle of commercial, but of moral justice, or justice as it relates to crime — if its grand object were to express the divine displeasure against sin (Romans 8:3) and so to render the exercise of mercy, in all the ways wherein sovereign wisdom should determine to apply it, consistent with righteousness (Romans 3:25) — if it be in itself equal to the salvation of the whole world, were the whole world to embrace it—and if the peculiarity which attends it consists not in its insufficiency to save more than are saved, but in the sovereignty of its application—no such inconsistency can justly be ascribed to it (Works, Vol., II, pp. 373–374 Emphasis added).

Fuller, the Calvinist

Fuller is a Calvinist. He says, “The Scriptures clearly ascribe both repentance and faith wherever they exist to divine influence [e.g., 2 Timothy 2:25-26; Ephesians 2:8].” He believes in irresistible grace. But what he is arguing against is that one has to know before he believes that he is being irresistibly called or regenerated:

Whatever necessity there may be for a change of heart in order [for one to believe], it is neither necessary nor possible that the party should be conscious of it till he has believed. It is necessary that the eyes of a blind man should be opened before he can see; but it is neither necessary nor possible for him to know that his eyes are open till he does see.

In other words, the limitation of the atonement lies not in the sufficiency of its worth to save all the sinners in the world, but in the design of God to apply that infinite sufficiency to those whom he chooses. As the application of redemption is solely directed by sovereign wisdom, so, like every other event, it is the result of previous design. That which is actually done was intended to be done. Hence the salvation of those that are saved is described as the endwhich the Savior had in view: “He gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” Herein, it is apprehended, consists the peculiarity of redemption. There is no contradiction between this peculiarity of design in the death of Christ, and the universal obligation of those who hear the gospel to believe in him, or universal invitation being addressed to them (Ibid., p. 374).

In this position, as in so many, he was in line with his decisive mentor, Jonathan Edwards, who wrote in The Freedom of the Will,

Christ in some sense might be said to die for all, and to redeem all visible Christians, yea, the whole world by his death; yet there must be something particular in the design of his death with respect to such as be saved thereby. God has the actual salvation of redemption of a certain number in his proper and absolute design, and of a certain number only; and, therefore, such a design can only be prosecuted in anything God does in order to the salvation of men (“The Freedom of the Will,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. I, ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven: Yale university Press, 1985), p. 435).

Fuller steadfastly refuses to let ostensible Calvinistic or Arminian logic override what he sees in Scripture. And ironically, High Calvinism and Arminianism are here standing on the same pretended logic against Scripture. Both argue that it is absurd and cruel to require of any man what is beyond his power to perform. Or to put it the way Fuller does,

They are agreed in making the grace of God necessary to the accountableness of sinners with regard to spiritual obedience. The one [High 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 (Ibid., p.379).

“The whole weight of this objection,” he says, “rests upon the supposition that we do not stand in need of the Holy Spirit to enable us to comply with our duty” (Ibid., p. 379). In other words, both High Calvinists and Arminians rejected the prayer of St. Augustine, “Command what you wish, but give what you command”(Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (New York: Penguin, 1961), p. 40). But Fuller says, “To me it appears that the necessity of Divine influence, and even of a change of heart, prior to believing, is perfectly consistent with its being the immediate duty of the unregenerate” (Works, Vol., II, p. 381.).Why? Because the Scripture shows it to be the case, and Jonathan Edwards provides categories that help make sense out of it. Concerning the biblical witness, he writes,

The same things are required in one place which are promised in another: ‘Only fear the Lord, and serve him in truth with all your heart.’ — ‘I will put my fear in their hearts that they shall not depart from me.’ When the sacred writers speak of the divine precepts, they neither disown them nor infer from them a self-sufficiency to conform to them, but turn them into prayer: ‘Thou hast commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently. Oh that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes!’ In fine, the Scriptures uniformly teach us that all our sufficiency to do good or to abstain from evil is from above; repentance and faith, therefore may be duties, notwithstanding their being the gifts of God (Ibid., p. 380. “If an upright heart toward God and man be not itself required of us, nothing is or can be required; for all duty is comprehended in the acting-out of the heart.” Ibid., p. 382).

Natural Inability and Moral Inability

In his most famous work, The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, Fuller piles text upon text in which unbelievers are addressed with the duty to believe (See Works, Vol., II, pp. 343–366 where most of these texts are explained. See, for example, Psalm 2:11n12; Isaiah 55:1–7; Jeremiah 6:16; John 12:36; John 6:29; 5:23. He aligns himself with John Owen at this point who wrote, “When the apostle beseecheth us to be ‘reconciled’ to God, I would know whether it be not a part of our duty to yield obedience? If not, the expectation is frivolous and vain.” Works, Vol., II, p. 353). These are his final court of appeal against the High Calvinists who use their professed logic to move from biblical premises to unbiblical conclusions. But he finds Edwards very helpful in answering the High Calvinist objection on another level. Remember, the objection is: “It is absurd and cruel to require of any man what is beyond his power to perform.” In other words, a man’s inability to believe removes his responsibility to believe (and our duty to command them to believe). In response to this objection, Fuller brings forward the distinction between moral inability and natural inability. This was the key insight which he learned from Jonathan Edwards, and he gives him credit for it on the third page of The Gospel Worthy.

Referring to himself in the third person as the author, he writes, “He had read and considered, as well as he was able, President Edwards’s Inquiry into the Freedom the Will . . . on the difference between natural and moral inability. He found much satisfaction in the distinction as it appeared to him to carry with it its own evidence—to be clearly and fully contained in the Scriptures. . . . The more he examined the Scriptures, the more he was convinced that all inability ascribed to man, with respect to believing, arises from the perversion of his hear” (Works, Vol., II, p. 330).

The distinction is this: Natural inability is owing to the lack of “rational faculties, bodily powers, or external advantages”; but moral inability is owing to the lack of inclination because of an averse will. Natural inability does in fact remove obligation. He cites Romans 2:12 as a pointer to this truth: “For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.” In other words, there is a correlation between what you will be held accountable for and what you had natural access to.

But moral inability does not excuse. It does not remove obligation. And this is the kind of inability the Bible is speaking about when it says, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Corinthians 2:14; cf. Romans 8:8).

There is an essential difference [Fuller writes] between an ability which is independent of the inclination, and one that is owing to nothing else. It is just as impossible, no doubt, for any person to do that which he has no mind to do, as to perform that which surpasses his natural powers; and hence it is that the same terms are used in one case as in the other (Ibid., p. 377).

In other words, it is just as impossible for you to choose to do what you have no inclination to do as it is to do what you have no physical ability to do. But the inability owing to physical hindrances excuses, while the inability owing to a rebellious will does not.

“He that, from the Constitution of his nature, is absolutely unable to understand, or believe, or love a certain kind of truth, must of necessity, be alike unable to shut his eyes against it, to disbelieve, to reject, or to hate it. But it is manifest that all men are capable of the latter; it must therefore follow that nothing but the depravity of their heart renders them incapable of the former” (Works, Vol., II, p. 378).

This kind of reasoning was not Fuller’s main reason for rejecting High Calvinism and Arminianism. Scripture was. But Edwards’ categories helped him make more sense of what he saw there.

The Practical Effect for Missions

The all important conclusion from all this exegetical, doctrinal, theological labor and controversy was the enormously practical implication for evangelism and world missions:

I believe it is the duty of every minister of Christ plainly and faithfully to preach the gospel to all who will hear it; and, as I believe the inability of men to [do] spiritual things to be wholly of the moral, and therefore of the criminal kind — and that it is their duty to love the Lord Jesus Christ, and trust in him for salvation, though they do not; I therefore believe free and solemn addresses, invitations, calls, and warnings to them, to be not only consistent, but directly adapted as means, in the hand of the Spirit of God, to bring them to Christ. I consider it as part of my duty that I could not omit without being guilty of the blood of souls (Morden, Offering Christ, p. 106.).

Fuller’s engagement at this level of intellectual rigor, as a pastor and a family man, may seem misplaced. The price was high in his church and in his family. But the fruit for the world was incalculably great. No one else was on the horizon to strike a blow against the church-destroying, evangelism-hindering, missions-killing doctrine of High Calvinism. Fuller did it, and the theological platform was laid for the launching of the greatest missionary movement in the world.

Fuller Against Sandemanianism

Before we draw out some lessons for ourselves, I want to deal briefly with Fuller’s engagement with Sandemanianism. Fuller’s response to this deadening movement of his day was part of the platform for the missionary movement, and it is amazingly relevant for our day because of its bearing on the debates about the nature of justifying faith. I just tuned into the debate between R. Scott Clark and Doug Wilson over at Scott’s blog, Heidelblog, and there were elements of it that relate directly to Fuller’s response to Sandemanianism (though no one there would be in the category of a Sandemanian). And again Fuller gets one of his decisive insights in this debate from Jonathan Edwards.

What is Sandemanianism?

Robert Sandeman (1718–1771) spread the teaching that justifying faith is the mind’s passive persuasion that the gospel statements are true. Here is the way Andrew Fuller expressed this Sandemanianism. The distinguishing marks of the system, he says, relate

to the nature of justifying faith. This Mr. S. [Sandeman] constantly represents as the bare belief of the bare truth; by which definition he intends, as it would seem, to exclude from it everything pertaining to the will and the affections, except as effects produced by it. . . . ‘Everyone,’ says he, ‘who obtains a just notion of the person and work of Christ, or whose notion corresponds to what is testified of him, is justified, and finds peace with God simply by that notion.’

This notion he considers as the effect of truth being impressed upon the mind, and denies that the mind is active in it. ‘He who maintains,’ says he, ‘that we are justified only by faith, and at the same time affirms . . . that faith is a work exerted by the human mind, undoubtedly maintains, if he had any meaning to his words, that we are justified by a work exerted by the human mind’ (Works, Vol., I, pp. 566-567. Sandeman took his view so seriously that he saw the main stream Puritan writers (including men like Flavel, Boston, Guthrie, and the Erskines) as furnishing “a devout path to hell.” Works, Vol. II, p. 566.).

Sandeman’s aim is to protect the doctrine of justification by faith alone. He believes that if faith has any movement of mind or will or affections toward God, it is an act and therefore a work and would therefore compromise the doctrine. To protect the doctrine, he denies that faith has any activity in it at all. Implicit is that faith is not a virtue. It does not partake of any goodness or newness in the soul. He therefore does not see regeneration as preceding and enabling faith, for that would make faith an acting of the renewed heart and therefore we would be justified by the goodness of what we do. So faith must be defined as perfectly consistent with a soul that is in actual enmity with God, before there is any renewal at all.

Sandeman’s main support for this view is the meaning of the term ungodly in Romans 4:5, “To the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.” He argues that this term must mean that there is no godly or virtuous or renewed or active quality about our faith, for if there were, we would not be called ungodly. So he defines faith as a passive persuasion of the truth in which the mind is not active. So faith can coexist with ungodliness understood as the total absence of any renewal or godly act of the soul (See how Fuller explains this argument of Sandeman in Works, Vol., I, p. 568.).

For the Sake of the Church and the Nations

Fuller found this both unbiblical and deadening to the churches. To sever the roots of faith in regeneration, and to strip faith of its holiness, and to deny its active impulse to produce the fruit of love (Galatians 5:6) was to turn the church into an intellectualistic gathering of passive people who are afraid of their emotions and who lack any passion for worship or missions (“Their intellectualized view of faith probably accounted for what Fuller and Sutcliff saw as the arid nature of many of their churches. . . . Most centrally, they were not sufficiently committed to the spread of the gospel” (Morden, Offering Christ, p. 150). Therefore, Fuller, the lover of God and missions, waged another battle against Sandemanianism for the sake of the church and the nations.

Fuller compiles a hundred pages of small print argument in twelve letters complied under the title Strictures on Sandemanianism (Works, Vol. II, pp. 561–646).

Here are two sample arguments for not taking ungodly in Romans 4:5 to mean that faith in the justified believer has no character of holiness:

Argument #1: “Neither Abraham nor David, whose cases the apostle selects for the illustration is argument, was, at the time referred to, the enemy of God. . . . But the truth is, [Abraham] had been a believer in God and a true worshiper of him for many years, at the time when he is said to have believed in God, and it was counted to him for righteousness, Genesis 12:1-3; 15:6; Hebrews 11:8. Here then is an account of one who had walked with God for a series of years ‘working not, but believing on him that justifieth the ungodly;’ a clear proof that by ‘working not’ the apostle did not mean a wicked inaction, but a renunciation of works as the ground of acceptance with God” (Works, Vol. III, p. 717).

Argument #2. “It and has been said that the term ungodly is never used but to describe the party as being under actual enmity of God at the time. I apprehend this is a mistake. Christ is said to have died for the ‘ungodly.’ Did he then lay down his life only for those who, at the time, were actually his enemies? If so, he did not die for any of the Old Testament saints, nor for any of the godly who were then alive, nor even for his own apostles. All that can in truth be said is, that, what ever were the characters at the time, he died for them as ungodly; and thus it is that he ‘justifieth the ungodly’” (Ibid., p. 404).

He points out, for example, that faith is a kind of “work” or act of the soul because Jesus says so in John 6:28–29, “Then they said to him, ‘What must we do, to be doing the works of God?’ Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent’” (Works, Vol. III, p. 718. But he adds immediately, as we will see below, “But that we are justified by it as a work, or is a part of moral obedience . . . I utterly deny.”)

He also observes that it is the uniform witness of Scripture that “without repentance there is no forgiveness” (Ibid., p. 716). He also shows that the meaning of faith in the New Testament is revealed with many parallel expressions that imply the good action of the heart (for example, to receive Christ, John 1:12; or to come to Christ, John 6:35).

So Fuller denies that faith is a mere passive persuasion of the mind, but asserts that it is the holy fruit of regeneration which has in it the good impulse to “work through love” (Galatians 5:6).

“Unbelief [is not] the same thing as unholiness, enmity, or disobedience; but it is not so distinct from either as not to partake of the same general nature. It is not only the root of all other sin, but is itself a sin. In like manner, faith is not only the root of all other obedience, but is itself an exercise of obedience. It is called ‘obeying the truth,’ and ‘obeying the gospel’” (Works, Vol. II, p. 575).

To see this is vital for the life of the church and the power of world missions. How then does he reconcile this with Romans 4:5 which says that God “justifies the ungodly”? Here is his answer:

This term [ungodly in Romans 4:5], I apprehend, is not designed, in the passage under consideration, to express the actual state of mind which the party at the time possesses, but the character under which God considers him in bestowing the blessing of justification upon him. Whatever be the present state of the sinner’s mind — whether he be a haughty Pharisee or a humble publican — if he possess nothing which can in any degree balance the curse which stands against him, or at all operate as a ground of acceptance with God, he must be justified, if at all, as unworthy, ungodly, and wholly out of regard to the righteousness of the mediator” (Works, Vol. III, p. 715. Emphasis added.). He uses the analogy of a magnet to help us see that faith can have qualities about it and yet it not be these qualities that God has reference to when he counts faith as justifying.

Whatever holiness there is in [faith], it is not this, but the obedience of Christ, that constitutes our justifying righteousness. Whatever other properties the magnet may possess, it is as pointing invariably to the north that it guides the mariner; and whatever other properties faith may possess, it is as receiving Christ, and bringing us into union with him, that it justifies (Works, Vol. I, p. 281).

“By believing in Jesus Christ the sinner becomes vitally united to him, or, as the Scriptures express it, ‘joined to the Lord,’ and is of ‘one spirit with him;’ and this union, according to the divine constitution, as revealed in the gospel, is the ground of an interest in his righteousness. Agreeable to this is the following language: “There is now, therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.’—‘Of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us righteousness,’ etc.—‘That I may be found in him not having mine own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ’” (Works, Vol. II, p. 384).

The Uniqueness of Faith

He points out that faith is unique among all the other graces that grow in the renewed heart. It is a “peculiarly receiving grace.”

Thus it is that justification is ascribed to faith, because it is by faith that we receive Christ; and thus it is by faith only, and not by any other grace. Faith is peculiarly a receiving grace which none other is. Were we said to be justified by repentance, by love, or by any other grace, it would convey to us the idea of something good in us being the consideration on which the blessing was bestowed; but justification by faith conveys no such idea. On the contrary, it leads the mind directly to Christ, in the same manner as saying of a person that he lives by begging leads to the idea of his living on what he freely receives” (Works, Vol. I, p. 281. “By faith we receive the benefit; but the benefit arises not from faith, but from Christ. Hence the same thing which is described in some places to faith, is in others ascribed to the obedience, death, and resurrection of Christ.” p. 282).

What matters, Fuller says, concerning the meaning of the justification of the ungodly is not that we possess no holy affections in the moment of justification by faith, “but that, whatever we possess we make nothing of it as a ground of acceptance, ‘counting all things but loss and dung that we may win and be found in him’” (Works, Vol. II, p. 406.). Faith is a duty. It is an act of the soul. It is a good effect of regeneration. “Yet,” Fuller says, “it is not as such, but as uniting us to Christ and deriving righteousness from him, that it justifies?” (Ibid., p. 572. At this point, he refers to Jonathan Edwards and gives him credit for this insight.)

Faith: A Holy Act That Justifies the Ungodly

Fuller concludes his book, The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, with reference back to the New Testament preachers:

The ground on which they took their stand was “Cursed is everyone who continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them” [Galatians 3:10]. Hence they inferred the impossibility of the sinner being justified in any other way than for the sake of him who was “made a curse for us;” and hence it clearly follows, that whatever holiness any sinner may possess before, in, or after believing, it is of no account whatever as a ground of acceptance with God. (Ibid., pp. 392–393.)

Which means that God justifies us under the consideration of our unworthiness, our ungodliness, because of Christ, not under the consideration of any holiness in us. In this way, Fuller is able to retain the crucial biblical meaning of faith as a holy acting of the will flowing from regeneration, and yet say with Paul, “To the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Romans 4:5).

One Great Enemy: Global Unbelief

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.

The Vital Link Between Doctrine and World Missions

What shall we learn from this? We should learn the vital link between the doctrinal faithfulness of the church and the cause of world missions. The main impulse of our day is in the other direction. Everywhere you turn there is pressure to believe that missions depends on not disputing about doctrine. As soon as you engage another professing Christian in controversy over some biblical issue, the cry will go up: “Stop wasting your time and be about missions.” What we learn from Fuller is that those cries are at best historically naïve and at worst a smoke screen for the uninhibited spread of error.

One crucial lesson from Andrew Fuller’s life is that the exegetical and doctrinal defense of true justifying faith and true gospel preaching in the end did not hinder but advanced the greatest missionary movement in world history. Getting Christian experience biblically right and getting the gospel biblically right are essential for the power and perseverance and fruitfulness of world missions.

Wrong Inferences Produce Deadly Mistakes

Learn from Fuller’s conflicts that deadly mistakes come from drawing wrong inferences from texts based on superficial claims of logic: If God justifies the ungodly, then faith must be ungodly because God justifies by faith. If the natural man cannot receive the message of the cross, then don’t urge him to receive it; it’s pointless and cruel. Real logic is not the enemy of exegesis. But more errors than we know flow from the claim to logic that contradicts the Bible.

If God is love, there cannot be predestination.

If Stephen says Israel has resisted God, then God cannot overcome our rebellion irresistibly.

If men are accountable for their choices, they must be ultimately self-determining.

If God is good, innocent people cannot suffer so much.

If God rules all things including sin, he must be a sinner.

If God rules all things, there is not point in praying.

If God threatens a person with not entering the kingdom, he cannot have eternal security.

If Christ died for all, he cannot have purchased anything particular for the elect.

Fuller shows us that the best antidote against the wrong use of logic is not first better logic, but better knowledge of the Bible, which is the best warning system for when logic is being misused.

Global Impact for the Glory of Christ

There is a kind of inner logic to Fuller’s life and battles and global fruitfulness. His engagement with Sandemanianism highlights the importance of vital, authentic spiritual experience over against sterile, intellectualistic faith. His engagement with Hyper-Calvinism highlights the importance of objective gospel truth. These two things set the stage for assaulting global unbelief. Authentic subjective experience of God plus authentic objective truth of God leads to authentic practical mission for God. Holy faith plus worthy gospel yields world vision.

Therefore, devote yourself to experiencing Christ in the gospel biblically and authentically. And devote yourself to understanding Christ in the gospel biblically and authentically. And may God ignite that experience and that understanding in such a way that your life will count like Andrew Fuller’s for the cause of world evangelization to the glory of Christ.