Andrew Fuller (1754-1815) did not believe it was possible for sinners to come to faith in Jesus Christ of their own free will even though they had a duty to

Refuting High Calvinism: The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation

A preliminary draft of the work was written by 1778. In what was roughly its final form it was completed by 1781. Two editions of the work were published in Fuller’s lifetime. The first edition, published in Northampton in 1785, was subtitled The Obligations of Men Fully to Credit, and Cordially to Approve, Whatever God Makes Known, Wherein is Considered the Nature of Faith in Christ, and the Duty of Those where the Gospel Comes in that Matter. The second edition, which appeared in 1801, was more simply subtitled The Duty of Sinners to Believe in Jesus Christ, a subtitle which well expressed the overall theme of the book. There were substantial differences between the two editions, which Fuller freely admitted and which primarily related to the doctrine of particular redemption, but the major theme remained unaltered: “faith in Christ is the duty of all men who hear, or have opportunity to hear, the gospel.” Or as he put it in his preface to the first edition: “God requires the heart, the whole heart, and nothing but the heart;…all the precepts of the Bible are only the different modes in which we are required to express our love to him.”

The Nature of Saving Faith

The Conversion of Saint Paul, a 1600 painting by the Italian artist Caravaggio.

In the first section of the work, Fuller states the theme of the book and spends some time discussing the nature of saving faith. He especially takes to task the popular High Calvinist view of faith as something primarily subjective.

The Scriptures always represent faith as terminating on something without us; namely, on Christ, and the truths concerning him: but if it consist in a persuasion of our being in a state of salvation, it must terminate principally on something within us; namely, the work of grace in our hearts; for to believe myself interested in Christ is the same thing as to believe myself a subject of special grace.

The Nature of Genuine Faith

The Sacrifice of Isaac is the title of two paintings from c. 1598 - 1603 depicting the sacrifice of Isaac. The paintings could be painted by the Italian master Caravaggio (1571–1610) but there is also strong evidence that they may have been the work of Bartolomeo Cavarozzi

As Fuller goes on to point out, genuine faith is fixed on “the glory of Christ, and not the happy condition we are in.” These are two very different things. The former entails “a persuasion of Christ being both able and willing to save all them that come unto God by him,” while the latter is “a persuasion that we are the children of God.” The High-Calvinist schema thus ultimately turns faith into a preoccupation with the one’s spiritual state and security and Christ a means to the latter.

Unconverted sinners are commanded, exhorted, and invited to believe in Christ for salvation

1929 cover of the USSR League of Militant Atheists magazine, showing the gods of the Abrahamic religions being crushed by the Communist 5-year plan

In Part II of the work Fuller adduces six arguments in defence of his position. Let us look at one of these arguments, the first, in which Fuller seeks to show from various Biblical passages that “unconverted sinners are commanded, exhorted, and invited to believe in Christ for salvation.”

Jesus says to unbelievers, "Believe in the Light."

Mary of Bethany anointing Jesus' feet with nard and wiping them with her hair by DANIEL F. GERHARTZ

John 12:36, for instance, contains an exhortation of the Lord Jesus to a crowd of men and women to “believe in the light” that they might be the children of light. Working from the context, Fuller argues that Jesus was urging his hearers to put their faith in him. He is the “light” in whom faith is to be placed, that faith which issues in salvation (John 12:46). Those whom Christ commanded to exercise such faith, however, were rank unbelievers, of whom it is said earlier “they believed not on him” (John 12:37).

Jesus says to unbelievers, "The work of God is that you believe on Him whom God has sent."

Resurrection of Christ by Hendrick van den Broeck

Or consider John 6:29 where Jesus declares to sinners that “this is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.” Fuller first points out that this statement is made to men who in the context are described as following Christ simply because he gave them food to eat (verse 26). They are unbelievers (verse 36). Christ rebukes them for their mercenary motives and urges them to “labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life” (verse 27). Their response as recorded in John 6:28 is to ask Christ “what shall we do, that we might work the works of God?” His answer is to urge them to put their faith in him (verse 29). Or, as Fuller puts it, faith in Christ is “the first and greatest of all duties, and without it no other duty can be acceptable.”

Honour the Son as your Honour the Father

Pages of Honour carrying the train of Queen Alexandra during her anointing at the Coronation of Edward VII depicted in a painting by Laurits Tuxen  (1853–1927).

Again, in John 5:23 we read that all men and women are to “honour the Son, even as they honour the Father.” Giving honour to the Son entails, Fuller rightly reasons, “holy, hearty love to him” and adoration of every aspect of his person. It “necessarily supposes faith in him.” Christ has shown himself to be an infallible teacher, a holy advocate who pleads the case of his erring people, a physician who offers health to the spiritually sick, and a supreme monarch. Honouring him in these various aspects of his ministry requires faith and trust. “To honour an infallible teacher is to place an implicit and unbounded confidence in all he says; to honour an advocate is to commit our cause to him; to honour a physician is to trust our lives in his hands; and to honour a king is to bow to his sceptre, and cheerfully obey his laws.”

Simon Magus was directed to believe in Jesus

Benozzo Gozzoli, Fall of Simon Magus (1461-1462).

Fuller can also point to the incident with Simon Magus in Acts 8, where the magician is urged by Peter to “repent” and “pray” for forgiveness of his sinful thinking (Acts 8:22). Forgiveness, though, can be found only in Christ. So, Fuller reasons, “he was, in effect, directed to believe in Jesus.” 
 

Sinners are reproved for not believing

Belief by Fred Szabries

Another argument that Fuller brings forward is the fact that lack of faith in Christ is considered a “heinous sin” in the Scriptures, Fuller reasoned that trust in Christ is required of all that sit under the preaching of the Word. Men and women are never reproved for their not being among the elect, for election is solely God’s work. But “sinners are reproved for not believing,” as in passages John 5:40, where Jesus rebukes his hearers for being unwilling to come to him to receive eternal life.
 

Sinful men and women are utterly powerless to turn to God except through the regenerative work of God’s Holy Spirit, yet this powerlessness is the result of their own sinful hearts

POWERLESS Painting by Gregor Ziolkowski

One very important question that Fuller ha to wrestle with had to do with human inability and the Spirit’s help. High-Calvinists argued that sinners are unable to do anything spiritually good, and thus are under no obligation to exercise faith in Christ. They supported their argument by reference to such texts as John 6:44 (“No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him”) and 1 Corinthians 2:14 (“the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned”). The inability of which these passages speak, Fuller contended in response, is a moral inability, which is rooted in the sinful disposition of the heart. Men and women refuse to come to Christ because of their aversion to him. They fail to understand the gospel and the things of the Spirit because they lack the means by which such matters are understood, namely, the presence of the indwelling Spirit. And they lack the Spirit because their hearts are closed to God. These verses are not speaking of a physical inability—such as insanity or mental deficiency— which excuses its subject of blame. In making this distinction between physical and moral inability, which Fuller derived from Jonathan Edwards, Fuller was seeking to affirm a scriptural paradox: sinful men and women are utterly powerless to turn to God except through the regenerative work of God’s Holy Spirit, yet this powerlessness is the result of their own sinful hearts.

We need the influence of the Holy Spirit

to enable us to do our duty

Depiction of the Christian Holy Spirit as a dove, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, in the apse of Saint Peter's Basilica

This led Fuller to address the role of the Spirit’s work in conversion. High-Calvinists argued that if repentance and faith are ascribed by the Scriptures to the work of the Spirit, then “they cannot be duties required of sinners.” As Fuller points out, though, the force of this objection is dependent upon the supposition that “we do not stand in need of the Holy Spirit to enable us to comply with our duty.” What is amazing about this supposition is that Arminianism assumes the same. For the Arminian, because faith is commanded of sinners by God, then they must be able to believe without the irresistible drawing of the Spirit. Similarly, the High-Calvinist reasons that since faith is wrought by the Spirit it cannot be an act of obedience. The truth of the matter, however, is that “we need the influence of the Holy Spirit to enable us to do our duty” and that “repentance and faith, therefore, may be duties, notwithstanding their being the gifts of God.”


There were two main practical conclusions to Fuller’s arguments.

1. Sinners have every encouragement to trust in the Lord Jesus for the salvation of their souls

François Boucher Cathédrale Saint-Louis (1766) Versailles

First, sinners have every encouragement to trust in the Lord Jesus for the salvation of their souls. They do not need to spend time dallying to see if they are among God’s elect or if God is at work in their hearts by his Spirit. Moreover, they can no longer sit at ease under the sound of the gospel and excuse their unbelief by asserting that faith is the gift of God.

2. Ministers of the Word must earnestly exhort their hearers to commit themselves to Christ and that without delay

Martin Luther preaching Attributed to Lucas Cranach the Younger  (1515–1586)

Second, ministers of the Word must earnestly exhort their hearers to commit themselves to Christ and that without delay. In so doing they will be faithful imitators of Christ and his Apostles, who “warned, admonished, and entreated” sinners to repent, to believe, and to be reconciled to God. Many High-Calvinist ministers of Fuller’s day, though, were too much like John Eve and had next to nothing to say to the unconverted in their congregations, because they believed that these men and women were “poor, impotent…creatures.” Faith was beyond such men and women, and could not be pressed upon them as an immediate, present duty. Fuller was convinced that this way of conducting a pulpit ministry was unbiblical and simply helped the unconverted to remain in their sin. Fuller put his position well in an article of the statement of faith he made at his induction into the Kettering pastorate in 1783: “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 that it is their [i.e. the hearers’] duty to love the Lord Jesus Christ and trust in him for salvation… 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 a part of my duty which I could not omit without being guilty of the blood of souls.”


Source: Haykin, Michael A.G. "LECTURES 7–8: “FULLERISM” & THE CASE AGAINST HIGH CALVINISM." Pages 6-14.