Threats to the faith: Lessons from Andrew Fuller

Towards the end of the 18th century, three kinds of non-biblical teachings posed a danger to evangelicalism in Britain. The Deists, who regarded human reason as the ultimate test of truth, were one such group.

”Socinians, often grouped with Deists, denied Christ’s deity and the concept of a substitutionary atonement. As they reduced Christianity to a mere moral system, these ideas found favor with the intellectual elite.

The second group threatening evangelicalism were the Sandemanians, who taught that saving faith was something merely of the mind a purely intellectual acceptance of the truth of the basic facts of the gospel.

”Sandemanians rejected the biblical teaching that saving faith involved heartfelt trust in Christ. Their ideas proved attractive to some evangelicals.

The Hyper-Calvinists were the third group: they attacked the free offer of the gospel. They denied that the unbeliever was under an obligation savingly to repent and trust in Christ.

”They tended so to emphasise the sovereignty of God in salvation as to forget  or even reject  human responsibility. Hyper-Calvinism appealed strongly to many Reformed evangelicals. As a result, evangelistic effort, especially among the Calvinistic Baptists of the day, suffered greatly.