ANDREW FULLER CONFERENCE FOCUSES ON THEOLOGY OF WARFARE By W. Hank Balch
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary hosted the annual Andrew Fuller Conference, Sept. 26-27, 2011. Th i s ye a r ’s A n d r e w F u l l e r conference, carrying the theme “Baptists and War,” brought together topics including Baptist chaplaincy on English warships in the 17th century, the revolution of church polity in the Philadelphia Baptist Association during the American Revolution,
Andrew Fuller and the Napoleonic War, American and Canadian Baptists in the War of 1812, Australian Baptists and War, Russian Baptists and the Cold War and the Vietnam War and Baptist witness. Conference speakers from Southern Seminary included professors Thomas J. Nettles and Gregory A. Wills, as well as presentations by Phillip Bethancourt and Cody McNutt. The conference featured other historians and scholars such as Paul Brewster, Anthony Cross, George C. Rable, Maurice Dowling, Nathan Finn, James Fuller, Keith Harper, Larry Kreitzer and Robert Linder. The history of Baptists and war in general is a complex one as “Baptists have served with distinction in
“The pattern of war revealed in the Old Testament shows how God would later battle for his people in the New Testament and finds its apex at the cross of Christ – where God carries out holy war on his Son, totally destroying sin and then pouring out upon him the spoils of victory through the Spirit.”
numerous wars, while other Baptists have been thrown into prison for being conscientious objectors,” said Cross in his address about Baptists and peace. Cross is the director of the Centre for Baptist History and Heritage at Regent’s Park College, Oxford. The historic Baptist reaction and interaction with war was often put in the starkest of terms. Men like the early Baptist Thomas Helwys asked, “What holy heart will not easily be brought to think that war is an unchristian thing where there is so much slaughter and bloodshed and which is accompanied with so many calamities and miseries.” Baptist minister Robert Hall echoed this sentiment when he said, “In war, death reigns without arrival and without control.” These realistic appraisals of war, however, are not without a broader theological context, as Bethancourt noted in his paper about the Canaanite genocide. The true holy war in which Christians are engaged, he said, is not ultimately between man and man, but rather between God and sin. War in Scripture is given as “a typological pattern of messianic warfare, rooted in the garden of Genesis 3:15 and fulfilled in the garden of the new creation.” “The pattern of war revealed in the Old Testament shows how God would later battle for his people in the New Testament and finds its apex at the cross of Christ – where God carries out holy war on his Son, totally destroying sin and then pouring out upon him the spoils of victory through the Spirit,” said Bethancourt. As “wars and rumors of wars” continue to increase at the dawning of the 21st century, such historical reminders of the Baptist vision of war should cause believers to think often and trust deeply in a theology of warfare that keeps their hope in Christ and their minds engaged with the lessons of the past. ____ More information about the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies is available at www. andrewfullercenter.org
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