Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 29:1 (Spring 2025)
Article: Andrew Fuller And Nicaea: His Potential Response To Edward Sharman And His Anti-Trinitarianism
Author: Michael A. G. Haykin

Andrew Fuller And Nicaea: His Potential Response To Edward Sharman And His Anti-Trinitarianism1

Michael A. G. Haykin

Michael A. G. Haykin is Professor and Chair of Church History at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky, and Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, located at Southern Seminary. He is also Professor of Church History at Heritage Theological Seminary, Cambridge, Ontario, Canada. Dr. Haykin is the author of many books, including “At the Pure Fountain of Thy Word”: Andrew Fuller As an Apologist (Paternoster Press, 2004), Jonathan Edwards: The Holy Spirit in Revival (Evangelical Press, 2005), The God Who Draws Near: An Introduction to Biblical Spirituality (Evangelical Press, 2007), Rediscovering the Church Fathers: Who They Were and How They Shaped the Church (Crossway, 2011), Patrick of Ireland: His Life and Impact (Christian Focus, 2014), Kiffen, Knollys, and Keach: Rediscovering our English Baptist Heritage (H&E, 2019), Reading Andrew Fuller (H&E, 2020), Iron Sharpens Iron: Friendship and the Grace of God (Union Publishing, 2022), and Amidst Us Our Beloved Saints: Recovering Sacrament in the Baptist Tradition (Lexham, 2022).

In the late 1740s, the American divine Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) described the intellectual mentalité of his day as “an age, as is supposed, of great light, freedom of thought, and discovery of truth in matters of religion, and detection of the weakness and bigotry of our ancestors, and of the folly and absurdity of the notions of those that were accounted eminent divines in former generations.” As far as Edwards was concerned, however, the reality was there had never been “an age, wherein religion in general was so much despised and trampled on, and Jesus Christ and God Almighty so blasphemed and treated with open daring contempt.”2 Central among the ideas held in extremely high regard by “eminent divines in former generations” was the doctrine of the Trinity. Since its creedal codification

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in the fourth century at the Councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381), Trinitarianism had been fundamental to Christian theology. The exaltation of human reason as the primary epistemological determinant of truth in the long eighteenth century, however, raised major questions about this foundational doctrine, along with other key aspects of the Christian Faith. A number of theological authors dismissed the doctrine of the Trinity as a philosophical and unbiblical construct of the post-Apostolic Church, and turned to classical Arianism as an alternate perspective, while others simply ri...